In the first nine months of FY2016 (to end-December), net sales of Recruit Holdings in Japan amounted to ¥1.3 trillion ($11 billion U.S.), which was 14.2 percent up from the same period in FY2015. The net income jumped 41.8 percent to ¥67.663 billion ($590 million U.S.), which translated into earnings per share (EPS) of ¥120.57 ($1 U.S.), according to a stock exchange news item released on Febr. 13.
Recruit Holdings (Recruit-rgf.com) is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE: 6098). In the first nine months of FY2015 it reported net income of ¥47.709 billion ($415 million U.S.).
The group expected net sales to come in at ¥1.830 trillion ($16 billion U.S.) (+15.2 percent) in the full financial year 2016, and net income to amount to ¥74 billion ($650 million U.S.) (+14.7 percent from the same period in FY2015).
Recruit operates with three divisions, namely Marketing media, HR media and Staffing.
Job-listing sites, such as Indeed, fall under the divisions HR media and Marketing media.
Marketing media
This division includes Summo.jp, Carsensor.com, Movoto.com and matrimonial classified Zexy.net. The listing service contributes almost half of the total revenue generated by this division.
Net sales of this segment climbed 8.6 percent to ¥272.2 billion ($2.3 billion U.S.) in the nine months to end-Dec., 2016. Revenue of the housing and real estate business amounted to ¥74 billion ($650 million U.S.), up 14.4 percent year-on-year, and ¥41.5 billion ($365 million U.S.) for the bridal business, an increase of 1.8 percent year-on-year.
HR media
This division mainly consists of domestic job-ad sites, namely Rikunabi.com, Next.rikunabi.com, R-agent.com and Townwork.net, and the multinational, job search engine Indeed.com.
Total sales from this division amounted to ¥282.4 billion ($2.4 billion U.S.) in the first nine months, up 14.6 percent over the same period in FY2015.
Both domestic and foreign job markets remained favorable. In Japan, a growing number of job listings for full-time, part-time and temporary workers pushed the revenue of local job sites up 5.1 percent to ¥182.4 billion ($1.6 billion U.S.).
Recruit continued to focus on the U.S. to draw strength for Indeed, despite the fact that the job search engine bellwether currently operates in 60 countries around the world. A drive to enhance the brand awareness of Indeed drove its revenue up a whopping 46.3 percent to ¥85.9 billion ($750 million U.S.) in the first nine months of FY2016.
With the last quarter of FY2016 still to be added, Recruit Holdings has already secured the title “Biggest classifieds company in the world in 2016 on revenue”, for itself. It’ll be bigger than, for instance, EBay Inc., Schibsted and Craigslist in 2016.
Here is the PDF of Recruit’s nine-month, consolidated financial results.