Amadeus Fire is a personnel service provider based in Frankfurt that specializes in placing professionals in the commercial and IT sectors. The company has a presence in over 20 locations throughout Germany.

The focus of the company’s placement activities are medium-sized businesses, which naturally have a harder time finding high-quality personnel compared to internationally represented large corporations. Therefore, the company has a functioning business model.

Record results As was once again confirmed today when Amadeus Fire published the preliminary key figures for the past fiscal year. The ad-hoc announcement revealed that the Amadeus Fire Group achieved a consolidated turnover of 442.4 million euros and an operating EBITA of 70.4 million euros in 2023.

Both turnover and operating EBITA reached new record highs. Both values increased by 8.7 and 3.5 percent, respectively, compared to the previous year. This resulted in an operating EBITA margin of 15.9 percent.

Results driven by further education The main drivers of turnover and results were the further education segment, where the operating segment result was almost doubled with an increase of 92 percent, achieving a new record result. This exceeded the company’s expectations for 2023 and significantly exceeded the weak previous year’s result.

On the other hand, the core personnel services segment fell below expectations. While the personnel expansion and growth plans were implemented as planned, the segment was burdened by an exceptionally high rate of sick leave, especially in the fourth quarter. As a result, the operating segment result for the past year was 13 percent below the record result of the previous year.

Slightly missed guidance This was also the reason why the Amadeus Fire Group’s projected full-year target, known as the guidance, was slightly missed in terms of results. Instead of the promised result growth of 5 to 7 percent, EBITDA only increased by 3.5 percent.

Despite achieving new record values, the Amadeus Fire share is not highly valued. Based on consensus estimates of analysts, the price-earnings ratio for the current year 2024 is 12.9.

Attractive share valuation The share has already fallen significantly prior to today’s company announcement: While the security was still trading above 125 euros in December, it can now be purchased for 107 euros in morning trading. It is possible that a trend reversal may be emerging for long-term oriented investors.