(BFM Bourse) – Particularly hard hit since the start of the health crisis, the Grenoble temporary work group has benefited from an upturn on the stock market on Thursday following the announcement of a targeted acquisition in the field of HR services for events.
Listed on the stock market on December 4, 2019, when a new form of coronavirus was already spreading in various parts of the planet, the temporary work and recruitment specialist Mare Nostrum suffered the full brunt of the global health crisis a few months later. forcing it to shut down all its agencies, training sites and recruitment firms. In 2020, despite a recovery over the second quarter, the firm saw its turnover contract by 25% and its net income fall into the red. So that for its first full year of listing, the title had fallen by 35%.
Last year, the Mare Nostrum share fell again, albeit more moderately (-7%), even though turnover rebounded by 26%, to 155 million euros, thus recovering (to scope and exchange rates) faster than anticipated. At the same time, the Grenoble-based company continued to diversify its businesses – temporary work, recruitment, training, wage portage, professional mobility, etc. – in order to better protect its profitability in the long term.
Pursuing the targeted expansion of its offer, the group announced on Wednesday after the market the signing of a protocol for the acquisition of Agence Unique, an operation limited in amount compared to the size of Mare Nostrum but which allows it to open up new positions in the events sector.
Diversification strategy
Founded in 2016 by Coralie Noblet, Agence Unique offers its clients an integral management service for the human resources aspect of their events, ranging from recruitment to operational management (technicians, managers, artists, animators, butler, etc.) ‘administrative management (recruitment, contract, training, payroll, replacement in the event of absence, etc.). The company has doubled its turnover every year since its creation to around one million euros before the health crisis, and since the lifting of health restrictions in May 2021 has returned to the path of growth.
“This merger with Agence Unique is perfectly in line with our diversification strategy and opens up new prospects for us in the events and culture sectors. We will be able to rely on the expertise of Coralie’s teams to develop new service offerings and deploy them to our clients. Moreover, we share the same values since skills, personality and above all people are at the heart of the Agency’s talent recruitment process”, said Nicolas Cuynat, the CEO of Mare Nostrum, in connection with the ambition to become a key player in HR for SMEs/ETIs.
Still very far from its introductory price of 5.24 euros, the title Mare Nostrum still took advantage of the announcement to regain 5.90% to 2.87 euros around 3:40 p.m.
Guillaume Bayre – ©2022 BFM Bourse
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