$22.77
$123.63
bear $22.77
base $62.04
bull $123.63
margin of safety $21.00
market price* $41.49
ManpowerGroup places temporary and permanent workers through its Manpower, Experis (IT and professional) and Talent Solutions (outsourced recruitment and workforce management) brands. About two-thirds of its roughly $18 billion of revenue is earned in Europe, with France alone the largest country and Italy second; the United States is a smaller share. Staffing needs very little capital - capital spending is about $50-80 million a year on $18 billion of revenue - but it has thin margins (operating profit was $150 million in 2025, under 1% of revenue) and little to stop clients switching agencies. Results swing hard with employment cycles. HOW WE MEASURE EARNINGS. We measure the cash the business generates for its owners after paying its staff, stock compensation and the capital spending needed to keep running, and we strip out the large swings in money tied up in client receivables, which move with timing and volumes rather than earning power. Measured that way and before interest, the business produced about $603M in 2016, $438M in 2017, $642M in 2018, $464M in 2019, $199M in 2020 (pandemic), $454M in 2021, $488M in 2022, $219M in 2023, $250M in 2024 and $179M in 2025. The 2025 operating cash outflow of $104 million that alarmed earlier readers is mostly a timing effect: the filing says $269 million went into receivables and other working items because collections were slower (days to collect rose about three days to 55, on mix and currency) and because it capitalised costs for new cloud systems. Excluding that, 2025 still produced roughly $180 million before interest - weak, but positive. Our earlier analysis used a measure that did not remove these working-capital swings, so its earnings figures and values are not comparable to these. WHICH YEARS REPRESENT THE BUSINESS TODAY. Revenue has shrunk from $22 billion in 2018 to about $18 billion, and margins have fallen, so the 2016-2018 years describe a larger, more profitable company. We use 2019-2025, which contains a full cycle (pre-pandemic, the 2020 collapse, the 2021-22 rebound and the 2023-25 European slowdown). The median of that window is about $250 million a year before interest. Earnings fell 28% in 2025 (from $250M to $179M). Our base case assumes about $200M in 2026, a rise rather than a further fall, because the first two quarters of 2026 already show it: operating profit for the first half of 2026 was $140 million against $92 million a year earlier excluding the 2025 goodwill write-down, on revenue up 9% (much of it currency). BASE CASE ($62 a share). Business cash flow recovers from $200M in 2026 to $235M in 2027 and holds at the cycle-median $250M thereafter, with a slow 1% a year erosion beyond year ten for continuing share loss to digital hiring platforms and lower-margin mix. We credit no growth: there is no backlog in staffing, and the company's market share and margins have been falling, not rising. The business is worth about $3.75 billion; net debt is about $0.81 billion (see below), leaving about $2.94 billion, or $62 a share on 47.4 million shares. BEAR CASE ($23 a share). Staffing is one of the most cyclical industries there is. In 2009 the company's revenue fell by roughly a quarter and profit nearly disappeared, and in 2020 cash earnings fell to $199M. The bear case puts a similar downturn into years two to four: $180M in 2026, $120M in 2027, just $30M in 2028 - below the roughly $60-90 million annual interest bill for one year, which the balance sheet can absorb because receivables release cash in a downturn - then a recovery only to $180M, a new lower plateau, eroding 4% a year after year ten as the industry is structurally squeezed. It also reflects the company's habit of writing down acquisitions (goodwill write-downs in 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2025 totalling about $325 million, with $807 million of cumulative impairments now recorded) and assumes the June 2027 euro notes are refinanced at higher cost, so net debt is taken at about $0.95 billion. The business is worth about $2.03 billion, it owes about $0.95 billion, leaving $1.08 billion, or $23 a share. BULL CASE ($124 a share). European demand recovers and the company returns to the $420-490M of business cash flow it earned in 2021 and 2022 by 2029, holding there. This needs no new markets, only a normal hiring upturn on the existing footprint, but it is a level last reached in an unusually strong post-pandemic labour market, which is why it is the bull case and not the base. Business value about $6.67 billion less $0.81 billion of net debt, about $124 a share. DEBT. At 31 December 2025 the company had $1.64 billion of debt and $871 million of cash, but that included $500 million of new 3.75% euro notes due December 2030 whose proceeds were used in January 2026 to repay the 1.75% notes due June 2026. At 30 June 2026 debt was about $1.04 billion (the 3.5% euro notes due June 2027, the 3.75% notes due 2030 and short-term bank lines) against $181 million of cash, reflecting the usual mid-year build in receivables. We take net debt at about $0.81 billion, between the year-end and mid-year positions, and credit a small benefit for the below-market fixed coupons. The main maturity to watch is the roughly $470 million of euro notes due June 2027. WHAT COULD MAKE THIS WRONG. Three things. First, if the decline since 2022 is structural rather than cyclical - clients replacing temporary workers with automation and AI tools, or hiring directly through online platforms - the $250M median is too high and the bear case's lower plateau becomes the base. Second, France and Italy are a large share of profit and both are sensitive to labour-law and payroll-subsidy changes. Third, the company has paid well over the value it later recognised for several acquisitions, so future deals could destroy more capital. MARGIN-OF-SAFETY PRICE. We are not very sure of the earnings level: it has fallen in three of the last four years and the 2025 figure was the weakest outside the pandemic. The worst plausible outcome is a deep European recession on top of structural share loss; the company would very likely survive it, because a staffing firm's receivables turn into cash as volumes fall and its debt is modest, long-dated, fixed-rate euro paper, but shareholders could wait many years for earnings to recover. If we are wrong about both the cycle and the structural squeeze, the shares are worth roughly the low $20s. While waiting the dividend, recently halved to about $1.44 a year, pays something, though it is not secure. The margin-of-safety price is $21: at that price the whole company, debt included, is valued at about $1.8 billion, or about ten times even its depressed 2025 cash earnings and about seven times the cycle median, so a recovery merely to that median over three to four years implies a return well above the 20% annual target, while the deep-recession case implies roughly breaking even after dividends rather than a large permanent loss.