Kelvin Stagg
CFO, Member of Executive Board & Executive Director
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the PageGroup 2026 Second Quarter Trading Update. I’m Kelvin Stagg, Chief Financial Officer. And on the call with me is Nick Kirk, Chief Executive Officer.
Although I will not read it through, I’d just like to make reference to the legal formalities that are covered in the cautionary statement in the appendix to this presentation and which will also be available on our website following the call.
Despite ongoing challenging market conditions, the group produced a good performance in Q2. Q2 gross profit was GBP 197.6 million, a decline of 0.2% in constant currencies.
For the first half, we delivered gross profit of GBP 385.2 million, a decline of 2.4% in constant currencies. We reduced our fee earner headcount by 80 or 1.6% during Q2, mainly in France and Northern Europe.
Overall, the group ended the quarter with 4,914 fee earners and a total headcount of 6,679. Despite the challenging conditions, gross profit per fee earner, our measure of productivity, remained high and grew 5% versus Q2 2025. In line with expectations and having paid out the 2025 final dividend of around GBP 10 million in June, net debt at the end of June was around GBP 7 million, in line with Q1.
In the first week