Lost in the announcement last month that Monster will lay off some 800 workers was the amazing news of the company’s rapid growth abroad. For at least the seventh consecutive quarter, Monster posted double-digit increases in its international revenues.
This segment has grown so fast that it now accounts for one-third of the company’s revenue. In the first six months of this year, it has generated more revenue than it did for all of 2005.
By the numbers, Monster reported international revenues of $117 million for the 2nd quarter of 2007 and $223 million for the first half of the year. This compares to $175 million in North American revenue for the quarter and $359 million for the first half of the year.
How important is the international market?
“The European and Asian recruitment markets represent a significant growth opportunity for Monster, and we will continue to make strategic investments to grow in these areas,” Monster’s CFO Tim Yates told Wall Street analysts during the company’s quarterly conference call in July.
Since 2004, Monster acquired a stake in ChinaHR, bought JobKorea and JobsAhead, a leading job site in India, which it operates alongside its MonsterIndia site. In Europe, Monster acquired Emailjob.com SAS, giving it a foothold in France, and bought JobPilot GmBH, primarily to gain access to the German market, but which also gave it a presence in Austria, Hungary, and Poland.
Monster CEO Sal Iannuzzi told analysts during the conference call it is “in the earliest stages of brand building in Asia, and we expect this market to be very meaningful in the future.”
The exciting story, Iannuzzi says, “is Asia, where I think that the amount of growth is just staggering. The opportunities — whether it be in India or China or in Korea or 10 other countries around the Pacific Rim region — I think we have tremendous opportunity for growth in the future there.”
CareerBuilder, which last year surpassed Monster in North American revenue after earlier taking the lead in traffic, began aggressively courting the international market in early 2006. This year, it signed a traffic deal with MSN to make CareerBuilder the recruitment channel on MSN portal sites in Europe, replacing Monster. The privately owned job board, which does not report international revenues, earlier launched sites in Canada, India, and the United Kingdom under its own brand. The traffic deal included a small stake in CareerBuilder for Microsoft, owner of the MSN network.
Last week, Wachovia Capital Markets upgraded Monster to “outperform” partly based on the strength of its international business.