Mr. McVeigh: I focus on business and professional services. Within that, you have a couple of different subsectors, one of which is staffing. Another sector is what I broadly define as commercial and professional services, which includes outsourcing companies such as Iron Mountain (IRM). The third category is business process outsourcing, primarily customer care companies, including Convergys (CVG), TeleTech Holdings (TTEC) and Sykes (SYKE).
TWST: As you look at these companies, how has business been in this
economic morass?
Mr. McVeigh: It has varied, as you would imagine. Across some of the employment
services names, trends have been very weak as opposed to some of the more
defensive names, including Iron Mountain, where trends on a relative basis have
held up much better. What you are seeing are pretty significant declines in
earnings across the staffing names versus Iron Mountain, where I expect EBITDA
to be flat to up modestly and flattish on earnings.
Tickers included in this excerpt: CVG, IRM, SYKE, TTEC
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