Workforce solutions provider ManpowerGroup (NYSE: MAN) announced better-than-expected revenue in Q2 CY2026, with sales up 7.5% year on year to $4.86 billion. Its GAAP profit of $1.13 per share was 36.8% above analysts’ consensus estimates.
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ManpowerGroup (MAN) Q2 CY2026 Highlights:
- Revenue: $4.86 billion vs analyst estimates of $4.72 billion (7.5% year-on-year growth, 2.9% beat)
- EPS (GAAP): $1.13 vs analyst estimates of $0.83 (36.8% beat)
- EPS (GAAP) guidance for Q3 CY2026 is $1.01 at the midpoint, beating analyst estimates by 14.6%
- Operating Margin: 2.3%, up from -0.6% in the same quarter last year
- Free Cash Flow was -$8.5 million compared to -$207.2 million in the same quarter last year
- Market Capitalization: $1.81 billion
Jonas Prising, ManpowerGroup Chair & CEO, said, "In the second quarter we delivered strong results with revenues ahead of expectations. Results reflect good execution across our brands and markets, continued cost discipline and improving demand. We are leveraging our scale and diversified platform and focusing commercial efforts on verticals that offer the greatest opportunities to win and capture share. We saw very strong growth in our Manpower brand and improving trends across Experis and Talent Solutions.
Company Overview
Founded during the post-World War II economic boom when businesses needed temporary workers, ManpowerGroup (NYSE: MAN) connects millions of people to employment opportunities through its global network of staffing, recruitment, and workforce management services.
Revenue Growth
A company’s long-term sales performance can indicate its overall quality. Any business can put up a good quarter or two, but many enduring ones grow for years.
With $18.72 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, ManpowerGroup is a behemoth in the business services sector and benefits from economies of scale, giving it an edge in distribution. This also enables it to gain more leverage on its fixed costs than smaller competitors and the flexibility to offer lower prices. However, its scale is a double-edged sword because it’s challenging to maintain high growth rates when you’ve already captured a large portion of the addressable market. To accelerate sales, ManpowerGroup likely needs to optimize its pricing or lean into new offerings and international expansion.
As you can see below, ManpowerGroup’s demand was weak over the last five years. Its sales fell by 1.2% annually, a poor baseline for our analysis.
We at StockStory place the most emphasis on long-term growth, but within business services, a half-decade historical view may miss recent innovations or disruptive industry trends. ManpowerGroup’s annualized revenue growth of 1.3% over the last two years is above its five-year trend, which is encouraging. 
This quarter, ManpowerGroup reported year-on-year revenue growth of 7.5%, and its $4.86 billion of revenue exceeded Wall Street’s estimates by 2.9%.
Looking ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 2.3% over the next 12 months, similar to its two-year rate. This projection doesn’t excite us and suggests its newer products and services will not catalyze better top-line performance yet.
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Adjusted Operating Margin
ManpowerGroup was profitable over the last five years but held back by its large cost base. Its average adjusted operating margin of 2.4% was weak for a business services business.
Looking at the trend in its profitability, ManpowerGroup’s adjusted operating margin decreased by 1.4 percentage points over the last five years. ManpowerGroup’s performance was poor no matter how you look at it - it shows that costs were rising and it couldn’t pass them onto its customers.
In Q2, ManpowerGroup generated an adjusted operating margin profit margin of 2.5%, in line with the same quarter last year. This indicates the company’s overall cost structure has been relatively stable.
Earnings Per Share
Revenue trends explain a company’s historical growth, but the long-term change in earnings per share (EPS) points to the profitability of that growth — for example, a company could inflate its sales through excessive spending on advertising and promotions.
Sadly for ManpowerGroup, its EPS declined by 13.8% annually over the last five years, more than its revenue. This tells us the company struggled because its fixed cost base made it difficult to adjust to shrinking demand.
We can take a deeper look into ManpowerGroup’s earnings to better understand the drivers of its performance. As we mentioned earlier, ManpowerGroup’s adjusted operating margin was flat this quarter but declined by 1.4 percentage points over the last five years. This was the most relevant factor (aside from the revenue impact) behind its lower earnings; interest expenses and taxes can also affect EPS but don’t tell us as much about a company’s fundamentals.
Like with revenue, we analyze EPS over a shorter period to see if we are missing a change in the business.
ManpowerGroup’s two-year annual EPS growth of 54.7% was fantastic and topped its 1.3% two-year revenue growth.
In Q2, ManpowerGroup reported EPS of $1.13, up from negative $1.44 in the same quarter last year. This print easily cleared analysts’ estimates, and shareholders should be content with the results. Over the next 12 months, Wall Street expects ManpowerGroup’s full-year EPS to grow 64.9% from $2.21 to $3.65.
Key Takeaways from ManpowerGroup’s Q2 Results
It was good to see ManpowerGroup beat analysts’ EPS expectations this quarter. We were also excited its EPS guidance for next quarter outperformed Wall Street’s estimates by a wide margin. Zooming out, we think this was a solid print. The stock traded up 12.3% to $43.82 immediately following the results.
ManpowerGroup put up rock-solid earnings, but one quarter doesn’t necessarily make the stock a buy. Let’s see if this is a good investment. What happened in the latest quarter matters, but not as much as longer-term business quality and valuation, when deciding whether to invest in this stock. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here (it’s free).
