"Our strong gross margin and balanced cost management were able to offset slightly negative organic revenue growth in Q3 2019, while generating record high quarterly free cash flow," says CEO Jacques van den Broek. “We continue to gain market share in several countries, in part driven by the successful progression of our digital strategy across the world. We experienced ongoing weakness in industrial-related sectors, while still identifying ample growth opportunities globally. This means that we continue to balance selective investments for the longer term, while managing more challenging markets. Meanwhile, our free cash flow more than doubled year-on-year in Q3 2019. This underpins the countercyclical nature of our working capital requirements, and hence the resilience of our free cash flow generation through the cycle.”
“Finally, I’m very happy with the proposal to nominate René Steenvoorden as Chief Digital Officer to our Executive Board. This appointment will further strengthen the new setup of our executive team, in which countries, regions, clients and the digital transformation are now all directly represented. With this team, I’m convinced we’ll be able to further accelerate the execution of our Tech & Touch strategy.”