Monster Worldwide Inc.

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Monster Worldwide Inc.

622 3rd Avenue, 39th Floor
New York, New York 10017
U.S.A.
Telephone: (212) 351-7000
Fax: (212) 658-0541
Web site: http://www.monsterworldwide.com

Public Company
Founded: 1967 as Telephone Marketing Programs
Employees: 5,000
Gross Billings: $845.5 million (2004)
Stock Exchanges: NASDAQ
Ticker Symbol: MNST
NAIC: 541810 Advertising Agencies

Monster Worldwide Inc., formerly known as TMP Worldwide Inc., oversees the operations of Monster, the largest online career search Web site, and TMP Worldwide, one of the largest recruitment advertising agency networks in the world. With over 58 million job seeker members, Monster is the 14th most-visited Web site on the Internet. Its database is home to over 49 million resumes, which are perused by over 200,000 member companies looking for prospective employees.

Yellow Pages Specialist in the 1980s

The company was founded in 1967 by Andrew J. McKelvey as Telephone Marketing Programs, a specialist in placing advertisements in Yellow Pages telephone books. By 1980, the New York City-based company also had offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Toronto, London, and Milan. Its gross annual billings had reached about $35 million, which, at 15 percent commission, came to more than $5 million in revenue. Telephone Marketing Systems was placing ads for clients such as Ryder Systems and Econo-Car in the nation's 5,700 directories. The company also held a three-year consulting contract with the French government.

Telephone Marketing Programs had $67.5 million in gross billings and $10 million in gross income in 1983, all stemming from Yellow Pages advertising. "We saw a tremendous opportunity to consolidate in the early 1980s," McKelvey later told Hugh Pope of the Wall Street Journal. "We learned how to buy agencies, how to merge them, and our market share grew steadily. The average agency doesn't want to go into Yellow Page advertising. They want to make award-winning commercials. But what we do is just as creative."

In 1985, when Telephone Marketing Programs ranked 67th among U.S. advertising agencies, its gross billings were $103.3 million and its revenues $15.3 million. TMP now had seven major offices and six sales units nationwide. In 1986, it opened TMP Japan Inc. in Tokyo as a joint venture. In France, it was in the initial phase of making advertisement placements by electronic delivery.

Telephone Marketing Programs was benefiting from a proliferation of new Yellow Pages directories as a result of the government-mandated breakup of the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. (AT&T). This was forcing advertisers to expand their budgets for directory advertising, and, largely as a result, Yellow Pages revenues rose 19 percent to nearly $7 billion in 1985. To accommodate national advertisers unwilling to spend more money, however, TMP, in an effort to target the best buys for its clients, was beginning to survey customers in a variety of markets to determine which directories they used and how often they used them.

By the end of the 1980s, Telephone Marketing Programs was the largest advertising agency in the Yellow Pages field. In 1989, its gross billings reached $270 million and its gross income climbed to $40.5 million, of which all but $3 million was in the United States. The company now had 17 offices. It gained 22 clients in that year, including giant firms such as Avis, Coca-Cola, CVS, Hitachi, and SmithKline-Beecham, while losing only seven. The company's billings and earnings reached $501 million and $59.7 million, respectively, in 1992. By 1994, it commanded a 40 percent share of the Yellow Pages market, including such major clients as General Motors and Ryder Trucks.

Recruitment Advertising Player: 1993–95

TMP Worldwide entered the field of recruitment advertising in 1993 when it purchased Chicago-based Bentley, Barnes & Lynn, an agency with about $50 million in annual capitalized billing, of which recruitment advertising accounted for roughly 75 percent. TMP sold the agency's consumer division to Ayer Inc. in 1994.

Paul Austermuehle, a Bentley, Barnes vice-president who was made president, said the following year that TMP's advanced Yellow Pages technology had helped his agency discover new revenue streams. TMP's heavy investments in computerization and technology, for example, enabled a longtime Bentley, Barnes client to meet a Clear Air Act mandate by reducing the number of commuters who were driving to and from work without passengers. "We're only just now discovering how to make the best use of all the things our TMP marriage provides," Austermuehle told Ylonda Gault of Crain's New York Business.

Like Yellow Pages advertisements, recruitment, or classified advertising was an unglamorous, labor-intensive part of the advertising business neglected by many name agencies because of relatively low profit margins. TMP Worldwide followed the Bentley, Barnes purchase with seven other acquisitions of agencies specializing in recruitment in the following year. These included Deutsch Shea & Evans, Merling Marx, and Chavin & Lambert of New York City and Rogers and Associates of Santa Clara, California. The additions raised TMP's recruitment billings to about $125 million a year and made it the third-largest recruitment agency in the United States and the nation's nineteenth largest advertising agency overall. In 1994, the company lost $2.5 million on commissions and fees of $86.2 million.

Founded in 1981, Rogers & Associates was the second-largest advertising agency in Silicon Valley, with California offices in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco as well as Santa Clara, plus offices in Chicago, Dallas, Miami, and Tampa. Curtis Rogers became president of TMP Worldwide's new recruitment division, while his partner, Steve Schmidt, was appointed president of the parent company's interactive/new media division, with responsibility for "Career Taxi," a Web site enabling clients to create an online brochure for attractive prospective job applicants.

By early 1995, TMP Worldwide's roster of acquired recruitment agencies had reached 12. Of TMP's 70 offices, 25 were focusing on recruitment advertising. TMP's billings in 1995 included $200 million from classified recruitment advertisements in newspapers and other publications. Its acquisitions that year included two competitors in the Boston-area recruitment ad business: Adion and the Haughey Group. TMP's 2,500 recruitment advertising clients at the end of 1995 included Cigna, Nike, Dean Witter Reynolds, and Gateway 2000.

Adion founder Jeff Taylor became head of TMP Interactive, which was put in charge of the "Monster Board" recruitment Web site Taylor created in 1994. He later told Rex Crum of Boston Business Journal, "I knew the business [of Monster Board] was bigger than New England, but almost all the ads and job seekers were from New England. By selling, I was able to utilize the infrastructure of TMP and grow the business." At the end of 1995, Monster Board was listing more than 7,000 positions from U.S. and Canadian employers, receiving resumes from 48 countries, and registering 15,000 hits a day.

TMP Worldwide was not ignoring its core Yellow Pages business, which among its 2,100 clients in 1995 included Ford Motor Co., MCI Communications, Hallmark Cards, Pizza Hut, and United Van Lines. Its gross Yellow Pages billings of $425 million in 1995 accounted for 30 percent of the total billings in this field by U.S. agencies, three times the share of its nearest competitor. An important 1995 acquisition was the purchase of Dallas-based GTE Directories Corp.'s Yellow Pages business and assets from U.S. West. By contrast, TMP held only a 7 percent share of the recruitment advertising market. TMP had net income of $3.2 million on commissions and fees of $123.9 million in 1995, marking an end to at least four years of deficits.

Publicly Owned Powerhouse: 1996–99

TMP Worldwide spent more than $25 million to acquire 12 companies in 1996 and, at the end of the year, had acquired 36 companies since the beginning of 1994 with estimated total gross annual billings of about $350 million. The company made its initial public offering in December 1996, raising $80.5 million by offering a majority of its outstanding Class A shares of common stock at $14 a share. This sum almost exactly matched the company's long-term debt at the end of the year and enabled it to borrow more money for more acquisitions. McKelvey remained president and chairman of TMP and continued to hold 60 percent of the company, including all the Class B shares, which had ten times the voting power of the Class A shares.

TMP Worldwide registered commissions and fees of $162.6 million in 1996. It lost $52.4 million after taking a charge of $52 million for issuing stock to existing shareholders of TMP's predecessor companies in exchange for their shares in these companies. By July 1997, when TMP sold 2.4 million more shares to the public, its stock was trading at $22.25 a share.

Company Perspectives:

At Monster Worldwide, we help individuals get ahead. We help them search, explore and discover opportunity. To stretch. To reach, strive and accomplish. To achieve. To arrive at the special place where talent and potential meet. Where a dream is fulfilled. A fire is ignited. Magic happens. To make a difference. At Monster Worldwide, we understand the unique potential we have. Not only to grow a company but to develop an entire industry. An opportunity to be seized. And fulfilled.

TMP Worldwide's overseas acquisitions included the 1996 purchase of the recruiting firm Neville Jeffrees Australia Pty Limited for $25 million. TMP had purchased eight companies in 1997, including Belgian and Dutch recruitment agencies, at a total expense of $18 million by July, when it landed Austin Knight, the largest such agency in Great Britain, with 1996 gross billings of £134.4 million (about $210 million), commissions and fees of £29.3 million (about $45 million), and 24 offices worldwide. Collateral lines of business brought its annual revenues to more than £70 million (about $110 million). Its clients included Sony Electronics, British Gas, Schweppes, Nestlé, and Yahoo! TMP now had a presence in 11 countries and 80 offices worldwide. Other 1997 acquisitions included the British companies MSL Group and Lonsdale Advertising and a U.S. agency, Johnson Recruitment Advertising. TMP's 1997 revenues came to $329.5 million and its net income to $10.7 million.

By this time, TMP Worldwide was placing the advertisements of all its print clients online at Web sites that included not only Monster Board but Online Career Center, the Internet's earliest career site; MedSearch, the main online classified-ad service for the healthcare industry, and Be the Boss, a site promoting opportunities in franchising. Founded in 1992 by Bill and Susan Warren, Indianapolis-based Online Career Center continued to be run by Bill Warren.

By late 1998, Monster Board was listing 50,000 job postings and receiving more than two million visitors a month, making it the Internet's top job-search site. Prospective employees paid nothing, while the cost to employers began at $175 for 60 days. The service was available in five countries. In January 1999, Monster Board, Online Career Center, and MedSearch combined to form Monster.com. During the second quarter of 1998, Monster.com had an operating profit of $455,000 on revenues of $10.7 million. Monster.com's revenues for the first quarter of 1999 reached $20.1 million. In May 1999, it was serving 42,000 clients, listing 204,000 jobs, holding more than 1.3 million active resumes, and recording 7.6 million hits per month. It was planning to introduce, in July 1999, Monster Talent Market 1.0, a service to connect job searchers with contractors, consultants, freelancers, and small business owners.

TMP Worldwide had made 14 acquisitions in 1998 by mid-October of that year. Among these was Stocking Advertising and Public Relations, one of the oldest agencies in the Washington, D.C., area, with annual revenue of $11 million. TMP paid for the purchase with stock valued at $14.5 million. The company had gross billings of $1.4 billion in 1998, including about $794.2 million for recruitment advertising and about $485.2 million for Yellow Pages advertising. Commissions and fees came to $406.8 million, including $48.5 million in Internet revenue. Net income was $4.2 million.

TMP Worldwide's list of 17,000 clients in 1998 included more than 80 of the Fortune 100 companies and about 400 of the Fortune 500. The company maintained 71 offices in the United States and 46 abroad. Its long-term debt was $118 million at the end of the year. McKelvey held 37.2 percent of TMP's shares in March 1999. The company's growing Internet business was not lost on investors, who bid its stock to a peak of $93 a share in the spring of 1999.

TMP Worldwide's ravenous appetite for acquisitions showed no sign of slowing in 1999. In January, it announced the acquisition of three European recruitment agencies: the German firms Bonde & Schmah and PMM Management Consultants and the French company Sources, SA. The latter purchase, combined with TMP's other operations in France, put the company into a leadership position in the recruitment advertising industry in that country, according to McKelvey. Also in January 1999, TMP Worldwide acquired Morgan & Banks Ltd., its biggest acquisition to date, for more than 5.1 million shares of TMP stock. This Australian company was providing permanent recruitment of personnel ranging from mid-level executives through clerks and was also engaged in temporary contracting and human resources consulting.

TMP Worldwide entered the executive search field in March 1999 when it agreed to buy LAI Worldwide Inc., a firm based in New York City, for more than $80 million in stock. According to Joann S. Lublin of the Wall Street Journal, McKelvey told an interviewer, "We are [now] going to be a big player at the upper end . . . starting with [college] internships running through the whole gamut ending with CEOs." LAI was merged with TASA Worldwide, TMP's executive search division, with Robert L. Pearson, LAI's chief executive officer, to run the operation jointly with Michael Squires, TASA's president.

During the first quarter of 1999, temporary contracts accounted for 30 percent of TMP Worldwide's sales; recruitment advertising for 24 percent; search and selection, 22 percent; Yellow Pages, 13 percent; and Monster.com, 11 percent. McKelvey indicated that the company name would probably be changed to TMP.com when the bulk of its revenue was coming from the Internet. He said that he believed recruitment advertisements, Yellow Pages ads, and executive searches eventually would converge on the Internet and that TMP wanted to acquire businesses promoting online advertisements to Yellow Pages advertisers.

Key Dates:

1967:: Andrew J. McKelvey establishes Telephone Marketing Programs.
1993:: TMP enters the field of recruitment advertising when it purchases Chicago-based Bentley, Barnes & Lynn.
1994:: Adion founder Jeff Taylor creates the "Monster Board" recruitment Web site.
1995:: The company acquires Adion; Taylor becomes head of TMP Interactive.
1996:: TMP goes public.
1998:: By now, Monster Board is the Internet's top job-search site.
1999:: Monster Board, Online Career Center, and MedSearch combine to form Monster.com.
2000:: Monstermoving.com is launched.
2003:: TMP changes its name to Monster Worldwide Inc.
2005:: Monster Worldwide sells its North American and Japanese Yellow Pages division.

Changes in the New Century: 2000–05

TMP's growth continued well into the year 2000. The company remained hot on the acquisition trail adding HW Group, based in the United Kingdom, and Illsley Bourbonnais, a Toronto-based executive head-hunting firm, to its arsenal. It also purchased System One Services and VirtualRelocation.com. TMP expanded its presence on the Web that year by launching Monstermoving.com, a relocation and moving Web site, and ChiefMonster.com, an executive job-search site. Late in the year, it acquired Jobtrak.com.

TMP made a play for HotJobs.com, the second-largest job-search site, in 2001. The company's plans were thwarted, however, when Yahoo! Inc. trumped its offer late in the year. By now, several challenges had forced TMP and its Monster.com subsidiary to make some changes in its strategy. A weakening economy and growing unemployment rates lead to job cuts and falling profits. In fact, during 2002 TMP reported a loss of nearly $535 million, due mainly to weak business operations at its offline staffing and executive search division as well as a charge related to its costly acquisition spree. As such, TMP retooled its operations in 2003 and decided to spin off its unprofitable executive search business. TMP changed its name to Monster Worldwide Inc. that year, signaling the company's focus on its Web-based business.

During 2004, Monster acquired Military Advantage Inc., a company offering military men and women career services via the military.com Web site. It also purchased Tickle Inc., a firm offering personality testing and career assessment services. In an attempt to bolster its international business, Monster acquired jobpilot GmbH, a leading European online career firm, and Emailjob.com, a French job-search site; it also secured a 40 percent interest in China HR, a Chinese job-search company.

In June 2005, Monster sold its North American and Japanese Yellow Pages division to Audax Group in an $80 million deal. According to the company, the sale enabled Monster Worldwide to focus on its core online recruitment business. That same month, Jeff Taylor announced he planned to leave the company in August to start a new online venture that would be partially funded by Monster Worldwide.

During the early 2000s, the company experienced many ups and downs but overall survived the dot-com crash that had wiped out many Internet-based firms. By 2004, its financials appeared to be back on track with gains in both revenues and profits. Monster had a presence in 27 countries across the globe, giving it access to over three billion people. The company had indeed come a long way from its Yellow Pages roots in 1967. Management was confident that Monster would continue its successful run as the leading online recruitment firm in the years to come.