Monster Worldwide Sees 11% Employment Index Rise in February

It was revealed on Friday that Monster Worldwide's

U.S. employment index rose 11% in February compared to the previous year, with transportation and warehousing maintaining their positions as top growth markets. According to the

, the MWW U.S. employment index is a monthly gauge used to asses online job demand. It looks at millions of employer job opportunities posted on job search websites when collecting the data. Monster CEO Salvatore Iannuzzi said in a statement last week that he is looking to boost MWW shares after it traded as low as 0.67 times the value of its net assets. The company hired bankers which helped generate a 20% gain in the stock price, but even after that the $1 billion company was cheaper on Wednesday relative to its earnings. Monster has declined to comment about whether the company has been approached by a potential buyer, following rumors alluding to that very thing. However, it did say that it had hired Stone Key Partners and Bank of America Merrill Lynch to review strategic alternatives. On Thursday, shares of Monster rose 3.4% to $8.61. On March 5, Evercore released a research report upgrading Monster Worldwide to Overweight and saying that MWW has put some teeth behind its comments and formally “retained” Stone Key Partners LLC and BofA Merrill Lynch “in connection with its review of strategic alternatives”. Similar to all such exploratory efforts, the potential outcomes could range from an outright sale, a large buyback, the spin-off of certain geographic assets, a JV, or nothing at all if the market turns out to be non-receptive. “We continue to believe this business could generate $76.3 mm in 2013E EBITDA before stock comp is added back,” Evercore said. “We believe the somewhat troubled North American business could trade at a slight premium to sales (or higher) depending on perceived sales and marketing cost overlap (50% of revenues).” The previous day, Oppenheimer had said that MWW's CEO indicated (during a recent conference presentation) that "the Board and the management is also focused on pursuing all other strategic alternatives to increasing shareholder value." “While MWW indicated it would pursue all strategic alternatives we would not conclude that a sale of the company is imminent, and would note that a sale of the company is not the only "strategic alternative" that could be considered.”