At an operating level, Parity reported a profit of 220,000 pounds ($391.6m) compared to a loss of 4.45m pounds ($7.92m) in 2003.

Its shares fell 10% in trading yesterday after the company announced the figures and said it had failed to experience an anticipated seasonal uplift in the order book for the last four months of the year.

Ian Miller, CEO for London, UK-based Parity, told ComputerWire: Training is a challenge because there is too much capacity in the market, although we are gaining market share. By this time we have not seen the uplift as sales are slower than they have been. We now expect this to occur between November and December.

The single bright spot was the UK Resourcing Solutions business, which provides staffing services. This division grew revenue 44% to 45.5m pounds ($81m), of which some 24% came from contracts transferred to Parity through its acquisition of the European customer base of HR management application developer Chimes. Group FD Alison Leyshon said strong demand here was due largely to the company’s work with the UK Government.

Parity recently won a high-profile recruitment services deal with the Cabinet Office, which it announced has now extended for a further two years to April 1, 2010, as well as a project with ICI Paints signed earlier this month, to manage temporary labor in the UK and Europe. Miller said he expects this deal to be extended further. Our Americas business was a key factor for the work with ICI, and we wouldn’t have been at the table without it. There is an intention to extend the deal across the group, he said.

Despite this, the Americas operation declined 12% during the half to 7.7m pounds ($13.7m), and mainland Europe declined 7% to 13.2m pounds ($23.5m), but both were profitable at an operating level.

Miller said in a statement: Parts of our market are clearly improving while others are still proving slow to recover. The staffing business in the UK and mainland Europe are both performing strongly and are significantly better than at the same point last year. We are confident that improvement will be maintained through the rest of the year. The company did not give any guidance on the full-year results.