Publicis Groupe: First Quarter 2019 Revenue

Arthur Sadoun, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe:

“Our First Quarter net revenue is in line with expectations, confirming our take on what we anticipate for the year. The Groupe is continuing to deliver on its transformation path, thanks to Power of One, to the rollout of our Global Client Leader organization and to the progressive implementation of our country-led model.

Our strategy is delivering good results: the attractiveness of our model is illustrated by the growth of our game changers combining data, dynamic creativity and business transformation, which recorded a 27% rise in the quarter. The retention of our clients also recorded a marked improvement. This is helping us to mitigate attrition that mainly comes from FMCG clients and that has remained high in the quarter. North America net revenue has been particularly affected by this attrition that represented around 300 basis points of impact on the region performance.

However, we believe that the pace of attrition will slow down in the second half of 2019. Additionally, as you know, we ranked first in New Business Wins in 2018, and the largest ones are starting to ramp up in the second quarter. Taken together, these two items lead us to confirm our outlook for the year.

We have announced today a major step forward with the acquisition of Epsilon. This acquisition will accelerate the implementation of our strategy to become our clients’ preferred partner in their transformation. Realized at compelling financial terms, the transaction will make us fully equipped with truly end-to-end suite solutions to address the increasingly complex needs of our clients in a fast-changing, data-driven marketing environment.

The Publicis Groupe will be stronger, with a balanced revenue mix across diversified expertise. We will be in a position to grasp a larger share of the marketing and business transformation market, which will significantly expand our growth opportunities”.