Publicis Groupe is claiming it has ended the year as the world's largest advertising group, reporting +6.3% organic growth in Q4 to bring full-year growth to +5.8% for the full year.

According to its full-year results, global revenue hit €16.03 billion (AUD$26.599bn), up +8.3% year-on-year, while net revenue was just shy of €14 billion, up +6.6%.

The holdco reported strong FY24 performances across all regions: U.S. at +4.9%, Europe +5.4%, Asia Pacific at +6.3%. It also claimed it maintained industry-leading financial KPIs: 18% operating margin rate, headline EPS up +4.9% at €7.30, free cash flow at €1.84 billion. Overall EBITDA was €3.014 billion, up +5.9%.

Helping things along was solid Q4 net revenue of €3.954 billion, and +8.9% reported growth as well as +6.3% organic growth. In APAC, net revenue for Q4 reached 339 million Euros, which reflects a +6.6% reported growth increase since Q4, 2023. South-East Asia was up by a high-single digit, after double-digit growth in Q4 2023, mainly driven by the Philippines and Malaysia, while Australia and New Zealand posted mid-single-digit growth together on the quarter.

In terms of sectors, healthcare was a leading contributor to full-year net revenue at 14%, followed by automotive (13%), financial (12%), Food and beverage (12%) and TMT (11%).

Publicis has proposed a 2024 dividend of €3.60 per share, an increase of 5.9%, to be fully paid in cash.

Arthur Sadoun, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe, stated, "Thanks to a very strong Q4, Publicis became the largest advertising company in the world in 2024. We are ending the year in the number one position across the board, growing three times faster than our holding company peers, and five times faster than the IT consultancies. We delivered industry-high financial ratios while stepping up the pace of our investments in AI and talent. Once again, we topped the charts in new business rankings.

"But even more importantly, we are accelerating on our status as a Category of One thanks to our unmatched 1st-party data capabilities, our connected media ecosystem, our creative firepower, and our 25,000 engineers, brought together through the Power of One. This makes us confident in significantly outperforming the industry in 2025 for the 6th year in a row."

Commenting on the results, Madison & Wall analysts noted the holdco's Technology offering via the Publicis Sapient business was stable, while the creative business ('Intelligent Creative'), represented a quarter of the company versus the former 'Creative' business, which represented one third. Meanwhile, media (now called 'Connected Media') was 60% of revenue versus “Media + Epsilon” which represented 50%.

"Also notable in the results were the company’s pass-through costs, which represents one measure of activity associated with much [but not all] of the company’s principal-based trading activities [note that some of what would be described as principal-based trading products don’t necessarily involve the company becoming a legal principal, and at the same time there is activity that makes the holding company a principal that doesn’t relate to media trading]," Madison & Wall commented.

"Profit margins were stable for the year at 18%, although much higher than most of the company’s peers - we think Omnicom’s margins might be higher if they recorded revenues on a comparable net revenue basis, as Omnicom’s operating income would be stable but revenue would be lower. Interestingly, management discussed the combination of Publicis Worldwide and Leo Burnett into Leo, noting that no cost efficiencies were intended as part of this effort.

"Our own expectations are that a larger-scaled entity of this nature will be better positioned to operate as a traditional agency network vs. remaining as two smaller separately branded entities, so even if cost efficiencies aren’t realised now, essentially we think they will be more efficient together than if they were apart."

Looking ahead, Publicis forecasts an organic growth guidance of +4% to +5% and expects operating margin rates to remain slightly above 18%.

Madison & Wall noted guidance was also provided on “targeted bolt-on M&A” for another year of 800-900 million euros of acquisitions.

"We think this is an important driver for long-term growth, as ongoing investments in new capabilities are necessary for a company in an industry facing change. Arguably, Publicis [like all holding companies] would be better positioned if it had the financial freedom to invest even more by shifting investor expectations away from a financial model involving dividends and share repurchases."