Publicis Ends 2024 On High Note, Q4 Grew 6.3%

 

Declaring itself “the world’s largest advertising group” (by net revenue), Publicis Groupe kicked off Adland’s earnings season today -- reporting fourth-quarter organic net revenue growth of 6.3%. For full-year 2024 organic growth (which excludes M&A and currency impact) was 5.8%. 

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Full-year net revenue totaled 13.97 billion euros ($14.4 billion) -- up 6.6% -- and Q4 net revenue was nearly 3.9 billion euros ($4 billion), up 8.9%. 

The Groupe’s operating profit margin for the full year was just over 18%. 

Company shares were up about 2% on the Paris exchange Tuesday morning after it released its earnings report.  

As for 2025, the company indicated that it was “confident” that it would achieve full-year  organic growth of between 4% and 5%.

The low end of the projection (4%) would be achieved in current market conditions. At the top end, the Groupe said it could deliver 5% if the macroeconomic environment improves, which would result in less cuts in traditional advertising and a resumption of client spend on digital business transformation projects.

In Q1 2025, the Groupe expects to deliver organic growth within the full year range.  

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.” 

The claim to being the top holding company will not be official until the other major firms report their results.

Omnicom reports later today, and WPP is expected to report later in the month.

But even Publicis has acknowledged that if the Omnicom-IPG merger goes through later this year, that entity will become the world’s largest ad group, albeit with plenty of growth opportunity for Publicis. 

In North America, organic growth was 5.1% for the full year. The U.S.-- the Groupe’s largest region, and where its model is the most advanced -- posted 4.9% growth.  

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