Martin Sorrell's S4 Capital reported like-for-like revenue down 16.6% to £210.2 million in the March quarter, reflecting the impact of a volatile economy.
The pure-play digital advertising group is under stress from a decline in ad spend by technology companies, sending the company's share price, and market capitalisation, down.
Sir Martin said the company was on target for the year with like-for-like net revenue to be down on the prior year.
"As indicated previously, trading in the first quarter reflects the continuing impact of volatile global macroeconomic conditions, general client caution, particularly amongst technology clients and a reduction in activity with some of our larger Technology Services clients, although there has been some sequential improvement in the Content Practice during the first quarter," said Sir Martin, the executive chair.
"We continue to develop our larger, scaled relationships with leading enterprise clients and are increasing our focus on margin improvement through greater efficiency, utilisation, billability and pricing.
"We maintain our targets for the full year and, as in prior years, financial performance will be significantly second half weighted reflecting both our normal seasonality and an expected improvement in market conditions.
"We remain confident in our strategy, business model and talent, which together with scaled client relationships position us well for growth in the longer term, with an emphasis on deploying free cash flow to improve shareowner returns, now all significant merger payments have been made.
"In addition to significant new business activity, we continue to capitalise on our prominent AI positioning, developing multiple initial assignments as clients start to experiment with and implement applications."
The company reported net revenue down 4.5% like-for-like to £873.2 million in the year to December.
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