IPG reported flat organic revenue growth in the September quarter and forecasts the full year at just 1% as the company works to fix underperformance in some parts of the business.
The global advertising group said net revenue was $US2.24 billion, with organic revenue unchanged from the third quarter of 2023.
IPG recognised a noncash charge of $232.1 million related to both the write-down of goodwill to fair value at the digital specialist agencies and the planned sale of R/GA and Huge.
The company is behind its peers reporting September quarter results. Publicis Groupe posted 5.8% organic growth and Omnicom 6.5%.
IPG reported “solid contributions” from media services, sports marketing, data management and public relations.
“We saw an organic decrease in our integrated advertising and creativity segment with mixed performance by agency, and in our segment of specialised communications and experiential solutions,” said CEO Philippe Krakowsky.
“Growth in the quarter was driven by Octagon, Weber-Shandwick and Golin.
“We had solid growth in our other category and some more modest increases in the healthcare, retail, and financial services sectors. Decreases in the auto and transportation and tech and telecom sectors were due to account losses in late 2023.”
Regionally, the US was flat and the UK (-0.7%) weaker. Latin America (+9.8%) had strong growth, Continental Europe modest (+0.6%) and Asiapac was down (-7.4%).
Krakowsky said the company had made “meaningful progress” to address underperformance at digital specialist agencies.
However, economic and political uncertainty in the US and in many of the largest international markets remained a significant consideration.
This was especially relevant, given the relatively high levels of discretionary project spend that characterise the December quarter.
However, IPG had a strong pipeline for project work in the current December quarter.
“We're focused on capitalising on those opportunities since we will be facing top-line headwinds as we had in the 2025 due to the news flow we've seen on some recent large account reviews,” he said..
“All in for the balance of this year, we continue to believe we will deliver organic revenue growth of approximately 1% and at that level of growth we remain committed to our margin goal for the year of 16.6%.”
The sale of R/GA and Huge was a “good ways down the track” and nearing a conclusion, Krakowsky said.
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.