Publicis, the French advertising group which owns Saatchi & Saatchi and co-owns the recently merged Zenith/Optimedia operations (see Optimedia And Zenith Merged By Parent Companies) yesterday released Q3 results which show better-than-expected billings for the year to date.
Consolidated billings of Publicis Groupe SA rose by 56.5% in the first nine months to reach 11.3 billion euro. This rise reflects a strong new business performance worldwide and, more significantly, the acquisition of Saatchi & Saatchi and US agency Nelson Communications.
Net organic growth excluding all acquisitions was 4.6% and group revenues for the first nine months of the year totaled 1.74 billion euro, an increase of 59% and an organic rise of 4.2% compared to the same period in 2000.
| Billings By Geographic Region |
| |
euro (b)Â |
 % organic growth |
|  Europe |
 4.294 |
 +7.5 |
|  North America |
 5.559 |
 +2.1 |
|  Asia Pacific |
 .944 |
 +0.9 |
|  Latin America and other |
 .577 |
 +6.9 |
|  Intra-group trade |
 (.034) |
 – |
|  Total |
 11.340 |
 +4.6 |
Publicis CEO, Maurice Lévy, commented: “The tragic events of September 11 exacerbated a worldwide slowdown that was apparent months earlier. Advertising markets contracted sharply, a trend that will certainly continue at least through the end of this year. In this difficult context, visibility is very constrained. Nevertheless, Publicis, while obviously not entirely sheltered from the difficulties of the economic situation, has held up better than the market as a whole thanks to our balanced portfolio of clients in different sectors, our broad geographical reach and our success in generating new business.”
