Publicis reports improvement in revenue decline

Publicis has reported a 5.4% decline in organic revenue for Q4, an improvement on the 7.4% recorded in Q3.

Fo the full year, organic revenue was down 6.5%, with the group – owner of Fallon and Zenith Optimedia – winning €6 billion in accounts last year.

“The very first figures for January 2010 or the first quarter seem to be pointing in the same direction and the trend seems to be unchanged.”

Net profit was down 9.8% to €403 million for the full year, with group sales down 3.8 per cent to €4.52 billion.

Publicis acquired Microsoft’s creative agency Razorfish last year for $530 million, boosting its digital revenues by about 7% to 22.4%.

Chief executive Maurice Levy said: “The year was something of a paradox for the Publicis Groupe.

“While our marketplace experienced a double-digit downturn, we were able to stop the slide and cut it by half, thus actually gaining market share.

“The economic environment worldwide was characterized by constant crisis of unprecedented proportions. In our industry, it manifested itself by a shrinking of the advertising market, which, month after month, caused us to reduce our outlook by as much as 12% to 14%. That left us few options but to manage on a short-term basis, making constant corrections that nevertheless kept us on course to pursue our long-term strategy.”