Ad Agencies Q3 Figures Leave Gloomy Outlook For Lehman Brothers
The outlook for European and US advertising remains largely gloomy, despite some more promising signs from the big networks, according to Lehman Brothers.
The top five global ad agency groups have now reported their third quarter results, which contained a few more positive indicators – organic growth up on Q2 and some stabilising of the US market – but analysts note that the outlook was generally quite poor. Lehman believes that the balance of risk for 2003 forecasts remains on the downside.
Of the five agencies – WPP, Omnicom, Interpublic, Publicis and Havas – only Havas failed to report any improvement in organic growth during Q3. Omnicom showed the strongest growth, as shown in the table here.
| Advertising Agencies Organic Growth Rates | |||||||
| Q1 2001 | Q2 2001 | Q3 2001 | Q4 2001 | Q1 2002 | Q2 2002 | Q3 2002 | |
| Interpublic | 6.0 | -3.0 | -8.5 | -11.9 | -13.8 | -10.2 | -5.8 |
| WPP | 6.0 | 1.0 | -6.0 | -9.0 | -9.0 | -7.4 | -3.5 |
| Omnicom | 13.8 | 12.0 | 4.5 | 4.7 | 3.7 | 1.5 | 4.7 |
| Publicis | 8.2 | 4.9 | 1.6 | 0.5 | -2.2 | -4.8 | -3.9 |
| Havas | 7.9 | 3.5 | -4.0 | -4.8 | -5.5 | -5.2 | -5.9 |
| Source: Companies/Lehman Brothers | |||||||
Regionally, only revenues in North America are showing growth across all the major groups listed here; other regions show a more mixed performance.
Despite this upturn, the US remains the weakest area for Interpublic, Havas and Publicis; Omnicom saw a market-thrashing 12.5% growth there (the other groups averaged a 6% decline). WPP did not report regional figures.