Publicis forecasts slower 2025, remains confident on outperformance

By Leo Marchandon

(Reuters) - Publicis, the world's largest advertising group by market capitalization, announced on Tuesday it expects organic growth of 4% to 5% in 2025, a slight slowdown compared to the robust performance in 2024 that exceeded expectations, propelled by its data-driven targeted marketing.

The French group, which dethroned British rival WPP as the world's largest ad group by revenue in December, expressed confidence in outperforming the market again in 2025.

Publicis reported net revenues of 13.97 billion euros ($14.35 billion) for 2024, representing an organic growth of 5.8% versus its 5.5% guidance. The last quarter of the year witnessed growth acceleration to 6.3%.

Publicis' strong showing comes at a time of significant shifts in the advertising landscape. The industry, traditionally a reflection of broader corporate health, is set to consolidate from the "Big Four" to the "Big Three" following the planned merger of Omnicom and Interpublic, forming a combined entity with over $25 billion in revenue.

"We will continue to differentiate ourselves with acquisitions in data, technology and artificial intelligence that will enable us to continue to outperform in terms of growth", CEO Arthur Sadoun said in a call.

This year, an additional 100 million euros will be invested in AI, specifically to develop the CoreAI entity, as part of a total budget of 300 million euros announced a year ago.

"You have to be agnostic about the partners you work with. You have to work with Gemini, you have to work with OpenAI, you have to work with DeepSeek, you have to be able to build your own models", Sadoun said.

Publicis, in its tech-driven transformation that has outpaced competitors, revealed plans to allocate between 800-900 million euros for targeted acquisitions in 2025, focusing on technology, digital media, and proprietary data.

The company highlighted that its strategic acquisitions, particularly Sapient and Epsilon, have contributed 40% to its growth since 2020.

"In short, we believe we are better prepared, we have the assets. We have invested 12 billion euros (over 10 years) to leverage artificial intelligence", Sadoun said in a call.

For 2025, the group projects its operating margin to remain slightly above 18% and anticipates free cash flow between 1.9 and 2.0 billion euros. It proposed a dividend of 3.60 euros per share, a 5.9% hike from the previous year.

($1 = 0.9734 euros)

(Reporting by Leo Marchandon, Editing by Nick Zieminski)