Publicis Groupe S.A. (PUB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. This is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Publicis Groupe First Quarter 2024 Revenue Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Arthur Sadoun, Chairman and CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Judith, bonjour, and welcome to Publicis Groupe's First Quarter 2024 Revenue Call. I am Arthur Sadoun, and I'm here in Paris with our CFO, Loris Nold. I will begin this session by sharing our Q1 highlights. You will see that we are starting this year on our front foot. Then Loris will provide more details on our numbers. Finally, I will conclude with our outlook for the rest of the year. As usual, we will take all of your questions together after the presentation. Jean-Michel Bonamy is also here and will be available to take your questions offline after this session. But before we start, please take the time to read the disclaimer, which is an important legal matter. Okay. To sum up this presentation, I would say we had a very strong start to the year. We continued to win market share by sustaining our organic growth momentum with plus 5.3% in Q1, ahead of expectations. This is a good performance as we are resisting despite what is still a very challenging macroeconomic environment impacting the entire industries. We are gaining market share by outperforming our peers by 400 basis points on average versus consensus, and we are accelerating on growth compared to our 4-year CAGR for the first quarter of 4.3% on top of a high comparable of 7.1%. This very good start to the year and the strength of our model mean we are confident and more confident than ever actually in delivering on our 2024 organic growth guidance while maintaining industry high financial ratios. There are 4 highlights when it comes to Q1. First, Epsilon and Publicis Media continued to be strongly accretive to our performance. Demand for marketing transformation remained high, particularly with the rise of AI and personalization at scale in a soon-to-be cookieless world. Epsilon was up 6.8% organically this quarter after double-digit growth in Q1 2023, capturing the continued client need for identity-based media solutions. Media, 1/3 of our revenue, was up double digits again in Q1 after 2 years of double-digit growth. This was due to both new contract wins and organic growth with existing clients. Second highlight. As anticipated, Publicis Sapient recorded sequential improvement in Q1 2024 versus Q4 2023 by delivering a modest minus 1.1% this quarter. In the U.S., Publicis Sapient's largest market, we actually returned to positive growth at plus 2.2% in the quarter. This is encouraging in a context where IT consultancies have not yet seen clients resume CapEx spend on DBTs, as recently expressed by the leader of the market. As we said in February, we remain confident that Publicis Sapient will return to growth over the course of the year. Third, Creative continued to show its resilience with low single-digit growth this quarter, driven by new business, scope expansion, and a solid performance from production. Last but not least, fourth highlight, all of our regions performed well. The U.S., our largest geography, continued to post strong growth with plus 5% this quarter on the top of plus 5.8% last year. Europe continued its positive momentum with plus 6.1% organic growth on the top of plus 15% in 2022 and plus 12% in 2023. The region benefited from strong performances, notably in France and CEE. It's also interesting to note that the Creative and Media in the U.K. grew double digit this quarter, while Publicis Sapient faced tough comparable in Q1 2023 at plus 44%. In Asia Pac, organic growth was plus 6.2%, with a very solid China at plus 6.7% and a strong Southeast Asian performance driven by Media. Overall, after outperforming our peers by 500 basis points last year, we are sustaining this dynamic in Q1 by continuing to win market share, expecting to deliver the highest organic growth of the industry for the eighth quarter in a row. Looking at our 4-year CAGR, we are clearly accelerating on our growth in Q1, and plan to keep doing so for the rest of the year. I will tell you more about this after Loris takes you through the detail of our numbers.

Thank you, Arthur, and good morning to all of you. It's a pleasure to be with you today. I will begin with the evolution of our net revenue for the first quarter of the year. The group posted a net revenue of EUR 3.230 billion in Q1 2024, which represents an organic growth of plus 5.3%. This comes on top of plus 7.1% last year and is ahead of our expectation, as Arthur just explained. Reported growth was at plus 4.9%. We recorded an EUR 18 million positive impact from acquisitions and disposals. This mostly includes the contribution of Practia and Corra acquired in the last 12 months. This quarter, foreign exchange rates contributed a negative EUR 29 million, which is equivalent to circa minus 1% of net revenue. This was mainly driven by a negative EUR 22 million related to the evolution of the USD to euro FX rate. Let's move on to the next slide, which gives the dynamics of our Q1 organic growth by geography. North America continued to see strong organic growth this quarter at plus 4.8%. The impact of the USD to euro was a negative 120 basis points on growth this quarter. Together with the impact of acquisition, this led to a plus 3.6% reported growth overall in the region. Europe posted a very solid plus 6.1% organic growth despite a changing double-digit comparable in Q1 2023, thanks to the strong performances of France and CEE. Asia Pacific posted a strong plus 6.2% organic growth, fueled both by China at high single digits, improving from the last quarter, as well as a strong Southeast Asia. Middle East and Africa and Latin America both posted solid organic growth, plus 4% and plus 7.8%, respectively. I will now detail the performance of each region on the following slides. Let's begin with North America. As I have just said, our operations in the region posted plus 4.8% organic growth in Q1, mainly driven by the U.S. at plus 5%, while Canada was stable. Let's focus on the U.S., representing 60% of group net revenue, where our operations grew plus 5% organically, as I just mentioned, coming on top of plus 5.8% for the same period last year. Media and Epsilon continued to be accretive to growth this quarter, confirming the strength of our integrated offer in this geography. Media grew at a double-digit rate this quarter. This was supported by both new business won in 2023, and scope expansions at existing clients, particularly in food and beverage, retail and healthcare. Creative posted broadly stable growth in this quarter. Publicis Sapient posted a positive organic growth in Q1, sequentially improving from Q4 2023. This performance was particularly solid considering the plus 8% growth in Q1 last year and the current wait-and-see attitude of clients when it comes to DBT projects and CapEx spend. Epsilon posted a high single-digit organic growth in Q1, benefiting from a strong contribution from digital media and data, driven by ongoing demand for identity-led and first-party data solutions. Let's turn to the performance of Europe on the following slide. As I mentioned earlier, Europe recorded an organic growth of plus 6.1%. The U.K., which is 9% of group net revenue in Q1, was slightly positive in the quarter on top of a high comparable base of plus 24% in Q1 2023. Media activities grew double digit in Q1 2024, like in Q1 2023, driven mainly by global wins of 2023. Creative activities also posted double-digit organic growth in Q1 2024, fueled by new business wins and scope expansions. Publicis Sapient, which represents 1/3 of revenue in the country, posted negative organic growth in Q1 against a particularly high comparable in Q1 2023. As highlighted in the last call, we are still facing delays in DBT project and CapEx spend, as experienced by other IT consulting firms. France, which represents 6% of group net revenues in Q1, posted a very strong organic growth at plus 9.4%. Media posted high single-digit growth on the back of very solid growth in Q1 2023, thanks to scope expansions. Creative activities grew mid-single digits and Publicis Sapient was up double digits again this quarter. Germany, representing 3% of group net revenue, posted a mid-single-digit growth on top of double-digit organic growth in Q1 2023. Media grew by double digits, mostly on the back of global clients, which follows double-digit growth in Q1 2023, while Creative was soft. Let's finish with Central and Eastern Europe. The performance in the region was very strong at plus 21.2% organic, as it benefited from global wins ramping up in both Media and Production. Turning to the next slide, where I will detail our performance in the rest of the world. In Asia Pacific, which represents 8% of group net revenue in Q1, we delivered plus 6.2% organic growth. Overall in the region, Media grew double digit on top of double digits in Q1 2023. Publicis Sapient posted high single-digit growth in the region. China posted a very solid performance at plus 6.7% organic growth in the quarter, sequentially improving versus Q4 2023, largely driven by client wins in Media. This is also the case for Southeast Asia with Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia as main contributors. Australia was broadly stable in the quarter. In Middle East and Africa, we posted a plus 4% organic growth in Q1, benefiting from strong Creative, mainly led by UAE. Latin America posted a plus 7.8% organic growth, driven by both Creative and Media, and with Brazil, Mexico and Chile largely contributing to the region's performance. On the next slide, you will find the group performance by client industry for the quarter. This is based on an analysis of our main clients representing 92% of our net revenues. It also excludes Outdoor Media activities & the Drugstore. This quarter, most of our client industries recorded positive growth. First, I do want to single out that in Q1, tech sector, representing 12% of our net revenue, posted a very strong performance at plus 11% growth. This was fueled by a combination of expanded scope at existing clients and new business gains. When it comes to the other sectors, healthcare recorded double-digit growth on top of double-digit growth in Q1 2023, thanks to new business wins across different activities and scope expansion at existing clients. Financial and retail were both down by mid-single digits. Regarding the financial sector, it received a low contribution from Publicis Sapient this quarter, being impacted by delays in DBT projects in Europe and a tough comparable, particularly in the U.K. The retail sector faced a double-digit comparable from last year. And finally, both auto and food & beverage delivered high single-digit growth. Moving to the next slide, net financial debt. The group closing net debt at the end of March was EUR 445 million, representing a net cash out of circa EUR 1.3 billion over the quarter, showing the usual negative seasonality of working capital at this period of the year. This compares to a net cash out of circa EUR 1.1 billion in Q1 2023. The variation of circa EUR 200 million was fully anticipated, first linked to the increase in the total cash payment for M&A in Q1; and second, to the change in working capital fully factored in our full year expectations on working capital. On M&A specifically, we are on track with our full year budget of EUR 700 million to EUR 800 million, as announced at our full year 2023 earnings call. The 12-month average net debt was EUR 383 million at end of Q1 2024. This is EUR 180 million below end of Q1 2023 level and EUR 49 million below end of 2023 level. We are fully on track to meet our average net debt objective for full year 2024 of circa EUR 400 million. This concludes my financial presentation. And now I give the floor back to you, Arthur.

Thank you, Loris. As you have seen, Publicis is off to a very strong start in 2024. In Q1, we have demonstrated once again our ability to gain market share with an expected 400 basis point gap versus our peers. Since 2019, we grew by 24%, roughly twice as fast as the industry average over the same period. Thanks to the strength of our model, we expect to sustain this very solid growth across the year. Despite ongoing macroeconomic headwinds, we are more confident than ever in delivering on our full year guidance and continuing to go twice as fast as the industry average. There are 3 reasons for that confidence. First, demand for personalization at scale in the soon-to-be cookieless world continues to increase, particularly with the rise of AI. We are able to capture a disproportionate part of our client investment in this area, thanks to our unique data offer combined with our unmatched media scale. We anticipate Epsilon and Publicis Media, representing 50% of our revenue, to remain very strong and accretive to our growth. Second, we will benefit this year again from new business tailwinds. Our unique go-to-market formula, connecting data, media, creative and technology, all powered by AI, has enabled us to top the new business ranking for the past 5 years. We expect the wins we had in the last 18 months to continue ramping up this year and materially support our overall growth. Last but not least, our agile platform organization means that the growth we will achieve this year won't be at the expense of our margin. Thanks to the efficiencies generated by our country model, global delivery centers, sales services, and our platform, Marcel, we are able to invest in our talent and our technologies. One example is our road map on AI that we presented in January. After spending close to EUR 9 billion since 2015 in data and technology acquisition, including Sapient and Epsilon, we are making an incremental OpEx investment of EUR 300 million over the next 3 years. Half will be focused on upskilling, training and recruitment of our people, and the other half on technology through licenses, IT software, and cloud infrastructure. This investment will allow us to evolve and accelerate to become an AI-powered intelligent system companies. Thanks to CoreAI, we will be able to connect every data point across all activities, business units, and geographies, and put them in the hands of our people to supercharge our client growth. We are on track to launch it both for ourselves and for our clients in 3 steps over the course of the year. This investment will even further strengthen our offer and undoubtedly leading to more market share gains in the years to come. All of this while maintaining the highest financial ratios of our industry. When you look at our organic growth guidance, plus 4% is rock-solid and factor in a continued wait-and-see attitude from clients when it comes to digital business transformation spend still affecting Publicis Sapient, like all the other IT consulting firms, more cuts in classic advertising spend as clients reduce certain costs and a cautious stance on year-end adjustment in advertiser budgets. The higher range of our guidance at plus 5% is definitely within reach if we see a faster ramp-up of clients resuming CapEx spend on DBT project in the second half of 2024, benefiting Publicis Sapient, and fewer cuts to classic advertising. In this scenario, we will see an acceleration in 2024 compared with our 4-year CAGR at plus 4.7%, while outperforming our peers for another year despite our tougher comps. This organic growth performance won't come at the expense of our financial ratios. We will continue to deliver industrial financial KPIs with our full year operating margin guidance at 18% and free cash flow of EUR 1.8 billion to EUR 1.9 billion. For Q2, we are confident in delivering solid organic growth, again, in line with our full-year guidance despite high variable of plus 7.1% last year and ongoing macro uncertainties. Well, to wrap up, we are starting 2024 on the front foot, sustaining our growth momentum. Coming on top of a high comparable, we delivered a very strong Q1 ahead of expectation. We saw a clear acceleration of our growth compared with our 4-year CAGR, demonstrating our ability to continue to win market share. In a still challenging macroeconomic context, our leadership in personalization at scale, our new business wins, and our platform organization make us confident to confirm our guidance for 2024. Our expected performance, which is well above the industry average, could show a further acceleration of our organic growth in 2024 versus [indiscernible]. Last but not least, we will maintain industry high financial ratios while investing EUR 300 million in the next 3 years in AI to truly become an intelligent system companies. I would like to thank our clients for their trust and our people for their outstanding work. Thank you all for listening. And now with Loris, we are ready to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Nicolas Langlet of BNP.

Congrats on the [indiscernible] Q1. So I have 3 questions, please. The first one on the net new business tailwinds. Was the impact in Q1 stronger compared to previous quarter? And looking at the next few quarters, how do you expect that impact to evolve? And I'm again curious if you have already reflected the recent [indiscernible] business win from Pfizer into the full year guidance or not? Secondly on Sapient, so we see a recovery in the U.S. Is it broad-based with various clients or it's just a couple of projects that really made the difference? And looking at Q2, should we expect the overall Sapient to return to growth, or it's more of H2 outlook? And finally, on the tech's again spending rebound, do you think this is a sustainable rebound or just a short-term catch-up after the cut in past quarters?

Merci, Nicolas. Thank you. A lot of questions. I'm taking note in order not to forget anything. I guess I'll start with the new business win in Q1. Look, what happened is pretty simple is that, as you know, it takes time to ramp up new business wins, particularly when you are talking about structural wins implying hundreds of people. And so the acceleration we have seen is due to wins. We had 12 to 18 months ago, that went faster, with a system that is, I guess, important for you guys, because we talk a lot at the moment about gen AI in production and these kind of things. But where AI is truly having a major impact on our clients, and by the way, on our revenue, when you look at Q1, is this acceleration of personalization at scale. I mean, clients are realizing that not only they have to move away from third-party cookies because of Google, but that AI can help them actually accelerate. And it's true that the offer we've got have accelerated that and had an impact on Q1, particularly on new business. The question you raised on new business, and you talked about Pfizer, is something I would like to be clear on, is that when it comes to new business, and hopefully you have seen that with us, Nicolas, for a while now, we consider ourselves today as a platform company, like an Accenture, like a Google, or like a McKinsey. And the product and the service we deliver are under very strict firewalls. And so just like Accenture, Google, or McKinsey, we are not sharing anymore any confidential information on our clients. So I won't be able to answer your question. I will ask you to judge us on our capability again to win market share, which is definitely what we did in Q1, and show the strengths of our model through our growth compared to competition. On Sapient, I mean, I don't want to be optimistic on Sapient, because I see very strong competitors and very good competitors on the IT consulting posting negative results and actually lowering down their guidance. So I think we should be extra cautious, okay? And that's very important to take that into consideration. Having said that, we were pleased to see that the sequential improvement we had was good. And that the U.S., as you said, was coming back to growth. It is due to something very simple that hopefully will increase with time, which is, when we talk about business transformation, as Accenture, Deloitte, or Capgemini, you have a couple of phases. You pitch, then you win the project, and you start doing a consulting phase, where you have a part of revenue, but this is not the majority. And then you have the execution, where you move to CapEx when you talk to clients. What has been slowed down in this part is the part of execution. And the reason why the U.S. is improving is because some projects have actually started in terms of CapEx and are pushing our growth on what is, by the way, highly difficult quarter for us, as the comparable is very high. And I'm looking at Loris, but I remember, it's 11% for Q1 last year for Sapient. So the comparable is very high. So it's really what we are expecting hopefully on a broader sense, which is the client that we still have, we didn't lose any clients, that they are starting to realize that now might be the right time to continue to invest in their transformation and starting to invest again with us and with Pfizer -- with Sapient. When we talk about the tech rebound, again, it's too early to know how the rest of the year would be. But I think it's very interesting to see that we move from minus 7% to plus 11%, which is a very good number. And that within this number, the one that are really pushing the growth in TMT are the tech clients. The fifth biggest growth in the TMT areas are tech clients. And why it is the case? It's because our offer basically matches with what they are expecting. First of all, we have a first-party data approach that matches with their own first-party data, because this is where they are. Second, we have a tech culture that makes a difference. And third, as we are able to connect thanks to AI data, media, production and creative, we are able to truly bring them the personalization at scale they need. So it is encouraging. It's too early to say if it is a long-term trend or just an improvement, but we feel confident about that. I hope I answered all of your points. I mean, there were so many questions that I tried to sum up as much as I could.

The next question is from Lisa Yang, Goldman Sachs.

I have a couple of questions as well. So obviously, Q1, you're already at 5.3%. We think it's still negative. So why wouldn't you be above 5% for the rest of the year given the new business ramp and improvement in Sapient that even at 5% looks a bit conservative? So are you expecting maybe additional headwinds? Or was there any shift of spend into Q1. So if you can maybe just help us understand why you shouldn't be doing better than 5%? That's the first question. The second one is a follow-up on the tech rebound. And I think the same question applies for China, but could you confirm that the improvement is mostly or entirely market share gain and not necessarily underlying improvement in the market. So if you could maybe comment on what the clients are saying or thinking compared to maybe a quarter ago? Are you seeing any improvement in China and tech? And then just on the buyback, could you maybe give us an understanding in terms of where you are? I think you talked about EUR 200 million of buybacks, but it sounds like it might have stopped lately. So how much of EUR 200 million have you already spent? And what are your intentions for the rest of the year?

Again, very dense questions. Thank you, Lisa. So I'm going to start with the 5%. Then I will leave you the question on improved tech, and I will come back on the buyback later. It's a legitimate question you asked. I think that first, it's very important to come back on Q1 and put things back in perspective, because I guess it says a lot about what is coming. As you have seen, there are roughly 3 elements that explain the overall performance we had in Q1. The first, and I talked about it a minute ago, but it's extremely important, is we see a material acceleration of demand from our clients when it comes to personalization at scale. And it's not only due to the duplication of third-party cookies, but it's also due to the rise of AI. And it's true that having Epsilon plus Publicis Media combined representing the best or one of the best offers in the market is a huge asset and a good reason for our confidence. And definitely, the reason why we overperformed with double-digit growth in the quarter. New business is ramping up, and we know it's going to continue to ramp up. It particularly ramped up in Q1. It doesn't mean it will ramp up exactly in the same way in Q2, because, of course, if they ramp up faster in Q1, maybe it's a bit slower in Q2, but they will continue to do that, and they did it. And we see, as we just discussed, that the tech that was negative, so with actually an easier comparable, are coming back to positive and helping us. So these are the reasons why we did well in Q1 and why we feel confident. I think that now we have to be truly cautiously optimistic, cautious because the macroeconomic tensions are still there. I think that yesterday, the U.S. CPI reminded us that we are navigating into a very tough context. Honestly, when I saw that yesterday, I said, okay, we're definitely having the right stance here, okay? Let's be clear, this is impacting some of our clients. And I guess we see that also in the results that are coming. It is still a tough time because of the macro for some of our clients. It is impacting our industry, and we have to listen to that. I mean, if you look at our direct competitors, but also when you look at IT consulting, you have some that are planning to be negative in Q1 and you have someone that also have already downgraded their guidance. So we definitely have to be cautious, okay? Now again, we are confident, not to say very confident in delivering our guidance for the reason I just gave you. And maybe the shift we operate from, where we took in Q4 to today, is that now we see for us a floor, and I gave you all the conditions for that. So we feel very, very, very rock solid about it. And the 5% is definitely within the reach, which, again, will be a great performance, because it will mean that we will accelerate again on our growth on the 4 year CAGR, which is what we're looking for. And we will be basically growing twice as fast as the industry average, despite the comparable we're having. Now you know us. We're going to wait until the end of H1 to really update you on the guidance and the detail of what could be the rest of the year. Loris, do you want to take question 2?

Yes, sure. And Lisa, you're right to be asking the question on the tech rebound in China together, because the common denominator between the two is really market share gains. As Arthur mentioned, on the tech side, if you look at the overall TMT sector for us, which is growing 11%, the top 5 increase in that sector are tech clients. So this is really scope increases, i.e., market share gains. Moving to China, it's true that in Q1 we recorded a remarkable acceleration with 6.7% growth. That actually comes on the back of growth in Q4 2023. But to put things in perspective, this strong performance is happening in a context that remains very challenging in China with an economic outlook that is uncertain. And we know there is softness both in the real estate market, but also in the consumer and corporate spending that are likely to continue into Q2. And so our performance was really driven by a market share gain and, in particular, around media. I was actually in China just 2 weeks ago, and I saw it with my own eyes. This is really possible through the superiority of our talent and capabilities that we have demonstrated over the years. And here again, the use of data and tech to reconnect marketing with business outcomes.

And I'm quickly going to take your question about cash allocation. So again, it is not a topic for Q1. But to be clear, we have not changed, and we won't change the strategy we laid out to you in Q4. We have 3 pillars to our strategy. First, as you know, we have our dividend that we have significantly increased. I'm not going to come back on everything we did, to stop applying the discount for payments, the fact that we suppressed the scrip dividend. But if you look, we have increased our payout ratio consistently. We are today at 49%, if I'm right, and we are proposing a EUR 900 million dividend for the year. I mean, I think it's good for our shareholders to see that all of this has led to a 70% increase in dividend and we have returned more than EUR 2.2 billion in cash over the last 3 years, okay? The second thing that we did that I know was important for the financial community is that we have stabilized the number of shares. We have introduced, to come back to your question, an active share repurchase program to make sure that we stabilize the share count. And that, again, is a big change for us. And it means that since 2021, we have spent more than EUR 0.5 billion in share buyback. And to come back to your question, we are planning now to do another one for EUR 200 million in 2024. Last but not least, M&A. I'm sure you will have some questions about that, and Loris can tell you more in a second, if you want to. Again, we have invested, as you know, roughly EUR 1 billion in the last 3 years. I think it's important for you guys to see that this has been growing 40%. So it shows the interest of the acquisition we made and how it's leveraging the entire model, and we plan to spend roughly between EUR 700 million and EUR 800 million this year. Again, there have been a lot of questions about what is the right balance between cash return and investment to our growth. I think we found the right balance, be it be on margin or in terms of cash allocation. If you look in terms of cash return, we have a TSR today of 160% over the last 4 years, okay? And when you look at our growth, we had the stronger growth over the years now for a while. And so we believe we have the right balance here. Wow, that was 2 long questions, a lot of questions into 2 questions. Lisa, if it's fine for you, we're going to move to the next one.

The next question is from Silvia Cuneo of Deutsche Bank.

Also 3 questions from my side. The first one is a follow-up on the market environment that you mentioned is still impacting the industry, and you gave the context on your guidance. Just want to clarify perhaps if you've seen any changes compared to the time of the conference call of the Q4 results? Any data points that you might want to flag? And you mentioned Sapient in the U.S. So overall, just trying to understand if you're feeling a little bit more confident as in the Q4 state in terms of uncertainties? And the second question is about any updates that you might be in a position to share in terms of rolling out of the CoreAI capabilities you've been investing on. And then just finally, on the double-digit growth for Creative in the U.K. that stands out compared to the group's Creative performance. Just wondering if you could comment about this outperformance here and whether that is sustainable for 2024?

Thank you very much. I'm going to talk about the level of confidence. Then I'm going to leave you the question on the U.K., as a couple of weeks ago, you were still the CEO of this region, and I'll take CoreAI to finish. So look, no, I would say the confidence is the same, meaning we are expecting 2024 to be roughly the same at 2023. We see some macroeconomic tension. We see some clients that are suffering and sometimes cutting some traditional advertising project, which is one of the reasons why, although they are very resilient, the Creative is not as high as the other. We, as we discussed, see some slowdown and wait-and-see attitude from our clients in digital business transformation. I would say nothing special has changed. And this is why, again, we believe we have to be cautious because the context is tough, but we can be confident because the model we have perfectly fits with our client demand at the moment where, despite the difficulties, they will have to transform. Again, if you look at Q1, for me, the most important news is this kind of acceleration in personalization at scale, because it means that maybe our clients at the moment are waiting a bit before making big business transformation in their infrastructure, but they are definitely accelerating on their marketing transformation, I guess, a lot because of AI, And that's a big opportunity for us that we are seizing. So I would say, to cut the long story short, expect, at least for us at the moment, '24 to look a bit like '23. And by the way, the same trends by expertise. You want to take the U.K.?

Happy to. Just to take a step back maybe on the U.K., I mean, as I said earlier, we posted a slightly positive growth. But keep in mind, it's on the back of plus 24% in Q1 '23. We have 2 distinct situations when we look at the U.K. today. First, Publicis Sapient, as we said, that delivered a negative performance, but after a very tough comparable in Q1 2023, where organic growth was above 40%. And second, Media and Creative, that both delivered double-digit growth after double digits and high single digits, respectively, in Q1 2023. Now specifically on Creative, and you know that we don't comment on new business wins, but really the acceleration of the U.K.'s performance in the last 24 months has been largely driven by new business on the Creative side. So it's one of the markets where we are winning market share, same comment as I made on China, and so it's new business driven for the most part.

I'm not going to add anything, but we are very, very pleased about the dynamics that we have at the U.K. at the moment. We have a fantastic team and the work that has been done is outstanding and it's really good. On AI, I mean, we could do an hour on AI. What can I tell you? First, since we announced in Jan our intention to really become an intelligent system company, we had a great reaction from our people, first, which is, I won't say that matters the most, but we need them to do it, because it's still a people business and we are here to empower them with AI and the return has been outstanding, and a huge interest from our clients, which makes a big difference, and I'll come back to that later. We have made very good progress in building our CoreAI. As you know, it's all about connecting our trillions of data points and make sure that we can put it in the end of our people in order for them to turbocharge our client growth. We are growing very fast, again, thanks to Sapient and thanks to AI, in our ability to put this CoreAI to life. And again, we have huge advantage here. We have data that no one else has with Epsilon. We have a single infrastructure, which means that we can put everything in command. And we have more than 40,000 engineers, and particularly in Sapient, that can put that in place. So we feel good about that. We have started to invest EUR 300 million, so EUR 300 million this year, in training and upskilling, but also making sure that we get the right tech and licenses to continue our development. And what is very interesting and by the way super-encouraging is that we are starting to work with our clients on some projects. We haven't waited for everything to be ready to start experiencing with our clients how we can do things. So I've got to be careful here, because this is part of our secret sauce and there are things that I can tell you and things that I can't tell you, because, again, it's part of our competitiveness. But if you look, for example, what we are doing at the moment on CPG, where we are really connecting the inventory, which is what you find on a shelf with identity, which is how clients behave, it's incredible to see how the CPG work can change, thanks to that. And again, when we said that what is great about AI is not that much efficiency is good, but what we're looking for the most is to be able to do things tomorrow that we can't do today, this is a great example. If you look at what we do on auto, for example, we are starting to build rich customer profile that can actually predict the next purchasing moment. And when you know that it happens every 3 or 4 years, our ability to choose, thanks to the AI, the next best action to really reach the new prospect is again something that is super exciting and will deliver growth at the best cost for our clients. And when it comes to pharma, which is, as you have seen, a booming segment for us, our ability to ensure compliance in what is a truly highly regulated industry, thanks to AI, again, make a difference. So if I've got to sum up, I think that our people and our clients have bought our vision. We are going very fast in getting all of the trillions of data points together, thanks to AI, through Sapient, and we are connecting this CoreAI to all of our activities, starting to work with clients on projects that are super encouraging. I tried to make it fast.

The next question is from Adrien de Saint Hilaire of Bank of America.

Well done for a solid quarter. I've got a couple of topics that I would like to spend some time on, if you don't mind. So first of all, on Epsilon, I'm a little surprised that the growth there has been slowing given the cookie deprecation theme and your comments are fewer about the rise of personalization at scale. So do you mind explaining a bit what's happening here? And maybe also talk about the rollout and the expansion of Epsilon internationally beyond the U.S., your degree of confidence of replicating the U.S. success into Europe and Asia? And then the second topic, again, sorry, sticking to AI. How is CoreAI being charged or billed to clients? Is there a specific additional fee when CoreAI is being used? Or is that part of the standard offering?

That's part of the secret sauce, the second question. So I will have to keep it for myself at the moment. What I can tell you is priority is to put the CoreAI in the hands of every of our people and make sure that then we can connect the CoreAI with what we charge, which is media, creative, software engineering, business transformation in general. And so although I won't answer your question, what I can tell you for sure is that we didn't build the CoreAI to be, first, a source of revenue, but to be, first, an incredible differentiator in what we can bring to our clients and how we can leverage AI. Because again, we love, as every of our competitors, what we do in gen AI with some of the big tech companies. There is a lot of things we can do in terms of content and creating images and that's awesome. But the truth is, AI becomes interesting when it's really at the service of unique data set that goes along the entire company and that can irrigate everything you do, not only in content, but in media, in software engineering, in insights. And this is where we have a big difference. So to cut the long story short, we are not building the CoreAI to have an additional source of revenue, although it could be. We are doing this because it's truly transforming the entire company and bringing to our clients a level of service and product that they can't find anywhere else. And that, by the way, justifies a part of the gap we are creating in terms of organic growth. So that was for AI and the CoreAI. Then there is a question on Epsilon. Adrien, I wish I have recorded what you said, because telling me that growth is slowing at 7%, when we made this acquisition a couple of years ago and the market did not believe that we could go to 3%, it means that there is a long way since the perception you guys could have at the beginning and the game changer Epsilon has been for us, by the way, thanks to the vision of Maurice Lévy. So I love the question, because it puts things back in perspective. What I can tell you and what is fantastic about Epsilon is that there is a double positive effect for us. First, the own performance of Epsilon has been incredibly accretive to the group and is still accretive by the way, by far, with 7%. Never forget that we had double-digit growth for the last 3 years, okay? And again, starting from the premise that we bought this company on multiple that we are assuming a growth between 0 and 3, which the market was doubting at the time, okay? The second thing, you need to know that it's not only having a direct impact on our growth and being accretive to what they do. They have an indirect impact on our other group assets, starting with Publicis Media. And this is why, by the way, we love to say that Epsilon plus Publicis Media is double digit. Because it's a combination of the best data sets in the industry -- beyond the industry, by the way, with the scale of Publicis Media. And the ability of those guys to work well together on what is 50% of our business, that is delivering a very strong part of our growth. So again, 7% for us is still a very, very strong number, even more when you compare to how you put it in perspective with 3 years of double-digit growth. So in itself, it is accretive, and when you add it to Publicis Media, you understand the power of our offer and our ability to continue to outperform the market as we do. On international, do you want to say a word about that, Loris?

Yes, sure. I mean, you might remember, when we last spoke on the full year earnings call about our M&A strategy, that 1 of the 3 pillars was to invest in capabilities around first-party data to nourish our CoreAI, in particular, outside of the U.S. We started over a year ago with the acquisition of Retargetly in Latin America, which is exactly that. And so when we look at our M&A pipe, and maybe we'll come back to M&A a little bit later on, there's definitely opportunities that we're looking at, both in Europe and in Asia, to complement the Epsilon offering and expand it internationally.

I mean, if I can add, and maybe we'll have a question later on that, but it's a very important point, is that the beauty of Epsilon in the U.S. and outside of the U.S. is that it will give us the opportunity to lead in terms of retail media and connected TV, which are the 2 biggest segments for the future. And it comes back to the point I was making before about the indirect effect of Epsilon on Publicis Media. And what we are building in terms of capabilities outside of the U.S. now, to come back to your point, not only in building first-party data, but making sure that we lead in retail media and in connected TV is going to be a big differentiator for the future.

The next question is from Dina Abu-Rahmeh at Morgan Stanley.

Maybe just one on our end. You reported strong growth in Media, which is an outperformance versus the market. Could you maybe just help us understand the drivers for this? Is it mostly Epsilon? Or are there other reasons you can highlight?

I mean, let's be clear, the first reason why Media is so strong is because I think we have the strongest team in the industry, led by Dave Penski. We don't talk enough about that. The talent bench we have built at Publicis Media, talent that we have grown, talent that we have brought, we talk a lot about technology and data, but it's still a people business. And so the first point is this, and we spend a lot of time with Dave to make sure that we bring the best people onboard, and we continue to do so every day. The second reason is the combination of Epsilon plus Publicis Media. And maybe I'll take a second on that is that we are the only company in the world that has, at the same time, identity at scale at an individual level, seeing 7,000 attributes, seeing 80% of what people buy that we can connect with our media. Some have media scale, some have identity but not has both. And our ability to connect both gives us an opportunity to lead into what will be marketing tomorrow. Because if one thing is certain is that marketing and investment will be based on first-party data for 2 main reasons. And I'm sorry to get a bit technical, but I think it's important for you guys to understand that. The first main reason is that all of our clients in every category will have to connect their paid media, what they buy in the media, when they own or when they rent agencies with their own media, which is their own digital ecosystem. And only identity can allow you to make the right arbitrage, if I take Loris, between an app where I'm going to make sure that I can see what is his [indiscernible] on the QSR and paid advertising that will push for chicken offer, to say something, but that's critical, because this is modern marketing is that it's to find the right balance between paid and owned based on identity. That's point number one. Point number two, only identity can allow you to link investment with business outcome. And to tell you, when I spend $1, this is a return I can expect and I can guarantee, by the way. And that's why, for those 2 reasons, in the future, in our opinion, every marketing investment, being paid or owned, will be based on identity. And we are the only one in the market that, again, possess the data, the media and the technology to buy it. And it's the reason I was saying that with the world, but this is one of the reasons why we see this acceleration in Q1 that is actually going above our expectation when it comes to personalization at scale is that the rise of AI has only increased willingness from our clients to accelerate on this model. Sorry, it was a bit technical.

The next question is from Christophe Cherblanc, Bernstein.

I got 3 questions. The first one is, sorry, coming back again on Epsilon. Arthur, you were clear that the deprecation of third-party cookie was not fully effective, but next year that will be the case. At the same time, clients are going to be more comfortable with AI. So it seems to me that 2025 should see a big step-up. So would you be concerned if I were to tell you that double-digit growth at Epsilon should be rock solid, as you say, double-digit level? That's the first question. The second one is on the media momentum. So super strong. Can you give a rough breakdown between the scope expansion and the wins? And should we expect the wins impact to be linear for Q2, Q3, Q4? And the last one is on headcount. Can you give us the headcount at the end of Q1 and the plan for Q2? And you mentioned other platform companies like McKinsey, Accenture, and Google, it seems they are struggling a bit with staff attrition being a bit too low. So is that something you're experiencing? And is there a level at which staff attrition being too low is an issue for you in terms of execution?

Thanks a lot. I'll take Epsilon and media. I leave you with headcount. First of all, the third party cookie deprecation will actually be effective next year, but in our client's mind, it's a reality for a while. Meaning they haven't waited for this to really happen to make the changes. And by the way, if they did not, which is the case with some, they're going to be in big trouble. Because you can't do that overnight. So again, what you need to understand here is that there has been an anticipation that is already translating into our numbers. I always said the same. When we bought Epsilon, we didn't know that this third-party cookie thing was happening. And I wish I could say, we were visionary. We just have been lucky on this one. And the fact that third-party data became so structural for our clients has massively accelerated the growth of Epsilon, particularly when we have started to connect it with Publicis Media. So I won't say there is no more room for growth, particularly with clients that we don't have, which comes to your second question, but it has already been anticipated. On AI, I think we have to be very careful. AI will take time for adoption first. As always, with these new technologies, there is a lot of excitement, then there is a bit of fatigue, then it's difficult to execute. And then you can see a slower ramping up with our clients. Where you're right is what we see at the moment is that our ability to truly put AI at the core of everything we do, thanks to CoreAI, only with a few experimentation, makes us very confident for the future. The only thing I can tell you for Epsilon, I won't give you a number, but what I can tell you is that we are definitely counting on Epsilon to be strongly accretive for us in the quarter and in the year to come, and particularly when we link it to Publicis Media that we believe will be accretive too. And to come back on that, the growth is a mix of both on Publicis Media. It is scope extension for the reason I just mentioned and new wins of clients that are truly transforming. Now you have to be careful because, as I always told you, we are choosing our battle. First of all, we don't buy market share. We have been #1 in new business for the last 5 years. And as you have seen, we have actually increased our margin over the year. So we make sure we go for clients that are truly valuing what we do and are really keen to transform. And so we are focusing on those ones. And so we want to make sure that we go at the right pace, with the right client that we can transform, that becomes best practices for others and where we can implement our technology. So it's a mix of both. Loris?

On headcount, and sorry, I'll start by stating the obvious, but I mean, given the momentum that we have, we have to continue investing in our talent. If you look at Q1, we are slightly above the level of recruitment that we had in Q4 2023, simply because we account for a ramp-up of a few sizable wins and our investments behind the AI project. At the same time, the net recruits increase in the last 12 months is below our organic growth in Q1. And just to give you a clear number, at the end of Q1, we have 105,000 employees. For the pace in 2024, it's too early to tell. But as always, we will apply a strict control on net recruits, while obviously making sure that we deliver on our committed scope of work to clients. On the attrition side, you're right, it's normalized and it's currently at 18%, which we think is a good level.

The last question is from Tom Singlehurst at Citi.

Tom here from Citi. You'll be relieved to know, it's just one question. In the first quarter this year, I mean, in organic growth terms, if we do that 2019 comparison, it's notable not only for the level of outperformance versus your sort of holding company peers. But it looks like you're going to overhaul Capgemini, so some of the IT services peers. And I suppose the question is, on the market share gain side, do you think you're actively taking share from those larger established sort of IT services companies as well as the holding company groups? Or is it you're just shifting from one legacy sort of hinterland into the IT services peer group? Are you outperforming both categories? Or is it representative of a shift from one to the other?

Wow, this is a great question, but not easy to answer. And you're going to understand why. First of all, the direct answer is just look at our growth compared to our peers. We are definitely gaining a couple of points of market share when you look at the IT services, because we are doing slightly better than the other. But I would say it's roughly the same trend. And by the way, we are not counting growth in the same way, which makes things very complex. And by the way, only gaining slightly a couple of market share. When you look at their multiple versus ours, I feel good about it, okay? So that's point number one. Then where we definitely win market share is against our peers, and this is what we look. We look at our 3 peers, we look at their growth, we look at the consensus, and we see how much we're growing. And by the way, it's pretty interesting to look at the net revenue evolution from the top 3 over the last 5 years. You see the kind of change that has happened. Now this is where the question is difficult, and I'm going to try to be clear. We are gaining market share from our peers, but from services that they are not delivering. You see what I mean? It's not apple-to-apple. When we win on those guys, it's not with what they are currently doing, it's with new things, which might explain also a bit of the tech sector. Again, it's about first-party data that no one owns at scale as we do. It's about making sure that we connect it through media that no one else does, because they don't have the Power of One. It's about making sure that we can build that through Sapient in a unique way. And so what I think we are doing at the moment is, yes, taking market share from our competitors, but with products and services that we are the only one offer. Does that answer your point? Because this is a very important question.

Yes, that's great. I suppose, I think in the past you said a point about being a sort of good house in a bad neighborhood. I suppose the point that you're shifting neighborhood is the right way of thinking about it.

First of all, I never said that. I never said that. Second, honestly, and maybe I'll close with this, this is not what we fight for today. We had, as you know, and you have been following us for a while now, we had a couple of very tough years to put our transformation in place. It started with what, I guess, was the boldest and the most visionary move that this industry ever did, which is Sapient, under Maurice Lévy's leadership. It continues with the Power of One that Maurice initiated. It then followed with Epsilon that we did more recently. And what we are doing today is really implementing a model that we believe will be unique, because it is at the crossroad of communication and technology, roughly. And it is, with the rise of AI, something that is becoming even more important for our clients. I mean, again, as I said, maybe Maurice was visionary, and then I got lucky. But the truth is, everyone talks about AI, but AI is nothing without the data. AI is nothing without a single structure. AI is nothing if you don't have an engineer culture. And we have all 3. We have Epsilon, we have the Power of One, we have Sapient. And so we are not looking that much at others. This is why it was a tough question because I never thought about that. We are more looking at, do we continue to sustainably grow on the best margin of the industry, finding the right balance between giving back to our shareholders and investing in our growth? And the truth is, Q1 for us is just another example of our ability to sustain this performance and actually be ahead of expectation in a couple of areas that were good news. But the most important thing, obviously, you will take about this call and that comes back to your point is, because we have a unique way to do personalization at scale, because we know how to connect data, creative, and media, which make us win new business more than other, and because we have this platform organization, despite all the difficulties that are existing, emerging, and will continue to emerge in terms of macroeconomic context, we feel good about our guidance that is roughly the double of our own industry. But what we look there and the reason why we like to win market share is because it is a demonstration of the uniquity and the competitiveness of our model at the service of our clients. The only thing you should take about those 400 basis points of gap with our competition at this stage is that it means that clients believe that our offer is superior. And this is what we fight for. We don't fight for looking at how can we do better than the others. We want to bring what our clients need at a moment where they dramatically need to transform. And this ability we have to be leading in data, leading in media, being very strong in creative, and having Sapient makes a huge difference. So again, it's really about staying very close to our clients, because some of them will be challenged. It's really focusing on the execution. We didn't talk about M&A, but it's a very important point. We are focusing on bolt-on, making sure that we put things in the right order. And I think it's very comforting for our shareholders to see that we spent EUR 1 billion in bolt-on that is growing 40%. And we are making sure again that we put our people at the center of that. And the excitement they have shown through the CoreAI was a very positive point. Well, I think we're going to stop here. I see Jean-Michel that will be happy to take all of your questions offline. We thank you very much for the call. Loris, it was your first one. Thank you for joining. We're very happy to have you here.

With pleasure.

Thank you. Have a good day. Merci.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your telephones.