S4 Capital plc (SFOR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody. I'm Martin Sorrell, and I'm here in Shoreditch. I'm here at the MediaMonks office in Shoreditch, having traveled across London 3 times this morning. Anyway, apologies for the early, early start, but we clashed with another company, so we brought the presentation through earlier. We have this presentation to analysts and shareowners in the U.K. and Europe and Asia, and we'll be doing another call, another webinar at 1:00 with U.S. analysts. So thanks for joining us this morning. And I'm joined by Simone, who's the CFO of MediaMonks and she's in Amsterdam. I got Wes, one of the Founders of MediaMonks, also in Amsterdam; Peter Rademaker, our CFO, in Amsterdam; Imma is in San Francisco at some god awful time. So apologies, Imma, for dragging you out of bed at this time. But thank you for being with us. And talking about being out of bed, even worse for Chris Martin is in Boulder, Colorado. And our sympathies with the families in Boulder as well, Chris. And thankfully, none of our people or their families were involved in that. And last but not least, Scott Spirit in Singapore. So we have a big crew here today. So we've got a presentation, there are 10 elements to it. We'll start off with the results, which Peter will take you through. Then Scott will talk a little bit about the market, client momentum, mergers and integration. And Wes will chime in on the content practice. Chris will talk about data and digital, the media practice and cookies. And then we'll talk about environment, society and governance with Imma and with Simone, so -- and then I'll come back briefly for a summary and outlook, and then we'll take your Q&A. So we'll probably take about an hour on the presentation. Over to you, Peter.

Thank you, Martin. And good morning to all who have joined us today in this call. I'm very proud to present to you our financial achievements of 2020. Clearly, 2020 has been a year that now we could have predicted what happened with the pandemic when we started. And of course, also our group was impacted by the pandemic, as we presented earlier to you in our trading updates in the half year stage. But we have been able to grow quite significantly, as we responded quickly with our creativity, our adaptability, resilience and the hard work of all our people. And that makes us basically look back at a very good performance in 2020. Early in the year, we already indicated that we would expect to grow with double-digit like-for-like growth, supported by a strong order backlog. And we realized a high double-digit growth, which I will show you in this slide. And next to that, with a lot of focus on liquidity and working capital, we maintained a very strong balance sheet and a very strong cash flow during 2020. And if you look at the numbers, under billings, this were GBP 653.4 million. And on a pro forma basis, GBP 768 million. Billings is our revenue, including our pass-through costs, especially related to our media, data and digital media practice. Our revenue was GBP 342.7 million, 59%, up from GBP 215 million last year. Like-for-like revenue was up 15%, and on a pro forma basis, 20% up. Our gross profit, our most important measure was GBP 295.2 million, up 72% from a reported base and a like-for-like 19% up and on the pro-forma base 24%. Our operational EBITDA was GBP 62.2 million, up 86%. And on a like-for-like basis, 18% up and on a per forma basis, 31%. Operational EBITDA margin 21.1%. That's EBITDA margin as a percentage of gross profit, 1.6 margin points up on 2019 and a like-for-like 21.2% and a pro forma 23.1%. Our operating profit was GBP 8.1 million versus an operating loss last year of GBP 3.8 million in 2019. Our operating profit is after charging approximately GBP 50 million, GBP 49.9 million to previous size of adjusting items, which are relating to acquisitions, amortizations and share-based payments. And that includes GBP 7.4 million charge of deferred and contingent considerations tied to continued employment. This letter charge is basically the result of our deal structures in our M&A activities. In our deals, we include protective governance. And one of this is continued employment during the period of contingent consideration and aligned with the IFRS rules, this means that things and considerations needs to be included as personnel expenses and not treated as goodwill or intangible. So that hits us in the second half. Our results before income tax was GBP 3.1 million, which includes these adjustment items versus a loss of GBP 9.2 million in 2019 and a pro forma result before income tax of GBP 12.1 million. The result for the period was GBP 3.9 million loss, which includes, again, the adjusting items after taxation versus GBP 10 million loss in 2019 and a pro forma loss of GBP 1.2 million. Our basic and diluted net result was 0.8p loss versus 2.7p loss last year in 2019. And on a pro forma basis, that would have been 0.2p loss. Our adjusted basic net result per share was 7.9p, coming from 5.2p -- 7.9p versus 5.2p last year. Our year-end net cash almost GBP 52 million after the significant combination payments since the raise that we did in July 2020 of GBP 113 million net. And finally, a very good start through 2021 -- in 2021 with January gross profit well ahead of our budget. So if you go to the next slide, then you see our gross profit growth by quarter. What you see is in 2020, then we started, as you know, clearly, remember from our trading updates, Q1 was 19%. In Q2, we realized a growth of 7% on a like-for-like basis. In Q3, it was 23%, and Q4 resulted in a 27% growth on a like-for-like basis on the gross profit. And especially Content showed a growth of 24% in that specific quarter. And then data & digital media increased with 35% compared to like-for-like last year, which means that in the first half, we had 12% growth and in the second half, 25% growth. We typically encounter seasonality, which means lower first half than second half. And in this particular case, first half was even lower as we presented in Q2. And when the pandemic hit, but in all months, we have showed growth, and the trough, as we indicated earlier, was still April with 3%, but again, growth in every -- in each and every month. In the reported EBITDA by half year, which is on the slide with the Stack diagrams, you see that 86% growth on a reported basis, like I mentioned, the 19.4% on a like-for-like basis. In the first half, we clearly had a lower EBITDA margin, as we mentioned, while we maintained the fabric especially during the pandemic. And in the second half of the year 2020, we realized 25.8% when we were firing up all cylinders, so this year or in 2020, I would say that the seasonality was even more impacted, especially in Q2, again, by the pandemic. And then in the next slide, a couple of these items I've already addressed in my summary of results, so I won't address everyone in every position individually. But here, you have the like-for-like in the pro forma. And again, to remind everybody, like-for-like is basically restated 2019, which includes the existing and combined businesses for the same months as included in 2020 and on a constant currency basis. And on pro forma, that as if all businesses were combined as from January 1 from that particular year. And what we saw, what you see here in this year, which we also indicated earlier, is that basically, our gross profit grew faster than our revenue as a result of the change in mix of production, especially in the Content practice. So less out-of-pocket cost, more internal people at work, which creates a higher growth in gross profit compared to revenue. On the next slide, again, some of the numbers to guide you through with our adjusting items and our numbers that I presented again, in the first slide. EBITDA, maybe to point out or to highlight, adjusted items are excluded, of course, from our operational EBITDA, if we measure our operational EBITDA. And these costs mainly relate to a GBP 16 million of acquisition-related expenses, GBP 12 million of share-based compensation and approximately GBP 23 million of amortization of intangibles. So if you take these out, that means that we ended up with a GBP 62.2 million EBITDA, which you see on the left-hand side of this page, which was a 21.1% EBITDA margin again, as gross profit and before central costs, our EBITDA was GBP 68.3 million, which basically means that our practices in total delivered an EBITDA margin on their gross profit business of approximately 23%. Finally, in these slides with these lot of numbers. The next one we had during the year, which you see on the left-hand bottom side, 493 million weighted average numbers of shares compared to 368 million last year, which with our net result of GBP 3.9 million loss that meant 0.8p loss per share this year versus 2.7p loss last year. And adjusted basic net results per share was 7.9 million (sic) [ 7.9p ] which is 53% up compared to last year, where it was 5.2 (sic) [ 5.2p ]. And on a pro forma basis, our EPS, our basic -- or adjusted basic net result per share was 9.8p versus 7.5p in the previous year. Our balance sheet, as I indicated, we maintained a very strong balance sheet during the year. Of course, we raised GBP 113 million net cash in the equity placing in July. But a very strong focus, again, on liquidity, which I will come back in the next slide. But if you look at our balance sheet, we are now at approximately GBP 1.2 billion net assets or total assets, I must say, sorry, and GBP 700 million of net assets. And the increase in total assets is mainly driven by the fact that mainly driven by combinations of our M&A activities. As you will see in our value of intangibles that we're carrying of around GBP 800 million. Our net cash position, GBP 52 million around it. GBP 142 million cash on our balance sheet. And at the same time, our long-term loan of GBP 44.8 million and our drawdown of our results to GBP 45 million, which then delivers the GBP 52 million net cash. And finally, what you also see on balance sheet, some increase in contingent considerations. Again, as a result of our M&A activities where we typically have an initial payment of around 60%, 70% of the total consideration. And then the remaining part is depending on the performance of the specific units, which creates our contingent consideration. So these were the sort of the couple of things I wanted to highlight on our balance sheet. And in our cash flow, which has been very strong, what you can see because we realized 62.7 -- GBP 61.7 million net cash flow from operational activities, which is basically a conversion of 99% of our EBITDA, which was GBP 62.2 million. So a lot of focus on liquidity, working capital from the practices. Simone is in the call, MediaMonks for half for it as data & digital media practice did. So both practices were very much focused on that, and we hardly encountered any write-offs on our receivable positions. And our cash flow from financing activities, again, the equity pricing, so GBP 145 million of cash flow from finance activities, GBP 130 million as the result of equity placing and a further drawdown of our revolvers, which created ultimately for us, a net cash position of GBP 142 million. My final 2 slides, pro forma gross profit and operational EBITDA by practice. The Content practice accounts were 72% of total against last year where it was 70%. And again, this is on a pro forma basis. Data & digital media, 28% contribution this year versus 30% in 2019. And the Content practice operational EBITDA was GBP 59.6 million, which results in a 22.5% EBITDA margin over gross profit on a pro forma basis, where data & digital media practice delivers on a pro forma basis a GBP 31.6 million, which is a 30.3% EBITDA margin as a percentage of gross profit. And my final slide, pro forma gross profit by geography. Americas, 73% of total, 25% up compared to last year. EMEA, 18% of the total, 11% up compared to 2019. And Asia Pacific, 9% up -- a 9% of the total, sorry, 44% up compared to last year. So that concludes my summary of the financial highlights. Over to you, Scott.

Thanks very much, Peter. Good morning, everyone. So I wanted to kick off today with a chart on how we see the total addressable market because I think understanding this is key to understanding why we believe we can continue to achieve these aggressive market-leading growth figures. So when most of you think of S4, you'd probably Zoom in on the middle column bottom row. These are muffet Nathanson's projections for digital advertising. They have it at USD 340 billion this year, growing at 17% year-on-year and representing 58% of total media spend. Now this is clearly an important metric or market for us. It has a fairly direct correlation with our digital media practice, certainly relevant also to our data and Content practices too. However, it's far from the full story. Even within this figure, there are portions of the digital advertising market growing significantly quicker. So pixelate estimates that connected TV and over-the-top TV spend grew 122% last year. And it's also far from representative of the full scope of our addressable markets. So in Content, as you'll see later, we work in virtual events. That's a $94 billion market growing at over 23% annually for the next 7 years. And obviously, COVID accelerated that. We've done AR and VR work for brands like Facebook, Snap, Verizon and the NBA. And Gartner predicts 15% of companies with over $1 billion in sales, will use AR in new monetizable business models going forward. We provide systems integration around marketing technology from companies such as Adobe and Salesforce. That's a $94 billion market, projected to grow at over 17% annually in the next 7 years. Our data practice operates in the broader data and analytics market, and that's worth $123 billion and set to grow at almost 15% annually in the next 4 years. IDC projects digital transformation investment will total $6.8 trillion over the next 3 years. So these are just some of the markets we operate in and have exposure to. There are plenty more. They represent hundreds of billions of dollars of spend, and they're all growing very significant rates in the right direction. So that's why we consider S4 to be essentially a pure-play digital royalty on digital transformation and marketing. And then moving on to the next slide, please. So growth is at the heart of what we do at S4, and our core offer is to help our clients grow, too. It's important to understand that we have 2 client bases at S4. What we call growth clients, which is what Google and Facebook often referred to as their torso clients. These are midsized companies. And for us at S4, they're often early-stage companies with a digital focus. So that might be in fintech, direct-to-consumer or e-commerce. They're usually looking to scale rapidly and require a flexible and agile marketing partner like S4 to support them in digital media data and creative. They're the enterprise clients of the future. And we look at enterprise clients as either Fortune 500 or their international equivalent. They normally have broad sophisticated marketing requirements and large marketing budgets, to the point where we believe many of these clients have the potential to become whoppers, meaning that they have the capacity to spend $20 million plus with S4 across our practice areas. Both of these client sectors play an important role in S4's own growth story. Next slide, please. We have a stated 20 squared objective to develop 20 clients with $20 million plus of revenue. And in 2020, and I realize that's a lot of 20s, we had 2, although we come into 2021 with our budgets projecting 5, and that's Google, an NDA tech company, Mondelez, BMW, Mini and Facebook. We've identified what we feel are likely the next 10 to grow organically to whopper status. And as you can see, we expect to maintain our significant tech exposure, with 5 of them from that sector, 2 telcos and 1 each in FMCG, pharma and financial services. Next slide, please. Now that we have 2 full years of operational data, we can start to offer a lot more disclosure around our client base, which we hope investors will find helpful in understanding our growth story and the opportunity ahead of us. And it should also provide some useful KPIs against which we can measure our progress going forward. So these charts are based on reported revenue for 2020 and 2019. The first chart breaks down our revenues by client industry segment. Technology is our dominant sector with 53% of revenue. [indiscernible] FMCG at 9%, agencies at 8%, and most of the others, around 3%, 4%, 5% or less. We believe this exposure to tech clients like Google, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, HP, Microsoft, Snap, PayPal, Adobe and others, is a competitive advantage for us, given their higher growth rates and above-average investments in digital marketing. Remember, many of these clients are also our partners as we go-to-market with them, providing services around their technology and products. Recent wins, such as Mondelez and BMW Mini illustrate the opportunities we have with our model across other sectors. But despite continued success here, we anticipate tech will continue to be the major industry segment for us. The next chart to the right illustrates the success we've had in expanding our relationships with clients across our 3 service offerings: data, content, digital media. In 2019, 14% of our top 50 and 9% of our top 100 clients engaged with us across more than 1 service. This has grown to 26% of our top 50 and 20% of our top 100 in 2020. The bottom left chart shows an average client size in the top 10, 20 and top 50 client cohorts. And as you can see, the 2020 figures are double or close to double the 2019 figures. We've significantly grown and upscaled our largest client relationships over the course of 2020. The bottom right chart gives further detail on this. You can see we've doubled the number of clients above GBP 5 million as we make progress towards our 20 squared goal. You can also see a significant increase of clients in the GBP 100,000 to GBP 1 million range. This is the result of priming the pump for larger clients with our successful land and expand strategy and also a strong performance in what I described earlier as the growth clients segment. Next slide, please. 2020 was a noteworthy year for new business at S4. Our new business comes from 3 main sources. And this chart seeks to illustrate their relative scale and importance. Looking at our top 100 clients in 2020, which is around 75% of our revenue, you can see that 50% of that revenue is represented by what we earned from those clients in 2019. Those landed clients, 34% of the revenue came from organically expanding our relationships with those clients in 2020. 7% of revenues came from new clients. We absorbed via mergers. And 9% of revenues came from net new clients we won over the course of the year. You can see some of the clients in these categories on the right, all of which provide a strong foundation for expansion in 2021. Next slide, please. Now on to mergers. Despite the disruption of COVID-19, our merger activity continued at pace in 2020, with 8 deals completed in the year as per the time line you can see here. Circus, Dare.Win, Decoded advertising, expanded our Content practice in Latin America, the U.S., France and Spain. Digodat, Lens 10 and Bright Blue contributed to the global expansion of our data practice. Orca brought a significant Amazon and e-commerce marketplace capabilities, and MetricTheory broadened our media offering from programmatic to performance. In July, we raised GBP 113 million as a merger war chest. And thanks to the efforts of Peter and all of his colleagues and their management of our cash position, we still have significant firepower at our disposal. And a healthy pipeline of deals for 2021, with 4 announced already, including the Creative Powerhouse Gem 3, which we announced today. The figures on this chart illustrate the gross profit and EBITDA contributions as per the investment memoranda of the deals completed in 2020 and the total potential enterprise value, including any deferred payments. Move on to the next slide, please. Now the success of our M&A strategy is highly reliant on our ability to integrate the companies. We fundamentally believe in integration. It's key to our model of offering an integrated service to clients of offering broad rewarding career paths to our talent and offering a differentiated and superior business model to our investors. It's something we take very seriously and we spent 2020 putting in the hard miles on integration. We've aligned the tooling. So we have a single view of our customers, by a salesforce, a single view of our talent by a Workday, a single platform for communicating via GSuite, Slack, a single platform for knowledge sharing by Highspot, and we started the process of aligning our finances on NetSuite. We worked to align our compensation and benefits, our recruitment and diversity efforts, more of which you'll hear about later from Imma. We brought together capabilities like growth, marketing, IT and real estate to have company-wide approaches. These platforms allow the mergers to plug into these services in what we call an API system, leaving us and the management of those mergers to focus our efforts on the positive synergies around revenue generation and growth. These are the building blocks, the foundation of our unitary structure and will soon be rolling out a single go-to-market brand for the company. Next slide. So it's been a year of unprecedented growth for us at S4. And as a result, I can now count myself as one of almost 4,400 colleagues in 31 markets around the world, and there's plenty more to come. And with that, I hand things over to Wes in Amsterdam, who's going to give you an update on our Content practice. Over to you, Wes.

Cool. Thanks, Scott, and hey, everyone. We're going to spend about 10 minutes talking about Content. We'll start with an introduction. When I think and talk about 2020, this was the year that we had to prove a point. And we did so by growing and scaling our strategic role agreement with key clients, more workers for this year. We also managed to win new offers in highly competitive industry pitches, and we also grew our team during very trying time. So as we wrap up 2020 a year that puts so much into perspective, it also brought into focus our strategy. We are here to win a decade, and we do so by helping our clients win their. And I think that role and responsibility in our clients' success has also really been instrumental to our own growth and the growth of our team and talent. This calls the earlier point 2020 was year that we doubled down in unitary, integrating our diverse expertise across quantum data and media. And we're doing that at a level that nobody else is willing or able to do. And the concept here is that we're better together and because of that better than others. It truly is a unique positioning in our industry and sets us up to the a long-term change agent. We left the market in Q4. I think the market, in general, is hungry for consolidation. We were able, on top of a very foundational data relationship with Mondelez to build in our Content services that model, that message is resonating. I think an important note here, consolidation isn't just an efficiency and effectiveness play. It's also an engine to innovate marketing, media and technology spend for our clients. Then, of course, the mine wonders to what is next. We keep building out our Content capabilities. Jam3 just mentioned an amazing team and also integrating fully with our data and media teams. And because we're doing that, we're becoming a partner of record for brands and businesses that want to turn up seamlessly for their customers. If we go to the next slide, this is a talent-driven business. So let's not forget the competitive advantage where many of our competitive cohorts had to shape talent, we actually were able to point out a soaring headcount, of which we are very proud. If we go to the next slide, this is an interesting one. S4 Capital was named 2020 as a holding company of the year. We are not a holding company. So Martin and myself had a very spirited conversation with the journalist around that yesterday. But I do think it's remarkable that we've been recognized in such a way. It's even more remarkable if you look at the broad recognition because it's not just holding company, it's also innovation partner. It's also a very long list of digital craft and creativity awards, having all of that available in a single P&L to our clients, is truly a unique offering. And it puts us on the front foot when it comes to exciting work. And with that being said, we're going to tee up a small video that explains the work we're doing with Amazon for the climate pledge. [Presentation]

Great. Thank you. More relevant information when we go through our CSR information later on in this deck. Small story about innovation, where future-proof partner into our clients, I mentioned one of these earlier. We're also transforming marketing production at scale, and we're doing that in close collaboration with Epic, the owners of the unreal engine, that technology has disrupted the gaming industry. It's disrupting the film and production industry. We're on the front lines of helping it disrupt the marketing services industry in the marketing production landscape. We're already doing that together for iconic brands like Oreo. So that is very exciting to see play out in real time. If we go to the next slide, I think worth mentioning our expanding relationship with Google. I've seen us work in so many different ways where we've partnered with Google to apply immersive technologies in base that help people make sense of their world, while also deeply embedding with our teams and making sure Google was able to adapt their market approach to ensure business continuity for their own clients. I think that combination has been really powerful and interesting to see play out. And again, speaks to our ability to offer a unitary and integrated team. If we go to the next slide, Scott mentioned this earlier, a really interesting part of last year, of course, was that we ended up helping to define, design, develop and deliver a completely new industry, virtual events. And we launched some of the world's biggest brands on to virtual stages powered completely by our bespoke teams, tools and technology. We call this digital as a destination and it actually delivers on what I believe the original intent of online marketing and messaging to be. It's personal, it's tactile, it's experiential. It's emotive, and we're still fully on the hook for conversion and results. We call this virtualization, and it's not just about replacing an in-person experience, really is rebuilding it with digital channels and user behaviors at the core. And again, we have a short video that will tee up to show you what that looks like. [Presentation]

Great. I think we'll talk more about our D&I practice [indiscernible] later on. Destiny is really key shining and setting light on female-led filmmakers. That's been a huge part of our offering all of our heads a film or female across the globe. And this isn't just words when the industry's biggest film moment was there, the Super Bowl. Out of 60 spots, only 3 were directed by women, and one of those spots was done by our team. So this is key to us. And to an extent, it's been disappointing to see how slowly the industry has been able to move the needle. We are moving that needle and that's something that we're proud of. If we go to the next slide, this is a very interesting space for us owning unchartered territory. We've been able to coin the phrase everywhere e-commerce, which is really an evolution of e-commerce. It's not just about channel-specific thinking. It really is elevating physical and mental availability across the digital customer decision journey. This messaging has resonated with Google. It plays into our deep relationship with MercadoLibre, and we've been making sure it is widely seen and talked about across the industry, which brings me to the very last slide of the Content practice update, what is next? We've talked about 2020 being the transformation of transformation, really a second reawakening of digital and to me, harking back to the original intended MediaMonks, insight-driven tactile, meaningful experiences. We're excited to see that really be a huge part of our business this year and expect to be beyond. We're changing the work by changing who does the work. We have what we call our community commitment. The work we do is done by fair reflections of the community where our teams work and for the communities our clients want to sell into. We keep inventing and reinventing the industry. We actually launched something that we call PR 2.0, which is a completely digital native way to look at promoting and protecting brands and businesses in real time. And then we didn't have the name in here yet, but the announcement of Jam3 this morning, super proud of that team joining. It truly is best-in-class digital creativity, content and experience. And we have led some of our shared clients. Now, we were on the call yesterday, and I'll paraphrase the client, he said, "I am -- I feel bad for the networks, which I think shows that having this collection of talent really is quite unique. And with that, I'm going to hand over to Chris.

Thanks, Wes. It's always hard to follow you in Content presentations. They are so good. So thank you for consistently raising the bar for the lowly data and engineering teams. So the data and digital media practice of S4 executed well in 2020 and navigated a year of growth acceleration and unexpected turbulence. We saw media budgets experienced a pullback in Q2, which did impact certain sectors of our book of business, travel, retail, hospitality, et cetera. However, what we also saw was some of our digitally-oriented brands, actually increased investments in certain areas of media, data infrastructure and in housing throughout the year. Finally, in Q4, we did see a strong return, and in some cases, an increase of overall media budgets coming back to bring us back to and beyond our pre-COVID media volumes. So very encouraging to hear towards the end of the year that we saw that much recovery. Our global data practice only piloted in 2018, remember, flourished organically in 2020, benefiting from a number of positive industry trends and expansion of our capabilities inorganically into growth areas across analytics, data science and measurement. We've added a number of global clients to the data roster in the last year, and we've seen success in converting and expanding those major data clients into even larger media and content clients. Some of which are becoming our largest whoppers, a key ingredient to the overall S4 story is us being able to cross-sell, and we're seeing data be a strong anchor for that conversation with our clients. Linear consumption to digital experiences, next slide. We've been anticipating and watching accelerating shifts of consumer behavior from the traditional consumption of linear media by the consumer across broadcast, TV, print, radio and other legacy formats to a world of digitally connected interactive experiences across very quickly changing formats and fragmented media partners. The consequences of social distancing has significantly accelerated these trends. And that now creates a much larger market opportunity for S4 across Content, data and media. For information on our most notable media work this year, I would invite all of you to learn a little bit more about some of the groundbreaking in housing work and transformations by referring you to our published Harvard business case study which analyzes the work that we've been doing with Sprint, T-Mobile over the last year as well as celebrating the Ad Exchanger Awards for our best in housing, both with Sprint and Bayer, 2 of our marquee clients serviced from our marketing transformations unit. Both clients expanded their relationships with us during 2020. And additional brands and lines of business are now using multiple business lines across S4. MightyHive had a long successful history of building a services ecosystem around the platforms and the future of marketing. And we are already ready for the future that these consumer trends that I just described are bringing to the media industry. And now is a unified S4, we're able to unlock so much more. And looking forward, and you'll see with the mergers that were just completed at the end of December in 2020 as part of our comprehensive media road map, you'll start to see that S4 has begun invest -- excuse me, investing in integrated media planning as well as media buying capabilities across paid, earned, owned performance marketing channels, inclusive of search, social, SEO, e-commerce and CTV, all of the boxes that Scott Spirit walked you through at the beginning of the presentation. We started that journey by merging multi-award winning entrepreneurs from Decoded, Orca Pacific and MetricTheory, each company bringing key capabilities for our quickly expanding media pillar. Dedicated post-merger integration teams were deployed immediately on close in each case and client cross-selling is well underway with synergies already being unlocked. Next slide. Similar to the media pillar, our data pillar is benefiting from some key industry trends. The privacy trends that I'm sure everybody has been reading about are putting pressure on brands to invest heavily in consented first-party data collection, ownership, control and activation by themselves, not by third parties, agencies or other partners in the ecosystem. That also leads to significant investment into cloud infrastructure to manage the growing value that consumer data collection and activation brings to the enterprise. With these trends, we recognize the need for a transformative analytics capability across Google and Adobe's main analytics platforms, and less than 2 years, which we announced 2 years ago, we've moved to expand from just a small footprint in the United States and analytics capabilities to a global delivery engine for analytics deployments. In 2020, we rounded out our analytics mergers with Digodat in Latin America, Lens 10 in Asia Pacific to join our already integrated mergers with Conversion Works in EMEA and an established analytics firm in Korea. In 2020, we officially launched a new industry category, an S4 offering called the data partner of record or data AOR, if you use legacy agency parlance. This category was created to meet the needs of the modern CMO that now must unlock data assets from across the enterprise, connect marketing data to the supply chain, organize consumer data using machine learning and predictive modeling, marketing automation tools, and then finally, activate that data directly into measurable dynamic working media plans. We are the champion of a client's marketing and advertising data wherever travels across the customer journey. As well with predictions of the end of the cookie looming for years, we again were ahead of the game by joining our partners at Brightblue. Brightblue is an industry-leading pioneer in the world of econometric modeling that when paired with our strong machine learning, business intelligence, visualization and data science teams, unlock a powerful tool set for the modern digitally savvy CMO. I invite you to learn more about our groundbreaking work and data by referring to published success stories about our client Mondelez, which is available in the public press. And next slide. And actually, the next one, I'll be jumping into cookies as the last note here. Google's recent announcement that they are no longer supporting the third-party cookie in their ecosystem as of 2022 is not a surprise to S4. We have been working closely with the fans on their strategic and tactical reactions to the following impactful pressure that we see in our industry. One, the advancement in the rollout and enforcement of GDPR and CCPA as well as other privacy regulations around the globe; two, potential government antitrust challenges for big tech companies; three, increasing consumer knowledge and sentiment changes around privacy topics in general; and finally, consumer behavior shifts to digital experiences. All of these shifts are significant and disruptive trends that we are well prepared to take advantage of. One of the defining features of S4 Capital is that we are built on a privacy-first foundation and a philosophy. If we've been building a technology augmented services company from the ground-up, focusing on first-party data assets, consented data collection in a privacy-first world then we applaud the approach that Google has taken in privacy with these steps, and we are ready to service the brands that need to transform their marketing infrastructure to navigate a cookieless and privacy-first world. And with that, I'm pleased to hand it over to Simone and Imma to present our efforts on environmental, social and corporate governance. Thank you.

Thank you, Chris. Good morning, everybody. I'm really happy to tell you about the progress we made in 2020 on ESG. And our global ESG strategy is, as you can see here divided into 3 strategic pillars; zero impact workspaces, sustainable production, diversity and inclusion, where Imma will tell you a lot about in this presentation. And in these 3 pillars, we focus on specific SDGs, which you can see on the next slide. As you can see, we don't only focus on our own households, but also on the value chain we are in. Pillar 1 and 2 mainly have an environmental focus, and Pillar 3 has a social focus. In the value chain, we collaborate with our partners to leverage our impacts. We want to be a catalyst for change. If you go to the next slide, you see our 2020 results. And 2020 is the baseline year, where we now have collected data for all S4 companies. In 2019, we did this for MediaMonks companies only. So 2020, we made a big step forward. Regarding the CO2 emissions, we take our own emissions and emissions in the value chain. So it relates to scope 1, 2 and 3. You can see what the impact is on travel relating to our CO2 emissions, seeing the pandemic. We will take this into account in the future and act upon it in our travel policy. The projects for goods and the total hours worked on will be one of the focus areas for 2021, as we want to give back to our communities.

Also, I can tell you that in 2020, we focused on diversity in every aspect of our business. And a result that we can already highlight is a significant closing of the gap in the women to men ratio as we compare the numbers for 2019 and 2020. And in 2021, the focus on diversity will continue as strong. So we can go to the next slide.

Yes. And what you can see here, a few of the 41 for good projects where we worked on. To LifeMoves, we provided digital marketing services. For Havianas, we created and produced their AllLoveIsWelcome campaign for their pride collection. For WildAid, we made a sea turtle protection campaign on for One Million Truths in the U.S., we delivered a content platform. If we go to the next slide, we take an active look at the outside world, and we really want to support external initiatives on ESG as much as we can. Therefore, we have signed the European Green deal and where Wesley showed a video about, we signed the Amazon Climate Pledge.

And besides all these environmental initiatives, we have already launched our S4 fellowship program. And we also support the programs like TechGrounds in the Netherlands and others like Hack the Hood in the U.S. or Code Like a Girl in Australia. All of these different organizations trained IT professionals, we can focus on women and cultural diversity. And now next slide.

Yes. As mentioned earlier, we want to be a catalyst for change, and we want to be one of the leaders in sustainability. That is why we want to become a B Corp. By the end of year 2021, we will also join EcoVadis. We want to make transparent to the chain how we perform on ESG. And last but not least, on our second pillar, we are working towards a sustainable production and procurement manifesto to increase the sustainable performance together with our clients. If we go to the next slide, here, you can see our long-term ambitions, like the carbon neutral by 2024 and the ambition to join the 1% pledge, and there's much more to come. If we go to the next slide.

Yes. And on diversity, we have systematized our diversity goals. And they inform our recruitment practices, any new initiatives like the women leadership program that's starting right now, expanding our ERGs in all the DE&I-focused client work. In addition, we will start measuring pay to ensure equal pay for equal value, all of it as we build a solid training foundation, training everybody in a code of conduct that has already launched to our population. We will also, at the same time, continue to participate in social forums that promote diversity in all communities where we work. The full CSR report will be released tomorrow. And that concludes our part. Back to Scott, I think.

Thanks, Simone and Imma, Scott and Chris and Peter and Wes. So just to summarize where we are in the last slide, summary and outlook. We've showed in 2020 very strong gross profit, net revenue and bottom line growth, around 20% in each case, organic. A strong -- we've had strong cash flow. Cash conversion has been almost 100% from EBITDA. And balance sheet has been strengthened by the fundraising exercise and by the strong liquidity in the business. And we're targeting, as you know, yet again, this is the third 3-year plan that we've developed and this 1 is the same as the other 2 in that we're aiming to double the size of the company over the period '21 to '23. And that mathematically means a 24% compound growth rate of top, net revenue, gross profit and bottom lines. And as you've seen, we had a good start to 2021 with like-for-like January gross profit well ahead of budget, which, as you know, was around 25% organic growth. We've got a healthy merger pipeline across every one of our 2 practices, whether it be data and analytics and digital media or Content, and you've seen another combination today with Jam3. And we've achieved brand awareness and brand trial in 2019. And our objective in 2020 was conversion at scale, which we've started to do, and we're starting to see, from the statistics that you saw from Scott around client concentration and development that, that conversion scale is starting to develop considerable momentum. We've also shown very strong progress against our ESG objectives as Imma and Simone have outlined, and we're very proud of the 2 programs we've initiated: the Fellows program aimed at historically black universities and high schools. And the S4 Women Leadership Program, which has started at University College Berkeley with 50 of our leading women and will be developed across the company in due course. And finally, the objectives for 2021 are to bed down the whoppers, the 5 whoppers that we've identified and developed. Developed another 10 actually that are in the whopper pipeline to take it further to a total of 15 that we're aiming at. So that's the first objective. The second is to roll out our unitary brand, which has already started to be rolled out in a soft launch. And finally, to broaden and deepen our service capabilities through further mergers. So more to come on that front, too. So with that, we'll open up to questions.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from Matthew Walker from Crédit Suisse.

The first 1 was, I think way back when you launched, you were indicating that you could provide Content services because you were doing it in a very fast, but effective manner. You were indicating, in some cases, charging sort of 50% less compared to traditional agencies. How do you assess the extent to which the traditional agencies have actually caught up and are now able to provide the same kind of cheapness but effectiveness in terms of creative services? That's the first question. Second question is, how much of your business now comes from what you would consider to be sort of e-commerce/transformation activity? I saw some press around talking about a combination with Globant. So could you just explain, do you need to add more capabilities in that area? Are you going to revert yourself into some sort of e-commerce/transformation business? And then finally, I think before you were looking at potentially having around GBP 100 million of net cash at the end of the year. Obviously, it came in around GBP 50 million. I think, on average, in the third quarter, it was averaging around GBP 87 million. Does this mean you will need to raise more equity to make more acquisitions?

Thank you, Matthew. I mean, on the first one, it's very difficult to assess whether the holding companies or other agencies have caught up. If you look at the results, I mean, the simple fact is, in 2020, we went forward and the holding companies went backwards. I mean if I -- looking at -- when we were writing the statement, I was looking back at where we were this time last year, we were about 2,500 people. With Jam3, we're at 4,600. And I would say at least half of the growth was organic growth. So we've onboarded about well over 1,000, 1,250 people during the pandemic, which hasn't been easy to do and another 1.25, 1,250 have come through, through deals. And if you look at it at face value, it would appear that the answer to your first question is that they haven't. You referred to 50% cheaper. I don't know where that statistic came from. I think we are more agile. We just recently had a review with one of our largest health care clients and in the -- global. And in the evaluation, we came out top of, I think there were 4 agencies, networks involved, we came out top. And when you looked at that evaluation, it was very much around the agility that we showed and so I think the answer is, on the basis of the evidence that we can see, both external and internal, there is no closing of that gap that you're referring to. And I think it's very difficult. I can't emphasize enough. I mean, Scott and I know this full well, and Michel deRijk, who's not on this call, know this full well from our experience at WPP. When you reinforce the verticals, you create more fragmentation I mean there's a lot of talk about simplification. And on a piece of paper, it might appear that it's simplified, but actually in reality, it's complicated. And turning up to presentations with the same T-shirt is not the same as providing a seamless unitary brand. And I have to say it is difficult. It's not easy. Wes can attest to that, as he's led our efforts in that area. And Chris has been doing a lot of the integration and he can attest to it. It's not a simple exercise. You have to work at it and develop it. On the e-commerce and transformation, I mean, Scott, do you want to talk a little bit about what proportion of our business is e-commerce and transformation? And I'll chip in on the global thing, as that's my dream.

And to see M&A ranking, yes. So on e-commerce, it's not really -- we don't look at e-commerce as a separate business unit. It pretty much touches everything we do. So as you know, our services are around data, around content, and around digital media. And across all 3 of those, it's incredibly important. So we have e-commerce clients. We do a lot of work for Amazon, for Mercado Libre and many others. If you look at a business like Metric Theory, which is a fairly recent deal we did, a huge proportion of their client base is direct-to-consumer brands who are very focused on selling online. And so a lot of the performance media that we buy is on behalf of e-commerce brands. We do systems integration around platforms like Shopify or Magento from Adobe, or Salesforce Commerce, and a lot of that sits in our content business. And then we do a lot of analytics and measurement for e-commerce companies as well. So it's not something we see as a separate service offering. It really goes across all of our services. And likewise, digital transformation is a very broad -- everybody has a different definition. I would say 100% of what we do falls into digital transformation. There are things in digital transformation that we don't do, that companies maybe like Globant and others do. But everything we do, we're 100% focused on digital, and it would all fall under the broad definition of digital transformation, I think.

Yes. On the Globant thing, Matthew, I mean, I love Globant, I'm an unashamed fan. Our 20 square foot objective comes from a direct copy of some of their objectives. They have different objectives, but I've taken the format. I'd just remind you that WPP have dropped something like $1 billion of return, actually it is $1 billion of return, by selling the Globant stock at 52 when it now trades at around 200. And when Scott and I was there, it wasn't easy in terms of working together with Globant, given the structure, but they do approach the business of digital transformation, or our industry, from a different angle. They approach it from a CIO, CTO, Chief Technology Officer angle, whereas we tend to approach it from a marketing and sales area. And I think there is undisputable logic to a combination of that nature, and it doesn't have to be Globant. It could be others as well. And the other thing, I think, to say is that we -- and some of that team is on this call. We have a very strong management team, a team which -- I've been in the industry for something like 40, 45 years, and I haven't seen as good or stronger team. Maybe in the early days of Saatchis, the original Saatchis, the team was as strong, but this is a really strong -- and it has -- they may not believe it, but it has capacity to do much more, in my view, and we're very ambitious. So it's very much in that vein that I made that comment. And also to signal to you that there are many ways of skinning the cat. That, don't think that we necessarily will go in the direction in the future that we've gone in the past. So that's at the back of that. On the net cash, I'm deeply offended by your comment. And I know that Peter will be deeply offended by your comment as well, because the cash generation has been extremely strong. Peter, do you want to talk a little bit about cash and cash generation and combination payments as to what leads us to what we thought, unlike you, Matthew, was a superior cash position, not an inferior one.

I can hardly speak, so much offended I am. So I will try to explain now. But Matthew, to your point, I think you probably are referring to where we were in Q3 trading or earlier. That's why we were heading above the GBP 100 million, again, also as a result of strong cash flow and a combination of the GBP 113 million. But I think if you look in the sort of average where most analysts were -- and I don't know where you were by heart, but I think we were sort of aiming for GBP 70 million, GBP 80 million net cash at year-end. But 1 thing which that didn't include at that moment in time, was the merger payments we did on Decoded and Metric Theory on literally at 8:00 in the evening at New Year's Eve. So that was, I wouldn't say, a last minute, but probably in anticipating -- in anticipation of that, we didn't include that or it was not modeled in. Like so Martin said, a very strong cash flow, I believe, if you are -- have the ability to deliver 99%, of your EBITDA in operational cash flow. But I'll leave that for you to decide if that's strong or not. But I think that, that's basically the -- coming back to the point that -- to your expectation, that Metric and Decoded deal were not included in that projection.

Yes. Just on your question on your sub-question about the future. I mean we have as you see, net cash, our net cash is running between -- on a monthly basis now between GBP 40 million and GBP 60 million. That's the sort of rough range during the month. Obviously, that we just completed Jam3, which we'll take the cash upfront on Jam3, we'll take something out of the back. But I would just draw your attention to the fact that we've said historically that we would leverage to 1.5 to 2x EBITDA, probably at the south end of that, at the 1.5 end. But we think we have still have considerable capacity given the structure that we continue to employ of half debt -- sorry, half cash, half equity. Given that structure, we still have significant capacity from internal sources to continue to expand through M&A. No doubt we'll get questions, as Scott can expand on what we're seeing in the M&A market in due course. Is that all right, Matthew?

Right. Yes. No, obviously, my model didn't anticipate what you'd get up to at 8:00 on the 30th of December. So apologies for that.

Next question is from Patrick Wellington from Morgan Stanley.

A couple of questions. Martin, you said that we've got a good start to the year in January, ahead of the 25% budget. But we're at the end of March. So perhaps you could give us an idea of how February might look. You could even give us an idea of how March might look, given that March has got a much easier comparative in gross profit growth. So that's my first question, the trend early into 2021. And then Peter, margins -- EBITDA margins probably stronger than expected. 21%. You normally have a range of 20% to 22%. Obviously, the nature of the group has changed their acquisition over the last 12 months. So can you give us a sort of feel for direction of EBITDA margins in 2021? And then a little bit of talk about clients. Again, looking forward at gross profit growth, to what extent have BMW and Mondelez contributed in January and February? And when does the revenue from those begin to build up? And related to that, I think you've talked in the past about a V-shaped recovery in your tech customers generically in 2021. Obviously, they're 55% of the total, so what they're up to is quite important. So how is the environment in those tech-based customers' spending trends looking?

Whilst I ponder what -- Scott is very keen to get us off the month-by-month treadmill that we got onto as a result of pandemic, but I will come back to -- It doesn't matter what we say, Patrick keeps on bulldozing ahead. So I'll come back to you on the January, February, March. Peter, do you want to talk about EBITDA margins? And then Scott, maybe -- or maybe Wes, you can talk a little bit about what you see on BMW and Mondelez in terms of revving up and what's happened so far in January, February and on, and then I'll come back on V-shape tech as well. So Peter, margins.

Yes. So on margins, to your question, Patrick, in 2020, we delivered right in the middle of the 20% to 22% EBITDA margin after central costs because we were at 21.1%, to be very precise. So that's beautifully in the middle. And last year, in 2019, we were at 19.5%. And that's, of course, it's all a combination of the mix of data and digital media, which you saw in also in the pro forma numbers, which has a slightly higher EBITDA margin versus Content, although both are very strong. And going forward, so that '21 was 2020. Going forward, it's a little bit early to say at this very moment in time where we are, where we're heading to. Because typically, as I also mentioned, and I know it's all defense lines. But typically, in the first half year, we encountered some lower as a result of seasonality or we are -- like we are doing also in December or in November and December of this year, gearing up already in hiring additional capacity people in order for the work from BMW, Mini and Mondelez to come in. So it's always a little bit hard how it exactly is going to evolve. But I think, let's say, going forward, that still that 20% to 22% range is a relevant range, and there will be some more economies of scale because we're growing. We're adding new combinations. We're growing organically. So it's likely going to, let's say, grow a little bit, but it's too early to call at this very moment in time, to give a precise indication on where we will end up or where we're growing to.

Wes, do you want to talk a little bit about the revving up of BMW and Mondelez? In January and February, we started to roll out. We've been hiring, but just talk a little bit about how you see the pattern developing.

Yes. I think we've been able to embed both clients quickly. It sort of shows the operational acumen, I think, of the team and our ability to sort of organize and operate at our own clients, because we don't have the P&L attribution issues and fights. Most of the embedding has happened. I think March is where we see the real revving up of the revenue. January, February, bit of December, a lot of it was setting up, making sure structures were in place. First pieces of work that have been really well received, building the relationships with the client teams. And March feels like the first month that both are, I was going to say revving up, but that's more of a BMW kind than a Mondelez one. And everything is looking good. I think that was interesting, right? It's 2 big wins, whoppers from scratch, at least at the BMW level, and to have that embedded at that level of speed, I think we're very happy to see.

Yes. Just on -- I mean, maybe, Chris, on V-Shape tech, I mean, when we look at the platforms, I mean, Google, Facebook and Amazon and Snap had blowout fourth quarters. I mean, my view is that we've seen very V-shaped activity around tech. I mean, would you just join comment on what you see from the tech clients?

I think that's exactly correct. The consumer behavior over the last year has predominantly been moving into a realm of where most of our not only clients, but largest partners sit. So for example, Google is not only a huge client of ours, but we also partner with them on delivering their technology platforms and installing them into the joint client bases. And we've seen significant momentum on that front, without getting into the specifics on who and where. But the trend is certainly that our technology book, which in -- earlier in the presentation, you saw was about 50% -- are investing not only in data infrastructure, but also returning to working media and digital and -- if not doubling down over the year. So it is a positive trend.

Yes. And then on your monthly question, which we want to get off, I think the best way of answering it, it continues to be strong in February. And you heard from Wes that we think that BMW and Mini and Mondelez are cranking up, and we'll see further impact of that in March and April. As you know, April was our weakest month so you will remind us, no doubt, Patrick, that we have weaker comparatives starting in Q2. But I'd also just mention, we have signaled this before, that we've told the market we're budgeting at 25%. And we've indicated to you, our internal budgets are stronger. So I would just say that we're sort of -- we feel good about '21 and indeed '22. Just to underline the point, GDP growth is forecast by your bank and others on this call at 5 to 6 this year and 4 to 5 next year. I can't remember. Well, I can, I think it's the 1980s you have to go back to before you can find 2 years of GDP growth of that level. We -- and 1 point I want to make. Scott mentioned the word royalty. Going back to the early WPP days or indeed Saatchi days, Warren Buffett used to argue that buying IPG or Ogilvy in those days was a royalty on the growth of globalization. I think you have to look at us as being a royalty on the growth of digital transformation and disruption, certainly on the marketing side of the equation. And so we have a secular tailwind, and I think cyclically it's stimulated by strong GDP growth. There's a strong correlation between digital spending and GDP, too. So I think we have a good tailwind. I think we're fortunate to be in the sweet spot and to represent that royalty.

Martin, at 1 point in your presentation -- yes, I think that captures it. Do you want to talk about generically? At 1 point in your presentation, you said conversion at scale, you're gaining considerable momentum. I mean just taking a step back, what do you mean by that? You're getting a seat at the sort of high table these days? People are beginning to notice you more? You're -- what's the implication of that?

Well, I think it's an interesting question. Wes and Peter and Scott and Chris and I, thankfully, Imma and Simone don't have to get up in the middle of the night for it, but -- every day -- but we meet every day for a few minutes to talk about people, our clients and our finances. I mean that was driven by the pandemic, but we've continued to do it on most days. And it's noticeable, I've seen in the last few months that we are getting increasing awareness and trial and traction. I mean, Wes and I have been on calls with Victor and Chris and Pete in the last couple of weeks with major clients who -- it's a difficult way -- thing to explain, but I think there's always like a marketing VIX factor. I mean the level of uncertainty in the market, principally, I think, because of the announcements from Google, or the blogs from Google and the announcements from Apple, that it's created a tremendous amount of uncertainty. And at some levels, concern because historically, clients were looking at third-party data or third-party cookies as being the way that they would move forward with first-party data, supplementing the first-party data. But clearly there's controversy, those people who own third-party data, and you know them well, are obviously extremely sensitive to any suggestion that they've been marginalized, particularly when the ad holding companies have spent large amounts of money on acquiring -- 4 billion, 2 billion, whatever it is-- on acquiring third-party data sets. But I think the level of uncertainty and risk has been raised to a -- volatility, if you like, has been raised to a very high degree. And I think clients are really looking, they're looking for guidance. I mean, Chris, you can talk a little bit about what you see on the data and analytics front, for example. Maybe you say a little bit about that because I think that's the lead-in for us in many situations.

I can. I think, Patrick, your question was about the momentum that we're seeing. 2, 3 years ago, we would get a phone call from Google, and they would say, we need help with a client that's too small for us. Now, we get a call from Google when they say that they need to implement active case studies in the world of cohorting, which is the alternative that Google is presenting to cookie identification and targeting, where they need us to bring our clients to the table and push the cohorting solutions into the active media decisioning of clients. And so we are becoming much more of the trusted thought leaders and the capable use case execution teams, multi award-winning in-housings, where we transform entire marketing departments of our customers and then teach them how to be more effective marketers. And then we future-proof those solutions. Those are the type of stories that get CMOs to call other CMOs and say, you should probably talk to S4 about what you are about to take on in your new role, which we've seen multiple times now, the CMO referral effect. So I think that's the type of momentum. So Martin called it the VIX. I think you were talking about the recognition and brand reputation. It is starting to form. And I think that these first few whoppers this year that are getting global coverage between BMW and Mondelez, these are not just standard agency-of-record relationships. These are transformative, building infrastructure for the next 10 CMOs, not just the next 10 months, type of conversations.

We'll take our -- Emily Johnson from Barclays.

So my first question is, on Slide 22 you're showing the M&A contribution of the companies that you bought in 2020 for gross profit and EBITDA on a pro forma basis? And could we get the M&A contribution to revenues? I think it was GBP 15 million in 2019.

Yes.

And I'll go -- do you want me to go ahead with all the questions?

Yes, go ahead.

The second question.

The question on Slide 22 as well.

Sorry. Could we get the M&A contribution to revenues? You've given it for gross profit and EBITDA.

Yes, I think we can dig that out for you. I think we can give you the number. Peter will give you the number. If he can't lay his hands on it now, we'll do that subsequent. That's one. Go ahead.

Super. Next question, which is following up on Matt's earlier question. Could you talk a bit about your strategic plans for S4 Capital? I think in the Reuters article that he was referring to, you spoke about Globant being a suitable company to inject S4 Capital into? And are you suggesting that you would buy a larger company like Globant or is it that you would be willing to sell S4 Capital? And then the third question, I'll ask Scott the question that you alluded to earlier. Can you comment on what sort of pricing you're seeing for M&A at the moment or are your 1 to 2x revenues a 5 to 10x EBITDA target ranges being squeezed by increased competition? Or are you still comfortable with those targets?

Do you want to talk about acquisition pricing, Scott?

Yes. Sure. So on your first question, just quickly, just to be clear what those numbers actually are. So those are the gross profit and EBITDA forecasts from the investment memorandum during the deal process, that those companies gave. So they're not actual figures of what they contributed. And I think once we report in our annual report, you'll see more detail on that. We probably can find a revenue number, but that's not a number that we focus on. I think we focus on gross profit and EBITDA, but we can probably dig that up. And you can see from those numbers that certainly, the valuations in 2020 were very much in line with what we said from an EBITDA multiple perspective. In terms of what we're seeing in the market right now, I mean, there's plenty of activity. I think we saw an uptick of activity in Q4, and that's continued into Q1 of this year. There's plenty of deals in our pipeline, lots of companies we're talking to and some very interesting ones. I think the 1 sort of thing I would pull out that we have seen from a competitive point that's affecting pricing, is that we still don't really see the holding companies. They're not very acquisitive. I guess they're more internally focused on trying to work out what they own and merge that together, than going out and buying things. What we're actually seeing is significant interest from private equity. So that's direct private equity looking to invest into some of these agencies, or it's private equity-funded agencies who are looking to execute rollup strategies. So that's probably our primary competition. We've certainly seen some outlying deals that have been very aggressive on the multiples. I think overall, there's clearly a bit of inflation that's probably taking most of the deals we're looking at up into the top end of our valuation territory, and maybe slightly beyond, but nothing too significant or too scary, I think, at this point.

Yes. Okay. On the strategy side, I mean we remain -- the critical thing in relation to any discussion whether it was Globant or anything else. There are 4 critical factors for us. One is digital. And I have to say, it goes back to a question of Patrick with regards we've had an instance this week where a client has split their budget. So 1 country -- well, actually, so it's 1 country going into Europe as a whole, has split their budget between traditional and digital. And we've been -- or we think we will be awarded the digital piece of that. So what we're starting to see is clients being prepared, I think, to split their budget with digital becoming 50% of media spend, forecast to go to 68% or 70% by 2024. Digital is getting the lion's share. And I think clients are starting -- as they take back control of their marketing function, they're willing to split the budget. But in any event, digital remains our focus. That's #1 because that's where the growth is. Number two, we have a data-driven model, which has become more important as a result of Google and Apple's decisions on privacy, et cetera. To drive the creation, production and distribution of content through digital media in an iterative model, so that's become more important. Thirdly, faster, better, cheaper, whether it's a good mantra or speed, quality, value is better, either will do. That remains the banner, the motto for the company, and unitary structure is critical. So coming back to the comment in the Reuters article, I was saying -- and this is a signal to you, don't think of us that we necessarily will end up doing exactly in the future what we've done before. As I said before, there are many ways of skinning a cat. And you can we -- one of the things you could do is you could look at a bigger company, given the management capacity that I think we have in this -- in the people represented on this call and beyond. And I think they're capable of really big things. And if you could find a company like Globant that you could inject yourself in, you use the word sell, we would be buying in, to use our vocabulary, because we don't look for people who want to sell. We look for people who want to buy in. We would be buying into a company that had 2 elements to it. One, that attack digital transformation and disruption through the marketing and sales functions, and 1 that did it through the IT function. I mean, companies at the moment have 3 functions involved in digital transformation: sales, marketing and IT. We happen to do sales and marketing. That's the way we come at it. I think we could come at it in a different way with other people. So we would roll our equity, if you like, just like we've done it with other people, we would roll our equity into a bigger operation. It would all depend on the social issues as well, as who does what to whom, as we put it occasionally. So that was the method there. So that's on the strategy and structure. But yes, I'd just urge you not to think that we are going to continually looking at adding companies like a Jam3 to our Content practice, just -- we may be unconventional.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our next question from Steve Liechti from Numis.

Can you hear me okay, first of all?

Yes, fine.

Yes, sorry. Just digging into DDM a bit. Peter, I just wanted to double check what you said on like-for-like in the fourth quarter. And I think you said DDM is up 35% like-for-like for GDP in the fourth quarter. I just wanted to check that. And my figure was actually close to 6% in the third quarter. So massive increase there. I'm just wondering if you can talk through that. And allied to that, it looks like you had a 5 percentage point increase in margin in the second half in DDM specifically. I just really wanted you to sort of talk through the specific trends in the fourth quarter and then whether we should extrapolate that through to next year completely, or is there some one-off? And I guess, really, my final question on the same topic would be if you're a betting man, do you think that DDM is now, given the tailwinds that it's got and all of the things that you've said today, do you think DDM's got a fighting chance of growing faster in like-for-like terms for Content this year, even with new wins going into Content?

Put a smile to Chris's face. Peter, do you want to confirm the stats?

So indeed, Steve, what I said was that -- you got that rightfully. So Content grew with 24% and DDM with 35% in the fourth quarter, delivering the 27% on a combined business. And I think to your question, and I think Chris mentioned it earlier when he was talking about the DDM practice that, especially media spend and then even, I would say, even more particularly in the United States, really got back to levels -- and Chris can better assess it if it's all pre-pandemic levels -- but we saw, especially in the second quarter, third quarter, especially U.S. media was at lower levels. And that got back what we, in a way, expected, that it would go back in Q4. And in a way, maybe it got even better or at a higher level back than we would have expected or what we expected in Q3. But that was basically the main result of the fact that DDM contributed so much, let's say, like-for-like growth in the fourth quarter.

Chris, do you want to comment on DDM and whether you're going to beat the pants off Wes?

We've talked about that internally, about the right language to use around percentage of the business between DDM and Content. My goal, of course, is to -- I think it was, we're currently 25% to 30% today of gross profit, and I want to be 50% within the next 18 to 24 months. That's an internal goal. That is not something that's public, I guess. I'm working on it. But the intent is not to have Content shrink. It is to have us organically and inorganically grow to balance out what the industry and what our clients should be spending across our book and portfolio in the long run. And I would say that Peter's analysis is absolutely on the money. We had, whether you call it the V-Shape or the reverse square root, if I was to bring that back into the conversation. That is exactly what happened throughout the year for our book of business and what we were looking at in digital media and data. We saw a strong rebound in media budgets returning from brands that felt comfortable in weathering the storm. We likely also had a lot of budget burn through the end of the year on the media side, where there was additional dollars not spent in budget, and they tried to use it before the end of the year. So I think we got some uplift there as well. What I can say is that sectors like travel have not quite returned yet. So there are parts of our book where there is still upward momentum for returning investment that we would expect in '21, as vaccinations take hold and travel begins to open up. So I think we still have a little bit more to gain back from our pre-COVID numbers in '21.

Yes. And I'd just add, Steve. I mean, when you think about it and you look at the platform numbers, and you include the trade desk, I mentioned the numbers before, 21 for Google in Q4, like-for-like growth, ad revenues, 31 for Facebook, 41 for Amazon on their advertising, which is running at 5 billion a quarter, so 20 billion a year. You had Snap at 61%, maybe benefiting from some switches from other platforms. You had Trade Desk at 48%, I think, ex political, 40%, 41% -- sorry, 48% with political, 41% ex. So I don't think it comes as a surprise really that we've seen a lift in digital, because if you look at the companies that we either work with or come into contact with, Q4 was strong. And I think what you'll see as we go through this year, how the platforms, how the platform has performed. Does that answer your question?

Yes. I'll take that. Chris, I'll say that was a yes, then.

I'll be more brief next time. Thank you.

As there are no further questions in the queue, I would like to turn the call back to Sir Martin Sorrell for any additional or closing remarks.

No, that's it. Thank you, operator. Thank you, particularly Simone and Imma, for getting up in the middle of -- particularly Imma getting up in the middle of the night. And Chris, well, he does it every day, so I don't extend that much sympathy to him. But anyway, thank you, Wes. Thank you, Pete. Thank you, Scott. Thanks, Chris. And thank you all for joining us, and we look forward to any questions, Pete -- we're all here, Peter and Scott and myself willing to take any further questions. Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody, and thank you for the crew here in Shoreditch. Thank you.