S4 Capital plc (SFOR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody. Good afternoon to some who may be on the call. Welcome to our second call today on our Q3 results for 2023. We're going to cover trading update. Mary is going to give you that. And then Scott is going to talk about market momentum and our client analysis. And then I'll give a brief summary and outlook and we'll do Q&A. There's an appendix with ancillary information for you as well. So Mary, do you want to kick off, please?

Thank you, Martin. Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. Trading in the third quarter was difficult with increasing macro uncertainty, client caution and extended sales cycles. Reported revenue was down 18% at GBP 246 million, with some impact from foreign exchange rates, especially the dollar to pound. On a like-for-like basis, revenue was down 13%. Reported net revenue was down 15% to GBP 212 million or 10% like-for-like in these challenging market conditions. Caution was especially evident in regional and local clients as well as some from the technology sector. And we continued to see longer sales cycles, which impacted growth from newer and project-based clients. Our net revenue for the first 9 months was GBP 657 million, broadly stable on a like-for-like basis. We have continued to take action on costs and have made a significant reduction in head count across the company. The number of Monks is now about 8,200, down 9% from our peak mid last year, and 4% from the end of June. Our expectation for full year net revenue is now below the prior year given market conditions, though profitability will still be weighted to the fourth quarter, driven by anticipated client activity and our work on costs and efficiency. Our operational EBITDA margin target is now expected to be in the range of 10% to 11%. Net debt at the end of September was GBP 185 million with leverage at 1.7x. After the remaining payments on prior year combinations, we expect to be around the top of our guided range of GBP 180 million to GBP 220 million at the year end. Moving to the next slide. My comments here are all on a like-for-like basis. Challenging trading conditions have intensified since the first half. Net revenue in both Content and Data & Digital Media decreased. Content grew across some scaled and mid-tier clients, but demand from smaller, more local clients and some from the technology sector was lower. Overall, the practices' net revenue was down 16% in the quarter, with 2 and 3 years stacks at 13% and 54%. Our work on costs has been especially focused on the Content practice, where we have also brought in new leadership, including a new co-CEO, Bruno Lambertini, and new heads of key markets such as APAC, with a focus on accelerating growth. Data & Digital Media was down 8%, again highlighting tougher market conditions, especially in the activation and performance business lines. 2 and 3 years stacks are at 7% and 51%. Technology Services grew 15%, as expected. This is a moderation after strong growth in the first half due to the timing of projects from major clients. Technology Services' 2 year's stack is 89%. From a regional perspective, net revenue decreased across the globe, with the Americas down 8%; EMEA down 19%, driven by the Netherlands and France; and APAC down 9% due to weaker trading in Australia. For the 9 months to September, total net revenue was stable at GBP 657 million with 2-and 3-year stacks at 28% and 75%. Within this, Content was down 7%, Data & Digital Media was down 1%, and Technology Services was up 39%, reflecting rapid growth in the first half and continued progress in Q3. We have again included information on outstanding contingent consideration in the appendix, and we are happy to take any questions on this at your convenience. After 2023, we expect no further material cash contingent payments. In summary, market conditions remain challenging and our expectations for the full year are that net revenue will now be below last year on a like-for-like basis, with margin pressure as a result. We remain focused on managing costs and driving efficiency and we continue to take significant action in the fourth quarter to protect margin. And with that, I will pass to Scott.

Thanks, Mary. Good morning, everyone. I'm going to start with looking at our addressable markets. The major digital platforms have seen an uptick in their top line growth in Q3, and they are on track to deliver growth in 2023 of above 10%. This is obviously in a fairly stark contrast to our own revenue patterns this year. So I wanted to spend a little time on that explaining why we think there is a divergence. The year-to-date 2-year revenue growth stacks are 20% for us and 20% for the platforms. However, the patterns do differ. Our growth last year was consistent at around 25% top line with no significant difference between the quarters. The tech platform saw good growth in H1 at 17%, but a major drop-off in H2, 4% growth, with Meta actually going negative. And this obviously makes for easier comps for them in H2 this year. We believe this is driven by client mix, with small- and medium-sized businesses, which represent a large portion of their revenue, pulling back spend quickly in H2 last year. Whereas, enterprise clients, the type we service, operate on January to December budgets and continued spending. Their pullback started in January '23 as evidenced in our slowdown and the wider industry. Client mix is also at work amongst enterprise client sector. Strong growth was seen from fast-moving consumer goods, which have been sluggish for the past few years. Many of them have seen their organic growth grow to 20% or more based on pricing and inflation. And we've seen similar increases in their ad budgets, which were already amongst the largest in the industry. Conversely, we've seen tech as a sector pull back as they focus on their years of efficiency, most notably Meta with their revenue up 24% in Q3 and their marketing spend down the same amount. We believe this is cyclical and growth will moderate at the FMCGs as inflation declines and pricing power evaporates. And tech will return to spending. If you look back over the past decade to 2022, growth in ad spend at just 4 of the main tech companies, Alphabet, Apple, Meta and Amazon was over 1,300%. This is 160% for the top global 100 brands. As they continue to focus on innovation, new products, AI and diversification, they will refocus growth efforts, and this will be supported by marketing. Whilst we remain committed and bullish on the tech sector, we are increasingly diversifying into categories such as finance and FMCG through a conscious sales effort. The tech services industry has had consistent double-digit growth for over a decade, but has slowed dramatically in 2023, with several competitors going negative and others significantly reducing their guidance several times over the course of the year. Our business has bucked the trend so far coming into '23 with a strong backlog and wins. But as flagged previously, we are now seeing that growth moderate in the second half as industry trends catch up. That said, analysts are cautiously optimistic for growth returning in FY '24 geared towards the second half. As you can see, we still have significant exposure to the technology sector from a client standpoint. It's around 44% of our year-to-date revenue. Obviously, there has been that concern around the sector this year, given that many large tech companies are going through years of efficiency, and we have not been immune to these pressures. Whilst our overall revenue from the tech sector is down 5% year-to-date on a reported basis, we do still have several large tech companies growing their spend with us this year. And as I mentioned previously, longer term, we're confident that this is a sector which will continue to provide growth opportunities ahead of the overall market. The main growth category for us has been financial services, with the full year impact of a portfolio of finance clients at Formula.Monks, our tech services practice, and some good wins in land-and-expand cases at Decoded.Monks. Whilst growth overall has been harder to come by this year, our long-term strategy of building broad, scaled relationships with the world's leading enterprise clients continues to deliver. We now have 12 clients with revenues above GBP 10 million to the year-to-date versus GBP 11 million last year, and a further 12 in the GBP 5 million to GBP 10 million category versus 10 last year. And as we pointed out in the RNS, like-for-like revenue growth from the top 20 clients of 3% and top 50 clients of just under 5% is ahead of the overall group. For clients in the GBP 1 million to GBP 5 million category, we have 65 versus 68 last year. Our whopper strategy continues to pay dividends. The challenge has been further down the client list. With longer sales cycles and a tougher trading environment, meaning growth from new clients and project-based clients has been more difficult than last year. This is more marked at a local level when dealing with smaller, more localized client relationships. This is certainly being driven by macro conditions, especially in the tech sector. But we have several initiatives in place to counter it. We have refocused our sales and growth efforts to drive more pipeline. And in particular, we've hired several new local, regional and capability leaders who have direct responsibility and ownership for growth in this area. On the whopper front, we had 10 last year, and obviously, one of those was Mondelez, which will not be at that level in '23. It's hard to predict exactly where we'll end up this year. We have clear line of sight on 8 whoppers. And as our largest clients are getting larger, we have 2 that are projected to be close to that $20 million cutoff. And with that, I'll hand you over to Martin for the summary.

Thanks, Scott, and thanks, Mary. So just to summarize just briefly where we are. It was a disappointing Q3. Year-to-date performance was better, but both were below our expectations, and they reflected the very challenging macroeconomic conditions, inflation and interest rates; interest rates being higher for longer or projected to be, and the wars on 2 continents now, and client fear of recession as a result. The quarter 3 net revenue decline of 10% like-for-like, and year-to-date, net revenue was broadly flat. Solid growth year-to-date, on a brighter note, across our scaled client base or whoppers, with the top 20 clients like-for-like year-to-date revenue up 3% and the top 50 clients up 5%. Our top 13 clients also around 50%, 55% of our net revenues. There are longer sales cycles that we're seeing, particularly evident in content and especially with tech and local and new clients. It's perhaps a bit of a crutch to talk about tech clients being the sole reason for it. It's broader than that. It's also local and new clients or smaller clients, maybe relationships with bigger companies that they've come under pressure because of the economic outlook. The number of Monks in the company is now down to 8,200. We were originally starting at around 1,000. Grew to just over 9,000 in June of last year. It was down 9% versus that number and 4% versus June '23. Those savings and efficiencies will impact us more significantly next year. There will be continued head count reduction in Q4 of a smaller nature, and we'll see improving margins and establishing a right-sized organization for 2024. The net debt level is at GBP 185 million at the end of Q3, and that increased pretty much due to payment of contingent considerations. Year-end guidance is to the top end of the GBP 180 million to GBP 220 million net debt range, but we have a significant buffer in terms of our covenants, which are around 4.5x EBITDA. There's a continued focus on ESG in 3 areas: on zero impact workspaces, on sustainable work and diversity, equity and inclusion. The traction from AI conversations has been significant and initiatives to encourage it are continuing, and we remain at the forefront leading this significant change. Full year net revenue, our guidance is expected to be below prior year on a like-for-like basis, with the operational EBITDA now the margin is targeted at 10% to 11%. We remain confident in our talent, in our business model, which is digital only, data-driven, faster, better and more efficient and unitary. And the focus on scale and portfolio, whopper opportunities, relationships position us very well for above-industry growth in the future, along with, of course, an important feature of improving efficiency and margins. Next year, we will have no merger payments, and therefore, the free cash flow that we have can be focused on debt reduction, can be focused on share buybacks and on dividends, probably in that order. So 2024 will give us the opportunity in those areas in terms of capital allocation. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] We currently have no questions in the queue. [Operator Instructions]

Okay. I think we've got about 50 people on the call. I think we had about 150 this morning to the U.K. call. If there aren't any questions -- operator, we'll take them -- and you can e-mail Mary, Scott and myself with any questions that may occur to you. Give a second for everybody to decide whether they have a question or not. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, operator. With that, we'll close the call. Thank you very much.