S4 Capital plc ($SFOR)

So good morning, everybody. I'm in Madrid. We're all spread all to the 4 winds. Radhika is in London and Scott, I think, is in Singapore. So welcome to our Q1 update. Radhika is going to take us through the trading update, and then Scott is going to take us through a brief client analysis. And then I'll come back just to do a brief summary and outlook, and then we'll take questions. So Radhika, over to you.

Thank you, Martin. Good morning. I will start with the financial headlines for the first quarter of 2026. Performance in the period has been impacted by the volatile global macroeconomic conditions and ongoing client caution. Despite these pressures, the annualized impact of the 2025 cost-out actions and the continued strong focus on working capital management has resulted in the Q1 operational EBITDA meeting expectations. Revenue was GBP 164.8 million, down 7.5% reported and 3.7% like-for-like. Net revenue was GBP 149.2 million, down 8.9% reported and 5% like-for-like. Quarter end net debt was GBP 111.8 million, reduced GBP 33 million from GBP 144.8 million at 31st of March 2025 and GBP 45.6 million like-for-like. Leverage has improved to 1.4x pro forma 12-month operational EBITDA compared to this time last year at 1.7x. The company repurchased its Term Loan B at a discount with a total of EUR 85.2 million repurchased to date. The outstanding loan now stands at EUR 289.9 million with a target reduction to EUR 250 million. Our full year guidance is reiterated. We expect like-for-like net revenue to be in line with current analyst consensus slightly below 2025. We target full year operational EBITDA to increase by at least 100 basis points. We target year-end net debt to be in the range of GBP 60 million to GBP 90 million. The Board will approve an interim dividend of 1.1p and recommend a final dividend of 1.1p, subject to shareowner approval if performance and liquidity targets are met. Moving on to net revenue by practice and geography, where all my comments are on a like-for-like basis. Both our practices have been impacted by the ongoing client caution due to the Middle East conflict and lower activity from some of our larger technology clients. Marketing Services, our largest practice, delivered net revenue for the quarter of GBP 136.2 million, down 4.5%. Technology Services generated GBP 13 million, down 10.3%. From a regional perspective, the Americas were above first quarter expectations, representing circa 80% of net revenue, down 0.5%. EMEA declined 27.8%, predominantly due to scope reductions on BMW and the Middle East conflict. Asia Pacific declined 4.5%. Our capital allocation priorities are maintained from the year-end. We have established clear capital allocation priorities focused on delivering shareholder value through dividends -- dividends first, targeted debt repurchase second and share buybacks third. The Board will implement a 50% dividend payout policy out of adjusted basic earnings per share over the medium term, subject to financial targets being met. With that, I will hand over to Scott for the client update.

Thank you, Radhika, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining the call this morning. We continue to have a very compelling client list with some of the world's leading and most innovative companies. Eight of them are what we call whoppers; that's clients that delivered revenues of GBP 20 million plus last year and that's a differentiator for a company of our scale. Most of our direct competitors have a much more fragmented client list with smaller relationships. As you can see, we continue to be skewed towards the tech industry. And despite the ever-increasing amounts they're committing to CapEx spending and AI spending, we are starting to see budgets stabilize in this sector. We continue to see significant opportunities for new business, particularly driven by our own AI tools and capacity. This is particularly so in the automotive sector where we recently won assignments from major manufacturers in Japan, South Korea, China and India. And as the category establishes itself as an early adopter of AI at scale in reaction to the existential pressure from Chinese EVs and AVs. We see similar opportunities in Financial Services, where we've seen an uptick in pipeline and wins as financial institutions move beyond pilots and concerns around AI governance to full-scale adoption, again reflecting an existential threat this time from new fintech platforms. In FMCG, we continue to build on the traction of winning real-time brand and orchestration partner engagements with 2 leading U.S.-based global clients at the end of 2025. One of these client relationships has since expanded internationally, and we're engaged in several scale pitches in this category at the moment. These are strong relationships that help us attract and retain talent to work on them. Declining spend overall have had a negative effect on the average revenue size of our top 10, 20 and 50 clients. But this is primarily driven by reductions in spend and scope rather than lost business. And again, it is starting to stabilize. And with that, I'll hand you over to Martin for the summary.

Thanks, Scott. Thanks, Radhika. So just a few observations on the overall picture. Firstly, and probably most importantly, we reiterate our full year guidance. We saw a Q1 net revenue reported decrease of just under 9% and 5% like-for-like, which was a sequential improvement over Q4 of last year and better than, I think, analyst expectations for the first quarter. But the performance reflected heightened macroeconomic uncertainty caused by the conflict in the Middle East and indeed tight continued client caution, especially amongst the technology clients as they allocate even more spend to building AI infrastructure. I think we're up now to something like GBP 700 billion for the top 4 hyperscalers alone for 2026. Full year like-for-like net revenue is expected to be in line with current analyst consensus, and that's slightly below 2025. Quarter end net debt was about GBP 112 million. Our leverage EBITDA -- debt-to-EBITDA ratio is -- we're now down to 1.4x. And that compares with GBP 145 million last year when the leverage ratio was 1.7x. And on a like-for-like basis, it compares with GBP 157 million. So you're seeing considerably improved liquidity as we saw at the end of last year and through last year, that continues into this year. We reiterate our full year target for EBITDA margin, which is targeted to increase by at least 100 basis points, primarily due to the annualized impact of the 2025 cost actions that we took. Number of Monks at the end of March 2026 is around 6,200, down 3% since December 2025 and 11% from the same point last year in March of 2025. We reiterate our '26 target net debt range of GBP 60 million to GBP 90 million with a medium-term leverage of under 1x operational EBITDA. And I think it's reasonable to assume that over the next 2 years, we'll be debt-free. The company's capital allocation policy is to prioritize dividends first then further debt repurchases and finally share repurchases as net debt falls further. The Board is also implementing a 50% dividend payout policy out of adjusted basic earnings per share over the medium term, subject to our financial targets being met. And in that context or moving towards that objective, we will approve an interim dividend of 1.1p for this year and recommend a final dividend of 1.1p, so making a total of 2.2p for the year, subject to share approval where necessary, which is on the final dividend. And that will be if performance and liquidity continues as they are currently. The company repurchased or has repurchased already just over EUR 85 million of its Term Loan B at a discount and that reduces the term loan B from EUR 375 million to EUR 290 million or just under EUR 290 million. And we have a targeted reduction -- further reduction to EUR 250 million, which will be the steady state. On the AI front, we're seeing significant opportunities for new business, particularly driven by those AI tools and capabilities. And we continue, as Scott said, to win multiple exploratory assignments as clients experiment and explore AI applications and develop use cases. The AI capability is becoming more central to our agencies' way of working and to our new business efforts. And a number of clients have called out the proprietary AI applications that we have and that we've implemented. And as a result, we won 4 major AI industry awards just in the last 2 years. And as Scott outlined, we're seeing significant assignments in 3 verticals: one, autos; secondly, financial services and to a lesser degree, we're starting to see take-up at scale in packaged goods. So overall, we remain confident in our talent, in our business model, in our strategy and in our scaled client relationships, which we think position us very well to deliver sustainable long-term growth. So with that, we'll go to questions.

[Operator Instructions] We'll now take our first question from Laura Metayer of Morgan Stanley.

Two questions from me, please. The first one is on the Tech Services business. I'm curious what do you think is the midterm outlook for this business? Obviously, the growth has been lagging the Marketing Services business. Do you see that business kind of closing the gap with marketing services over time? And what do you think is the impact of AI on this business? And then the second question is on the Middle East. If you can help us understand what sort of business dynamics you're seeing there and the growth, and how the situation is evolving, that would be really helpful.

Okay. Thanks, Laura. On Tech Services, we are seeing stabilization and a little improvement. Budget for this year, we're budgeting flat revenues for Tech Services. I think when we looked at the budget to Tech Services, our people were a little bit more optimistic than that, but we were a bit more conservative in the forecast. And there are some signs of an improving overall environment there. It's not just within our tech services, digital transformation business, it's not purely marketing there. There's enterprise tech services as well or enterprise transformation. So I think the prospects are a little bit better. Obviously, it's been a rough time for the practice over the last really 2 years. So that's background on that. On the Middle East, we did when the -- during the cease fire, which was obviously subsequent to the starting of the conflict there, we did see some stabilization. Hostilities recommenced briefly. We've now gone to another sort of cease fire period. I mean it's very volatile. But I would say I would characterize what's happening is we had the initial destabilization. We then had a period of the cease fire where some commercial activities were continued. And whereas earlier on, we've seen sort of a stasis in terms of budgets and budget discussion going into 2026, there was a continuation. There was then a sort of came to a shuttering halt very briefly a few days ago, and there are signs and signals that there may be some form of maybe longer cease -- my guess would be longer cease fire agreement whilst some negotiations continue. So it's a very volatile situation. We have gone -- in Dubai, just in the last 24, 48 hours, we've gone to virtual working again. I think the schools were closed again and kids were told to stay at home. So it's very volatile, Laura, but I would say we saw the initial dislocation, some stabilization and then the monitoring of the Strait of Hormuz for a very brief period of time brought things to a shuttering halt again. But maybe we'll see some constructive action coming out of it now. So an improvement on where it was, but we just got a question mark hanging over things at the moment.

[Operator Instructions] We'll now move on to our next question from Brian Swenson of Barclays.

So just on the Middle East, again, obviously in EMEA, net revenue down 28%. If you were to try and quantify that, how much of that do you see coming from Middle East impact versus sort of the scope reduction you called out on BMW.

Yes. So...

And then on the -- yes, sorry, go ahead, please.

Yes, well, let's sort it. Radhika, if you want to respond to that.

So I would say 70% of it was BMW scope reduction and the rest of it was the Middle East.

Okay. And then versus underlying sort of business versus EMEA, do you see that roughly flat? Or is it just those 2 factors?

Roughly flat for the year. Is that what you're saying?

Yes, excluding those 2 factors. I mean those were the key factors.

Yes, those were the key factors, yes.

And then just my second question. When you talk about your intended dividend policy and you mentioned medium term, how should we think about the medium term here?

Well, it depends. I mean, I think the market -- what is the market consensus, Scott, for our EPS? Is it about 5.8, 5.9?

You mean -- correct. Yes, correct for this year, yes.

Yes. So if you -- 5.8, 5.9, so you take 2.2 on the 5.8, 5.9 for this year. But if you take 50%, you would be talking about just under 3p a share. So I think medium term, you can interpret as being this year and next year.

With no further questions from the line. I will now hand it back to the management team for closing remarks.

Okay. Well, thank you for joining us. Thanks for the time and we'll be back to you, I think, in August. Is it going to be...

Yes.

Radhika, for the first half.

Yes, on the 11th. Yes.

Yes. We'll be reporting on the first half in August. So we look forward to seeing you there. Thank you once again. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.