Many global marketing companies had better margins and lower finance costs last year

BLOCKLEY, U.K. - Aug. 6, 2015 - PRLog -- Revenue earned by the world’s largest publicly listed marketing groups continued the previous year’s gentle rate of growth last year, and in a number of cases their profits also benefited from improved margins and lower finance costs.  Nevertheless 40% of the companies suffered a profit decline.

In its latest annual survey of "The Global Greats", the industry research publication Marketing Services Financial Intelligence found that much of the 5.7% revenue growth came from acquisitions, offsetting the downward drift experienced by the remaining 31% of companies surveyed.

Most notable among the acquisitions were the purchase of the Canadian agencies Cossette, Vison7 Media and Citizen Relations by the ambitious Chinese company BlueFocus Communication Group for a reported $210 million.   BlueFocus also acquired a near 20% stake in the UK-based public relations group Huntsworth in October 2013.

In overall terms, operating profit margins before amortisation and impairment charges improved to 15.4%, finance costs absorbed 8.7% of operating profits (down from 11.4% in the previous year's survey) and post-tax profits grew by 11.1%.

There has been no change in the composition of the top five groups measured by revenue, headed by WPP.  But after a standstill year, its lead over Omnicom Group has narrowed as currency movements favoured US companies. Omnicom would have caught WPP if it could have grown its revenue by 10.5% instead of 5%.

The survey suggests that adverse currency movements dampened growth at Publicis Groupe which remained little more than half the size of WPP.  "Indeed WPP’s revenue was almost as big as that of Publicis and the Interpublic Group of Companies put together", the report commented.  "Dentsu narrowed the gap behind Interpublic, helped by a string of relatively modest sized acquisitions by its Dentsu Aegis Network."

The most noteworthy change in ranking was that of Havas, shunted out of sixth place when Alliance Data Systems Corpn acquired Conversant that in turn had acquired ValueClick.  Such is the demand for database related marketing services.

The survey “The Global Greats” examined the top 29 marketing companies listed on major stock markets around the world and ranked them by - among other measures - revenue, operating proft margin, staff costs as a percentage of revenue, finance costs as a percentage of operating profit, and post-tax profit attributable to shareholders.  The full report is available free to subscribers at www.fintellect.com.