2020 Annual Financial Report

In 2020, the whole world was put to the test, the global economy has suffered and everyone, wherever they are in the world, has been impacted.

As I am writing this message, there is still uncertainty as to the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic, as lockdowns are still being announced or are in place in several countries and vaccination is progressing unevenly.

Our industry, like so many others, has suffered the effects of this crisis, which has resulted in a significant decrease in marketing investments for our sector.

Nevertheless, in this year of multiple crises, Publicis Groupe has held up well and achieved solid performances thanks to the transformation started many years ago.

When the pandemic hit, we were already well equipped to deal with it. Our long-term investments in data and technology, our country model and our Marcel platform enabled us to limit the decline in our revenues and maintain the best financial indicators in our industry.

As a result, we reported almost stable net revenue and organic growth that is above the average of our peers in 2020, demonstrating our ability to capture the shift in our clients’ investments towards digital, e-commerce and direct-to-consumer channels, a move that has accelerated with the pandemic.

This was particularly noticeable in the United States, our main country, where we recorded the best performance in the industry in 2020. The last quarter saw figures rise there, driven by the growth of Epsilon, Publicis Sapient and double-digit growth in our Healthcare activities. Our creativity and media activities have also been resilient there.

Throughout the year, business in Europe was severely affected by the various restrictions put in place by governments to combat the pandemic, and in our main countries. In Asia, where restrictions were also significant, our performance was the most resilient among our peers.

In 2020, we also continued to gain market share. This is evidenced by the growth in net revenue for our 200 largest clients, as well as our new business wins such as Kraft-Heinz, Reckitt Benckiser, Pfizer, Visa, L’Oréal in China, TikTok and Sephora.

Our financial ratios were, once again, the highest in our industry, with a margin rate of 16% and free cash flow of nearly euro 1.2 billion, thanks to the relevance of our business mix and strict control of costs and cash flow.

It is thanks to these solid results that we have decided to offer our shareholders, from this year, a dividend of euro 2.00, i.e. a payout ratio of 46.8%.