Aegis reports organic growth of 9.1% for Q1

Aegis Group, home to Carat, Vizeum, isobar, iProspect and Posterscope, has outperformed most of its marcoms rivals to post a 9.1% rise in organic revenue for the first quarter of 2011.

Jerry Buhlmann: chief executive officer of Aegis Group
Jerry Buhlmann: chief executive officer of Aegis Group

In today's interim trading update, Aegis, which also owns research division Synovate, said it had ended the period with "significant undrawn available credit".

Aegis Media delivered an organic revenue growth of 10.1% during the first quarter, while Synovate reported a 7.3% boost.

The report stated that Q1 revenue growth was "driven by continued strong performances from our businesses in faster-growing regions, North America ,and a number of Western European markets." 

In faster-growing regions, the strongest performances reportedly came from Aegis’ businesses across Asia Pacific, particularly China, and from Brazil and Russia.

The first-quarter results include a full contribution from Aegis’ acquisition of Australian marketing communications group Mitchell, which it bought for £207m in July last year.

The Mitchell acquisition was said to have "delivered a good performance during the period, in line with our expectations."

In Western Europe, Aegis said there were "particularly good results from our businesses in the UK, Germany and the Nordic region. Our Spanish business also performed well, in spite of the continued challenging economic environment in Southern Europe."

The company said North America continued to deliver strong performance improvement, supported by "ongoing positive new business momentum".  

Aegis Media claimed it had secured total net new business wins of $1.6bn during the first quarter of the year, compared to $0.8bn in 2010.

Wins include The Home Depot and Disney in North America, Enel in Latin America, Ergo, Findus, Asda, Red Bull, the Scottish Government and eBay in Western Europe, and Kellogg’s digital creative business in Asia Pacific.

During the first quarter, Aegis acquired Clickthinking, a South African performance marketing business, and Riber, a US-based sports and entertainment marketing agency.

In March, Aegis reported its down from £91.2m in 2009, and £124.6m in 2008. The group had been affected by £37m in bad debt resulting from the financial problems of a Spanish client.

Jerry Buhlmann, chief executive officer of Aegis Group, said: "Aegis Media delivered another excellent new business performance and Synovate started the second quarter with a healthy orders-on-hand position.

Buhlmann said he was positive about the future: "Aegis remains well placed to build on this performance and achieve further revenue and profit growth in 2011, in spite of macro-economic uncertainties."

"We remain on track to deliver organic growth for 2011, at least in line with the level achieved last year."

It's organic revenue growth trumps for the first quarter, as well as , and

However, Aegis has also announced it has acquired Qualitè Search Marketing, a performance marketing business based in Norway. 
 
Qualitè, which specialises in search engine marketing and advertising, web analytics and social media, will be merged with iProspect’s existing business in Norway. As at 31 December 2010, Qualitè had gross assets of £0.1m.

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