Levy disclosed plans for possible acquisitions in an interview with the Wall Street Journal after the world's fourth-biggest holding company reported a rise in profits of 21.8% for the year to €263m (£178m) as well as seeing strong organic growth in the second half of 2003.
Levy said he was particularly interested in buying direct marketing firms to boost the company's offering of customer-relationship management services in Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific.
Historically, Levy said that the strength of Publicis had been in advertising and media buying rather than marketing services.
"We are looking for some smallish acquisitions to help us complete our offer in marketing services. 'Marketing services' is a catch-all phrase used to describe all sorts of marketing tactics that aren't traditional advertising, such as public relations, internet marketing or in-store promotions," Levy said.
Revenues for the year were €3.86bn and organic growth for the year stood at 2%, rising to 5.2% for the last quarter. Publicis said that it added new business with a value of €3.4bn during the year.
The company said that it had met all of its 2003 objectives including the successful integration of Bcom3, which was acquired in September 2002, an improvement in the operating margin and strengthening of its balance sheet with net debt reduced by €164m.
The company also met its ambitious target of delivering an operating margin above 15% for the second half and hit 14.3% for the full year.
Its operating margin, an good indicator of efficency, put it ahead of WPP Group's 13% and well ahead of French rival Havas on 8.3%.
Levy said: "Our objectives remain client-focused -- an absolute commitment to bringing clients the most complete services, adapted to their specific needs, through lean and flexible structures; to grow faster than our competitors; to solidly establish a sustainable operating margin of 15% and to improve our financial structure."
Despite the upbeat earnings release, Levy later told reporters that he only saw global adspend rising by between 2% and 3.5% over the year.
"What we've seen systematically over the last 10 years or so is that forecasts aren't generally met. There will definitely be growth compared with 2003 but I don't think we'll get to 5%," Levy said.
Earlier this week Aegis, which owns the Carat media buying network, said it expected growth of 5.3% in 2004 in an upbeat set of results. WPP put it at 3%-4% when it reported its results two weeks ago.
Publicis owns the advertising networks Saatchi & Saatchi, Publicis Worldwide and Leo Burnett Worldwide, as well as the media agencies ZenithOptimedia and Starcom MediaVest.
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