Group Press Releases
Extract From The Chairman’s AGM Statement
25 May 2005
The following is an extract from the chairman’s statement that will be given at today’s AGM of Aegis Group Plc.
“Overall, trading in the year to date is in line with our expectations, with broadly based growth across the group. For the first quarter the group’s revenues were 12.5% higher than the same period last year, and organic revenue growth was 5.8% compared with 4.8% in 2004.
Aegis Media has seen continued growth in client spending. Europe has maintained its recovery although there continues to be significant variation between markets. The Asia Pacific region as a whole is showing strong growth with China being the strongest contributor, and US marketing spending is rising in line with expectations.
Around the world the first three months of 2005 has been characterised by an acceleration of the trend of a switch in the allocation of budgets away from conventional broadcast and print media towards interactive and out of home media, with the result that Isobar, our digital one-to-one network, contributed over 13% of our media revenues in Q1. This proportion is expected to rise for the full year and in the future.
Net new business for Aegis Media was $425 million in Q1 2005, compared with $285 million in 2004, and organic growth of media revenues was 5.3%, equal to the performance of Q1 2004.
Synovate continues to increase revenues, which were 12% higher in constant currencies than in Q1 2004. Of this growth, 6.7% was organic (2004 - 4.0%), with the rest coming from the group’s programme of selective acquisition. All regions performed strongly. A number of new initiatives have been launched this year including the creation of a new global online data collection facility, a new syndicated automotive survey in the US, and a new retail tracking practice based in Asia. All of these are expected to contribute significantly to revenues in the full year.
Macro-economic data suggests a degree of caution on the outlook for the world economy. However, the group’s powerful positions in the higher growth sectors of the communications business lead the board to remain confident of a satisfactory outcome for the year.”
As indicated at the time of the preliminary results in March 2005, an announcement will be made on Thursday 2nd June regarding the implementation of International Accounting Standards.
For further information contact:
Richard Walters
Head of Communications, Aegis Group plc
+44 (0) 20 7070 7700
Jeremy Hicks
Chief Financial Officer,
Aegis Group plc
+44 (0) 20 7070 7700
Charles Palmer, Tim Spratt
Financial Dynamics
+44 (0) 20 7831 3113
