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(Alliance News) - S4 Capital PLC on Wednesday swung to an interim profit as its Content unit saw revenue jump on a series of acquisitions.
In the six months to June 30, the Martin Sorrell-led advertising firm recorded pretax profit of GBP118,000 compared to a GBP8.5 million loss the year before.
Revenue jumped 61% to GBP141.3 million from GBP88.0 million the year before. Billings rose 41% year-on-year to GBP260.4 million. Like-for-like billings grew 13%.
S4 Capital's Content unit saw revenue double to GBP94.4 million from GBP45.2 million.
"This year has seen significant activity, with five transactions aimed at continuing to build our Content capabilities and building out our data and key platform capabilities and resources," S4 said.
Chief Executive Sorrell said: "The tragedy of Covid-19 has only accelerated the speed of digital transformation and disruption at consumer, media and enterprise levels. These results confirm that S4 Capital is currently in a growth sweet-spot and that its digital only, faster, better, cheaper, unitary, 'holy trinity' model, which combines first party data with digital content, data and digital media, is migrating from brand awareness and trial to conversion at scale."
Sorrell said the firm is in a "position to build stronger value-adding relationships" and expand through further combinations.
"We will continue to update the market on progress in reaching our new client conversion target of '202', that is 20 clients with over USD20 million of annual revenues," he added.
S4 Capital decided against paying an interim dividend, but noted it continues to review the advisability of declaring a modest dividend in future.
"We still believe, that despite the pandemic, we have a fighting chance of achieving our target of doubling the size of the company organically by 2022," S4 Capital added.
Shares in S4 Capital were 2.4% higher in London on Wednesday at 368.50 pence each.
By Paul McGowan; paulmcgowan@alliancenews.com
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