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PARIS, April 20 (Reuters) - Advertising agency Publicis posted forecast-beating organic sales growth in thefirst quarter helped by the weak euro and the contribution ofits recent acquisition of smaller peer Sapient.
Organic revenue growth was 0.8 percent on sales of 2.1billion euro ($2.25 billion) in the quarter, the company said ina statement on Tuesday.
Organic growth slowed from the 3.2 percent seen in the lastquarter of 2014, but came in above analysts' forecasts forrevenue to shrink by 0.5 percent or rise 0.5 percent.
The world's third-largest advertising agency, which competeswith Britain's WPP and America's Omnicom, istrying to turn things around after a difficult 2014 in which itsfinancial performance dragged rivals and its much touted mergerwith Omnicom fell apart.
Key to the promised recovery is building on the $3.7 billionacquisition of digital ad specialist Sapient, which wascompleted in February.
"This is an encouraging start to the year," said PublicisChief Executive Maurice Levy, who had previously warnedinvestors that growth would pick up in the second half.
"The priority this year is clearly organic growth andgetting the machine going again."
Publicis got a 215 million euro boost from favourablecurrency exchange rates in the first quarter from its exposureto the U.S. and Britain. The beneficial effect from the strongerdollar against the euro is expected to continue especially sinceSapient earns 55 percent of sales in the United States.
Publicis is the first ad agency to report results, and WPPis set to report on Thursday. Smaller French peer Havas will publish sales on May 5.
Publicis shares closed down 0.7 percent on Monday to 72.34euros, giving the group a market capitalisation of 16 billioneuros.
Its shares have risen 21.3 percent this year, compared witha 20.5 percent rise for the European media index, a 15percent rise for WPP, and a 0.5 percent rise for Omnicom.
($1 = 0.9313 euros) (Reporting by Gwenaelle Barzic; Writing by Leila Abboud)
