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That's an interesting article, the author is a partner at SI Partners:

Acquisition Advisor:

SI Partners acts as an advisor to Havas in the acquisition of other marketing agencies and companies.

It makes THG look like the next Nvidia..

I cannot for the life of me see what is so bad with results, if it had gone up 20% it wouldn't have surprised me..added a good few..in for a penny and all that..

maybe capitulation for some small fund or tail end of trackers..time will tell.

Most of H1 was reported during AGM statement, the statement quoted by 404 is virtually the same:

'Full year like-for-like3 2025 operational EBITDA target remains unchanged, broadly similar to 2024, with a greater second half weighting, reflecting the timing of significant new business wins and further cost reduction, which is being actioned.'

That's the water shed as it were, lets see if directors step up to the plate..

Yup, FCF is impressive during such turbulent times, leaving the door open for another special divi and the recognition of returning cash through share buy backs is also welcome.

The year end debt target is a a wide one but they have left the door open for significant H2 improvement should it happen.

'As previously, the Board is not proposing an interim dividend and will consider approving an enhanced final dividend for 2025, if the improved second half performance and liquidity targets are delivered. As net debt is reduced and falls below £100 million, our capital allocation policy will return cash to shareowners through a mixture of dividends and share buybacks.'

Hopefully H2 will start to settle down with tariffs largely out of the way, Fed also in focus with unemployment on the rise in US.

Its hard to work out from their monthly fact sheets but it looks as though they have reduced a fair bit, could be wrong but % of NAV and current valuation is only metric quoted.

Stock has moved more than 10%, which should be enough for the board to issue market clarification tomorrow.

Short interest seems to be at odds with the rest of market making new highs, could be high volume is unwinding some of these positions - hard to tell as data is always behind.

Maybe there is a bit of M & A interest, what a risk to run with such large short positions.

having listened to the presentation several times, it looks as though revenue was already returning back to normal as thy exited H1, that was my conclusion anyway..

Is it a call in, can we ask him about the ..err share price lol

Looking forward to the update Monday, should provide some much needed guidance..

Tariffs are really starting to bite now for Americans along with mass deportations, many, many farms simply going to the wall either due to lack of staff or low commodity prices due to limited export market, some of the drops/hikes are close to 50% .

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/wheat

Wait until Americans have to pay 60% for a cup of coffee, Starbucks and all the other listed chains will be quite vocal i am sure.

This sort of public upheaval is bound to curtail further tariff introductions, as if the US doesn't have enough to contend with already..de minimis is another biggie especially heading into the holiday season..

Interesting times..

Revised employment figures across the pond along with softer inflation bodes well for higher rate cut, ECB on hold for moment at least.

Solid numbers over at THG, might help sector sentiment given overlap with some shareholders.

Coming up to the mid point for Sept and so far nothing showing for Aug tracker/etf on the sell side, there has been a moderate amount of buying though.

For date of change use the 'funds' tab..

https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/xlon/sfor/ownership

Auson, spot on, market makers are taking lots in size which prompted me to take a look at NMS, brief intro from Ai.

Understanding Nominal Market Size (NMS)

Purpose:

NMS is a tool used in a quote-driven market to define the minimum quantity of a security that a market maker must be willing to buy or sell at their quoted price

It looks as thought the NMS has increased at some point to 75k, now the same as THG which has much larger market cap.

Might indicate increased volumes and/or demand if market makers are willing to accept larger parcels of stock..

Curious to see how this plays out now, Anthropic is just one large player what will the others do?

It reminds me in someway of when Facebook refused to pay for news in Australia, remember this from the Guardian newspaper:

'Meta, TikTok and Google will be forced to pay for Australian news. What does it mean for you?'

The problem here for those using LLM's unchecked, is so are the potential losses for breaching copyright,this in unlike the news example where its very limited to just one country and several news outlets, we are talking about the internet as a whole..

I see this as a huge win for companies like S4 as any major thinking of running the own campaign will no doubt think twice before doing so, the risks are not even quantifiable imo..

The timing of S4's release (posted earlier by Wolf) in this context couldn't be better, all within the same week !

'S4 Capital's Monks Technology Services Supercharges the Full Application Development Lifecycle with Dev²'

The reference to using a clients network (Private AI Stack ) is an interesting and fundamental development, showing just how worried clients are about using external LLM data (see earlier threads for discussion on this very issue).

This is a biggie imo as it rules out using just any old LLM to knock up a campaign, instead content will be carefully curated and one assumes purchased before hand once the pitch is known, this really moves control back into he hands of creatives who know how to put this type of infrastructure together.

Basically the internet is off limits ..

Here's the full excerpt;

'Private AI Stack — Total Data & IP Control: Dev² deploys inside the client's own infrastructure, on-premises or private cloud; integrates with bring-your-own AI models like Azure AI, Ollama, or custom LLMs; and doesn't allow for public LLM exposure, ensuring compliance with strict enterprise, privacy, and regional regulations.'

Media creation market looks to be moving back towards a more traditional setting whilst harnessing the power of Ai at the same time, clients will still see the benefits through better pricing, but so too will companies like S4 that have embraced Ai enhancing their own offering.

The above post was drafted before yesterday's Anthropic announcement, just in case it reads a little out of sync.

Sorry if this sounds a bit too upbeat, but given the landmark decision yesterday against Anthropic worth highlighting.

> Anthropic has agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion to settle a class action lawsuit with a group of authors, according to a filing.

> The authors claimed the artificial intelligence startup had illegally accessed their books.

> If Anthropic’s settlement is approved, it will be the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history, the filing said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/05/anthropic-to-pay-1point5-billion-to-settle-authors-copyright-lawsuit-.html

If approved this sets a huge precedent and redraws or re-establishes copyright laws with regard to Ai.

You can clearly see the effect on Innovent and Beone with such large MSCI China Health Care Index (HKD) weightings, index is clinging to MSCI China.

https://www.msci.com/documents/10199/53d45d8e-28a9-4a1f-8f91-c9dfddaf10bc

Hang Seng Biotech Index Index is making new recent highs, back to 2021 levels but still some way to go for major high.

17,924.49

4.56%

+781.18

Excellent article Wolf, MSQ detail is welcome as is this para or two:

Of course, that Darwinian framing cuts both ways. While he diagnoses the extinction of others, his own creature, S4, launched in 2018 as an answer to everything WPP was not, has been stumbling. Shares are down 97% since their 2021 peak, revenues dropped 11.4% in the first quarter of 2025, and the market has trimmed its valuation from nearly £4 billion to a humble £140 million.

Still, Sorrell insists the animal lives. “Our model is exactly what clients need when every dollar counts. Efficiency and speed are our currency.” He says it twice in the same conversation, like a man making sure you got the memo.

A copy of the share register could be quite revealing, not least of which is where have the bulk of shares ended up from the July exodus.

As a very rough and ready estimate July saw net outflows of around 7% from etf's/trackers, that's 7% of the issued share capital changed hands, June was pretty hefty too.

I would be interested to see if its one institution or several as yet undisclosed entities.

On the subject of free float, no idea but looking forward to the Aug figures to see if any clues as to above..

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Reducing head count, some of this has to down to automation with hey-eye, its the one area where they can really make cost savings directly impacting bottom line..