Member Info for RunS4

Cheers, Auson, for breaking that out for us.

@Auson /@ryanf - having done a bit research you're probably right it was a whopper. And I shouldn't shot that thought down right off the bat.

We'll just have to see what the March forecasts tell us about 2026 trends..

They're certainly not a Whopper (£20m revenues) for S4.

SMS sounds bullish here - "Encouraging Momentum in the Bay area" and "AI Implementation will take us to new heights". Are they seeing more then Green Shoots then?

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sir-martin-sorrell-35279a67_back-in-san-francisco-with-the-monks-and-ugcPost-7430677243225591808-w5f4?

Spot on, TargetPractice.

I should add it was the Reciprocal tariffs that were struck and sector tariffs such as those on Steel/Aluminium/Semis - they still stand. However, to be sure it's the Reciprocal tariffs and the scale/scope of those which were the major headwind for the economy.

And that's a net positive to the US economy and imho, a big headwind for the US economy and marketing/Ad soend in the US in 2025. If this holds and dumbo doesn't throw his toys out of the pram and look to implement additional tripe policies as a substitute for the strike down of ad hoc global tariffs, then that's a major headwind removed for S4/Ad sector.

Onwards and upwards!!

"Could Martin be wrong about Omnicom & Interpublic merger?"

Quite likely, IMO. 28% YOY growth for Q4 is an impressive stat and even a 20% of that number (6%) for S4's growth forecast in 2026 will do a world of good for our ailing stock price on this god forsaken stock exchange. ;-) That kind of growth stat is S4's path to redemption from the 95% decline from the peak, but will we get there? The wider marketing world needs to buy into the narrative that Martin's been promoting and that's still a show me story.

Fingers crossed!! 30p back to 22p after an impressive financial showing and on no news -- says it all about the wonderfully deep market we're listed on.

If you want to get back to generating 20% EBITDA margins, then cut labour costs in high cost economies and pivot to locations like Egypt and from that move content creation costs would be a lot lower.

"But apart from that why do they need an office in Egypt ?"

Another simple explanation - availability of low cost educated labour supporting their MENA operations including larger customers such as Saudi's PIF.

Strange posts are inversely proportional to the movements of the stock price on this mother of stock exchanges - they're as predictable as dumb Donnie's prognostications of mother of all economic booms in the US even in the face of massive tariffs slapped on their importers.

I had no idea about his birthday but certainly wish him well.

He's certainly making a lot more noise, OK I meant a lot of linkedin posts/interviews in 2026 than he did in 2025. I'm still not sure what his frequent jaunts to India will do for S4, but hey maybe there are some big actions afoot that we're not privy to! Have they seen a real/tangible turn in business in the last 2 months of 2025 and hopefully that momentun is carrying forward into Q1 26?

If 2026 does turn out to be the year that the US economic growth regains its footing and broadens out outside the 2025 AI capex bubble, that would be when we can get back on a growth trajectory. Next month's update and the 2026 forecast will be telling.

"Richard Huntington, former CEO at Saatchi and Saatchi (Publicis agency) recently posted on LinkedIn that he thinks the ad industry staff numbers could be as little as 10% of the numbers from pre-Covid. AI is transforming the industry across all parts of it."

A load of boll*cks I'd say!! As sensational as Microsoft's AI head saying AI will replace all white collar jobs in 18 months!! Utter BS.

It's not just SaaS companies or wealth managers that are facing the heat. Today's the turn of commercial real estate and logistics companies on Wall Street,

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ai-fears-spark-sell-off-in-shipping-freight-stocks-in-sign-every-corner-of-the-market-is-an-ai-target-212041918.html

It'll blow itself over, but is causing varying degrees of pain to now the 'old economy' too!!

Publicis hits new yearly lows, probably joining in the malaise on the French markets as Dassault systems gets hammered to 5-year lows and so does Cap Gemini. Other Holdcos got pounded too today - Omnicom as well as WPP (everyone's favourite punching bag I suppose).

So much so that young Martin has clubbed their newest revamp as Omnicom redux..

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sir-martin-sorrell-35279a67_the-one-wpp-narrative-is-back-but-the-share-7427370249634648064-5JTf/

Go Martin - show us how it's done in 2026. Give us a small revenue growth number and us lot will be a very happy bunch.

Wes ter Haar -- "My goal for this year is to have about 25% of our revenue running in this model, and that is based on hopefully having three quite sizable clients signed up at the end of Q1 "

One in the bag at the of Q4 25 and 2 more expected to follow this quarter - that's pretty good stats showing tangible progress in leveraging AI to create content and enabling real-time hyperpersonalisation at scale for our customers. If they continue doing this at scale and increase the % share of these subscriptions as the portion of overall revenues, then that's great news. I suppose we'll have to wait a while yet to make a realistic assessment.

Should tariff head winds dissipate in 2026 and US growth gets back on the agenda, we could end with 2026 as a revenue turnaround year for S4 and reward us suffering shareholders for a change. We'll get a good sense for how costs are tracking for 2025 and given most cuts were made in Q3/Q4, we could ask the question on the conf call as to impact of these cuts ov 2026 profitability assuming revenues stay even flat.

All to play for here, IMO.

"Need to diversify our client base out of tech sector as soon as possible. They are not going back to spend on marketing any time soon"

The first part is fair and we're indeed doing that. it'll be good to see how the new CPG clients' spend was tracking at the end of the year, and if Martin and co are any wiser about revenue trajectory for 2026. Going by how much Martin's been posting on LinkedIn just in the past 4 to 6 weeks (way more than I've seen him post in the past couple of years), you could be excused for thinking he's seeing more than just green shoooooots. He's out promoting S4 in anger and back in India again next week for another major ad industry event.

The second comment isn't correct. It's not like they're not spending on marketing, but the spend value did drop from 2023 to 2025. End of H1 25 saw a stabilisation in spend at GOOG, and it remains to be seem how that's tracking in h2. They'll still have spent more than £100m with S4 in 2025. I don't think any of the hyperscalers are cutting capex anytime soon, certainly not in 2026, but far more important is a rebound in US growth outside of this AI capex spend. If that materialises as I think it would this year, our pathway to growth in 2026 gets a whole load easier.

The 'Sell software and SaaS stocks' theme is now playing out in anger on Wall Street. The fear now is that AI will cause disruption in revenue streams for SaaS companies, even though the reality is far more nuanced. There will be winners and losers, but the selling right now is indiscriminate.

This is a la the fears yesterday that Publicis' revenue growth forecast for 2026 was weaker because AI is eating its lunch and hammered their stock and took us down with it too. Again, the reality may not be as black and white, nay certainly isn't IMO. This sell everything because of AI fears will shake itself out and winners will show up eventually. I'd wager that services companies like S4 with their deep AI focus, providing pathways to optimise marketing spend for clients, will turn out to be winners once the US economy recovers from its tariff driven slumber.

I like the fact that large pockets of tech are getting crushed and if that trend gets to the hyperscalers and they start pulling back on Capex spend - that's when we could truly shine.

Revenues for 2025 for us is forecast down LFL circa 8.5% and I suspect reported revenues will be down circa 11% for 2025 - somewhere around £673m down from £754m. Will we get an uptick, even if very small, this year. We wait with bated breath. And in the meantime, our balance sheet is rapidly improving. That revenue uptick, when it lands, with a much lowered cost base, is what will push sustainably higher IMO.

The wait continues!!

Ahh. Our resident 10p a share loser finds his voice!! After a week or so of misery might I add.

When you get around to doing an analysis on Publicis' results and I'll grant you the week that you need to get there, Youll figure out that you should be making these comments on WPP's board and not here. That banded about tech focus, we're already there with the Agentic and Gen AI prowess.to separate us from the also ran Agencies and make a meaningful impact to CMO budgets..

We'll wait to hear from you next week but I won't be offended if you took a month to respond.

It's pointless talking about Indonesia, IMO. The whole of APAC is 5% of revenues and there are much bigger markets there for S4 to grow in.

S4's repeated visits to india is an easy pointer as to where he thinks a bit of growth could land in that region, and not to forget Australia/NZ/Singapore and other advanced economies' trajectory changing for the better post the tariff related headwinds of 2025.