Member Info for RunS4

"Lets see if there is a potential take-over on the cards here or speculation is moving the price."

There is no potential takeover at this time and that's my strong view. The stock valuation on this stu*pid stock exchange should've never got to these levels for a free cash generating company with no distressed debt scenario. That news article probably woke up a few numpties who can't see the wood for the trees.

The potential for revenue rebound in 2026 on the back of a US economic rebound outside of AI capex is what could drive us meaningfully higher and maybe the dumb f*ucks controlling this useless stock market are waking up to that reality!!! I'd say it's as simple as that scenario.

"Trump has the US 250 Centenary ,Football World Cup as well as the US Midterms at home ...so it would make sense for him to de-escalate tariffs and foreign aggression and instead focus more on trying to improve his popularity at home , and finding some( any?) friends abroad with whom to celebrate that Independence milestone , giving the economy a chance and the continued uncertainty some pause"

Therein lies the real hope for S4 shareholders to make meaningful gains on their investments. Martin is but a cog in wheel and can't dictate how the US economy fires, which is what we'd need for S4 to meaningfully breakout. What happens in this gorforsaken economy is of no real consequence to how we perform.

Bitter2000... Aka Pointless2000.

All it needed was for Butter 2000 to open its big mouth!!! ROFL...

Stirring the pot is young Martin.. We can only hope that his bravado and gumption can bring us shareholders some succour in 2026.

Hope springs eternal, but with robust Q3 growth in the US spilling over into 2026, diminishing tariff headwinds in 2026, and OBBB stimulus in 2026 - will we finally catch a break in 2026? If Martin and co can't turn revenue around in 2026 and can't cut deep, then bitter lse2000's prognostications of 10p may well play out.

Have a good Christmas all (even you bitter2000), and here's hoping that 2026 delivers!!

Https://www.storyboard18.com/agency-news/confusion-creates-opportunity-for-agile-players-sir-martin-sorrell-on-industry-consolidation-86022.htm

A bit more free press for Martin over in India. And we still wait though!!

He's always at it I suppose. :-) Good lord, I do agree that if he can give his pontifications a bit of rest and focus on stockholder value in his own firm, that might actually be a good thing for us suffering lot.

I don't quite know what to make of these spate of new exec hires in the US - the most recent being EVP Data in North America.

https://apnews.com/press-release/pr-newswire/sneha-ghosh-joins-s4-capitals-monks-as-evp-data-namer-107722dca56d73717a889fe5bac9d671

Logic dictates that new exec hires would be in support of growth and for that they'll need to see a bit of light at the end of the tunnel, but the current business trajectory is still weak. I can understand the GOOG and GM hires - get experienced people in to start growing in business that they've landed in the recent past, and we can only hope that on the back of better growth in the US in 2026 (current market consensus view), that S4 can finally turn this around. It's still a 'Show me' and we'll still be valued in the dumps on the LSE and not a merry Christmas at all for us lot, but maybe next year?

Aren't we tired of saying this over and over again...

"Its unravelling slowly.."

It can't come soon enough, 1Pencil. Here's looking forward to a Capex light/Opex normalised 2026.

We need a bit more of a pull back from this AI Capex cycle spend (Watch NVDA, AVGO , etc) and once that trend is set, we should see Opex come back a bit in 2026 - that's what S4 needs really.

In another note, S4S' Series A and B investment in TV Scientific would've got them a bit of money as that was sold to Pinterest this week. Martin and a few other S4 chappies would've stood to gain from that sale, but the bigger question is whether we can land some business from PINS.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/monks_performance-advertising-just-expanded-to-activity-7405374815437656064-0od2

@Papa65 - are you Justin Billingsley by any chance? ;-)

I vaguely remember seeing that name a while ago and when there's no growth to be had, nay big negative growth in 2024 and a big drop in 2025 H1 too, it's not a surprise he's out. And let the burden fall back on the ever dependable Scott Spirit, Martin's right hand man..

JB berty, he's the Ops chap and I'd think at least put in processes to focus on getting billable work addressed.

If some of the more recent expensive hires in the US don't bring a turnaround in revenues in 2026, then they should be shown the door!! Not much to pay across the pond by way of severance costs!!

1Pencil - for starters, I'm not biting on every single post. What I'm commenting here about is the relevance of say reposting every single Linkedin post, say, about Monks as 'News' when you know that's more or less irrelevant to the company as a tangible growth driver. If you want every single Linkedin post on this message board as 'News', then that's your prerogative.

I'd rather hear about potential revenue impacting drivers/ news such as client wins that aren't public/known yet or even actual expansion of scopes of work at a existing customer.

" hires if they didn't think it would add value, likewise those three joining surely its a positive career step for them too, what is their motivation ?"

Possibly, yes. And this isn't a surprise at all. Dave Meeker put out a post on LinkedIn about 2 or 3 months ago asking his network to recommend a few top guys in multiple client facing areas for Google. And Scott Spirit already said on the H1 call that spend at Google was finally stabilising after many bad quarters. And that's good. However, Google isn't S4's only customer and our cost base is still bloated much more than any other holdcos and I'm possibly guilty of shoehorning us in the HoldCo category when Martin categorically says that we aren't a Holdco, but we still have a bloated cost base that we need to contend with. No amount of head in the sand to stay away from addressing that elephant in the room is good for us broadly speaking, particularly if revenue growth is not yet in sight.

Shocker of shocker, I'm finding myself not disagreeing with a post from the epitome of the shiite nature of our golden stock exchange, lse2k.

As long as we're listed here, none of these linkedin posts or extending relationship posts matter and revenue growth is the only metric that will move the needle on getting us off these ridiculous valuation levels. But lets be honest about it, if there was a market selloff we could easily go below £100m market cap levels and we'd get plenty of naysayers till calling 10p or less price levels - rinse repeat this!!

I can't see Martin even saying flat revenue levels for 2026 after multiple misses on the revenue forecasts this year and their inability to cut costs more as they're hoping for revenue recovery in 2026 (after doing the same in 2025) is a big weight on S4's neck. If they do better on FCF and net debt metrics at the end of 2025, that's the only plus IMO. And the rest will be down to how the US economy recovers in 2026 and if discretionary spend on marketing comes back. THat's the only 'hope' for Martin and co, and for us lot, the suffering shareholders too!!

"I have not seen any current health issues with SMS. Do you have any news links to verify."

He's is gaslighting anyone who wants to be gaslit!!! Pretty simple me thinks. ;-) And he has the full power and backing of the deepest stock market on this planet to carry on with what he does every week - try to pull this down at the bidding of his shorting masters.

However, this is an exchange that we're doomed to be stuck to forever as our management don't want to be burdened with a class action lawsuit every week as a result of their amazing business forecasting prowess ;-) And so this rinse repeat continues until that day when our management lot can actually deliver 'revenue growth' - Yay, that's the only metric on which we determine a stock's value.

I have a few points to make on the Moody's rating notes.

1. I have no issues with their take on little visibility on ad spending rebound in H1 2026. Martin and co thought, just like the rest of the corporate world, that numpty would be their saviour in 2025 and the lightweight's been the opposite if anything. Hence S4's initial view of revenues being flat to now down 10%. Whilst they're diversifying a bit out of tech company reliance, it's been slow progress and I'd like to think that the new CPG news haven't ramped as much as they expected - economin uncertainty affecting ad spend (discretionary) isn't a fib.

2. Their adjusted EBITDA view of £58m for 2025 versus the guide of £75m from 2 weeks - sounds egregious to me when that forecast was literally 6 weeks till the end of the FY? I don't buy Moody's view

3. FCF of under £10m..Crikey, that sounds like they're in a bit of a clueless land. The last guide 2 weeks ago stated that liquidity is improving even in the face of revenue declines - I view that as FCF being decent and dropping to the single digit millon isn't on the cards. I'd take that view with a large pinch of salt.

And for the rest of the opinions on this particular thread - I'd say only this that stock prices get into silly valuation la-la land when the market depth is low and revenue growth is the only metric that matters. The naysayers will certainly emerge with their outlandish prognostications and I/longs can't blindly slate those, but this is what a bottom looks like. Plenty of despair and negativity with doomsday prognostications and that bankruptcy is nigh. I'd wager against that shiite with all the evidence in front of my eyes and FWIW, I've still been adding in the 16s/17s.

Do what you need to do from your risk management viewpoint and from risk reward viewpoint, that's exactly what I'm doing!!

GL and a GW!!!

""Let's concider if SMS was replaced? S4 would run the risk of lossing major clients that he attracted. Also regarding the golden B share, how would you feel if SMS gave up his B share, only for a low-ball takeover attempt offering 25p per share? I say be careful what you wish for. Better the devil you know, than the devil that you don't know. All that we can do as S4 shareholders is trust that SMS can turn things around. I live in hope, but won't hold my breath."

NigeCo - I agree with this. Martin getting booted (impossible pretty much) now or leaving will do nothing for the stock price or the revenue trajectory. The US economy needs to turn around as that's where our bets are placed - most sectors of the US economy are in a recession and the tech sector is still Capexing away to glory. Numpty was hailed as the second coming of the messiah and now a more sober reality has set in for both business leaders as well as the US' non-top 10% class. We'll just need to ride this out and wait for the turn in business sentiment and spend.

This is an interesting LInkedIn interview with Wes ter Haar.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7398858476539719680/

The sellside analysts were asking this question on a call a few months, possibly the March one (can't remember) around this change T&M to output based billing will impact revenues - maybe this state of flux is in some ways impacting billing/revenues and correctly predicting this could be causing headaches to the management, but if this is indeed a new paradigm for us and our competitors, then we need to get forecasting fit for purpose and ready for this new world.

We can only hope this gets better in 2026.

I reported lse 2000's post as it is libelous and is falsely accusing SMS of stealing funds from WPP to invest in S4? The lows that numpties like LSE go to in order to try to push the price down.

Crikey!!!

Thanks, Yorek. Worth a bit of a read there if only because if offers up context around WPP's recovery from the bottom in 1992 PLUS the recovery seen at Saatchi after the last downturn.

I wouldn't use gross revenue as the key metric for topline - I'd always take out pass-through costs and use adjusted Net Revenue as the more pertinent metric for companies in the ad sector. Net debt numbers are off - it was £143m at FYE 2024 and not £182m - I suppose he's included lease liabilities in that count, but hey ho.

It's a bit of a wait for us until the US economy turns around - maybe dumbo will wake up to the plight of the suffering middle class soon enough!! We can hope.

"When net debt is more than the total M/Cap of the company. It's debt in the end that kills companies. For this reason I think S4 should priorities paying down debt before paying out any dividends."

@NigeCo - If we take net debt at year end at the midpoint of projections, and that's being generous given their calamitous projections through 2025, we're at £120m net debt and we have 2 clear full year runs before debt comes up for refi or repayment in 2028 August. Even at a shiite low £30m FCF for the next 2 years, we'll be at £60m at YE 2027, and I can't see how that is an issue for repayment a big chunk and refinancing a small portion.

You're comparing the current F*cked up market cap on this godforsaken stock exchange to net debt, and I know that's the only thing to go by with Martin choosing to stick with this exchange because they're lazy + can't be bothered with quarterly lawsuits from aggrieved investors. I'd think we at least be twice this market cap on the NYSE if you only take ludicrous FCF yield we're trading at on here. I get all the revenue misses, but its not like EBITDA or FCF is falling off a cliff with the big revenue dropoffs. We're probably cutting costs faster than the drops in revenue in 2025 and that's got to count for something for a stock price - apparently not so here!!!

CharlesM - Here's my take on some of the points you raised.

"3 weeks ago SMS said that tech clients marketing spend is stabilising." He didn't say this 3 weeks ago. On H1 conf call, Martin/Scott did say that Google spend looked like it was stabilising after many quarters of reductions.

"How can anyone take this guy seriously? He is just a clown pretending to be a CEO." I can't say I disagree with the sentiment expressed, but S4's management seems unable to quite predict if/when the turn in ad spending will materialise as that discretionary spend driven by economic growth is what drives revenues for us. The reality in the US right now is that economic growth is primarily driven by AI Capex spend. Low income customers are pulling back (and you'd have to pin this in Numpty Trumpty's tariff policies) and that's hurting a more stable growth environment where ad spend could start going. And of course, our now notorious reliance on tech clients who're still cutting opex.

"He is so lucky to list this sh*tshow on LSE. Americans would turn to lawsuits and accuse him of misleading investors long time ago." Come to think of it, this could be the Numero Uno reason why he doesn't want to list on the NYSE with 'growth' and 'forecasting' all but a fading memory or may I say, a recurring nightmare.

"People on this forum are so confident in S4Capital cuz Wes ter Haar has bought 1mil. shares for 45p a share, plus another 1 mil. shares for 25p per share, just follow his trades, what could go wrong?" Yes, for me blindly following management buys isn't an all-winning strategy and that's maybe born from their seeing client wins accruing and the expectation that revenues will follow quickly. Today's update states that revenues aren't ramping like they thought it would form these wins - the optimist in me says it's a timing issue, but that optimist part of me is being beaten dead by these never ending misses. :-)

"Soon he will be buying whole company from SMS for a symbolic 1£ as there is not much value left in it." Aww, I get that you have a high average, Herr Munger, and that bites and leaves a uber bad taste in the mouth. But if you were to look at it dispassionately (hard I know), they're still generating decent FCF and debt is not an issue. If you cut jobs in the US, you don't even need to pay out lots in redundancies and that's where they'll have to go next should H1 26 still be scraping the bottom.

It's miserable in the near term, and green shoots are nowhere to be seen. I know someone senior at Thoughtworks (a tech services company taken private 2 years ago), and their LOB is running at 20% negative revenue runrate this year, YOY. And this time last year, they were proclaiming Numpty as the second coming of the Messiah who'll right their ship and set them on a growth runway. Not to be!! We're a lot better off than that -- is my words of solace.

Next year, Rodders!!