Publicis Groupe, the multinational advertising and public relations company, closed 2024 as the “world’s largest advertising company,” driven by a Q4 organic growth of +6.3%, bringing full-year growth to +5.8%.
The agency’s performance remained solid across all key regions, with the U.S. at +4.9%, Europe at +5.4%, and Asia Pacific at +6.3%. The company’s financials included an 18% operating margin rate, headline EPS growth of +4.9% to €7.30, and free cash flow of €1.84 billion.
With a proposed dividend of €3.60 per share (+5.9%), fully paid in cash, Publicis enters 2025 targeting organic growth of +4% to +5%, a slightly higher operating margin, and free cash flow between €1.9 billion and €2.0 billion.
Arthur Sadoun, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe: “Thanks to a very strong Q4, Publicis became the largest advertising company in the world in 2024.
“We are ending the year in the number one position across the board, growing three times faster than our holding company peers, and five times faster than the IT consultancies. We delivered industry-high financial ratios while stepping up the pace of our investments in AI and talent. Once again, we topped the charts in new business rankings.
“But even more importantly, we are accelerating on our status as a Category of One thanks to our unmatched 1st-party data capabilities, our connected media ecosystem, our creative firepower, and our 25,000 engineers, brought together through the Power of One. This makes us confident in significantly outperforming the industry in 2025 for the 6th year in a row,” Sadoun added.
