Hello everyone, and welcome to the Havas Full Year 2025 Results Conference. The speakers today are Yannick Bolloré, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and François Laroze, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Please note this conference is being recorded and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen-only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. This can be done by pressing hashtag five on your telephone keypad to register your participation at any time. Please note that three questions and one follow-up question are allowed for each analyst. I will now hand you over to your host, Yannick Bolloré, to begin the conference. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you very much, and hi, everyone. Thank you very much for making the time to connect to this call. So maybe to start directly, if you change the slide. So you first have, w e'll take, I'm sure, all the time you need to read later. So just in terms of agenda, we'll go first with the highlights on one of the guidance, and François will take a deeper look at the results of 2025, and then we'll jump to the Q&A. So, 2025, of course, has been a very important year for Havas. That was the first year where we were fully listed at the Euronext Amsterdam. We initiated the listing December 2024, and it was a rollout of our new strategic plan, Converged.
So if we jump directly to the results of 2025, as you can see on the chart, we have fully achieved our guidance. We initially guided the market on an organic growth of above 2%. Then we narrowed it down to 2.5%-3% after the Q3 results, and we achieved a +3.1%, so we are slightly above the expectation on this criteria. An important criteria for us at Havas, you know, is the profitability that we are tracking down very precisely. We were at 12.4% last year. We guided on a 50 basis points increase that we have fully achieved, so 12.9%. And the adjusted EBIT in absolute number is at EUR 358 million.
The operating cash flow is also very significant after working capital, an increase of 53%. So, to start this presentation, we wanted to start not by data tech and AI, not that it is not important, but we wanted to stress the importance of talents, and we are very pleased to have seen great talents coming from across the industry, deciding to join the Havas for the rest of this career—for the rest of their career. So we are pleased to see that Havas remain a very attractive place for the best talent of the industry. We are also very pleased with our sustainable results for 2025. As you know, we value a lot those results and those ratings.
First, because it's the right thing to do, and also because as a B2B business, our clients are asking our ratings for their own credentials. And this year, we have achieved a gold medal at the EcoVadis, and I think we are the only holding company of the industry to have achieved a gold medal this year, and a B rating at the Carbon Disclosure Project, CDP. So of course, an important aspect of the success of Havas is our integrated approach that we have pioneered, that we were the first group back in 2014, 2013, even to talk about integration.
This client-centric approach has been a great proof of success this past year, especially 2025, with more and more clients interested with this seamless and frictionless approach to the business. So to talk about data and data tech, and AI, you know, we have a very disciplined cost trajectory. We shifted from EUR 60 million this past year's of investment a year to EUR 100 million, and that we've invested in 2025. And for 2026, we keep the same amount, which allow us to develop strong partnerships. Now, you see on this chart, a partnership with Microsoft, with Google, with Adobe, with all those great companies.
We are launching a new LLM portal called AVA that we've announced at CES in Las Vegas. And you see, by the way, a picture of the CES, Las Vegas. So the idea is not to display pictures of me, but just to show that we were very big at CES this year. We're the only advertising agency to do the keynote speech on the impact of AI on our industry. Very well attended. And we launched AVA, it's a secure access to the most prominent LLM from Google, Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, ChatGPT from OpenAI, and of course, Copilot from Microsoft. It will be ready next month for all the Havas employee that have been fully trained by ProfAI.
So 23,000 people to be trained this year. It's a great training, by the way. And also, we've made some great progress on the production side. So, you know, we went big 3 years ago on the AI production with Vermeer through Prose on Pixels, our production hub, and we're having very strong results. We believe, according to our client feedback, that we have the best production tool of the industry. Creativity is also core to Havas success, so we are glad to have had more than 1,600 recognitions in the biggest festival last year. We believe creativity matters a lot, and it will even matters even more in an AI driven world. So we continue to spend time on making our clients' work stand out.
I won't be talking about AI right now. I'm sure there will be a question in the coming during the Q&A session. In terms of clients, how does it translate into clients? So we haven't went-- we haven't gone through the whole list of new business, but just to highlight some of them. The first one, The Travel Corporation, we thought it was interesting because it was a client that was previously in-housing his business and decided to go external. Which I think it's interesting because we have a, well, we see a lot of talks and literature on the fact that clients might be in-housing more in the years to come. These clients have decided to go full external, they launched a big competition, and Havas as well, the integrated clients.
BBC, we were very proud to retain the BBC. Our retention is a key aspect of our success, and it's one of the largest client for Havas in the UK. And by the way, in the UK, we are proud to see, like, amazing, iconic British brands such as British Airways or British Telecom, that have also chosen Havas. The third one is the European Commission, that Havas has won, working very well with them. We are very proud, as you can imagine, to have land this account into the Havas family. Another big retention is like a global account on media for INNOCEAN, for Hyundai, Kia media buying through INNOCEAN. They are the Korean agency.
We are pleased to have renewed these clients after 16 years or 18 years, I don't remember, for a relationship. Of course, last but not least, during the last part of the year is Emirates that has chosen to come back to Havas. I think it's a very insightful win. They were working with us until 6 years ago, and they decided to work with another agency, and after a global review, they have decided that Havas were the best partner for the future. We are also very pleased to unveil a new positioning for Havas. It's been 7 years now that we were working with the positioning around making a meaningful transformation to brands, businesses, and people.
After a year of intense work with clients and teams, we came up with this positioning, growth powered by desire. I think it's very good and very important to start by growth, just to remind everyone that what we are doing at Havas is not just to do great work to win awards, it's to do work that will create growth for our clients, that will drive their market share up, that will increase their pricing power, that will increase the volume of sales. And to do that, what we do at Havas is we create desire for brands. And desire, of course, it's the way to create more brand preference for our client that will ultimately create growth.
We will talk more about desire during Cannes Lions, where we unveil the first desirable brand study after the Meaningful Brands brand study. So basically, with all those trends, we can clearly affirm that we are the strongest challenger in the market. And as we told you during the last call, we are very pleased to be the challenger. It's clearly giving us an extra boost of energy. In terms of growth story during the past four years, so you see the revenue has been growing year after year, despite negative organic growth in 2024. That was due to the loss of an important client in the pharma sector in the U.S.
But even 2024, if you look at the EBIT, despite this negative organic growth, the EBIT went up from EUR 327 million to EUR 338 million, which is a clear demonstration that Havas, even in tough time, is capable to protect and even increase its EBIT. And you see this year, where everything went well, from the organic growth to the profitability that we have achieved. And that's it. And if we look at the guidance before giving the floor to François. Due to the momentum we are experiencing, we are glad to share with you that we forecast another year of organic growth in the same range of 2025.
So our first guidance for 2026 is an organic growth between 2% and 3%, for the full year. And we believe we can continue to improve the adjusted EBIT margin. So you remember, we're at 12.4 in 2024, 12.9 in 2025, and we believe we can reach a result between 13.2% and 13.5%, for 2026. And in terms of midterm guidance for 2028, as we disclosed with François during the capital market day back in 2024, we believe we can reach 14% to 15%. So that was it for me, and I leave the floor to François.
Thank you, Yannick. Hi, everyone. I will walk you through the Q4 and full year financial presentation, starting by the fourth quarter, for which we have posted a 3.7 organic growth, so very solid organic for the quarter, to which we had the 0.9% of scope and a very negative impact of foreign exchange, coming from mainly coming from U.S. dollar to euro. So the total growth of the quarter is 0.5% positive, with EUR 781 million of revenues. The good news of this quarter is that this organic growth has been well balanced between the different regions.
As you see here, all the regions have strongly contributed to this performance, including North America, 4.6%, Europe 3.5%, and Asia Pacific and Latin America being also in positive growth. If we now move to the figures of the full year, the organic growth as described by Yannick is at 3.1%. If we add the 1.1% of scope and the negative impact of the Forex, it leads to a 1.7% total growth, EUR 2.8 billion revenues for the full year. In terms of region, same trend that for the quarter, all the region contributed to this performance. Very solid in North America, almost 5% of growth, 2% in Europe, 1.7% in Asia Pacific, and 3.6% in Latin America.
In terms of revenue breakdown, no major change compared with the previous communication. We're still at roughly 40, 40, 20, between media, creative, and Havas Health. In terms of region, North America is still the first region with 34%. France, number two, 17%. UK, 16%, rest of Europe, 17%. In terms of sector, healthcare and wellness is still by far our first business sector, with 30% of the revenue. And then we've got final consumer goods, which are at number two, at around 10% of the overall revenues. In terms of M&A, we remain our strategy, which is to focus on a targeted and bolt-on acquisition, to try to finalize between 5 and 10 per year, with cumulative revenues around EUR 50 million, which agencies that contribute to the increase of our profitability ratio.
In this year, we are very proud to have finalized 11 deals, which is a record in the Havas history. 11 deals in all of the regions and in all the expertise. As you see, all the regions, U.S., U.K., France, the rest of Europe, have contributed to this very positive performance. Havas Media being the main business unit in which we have invested, with 7 deals achieved during the year. Havas Creative 3 deals, and Havas Health, 1 deal. In terms of expertise from B2B to activation, traditional media, and else with FMAD, all the expertise have been contributing to this performance. A few words on the Horizon Global JV, which has been launched and announced a few months ago. It's still working good.
We have already won one client, mid-sized client, in Latin America the previous months, and we are working today on several pitches at a global level with the help of Horizon and Havas that could contribute to nice wins in the coming months. If I now move to the results of the detailed results of the year up to the adjusted EBIT. We have already commented the net revenue by 1.7% compared with last year. Important to point out that our staff costs, fixed and performance share, have increased at a lower pace than the revenues, and therefore, our comp ratio went down from 64.2% to 63.9%.
In the same time, very good performance as well on the other expenses, with the comp ratio moving from 15.6% to 15.3%. So thanks to this good performance, the adjusted EBIT went up by EUR 20 million from 338 to 358, and the margin, as already described, went up by 50 basis points from 12.4% to 12.9%. Just a few words on the headcount, because it's one of our main focus at the moment, try to ensure that the headcounts are fully under control. This year we have seen the headcount fully stabilized all over the year. 22,600 people at the beginning of the year, same headcount at the end of the year, including 300 people coming from the acquisition.
Which means that in organic evolution, the account have decreased by 1.2%, which confirm our ability to generate some productivity with our staff. If we now move to the full P&L, down to the net income group share, all the KPI are on the good direction. The restructuring are stable at EUR 24 million, including the earn-out adjustments. The net financial expense are roughly at the level of last year. Good news also on the income tax with a EUR 90 million stable, which means that the effective tax rate went down from 33.19% last year to 30.1% this year. If you add the non-controlling effect, you see the net income moving from EUR 173 million to EUR 189 million. It's a 9.2% increase.
Another good news of the year with the cash, and you see here that our net cash position was EUR 211 million at the beginning of year 2025, and we ended at EUR 207 million at the end of the year, 2025. Very solid generation of cash flow. If you add the operating cash flow and the working capital positive variation, it's EUR 360 million of operating cash flow generated during the year. During the same time, we have invested in CapEx for EUR 36 million, in M&A for EUR 49 million.
We have paid tax for EUR 85 million, and we have brought back a transaction with shareholder for EUR 120 million, including the dividends paid to the Havas shareholders, the dividend paid to minority shareholders of the subsidiaries, EUR 5 million, and the buyback program for EUR 25 million. This year has been strongly impacted by the exchange rate effect. It's 72 negative impact on the net debt. And even with this very negative impact of the exchange rate, we have been able to finalize the year at EUR 207 million for 31 December 2025.
If we now look at the evolution of the net debt all over the year, you see, as we have already explained several times, that the position at the end of the year is not really representative of our overall average daily net debt. At the end of the year, we finalized at EUR 207 million, but the average net debt is a debt of EUR 28 million all over the year. Which means that there is roughly a variance of EUR 200 million between the position at the end of the year and the average position. That we see here with a position of EUR 79 million at the end of June. Important to remind that we have also very high liquidity available.
It's EUR 1.3 billion, taking into consideration our cash equivalent of almost EUR 300 million and all the credit lines with our bank, including the RCF of EUR 700 million, which gives to allow a real room of maneuver in terms of investment. Now, in terms of dividends, we will propose to the next shareholder meeting EUR 0.8 dividend per share, which would represent a 42% payout ratio compared with net result group share that we have earlier described. Reminding that, during the year 2025, we have done EUR 25 million of share buyback, and that we will propose to the shareholder meeting to renew the program with a maximum of 10% of share capital, but the amount of the program will be disclosed later.
Thank you for your attention and, with Yannick now, we are at your disposal to answer any question you may raise.
Thank you, François.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please dial hashtag five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial hashtag six on your telephone keypad. Note that three questions and one follow-up question are allowed for each analyst. The next question comes from Laura Metayer from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, Yannick and François, and congratulations on the strong quarter. I have three questions, please. The first one is on the pricing model evolution. So you've obviously won some business recently, you've renewed some business. I'm curious if you're seeing any evolution in the pricing model. You've mentioned that your organic headcount has come down, so I guess that you can do probably the same with less people. How is that being impacted in terms of the revenue model that you have with your clients? And do you feel like you can retain some of the efficiencies rather than passing on everything to your clients? Second question is on the visibility that you have into 2026, and the environment, is it still uncertain and challenging, or are you seeing your clients less adverse to risk?
And then the last question is, you printed a really good organic growth for Q4. I'm curious if that was mainly driven by better performance in your creative or your, or your media business, or both of them. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you very much, Laura. This is Yannick speaking, and thank you for your comment on the number. Maybe in terms of pricing model evolution, François, you want to take that one?
Yes. First of all, we have to remind that, as a media industry, we're always under pressure of the client, and it's not recent. We are always facing a request from our client for ages to reduce our fees year after year. And today, we are still at this pressure, but we are totally used to living with it, and we are able to deliver productivity that leads to this reduction of our fees, when necessary. So I think we do not feel an extra pressure compared with the one we have felt over the last year.
On the organic growth of the quarter, we do not disclose by business unit, but let's say that all the business units, creative, media and health, have largely contributed to the very good performance of the fourth quarter. And for 2026, Yannick has disclosed the guidance for the coming year. Today, we are still very cautious, but we see no major evolution of our clients. We are still very focused on delivering their ambitions in terms of sales, and we seems to be waiting from us the full support to help them in their strategies.
We do not feel any breakdown from a major clients, and we have exchanged with them to foster their sales and to take the good measures for them to reach their own targets. So we are quite confident.
Yeah, maybe just to add on that, yeah, 2026, in terms of outlook at the end of February, looks a little bit like 2025. We don't see many changes. And then the prices, I would say the biggest evolution that we see is more on the production side of the business, where thanks to AI, we can see huge cost reduction to produce assets, whether it is print or TVC. But we are not really affected by that because in the past, we were externalizing or outsourcing production, most of this production to third-party companies. And now, thanks to AI, it's coming in-house. So we are not affected with this drop of the prices.
Just to give you a number, I disclosed at CES we see savings on production for video between 10% and 50% so far. But with no impact, no negative impact on us.
That's very helpful. Thank you for all the color.
The next question comes from Annick Maas from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one is going back to AI, which, as you alluded already to it, it's going to allow you to do more things more quickly, so in theory, with less people, and agencies are very staff-intensive businesses. So have you thought about staff efficiencies in terms of numbers of staff over the next five years, maybe? If you could just comment on that, that would be great. The second question is on Horizon Media. I think you've mentioned you won one client, and you're working on several pitches. Can you just give us a bit more detail? Are these clients that come from the U.S., or are these your clients and you're bringing them to the U.S.? You know, what type of size are we talking to in terms of clients?
The last one is on the seasonality of the growth you're expecting actually for this year. So how is the 2%-3% going to evolve through the year, please? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Annick. So, on AI, I mean, François mentioned that if you look at the headcounts of our. Our goal basically is to grow with the same number of headcounts. So to absorb the 3% growth a year, roughly, with the same number of headcounts. If you look specifically at 2025, the growth has been 3.1% organically, and the headcount, if you exclude the people that have joined us through M&A, it has decreased 1.2%, which means that in fact, it's even a productivity gain by 1.2 + 3.1, 4.3%. Is it entirely due to AI? It's hard to say, but for sure, AI is playing a huge part in it.
So our vision on the next five years is to continue to grow with the same number of headcounts. So, we are training our people with AI, we are finding efficiencies everywhere. And, I believe that we can absorb the growth, quite this kind of growth, with the same number of headcounts. Then your second question on Horizon Media, that's true that, François disclosed that we won one client, and I think it's the first time that we disclosed it. So it's a client, it's a Horizon client in the U.S., that wanted to expand, in, Latam, in Mexico, and, he has awarded Horizon Global, for that. So it's a mid-sized client.
But what's important, the clients that are in the pitch right now, so I think we'll be able to give you more color on the Horizon Global in, hopefully, in the coming 3-6 months. I think it will be here in July to let you know the results of the pitch, but it has created a lot of interest from clients. And the relationship with Bill Koenigsberg, Bob Lord, and the team at Horizon is very positive. We had a board meeting during CES; it went very well. I mean, the teams are very motivated, and we think we have something on the market that didn't exist before. And on the seasonality of the business, François, you might take this one.
Yes, it is. I would say it's a little bit too early because we, with all the financial team, make a first reforecast in the coming week, knowing that our budget has been prepared a few months ago. But up to now, we don't see any major evolution compared with last year. i.e., until the reforecast that on which we will comment later, we consider that it could be right, roughly equivalent to the one we had last year.
Great. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Annick.
The next question comes from Conor O'Shea from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes, yes, good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. 3 questions from my side as well. Just to come back, first on the guidance for 2026. Obviously, I understand it's necessarily cautious at this stage, early in the year, and similar guidance, I think, to 2025, which you beat, but you seem to be more confident on the margin growth than the revenue growth. It's, you know, in theory, a little bit slower than 2025. Obviously, you've commented a lot on keeping headcount stable and level of growth, but maybe you could just talk around that a little bit.
Secondly, maybe for François, if you could give us an idea of the potential full year 2026 Forex translation drag and M&A boost at this stage in the year. And then the third question, it seems that Dentsu has abandoned their efforts to sell their entire international agency business. And may look for piecemeal sales on a local basis. I think in the past you said that that could be interest in certain regions to confirm that potential interest.
Yes, thank you very much, Conor. So, on the guidance, just to make sure I understood, you said we were more cautious in on the profitability than on the growth?
Oh, the opposite. More confident on the margins than the growth.
Oh, no. No, no.
No. Balanced. Okay.
Well, I mean, it's easier for us to be clear. It's easier for us to manage the cost base, of course. But the growth, I mean, we don't have major clients to pitch before the end of the year, meaning that the traditional terms are end of June or end of December, and we are quite safe for end of June. So, we feel, François, quite confident and to achieve the organic growth as well.
Yeah.
And you want to take... So you want to take, François, the effect of M&A effect on Dentsu?
On the FX, it's quite complex because as you can imagine, we have many currency which contribute to the FX impact. But if you take the US dollar, let's remind that the average for the year 2025 was 1.12, and today we are in the range of 1, around 1.17, 1.19. So we may have another negative impact on the revenues if the dollar was to remain at the level where it is today. Let's say equivalent of the one of the 2025, but it will depend on the evolution of the euro-dollar conversion.
reminding that in terms of EBIT, the impact is far smaller, it's between EUR 5 million and EUR 8 million per year, if we would remain in the same trend, than last year.
Okay.
M&A. M&A.
On the Dentsu?
No, on the M&A.
Oh, sorry, on M&A?
Yeah. Let's say the perimeter effect so far. Yeah, yeah.
Yes, on the scope effect, yes, let's take 1.2, between 1.2% and 1.5%.
Okay. Okay, perfect.
Okay, and maybe on Dentsu. So, I mean, we've been talking a lot about the scale of Havas during the past 15 years, by the way, but especially since the listing. Actually, what we see is that our scale is a real advantage because in times of changes, abilities, speed of execution are key to clients. You have to train all your people to restructure, to change a lot of things. We didn't enter into too much details, but what we have done this past three years, integrating AI, has been really significant. We were the first, by the way, to integrate AI at this speed. When we started as early as 2011 on the media buying program, and then we implemented AI everywhere.
I mean, production, of course, the things we are doing with LLMs. We are questioning every, expertise, every business line, even the corporate for legal, finance, everything, to see how we can gain efficiency, in AI. So, basically, we believe our scale has been an advantage this year and will continue to be for the years to come. So we are not seriously looking at trying to gain scale for just the sake of gaining scale. And then what we said last year is, if there are some mid-sized opportunity that are like mid-sized company or some sales by a partner from, one of our peers, we will of course consider. But having said that, we are not in a discussion with any of our peers, to discuss these kind of things.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial hashtag five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. The next question comes from Julien Roch from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yes, good evening, Yannick, good evening, François. First question is, can you split your 3.1 organic in 2025 between net new business and existing clients? Publicis told us that their 5.6 organic in 2025 was around 3% existing clients, around 2.5 net new business. So a similar breakdown, please. The second one is, can you split your EUR 130 million pass-through costs between media, production, event, and other, maybe nearest percentage to 5%? And then, on, if you could we could have a, an estimate or a guidance on interest and tax rate for full year 2026. Thank you.
Thank you. Not sure, Julien, I got your second question. Is how do we split the EUR 100 million investment?
No, the EUR 130 million of pass-through costs, so the difference between revenue and net sales.
Ah, the pass-through. Okay. Okay, great. Now, François, you want to take the questions?
Julian, it's not an easy question. You ask most of the questions that we do not re-disclose. On the first one, I do not really follow the type of communication of Publicis on the strength of net new business, and I think it's totally not auditable and not really easy to perform. So we do not disclose this kind of figures. What we can tell you is that we have three levels of organic growth. First one, which is new business, and we have been very, very active with nice wins. And with Yannick, we consider it's certainly a record year in terms of new business for Havas. The second is client retention, and here again, we have been extremely successful with the retention.
We referred to some big retention like Hyundai recently or Sanofi. And the third one is the in-business, our ability to extract more revenues from our existing clients. And we focus more on these three levels that we follow internally, but we do not disclose these figures. On the second question on the pass-through cost, it mainly comes from our production and also events operation. But here again, we do not disclose the detail. I don't think it will help you in your understanding of the group. The third question was on tax rate. On tax rate, we have had a very positive tax rate in 2025, down to 30%, coming from 31.9.
We are quite prudent for the next year because we have some positive one-off on the tax rate during the year 2025. Our forecast would be maybe to come back to the range of 31-32 for the coming year, above the performance of 2025. In terms of financial, nothing really important. You could consider somehow stable compared with last year.
Merci.
Thank you, Julien.
As a last reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial hashtag five on your telephone keypad now. There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing remarks.
Also, thank you very much, everyone, for connecting to the call. As you can imagine, we are quite satisfied with the achievement of 2025, and we enter 2026 with a certain degree of serenity. Thank you very much.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
The conference is over now. You may now disconnect.