Good morning, everybody. I'm here in London. I'm joined by, on my left, Scott Spirit. On my right, Mary Basterfield. And for the first time on our extreme right, Jean-Benoit Berty, who, as you've seen from the release, has joined us now as Chief Operating Officer of S4. The presentation today has got a number of aspects to it. I'll do a brief introduction, then hand over to Scott to talk a little bit about our strategy. Mary will talk about our results. And then Scott will again talk about market momentum and client analysis. And then Wes ter Haar, who is in Las Vegas, so it's really early morning for him, will cover artificial intelligence and what we're seeing there. And I'll do a brief summary and outlook. And then for Q&A, we have Brady. Where are you, Brady?
Wes, it's a wee bit early here too.
Okay. Early. Thank you for early morning. Chris Martin is in Barcelona, so a little bit more civilized. With that, let's move to the introduction. Just want to make a few comments on the release and what we're seeing. After four years of very strong organic growth, 2023 was a very challenging year. That did reflect global macroeconomic conditions, but it also reflected considerable client caution as interest rates rose and, indeed, fears of recession. To deal with that, we've made several structural changes to improve performance. The first was a reduction in the number of Monks people in the business, from about over 9,000 to about 7,700. The second was a reorganization and additional leadership in our content practice with the appointment of Bruno Lambertini as co-CEO, with Wes ter Haar on this call.
Thirdly, the appointment of, as I mentioned before, of Jean-Benoit Berty as our Chief Operating Officer with extensive background at EY, Capgemini, and CRM agencies before. And finally, a simplification of our board structure and strengthening the executive committee. Our board structure historically had been both non-executive and executive. We've now slimmed it down to mainly non-executive involvement, freeing up our executives to focus even more on the business. At the same time as all this, we've made further investments in our systems, in our processes, in our control, and our governance. And Mary, of course, has been heavily involved in that, in strengthening the central financial team. Now, given all that, given continued market uncertainty, this time this year, we think clients are a little bit more optimistic. This time last year, they were concerned about interest rates rising.
Now, they're focused on the possibility of interest rates starting to fall in the second half of the year. But given all that uncertainty, we maintain our continued discipline in hiring and, indeed, in cost management. The strategy, as you'll hear shortly from Scott, remains exactly the same. And we're confident that our talent, our business model, our strategy, and our scaled relationships, which continue to strengthen, position us well for above-average industry growth and in the medium and longer term. With that, let me hand over to Scott to talk a little bit about the strategy.
Thank you, Martin. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining. As Martin just said, our strategy remains consistent. I wanted to cover some of our key differentiators. Firstly, we're purely digital. We're focused on the fastest-growing segments of the marketing and technology services industries and with a natural understanding of the impacts of technology, which is especially relevant in the age of artificial intelligence. We are data-driven. Data informs all of our work. This leads to more effective and reliable results for clients. Data is also the key input and the fuel which powers AI. We go to market as faster, better, cheaper, and with the advent of AI, more. Our unique combination of marketing and technology capabilities allows us to address budgets across CMOs, CSOs, CIOs, and CTOs. Given the pace and impact of change, we focus on the now.
We help clients achieve results and relevance today. We have a single P&L approach. We go to market under a unified Media.Monks brand and offering clients a more integrated approach. We generate value for our stakeholders by having scaled, profitable clients. Our addressable markets of digital marketing and technology services are both multi-billion-dollar opportunities. We rely on our talented entrepreneurial colleagues. There are 7,700 of them around the world. We aim to deliver maximum and measurable results for our clients across our three core practices: content, data, and digital media, and technology services. We have a global network of connected offices, 61 in 32 markets. Finally, we act as responsible stewards, managing risk and aligning our ESG goals with our business objectives. With that, I'll hand over to Mary for our audited financials.
Thank you very much, Scott. Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. I look forward to catching up with many of you during the investor roadshow. I'll start with the financial highlights. After four years of strong growth, 2023 was a difficult year. Net revenue was GBP 873 million, down 4.5% on a like-for-like basis. We delivered growth in the first half, but the third and fourth quarters were more challenging. Profitability came under pressure due to lower revenues. However, operational EBITDA was in line with the revised targets at GBP 94 million. We made significant cost reductions to deliver an operational EBITDA margin of 10.7%. EBITDA improved as these cost reductions took effect. We delivered GBP 57 million in the second half compared to GBP 37 million in the first. Adjusted operating profit was GBP 82 million. Adjusted earnings per share were 5.7 pence.
We finished the year with net debt of GBP 181 million, reflecting combination payments made in the year. This was at the bottom of the targeted range due to tight cost control and slightly lower-than-expected combination payments. Leverage was 1.9 times. Moving now to the income statement, revenue decreased 5% on a reported basis to GBP 1 billion. Like-for-like was down 8%. Reported net revenue of GBP 873 million was down 2% or 4.5% like-for-like. This reflects global macroeconomic conditions, client caution, longer sales cycles, a difficult year for new business, and a lower seasonal uplift than in previous years. While all practices were impacted, this was most evident in content. We finished the year with 10 whoppers. That is, clients delivering over $20 million of revenue. Our strategy of building broad, scaled relationships with leading clients continues to drive our revenue.
We saw better performance in our top 10, 20, and 50 clients. Operating expenses were broadly flat year-on-year despite inflation and a full year of combinations made in 2022. This is the result of tight cost management and a reduction in the number of Monks to about 7,700 at year-end, down 13% on December 2022. Operational EBITDA of GBP 94 million was down 25% on a reported basis and 37% like-for-like, driven by lower revenues. I've given you a breakdown of the adjusting items in the table on the left-hand side. You can see that M&A investment was significantly lower due to reduced activity. Acquisition, restructuring, and other expenses of GBP 12 million includes GBP 13 million of contingent consideration linked to employment and restructuring costs of GBP 18 million, which have driven significant cost reductions.
This was partly offset by a revaluation of contingent consideration on prior-year combinations, resulting in a credit of GBP 25 million. Reported profit includes a credit of GBP 9 million relating to the significant one-off devaluation of the Argentine peso, which we have excluded from operational EBITDA. Finally, the increase in net finance expense is driven by higher interest rates on our term loan, which provides us with secure long-term financing. Looking next at our three different practice areas: content, data, and digital media, and technology services. My comments here are all on a like-for-like basis. Net revenue in our largest practice, content, was down 10% in a challenging year, especially in the second half when macroeconomic conditions made clients cautious. Some technology clients spent less. There was limited seasonal uplift in the fourth quarter.
Data & Digital Media net revenue was down 3% with modest growth in the first half but a decline in the second, highlighting tougher-end markets. Net revenue in Technology Services was up 22% with very good growth in the first half. As expected, this slowed significantly in the second half due to longer sales cycles for transformation projects, phasing of work, and a reduction in activity from some larger clients. From a regional perspective, the Americas was down 3%. It remains our biggest region, boosted by Technology Services at 79% of the mix. EMEA decreased 11% in challenging macro conditions. Asia-Pacific declined 9%. Moving to EBITDA by practice on the next slide, again, my comments are on a like-for-like basis. In Content, operational EBITDA margins were significantly impacted by the decrease in net revenue, though this was tempered by strong cost discipline.
Operational EBITDA was GBP 39 million, down 56% on the prior year at a margin of 7%. Ongoing hiring controls and reorganization of the practice have reduced headcount. We continue to focus on improving the operating model, integration, and forecasting. In data and digital media, a modest decrease in net revenue impacted margins. We took corrective action to reduce cost. Operational EBITDA was GBP 34 million, down 22% at a margin of 16%. Technology services had a strong first half but delivered lower margins in the second on lower revenues. Operational EBITDA of GBP 43 million was up 1% at a margin of 32%. Central costs were down 15% year-on-year, reflecting tight cost control and efficiencies. Moving to the next slide, you can see that we continue to maintain a strong balance sheet with sufficient liquidity and long-dated maturities to facilitate growth.
Our EUR 375 million term loan matures in August 2028. Our EUR 100 million revolving credit facility, which remains undrawn, matures in August 2026. We currently have comfortable headroom against the key covenant. Moving to cash flow on the next slide, CapEx of GBP 10 million is primarily investment in IT infrastructure. Interest paid increased as a result of the higher Euribor rates on the term loan, while higher tax paid reflects our performance in 2022. Restructuring and other one-off expenses include the GBP 18 million of restructuring costs, mainly related to people, and around GBP 3 million of spend on our ERP program. There was a very small working capital outflow due to a reduction in trade payables driven by activity levels and cost control. Free cash flow was GBP 14 million. We continue to focus on cash management.
The cash spend on combinations was GBP 81 million, almost completing the payments related to activity in prior years. This takes net debt to GBP 181 million, which is at the bottom of the targeted range. Turning to our guidance for 2024, we anticipate significant market uncertainty as clients remain cautious in the near term despite potential interest rate reductions later in the year. At a practice level, we expect content to deliver an improvement in EBITDA and margin driven by the benefit of cost reductions made in 2023 and data and digital media to perform in line with 2023 on both the top and bottom line with some margin improvement. Technology services has a more challenging outlook and is expected to be lower in both revenue and EBITDA following a reduction in activity with some key clients.
Given the outlook for technology services, we are targeting like-for-like net revenue for the group to be down on 2023 with overall a broadly similar level of operational EBITDA. The comparatives with 2023 will be tougher in the first half and ease in the second. We expect 2024 to be heavily weighted to the second half given our natural seasonality and an expected improvement in end markets as interest rates come down. Excuse me. Given the uncertain market outlook, we continue to maintain a disciplined approach to cost management, including headcount and discretionary costs. We anticipate a net finance cash charge of about GBP 30 million and a tax rate of 24%-26%. Our guidance for cash contingent consideration is GBP 10 million settled in the first quarter.
Our expectations for net debt at year-end are in the range of GBP 150 million-GBP 190 million with capital allocation priorities focused on debt reduction, buybacks, and dividends. As usual, we have included information on weighted average share count and invested capital in the appendix. We are happy to take any questions on these at your convenience. In summary, we expect clients to remain cautious this year. We continue our disciplined approach to cost management and operational efficiency. We are targeting a broadly similar level of performance as 2023. Medium-term prospects remain good. With that, I will hand over to Scott for the market and client update.
Thanks, Mary. I'm going to take you through some of the market and client dynamics that we saw in 2023 and the outlook for 2024, some of the challenges we faced last year, and the actions we've taken to stabilize the business and build stronger foundations for growth. As you're aware, last year was a difficult year. From a macro perspective, we entered 2023 with reduced growth expectations and less than typical visibility as many of our clients delayed their budgeting processes well into Q1. As it turned out, 2023 was most notable for the challenges faced by our primary client segment, the technology sector. Historically, our growth has been tightly correlated to the growth of digital advertising and the revenue growth of the major tech platforms.
As the tech companies engaged in rounds of layoffs, right-sizing their businesses after a post-COVID-fueled growth spurt, they also cut their marketing budgets and doubled down on their year of efficiency. Actually, digital marketing had a relatively healthy year. The platforms had a tough first half but delivered strong growth in H2. Overall, digital media spend growth was around 8.7%. That was driven by FMCG spend, driven by inflation, and other non-tech categories. Our quoted agency peers originally guided to 5% growth and ultimately delivered 0.6%. 2024 looks like it will be a similar year for digital media growth with analysts projecting 7.7% growth but with the technology category continuing to be muted. Our quoted agency peers are currently guiding towards a more modest 3% growth. Our other addressable market, tech services, had a turbulent time after many years of 20%-plus growth.
Originally guiding to above 12% growth, our main peers delivered just over 5%. For 2024, are projecting less than 1% growth with significant margin compression and many of them turning into negative territory. Despite these macro challenges, our stated goal remains to outgrow our markets. We did not achieve that in 2023. Our guidance for 2024 also falls short. So I wanted to dig into our clients and our growth approach some more and look at what changes and actions we're taking to turn things round. Our scaled client relationships remained healthy in 2023. The only significant loss we had was the previously flagged Mondelēz content business, although Mondelēz does remain an important client. The reduction in work with Mondelēz was around GBP 30 million in net revenue. Thus represents 3.3% of our total 4.5% decline in net revenue.
Our heavy exposure to technology clients was also a challenge in 2023 as they embarked on cost-saving programs. Meta publicly disclosed their sales and marketing spends were down almost 20% in 2023 with others down similar amounts as we understand it. We had six technology clients in our top 10 in 2022. Their net revenues were down just over 8% in 2023 due to spend declines. This contributed to our overall decline. In a year where budgets were down as much as 20%, we still gained share. Our strategy of focusing on large-scale client relationships continued to be successful. We ended 2023 with 10 Whoppers, clients with revenues above $20 million, the same number as 2022 with two dropping out, Mondelēz and one tech company with reduced spending and two new ones, one telco and one FMCG, entering the list.
Overall, our like-for-like revenues from our top 20 clients were down 2.6%. Our top 50 were down 1.1% versus an overall figure of 5.4% for the whole of S4, illustrating that the key challenge in 2023 was with smaller and local client relationships, project work, and winning new business. While we expect clients to remain cautious with their spending in 2024, we do have a renewed focus on growth. We've launched a plus-one strategy of expanding existing client relationships by selling in additional services or geographies. We've simplified the go-to-market approach for our eight capabilities, each of which has clear leadership and accountability. We're investing in sales and new business capabilities, expanding the teams and using technology such as Salesforce. Brady can tell us more later about how he's reshaping the tech services sales approach.
We have new leadership in place in several key markets such as the UK, France, Germany, and regions such as Latin America and Asia Pacific to specifically address the challenges we've seen with local and regional clients. The pipelines are improving. There's significant new business activity, including recent wins from the likes of Zillow, Burger King, LIV Golf, AliExpress, FanDuel, and ASML. I also have a couple of slides showing the usual data that we share on our clients. As you can see, our client portfolio did not change significantly in 2023. Technology remains at 43% of our total business, slightly down based on reduced spending from clients. We remain bullish and committed to the technology sector. We continue to develop our relationships and our partnerships there. That said, we also continue to diversify our client base and are pursuing a pipeline of opportunities in other categories too.
Finally, in terms of scale, our average reported revenue for our larger clients was largely stable in 2023. This is in comparison to our overall reported revenue decline of 5.4% across S4. That's further evidence of the health of our scaled client relationships. This momentum with larger clients is also evident in the table on the right with slight increases in the number of clients in the GBP 5 million-GBP 10 million and GBP 10 million plus categories. That said, we had declines in the number of clients in the lower revenue categories, many of which are one-off projects, new business, or local client relationships. We're focused on rebuilding this pipeline in 2024. With that, I'll hand over to Wes, who's going to update us on artificial intelligence.
Thanks, Scott. Hey, everyone. So if we go to the next slide, let's look at our year in AI. I know these types of updates have become a bit of a standard. But I do think it's quite interesting to look back at the start of last year if we go to the next slide to get a sense of the progress made and especially where we're headed next. So in February of last year, we committed quite publicly to being fast and first. I think we saw a very disruptive moment coming for our industry. We followed that up with some really meaningful core leadership quickly. The future will be generative. It actually echoes quite a lot of what we heard at GTC last week, marking sort of moving from read to reveal to generation.
Then, of course, in this call last year, I think we were the first of our cohort to spend meaningful time on GenAI, what it meant, our point of view, and our plan. If we go to the next slide, what we're seeing is that AI is changing the industry in two important ways. The first one really sits at the customer experience level. We were awarded AI Agency of the Year a few months ago by Adweek. That's really for work like the one we'll show right now. If we go to the next slide, we'll show a quick video for Burger King. This is a really interesting piece of work, probably the most significant use of generative AI in a creative campaign so far. You can start seeing sort of a great irony when you talk about AI.
AI actually allows us to make the consumer experience more human, the ability to understand the consumer's intent, their interactions, the ability to respond to that in close real time with super high levels of relevance and fidelity. Really great piece of work. People were able to make a completely personalized Whopper of any type. And because of that, win $1 million potentially. We just finished the campaign, massively successful, really great example of personalization but also some of the joy and fun that the technology enables. It also starts pushing into the scale that these branded models can actually create. There were moments where we were generating, I think, about eight burgers a second. So this is also a great example of just AI at scale and the power of a branded model. So that's one part of the spectrum.
If we go to the next slide, the other big impact of AI is on marketing operations. And again, I think we're really decently positioned here. We just won a series of AI Excellence Awards from the Business Intelligence Group, one specifically for the quality of our strategic planning. I think that's a really good reflection of the growing importance of our consultancy practice. We also got awarded one for product. So if we go to the next slide, we launched Monks. Flow at CES this year, I think really exciting, practical, real use cases in market. This is our workflow orchestration solution. We're connecting talent and technology across the enterprise stack. We're doing that in ways that solve high-value marketing use cases.
And really, this initial launch, and I would almost say year one in general, was about helping marketers solve the speed scale and spend issues that plague pretty much every global marketing organization. Really great response, very much a new pipeline, a new business line for us, and lots of traction, which is exciting to see, of course. If we go to the next slide, I want to be super clear. This isn't just about content. I think year one was very much focused on that space. Year two, our focus is on intelligence and insights. And this is a good example. We're targeting better performance, better predictions, really bringing and collapsing almost our steps and silos together between data, digital media, content, and, of course, a lot of the actual framework and architecture delivered by our technology teams. We launched this at NVIDIA GTC. It's called Persona. Flow.
It's part of Monks. Flow and actually accelerates the process of generating 3D insights for the marketing org. We now have statistical proof that this sort of promptable proxy of the consumer base can actually replace qualitative and quantitative surveys. There's a very telling internal tagline from three months to three prompts, which I think, again, shows that collapsing function of AI, the ability to speed up quite traditional processes, I think, is very exciting and will sort of define the next few years in our industry. Go to the next slide. Launched this at GTC. Monk. Flow, in general, is designed in close collaboration with NVIDIA engineers. Why? It's important that what we do is sympathetic to some of the architecture and roadmap decisions for it to run efficiently at real scale.
I think what is probably a little bit underestimated at the moment is there's a lot of piloting. In Adobe's words, a lot of playground work. If you start doing that at scale, the efficiency of the models is actually one of the defining features of this being a net positive from a P&L perspective. So lots of focus on that. We didn't just launch Persona here. GTC, which was at the beginning of last week, was, I think, a really great setting for our team. We were on stage twice. One of those settings was really to talk about our avatar solutions connected to NVIDIA's solution ACE. The other one was more focused on live broadcast solutions. Our work was also in the Jensen keynote, which, of course, was really fun for our teams.
If we go to the next slide, pretty much everything we do in our Monks. Flow efforts and product roadmap is connected to our technology partnerships. I think it's worth talking a bit about Adobe, especially because I am at the summit at the moment in Vegas. There is, I think, something quite interesting to what we saw yesterday at Adobe's keynote. So if you look at the Firefly Services announcement, you can see how that connects really well with our roadmap for Monks. Flow, right? We're not competing with big technology companies. We're enabling their models, their APIs, their automation technology to get lifted into workflows to enable the marketing org. And Firefly Services, I think, is an amazing reflection of that. We'll go into this in a lot more detail at CAN, where we'll have a major update to Monks. Flow.
If we go to the next slide, a lot of this is driven by our relationship with our big technology partners. We're also always looking at the next wave of technology companies in the AI space. We all sort of see how quickly that's moving. We just launched a really exciting and much deeper working relationship with Runway, which has really been one of the winners of that next wave of technology. We'll actually have some more announcements in this space to come quite soon. But our team, of course, is really excited. But sort of reflects, if we go to the next slide, that this is exciting for creatives as well. I think there is sort of an unease in the industry that this is against good craft or good creatives. We don't believe that to be the case at all.
We launched Artist Monks earlier last year to show our commitment to the space. This is a mixture of both internal talent and external talent and also some of the most exciting AI creators globally that we're bringing into our clients. We're bringing into our projects. I think if I would have to end sort of year one on an important note, that's a reflection of us not treating AI as a separate standalone line of business or effort. Realistically, this is becoming our business. There are very few current new business pitches or, I would say, opportunities in the pipeline where AI is not either a meaningful part of our offer or the full effort, which I think is pretty exciting. If we go to the next slide, the question then, of course, is, what happens next? We said that AI would be disruptive to our space.
I think so far, the evidence bears that out. We committed to that early. I think because of that, we have been able to make a lot of progress. The sort of commitment to being fast and first, I think, has put us in a key position with our client base as a subject matter expert and an expert advisor. Next year, I think if we go to the next slide, it's really taking that role. A lot of that role was around learning. It was around pilots. It's about scaling that. I think that's the main message that we're also seeing reflected at GTC, that we're seeing reflected at Adobe Summit. How do we start doing this at real scale? We're seeing that shift in our client base as well, moving from pilots to programs. Those are meaningful changes.
I think sometimes the complexities around change management might be a little bit underappreciated there. We're hoping to start communicating some of these later in the year. As you can imagine, it's an interesting area. Companies are a little slow to communicate that out in the open. If we go to the next slide, the most important slide, I would say, what happens next is the commercial model. The reality is our industry at large relies on a time and material commercial model. To explain that in a very simplified manner, what percentage of my people can I get billable at what percentage of their time? In the age of generative AI, those concepts, people and time, become quite squishy if that is what your commercial model relies on fully. So we also believe that that traditional time and material model actually incentivizes against this innovation.
So for clients who are ready to buy differently, and that is not every client, we're focusing on a new version of T&M. We call it Talent and Machine. And really, it's about what the combination of those two can offer from an output and outcomes perspective. I think an exciting new commercial model, we're seeing this as a very sizable conquesting opportunity for us as long as we keep moving quickly. I think we've done so in year one. And looking at the first few months of this year, I'm pretty confident we'll be able to keep moving both quickly but also with intent towards some really clear goals. If we go to the next slide, just to end it, this really is the next phase of disruption.
If you look at it through the lens of S4, and we heard Scott talk about this in more detail just now, I think the initial disruption from an S4 perspective was quite tactical: single P&L, different M&A model, faster, better, cheaper. If you look at that through the lens of AI, it also is now more. This next phase of disruption really is a cloud and computer revolution. I would say that is the defining trend of what we'll see in the next 5-10 years. It'll be relatively consistent across industries. We're, of course, seeing that first and foremost in marketing and advertising because that's the industry where we have most of our business. What we'll do in the next call, we'll start showcasing some of the work we're doing in broadcast that's also related to this cloud and computer disruption.
Realistically, that disruption will happen across industries, especially industries that have quite traditional commercial models like time and material. I'm sure we'll have some Q&A around AI as well. But that's our quick AI update. I'm going to hand it back to Sir Martin before we head to Q&A.
Thanks. Thanks, Wes. Thanks, Mary. Thanks, Scott. Just a summary and some comments on the outlook. Net revenue and operational EBITDA margin we delivered in line with the revised expectations. There was improved performance in the second half, primarily due to reductions in cost. Our net revenue at GBP 873 million was down 2.1% on reported and 4.5% like for like. That reflected the challenging macroeconomic conditions and cautious spending from clients, particularly those in the technology sector. It also reflected the smaller client relationships, a reduction in them, and a reduction in regional and local clients, along with a difficult new year for new business and lower seasonal uplift in the fourth quarter. Our strategy of building broad-scaled relationships continues to drive revenue. We saw better performance with the top 10, with the top 20, and with the top 50 clients than average.
We exercised a disciplined approach to cost management and focused on efficiency and integration. The number of our Monks was around 7,700, down about 13% when compared to December of 2022. Net debt at the year-end was GBP 181 million. That was leverage of 1.9 times. That's the lower end of the guided range, reflecting tight cost control and lower contingent payments. The initial response from our AI initiatives, as you just heard, is encouraging. We remain very much at the forefront of the industry leading this change. 2024 net revenue is expected to be down on the prior year with overall a broadly similar level of operational EBITDA. We expect the year to be heavily second-half weighted given improving end markets and our normal seasonality.
Our net debt range for target range for 2024 is GBP 150 million-GBP 190 million, with our capital allocation priorities focused on debt reduction, buybacks, and dividends. We've made structural changes to improve performance with a strengthened exco. We've simplified the board. We've appointed, as you've heard, Jean-Benoit as Chief Operating Officer. We remain very confident in our talent business model and strategy and scale client relationships position us very well for above-industry average growth in the longer term, with an emphasis on improving efficiency and, indeed, margins. So with that, let's turn to operator the Q&A. We've got Chris and Brady and Wes on the line to answer questions as well. We've put into the appendix some commentary on content, on data and digital media, and tech services to give you a bit more background on what was happening last year and what's going to happen this year.
With that, over to you, operator.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Please ensure your line is unmuted locally, as you will be advised when to ask your question. Once again, that's star 1 if you would like to ask a question. Our first question comes from the line of Dina Abu-Rahmeh from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, sorry. Maybe just two questions on our end. First one is, could you maybe shed more light on the current market environment and when you see that maybe longer term, when that will improve? And then secondly, any thoughts on tech companies' ad spend? And how do you see that evolving? Thank you.
Yeah, Scott, you want to deal with the second one first, and I'll come back to current.
Sure. So I think if you look historically at tech advertising or advertising from the large technology companies, it's been very significant. It's provided a really significant portion of overall media spend growth over the past decade or so. That's obvious when you consider the scale of those companies and the massive growth that they've gone through. As I said, last year, many of them put the brakes on their marketing budgets and had their years of efficiency. Certainly, coming into this year, we see continued caution. The reality is, as we've said, we do want to continue to have really strong relationships with tech companies. We believe that that spend will return. We believe that these are growth-focused companies for the long term. Even as you saw in Wes's presentation, the partnerships we have with them are also really important, not just the client relationships.
But they're also very innovative companies. They're constantly launching new products. We see that particularly around AI. Wes is with Adobe today. And they're launching their new products today at their summit. So we do believe that that spend and that growth will return. We can't put a date on that. And certainly, coming into this year, I think we still see significant caution from technology clients. So we're not bullish on it in the very, very short term. But we do see that returning.
On the first question on client confidence, I guess, is the question. This time last year, clients were concerned about interest rates rising. This time this year, they're looking at interest rates probably falling. There's differences of view as to when that will happen. It seems to be focused on the second half of the year. We've had one central bank, the Swiss Bank, cut rates probably a little bit surprisingly. We'll see what happens with the ECB and the Bank of England. It looks like they will go first in comparison with the Fed. This morning, there was some commentary that the Fed will certainly be cutting as we go into the second half of next year. I expect client confidence to strengthen as we go into the second half of the year.
Obviously, it depends to some extent on what is going to happen in the U.S. presidential election. If President Trump is reelected, which I guess is probably a 50/50 or maybe a higher probability than that given polls, that probably will strengthen confidence in North America. It might cause some shudders elsewhere in the world. But in North America, I think CEOs are worried about regulation. And probably Trump's Trump card is that he's more low tax, low reg, low regulation, and therefore probably more attractive to the business community in that sense. So I would expect client confidence to improve. But as Scott said, we've seen no sign yet of that happening. On the tech side, we think that the strength that we have in the tech sector will continue to be a positive factor for us.
And that's where the future lies, particularly as you heard from Wes, given the developments around AI and not just AI technology but what we see happening with the metaverse and blockchain and quantum computing in particular. Next question, operator.
The next question comes from the line of Tom Singlehurst from Citi. Please go ahead.
Good morning. It's Tom here from Citi. Thanks for taking the question. Thanks for the presentation. A couple of questions, if it's okay. The first one on margins, maybe whether you could give us a little bit more sort of detail on the sort of divisional moves because I appreciate you are offering sort of flat-ish EBITDA in the context of falling revenue. So that does imply at the group level a step up in margin. But I'm presuming the anticipated fall-off in margin within tech services is expected to be quite significant. Can you just give us some framework for thinking about how the margins will develop at a divisional level and why they're not rebounding maybe a little bit more at the group level?
And then secondly, M&A in a sort of broader industry context, obviously, Wall Street Journal report a couple of weeks or so back indicating that you had been approached and had rejected that. I just wonder whether you could just give us a bit of a sort of rationale for S4 being a standalone asset and whether you think being a smaller player in the context of the industry is or what the advantages are. Just the broader views on industry consolidation, pros and cons would be very much appreciated. Thank you very much.
Okay. Mary, do you want to deal with the margins question?
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Martin. Hi, Tom. So from a margin perspective, we've given some detail on practice expectations for 2024 in the release and in the presentation. So our expectations are that content will show improvements at an EBITDA and a margin level driven by the cost savings that have been made in 2023. For data and digital media, we are expecting a similar both top and bottom line performance as 2023 but with some margin improvements. And then tech services, as we've said, we expect tech services to have a challenging year in 2024. And that will be evident both in the net revenue and the EBITDA and in the EBITDA margin. And so when we pull those things together, we arrive at our overall guidance, which is down on 2023 for net revenue and broadly similar in line with EBITDA.
So we've got a number of moving parts at the practice level that contribute to that overall guidance.
Yeah, turn to the second question, Tom, on M&A. We've received no credible offer for the board to consider. And as you know, our structure ensures that our shareholding structure ensures that we control our own destiny. On the broader question that you asked about our offer, and I think we made clear in the presentation, we think our offer is effective and competitive. And we believe we can compete even with the more scaled competitors, whether they be in the consulting business, whether they be parts of the holding companies because we don't go head-to-head with the holding companies as a whole. Given our digital emphasis, it's really more with their digital components. And last but not least, with the specialists who are of similar or even smaller scale.
I think the scaled offers that we have in the three areas that we operate in, that's content, data, and digital media, and tech services, integrate effectively in terms of pitches and in presentations and, indeed, developing relationships. If you look at our top 10, top 13 relationships, I think our top 13 clients account for about 55% of our revenues. That concentration, I think, indicates to you, and you know that we have our 20-squared objective, and we're halfway there. We had 10 large-scale clients in 2022 and 10 in 2023. Despite the downdraft that we saw in the net revenue, we managed at the larger client end of the top 10, the top 20, the top 50 to improve the scale of those relationships. I think we're at our best in two areas.
One is land and expanding and developing the relationships rather than major presentations. So that's one area. And the second, as you saw from the presentation, and if you look at the material in the appendix, we have deep technological expertise, which enables us to compete extremely effectively. You don't develop integrated integration relationships with companies like NVIDIA, AWS, and Adobe unless our people have very deep technological capabilities. So having said all that, I think the scale that we have is sufficient. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't look at expanding at the right time, our scale and our abilities. But now is not the right time. We have to get our house in order from an efficiency point of view, an effectiveness point of view, an internal point of view.
That's one of the reasons why Jean-Benoit has joined us to ensure that we do that, certainly, as we go through the rest of 2024. Does that answer what you had there, Tom?
Yeah, that's very clear. And on the former, on the margin, maybe to go back to that, I mean, could you talk about whether there's some investment going in? I mean, ideally quantified. But should we think about that technology margin coming down, involving a little bit of sacrifice in order to get the growth coming through, or is that a permanent sort of step down in what we should expect margin-wise?
I think I'll pass to Brady in a minute. He can talk a little bit about the work that's being done in technology services to expand our sales approach. There is some investment in the numbers but not a significant amount overall. I think the key impact we're seeing on margin for technology services is due to the change in the top-line trajectory, which we believe will be relatively short-lived as the sales approach takes hold. Brady, do you want to comment a bit more on the sales approach?
Certainly. Thanks, Mary. And Tom, nice to chat. Fundamentally, there is a shift that's taking place in the market. If you look at the early post-COVID days, there was significant tailwinds in the transformation efforts inside of the scaled enterprise technology organizations and our client base. Over the last 12 months, that has shifted that sentiment shifted pretty significantly. And there's an increased focus on cost management and cost takeout, moving efforts towards scaling contingent workforces and nearshoring. As part of that shift and the investments that we're making in 2024, as Mary just alluded to, we're changing our go-to-market strategy for technology services, emphasizing a new geographic and market-based sales strategy that is focused on moving into that managed capacity ecosystem at a pretty significant pace. It doesn't mean that the transformation business is less important to us.
It's just a reflection of the reality of where the demand sits in the market. Overall, I think there is significant upside. More broadly, I believe 2024, based on what Gartner has shared, will be the first year in which IT services is the largest segment of the overall IT ecosystem. So I think that is certainly compelling and helpful to our overall long-term growth trajectory. But this is definitely a year of transition for us as we shift emphasis selling into a new area of demand.
Yeah, I think it's also important to say, Brady, that as you've expanded the sales effort, we've done it sequentially. So picking up on Tom's question about investment and impact on margin, as each sales outlet is initiated and developed, we look at the return. And then we add on the basis or contract on the basis of sales and success. So it's trying to balance the sales growth with the investment. Does that fully answer what you asked, Tom?
Yep, that's very clear. Thank you.
Okay, operator. Next question.
The next question comes from the line of Joe Spooner from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Good morning. You spoke about the challenge that you have faced in the smaller client area and the focus on needing to rebuild that client pipeline there. Can you just give a sense of how you engaged that client base? I imagine they're a tougher audience to engage with. And then secondly, you spoke about, again, when you entered 2023, there was reduced visibility around the budgets that the clients were setting. Is that different as you enter 2024? Thanks.
Yeah, on the second one, I think it is different in 2024. In 2023, we saw significant delay as we went into not just the marketing budgets but operational budgets out of which the marketing budget came. So I think it is different this year. That's why I think the levels of focus are different this year. And the levels of certainty or uncertainty are different this year. On the smaller clients, to be clear, we're not talking about necessarily and I think your question is around SMEs and mid-sized clients. We're not actually talking about those exclusively, although that's a part of it. It's more smaller relationships. It could be smaller relationships with bigger clients. I mean, Chris, do you want to comment at all from a DDM point of view and maybe an overall point of view what you see happening with the smaller relationships?
On the SMB front and our mid-market advertising services, we're actually seeing a strong recovery from 2023 to 2024 in the overall level of activity, not just inbound logos but also our relationship with the big platforms. So when we look at Wes's presentation around AI and the changing landscape in marketing services and how the impact is felt in the industry, it's going to impact the mid-market clients and the regional advertisers a lot faster, especially those that are digitally native or derive most of their growth from online channels. So our relationships with Google's PMax and Gemini, our relationship with Meta and Advantage+ and Amazon Ads, all of which have platforms and native connections to their AI efforts, that momentum is beginning to seep into our mid-market business.
We're actually seeing an expectation of a very decent recovery from the 2023 slowdown in that market segment for us. The automation efforts and AI buzz has already got some significant traction in our mid-market exposure in DDM.
Do you want to add a little bit because it came up a bit in the previous question about deprecation of third-party cookies and that impact that's having on DDM and indeed across the company?
The deprecation has been a very slow burn over the last few years. And the platforms have been dragging their heels a bit to allow for different types of measurement solutions and targeting solutions. And that shift of the identifier of an individual moving from a third-party ecosystem into a first and zero-party-owned environment has been embraced by the large platforms and now finally Google. So we're seeing that shift into multi-touch attribution being powered more and more by alternative methods other than the cookie. And that is filling out in scale in the big walled gardens. So you'll see more budgets being consolidated around Google, around big private marketplaces, around Amazon, around TikTok, around social platforms where there's a direct connection between the consumer and the advertisers. So we are relatively well-insulated as Media.Monks inside of that shift and transition.
That pushes a lot more business towards our data services and technology services business that integrates all of those functions on the MarTech stack. Even though we're seeing fluctuations in our media business, which is a big discussion in 2023 about our backwards top-line revenue, the consulting business and the work that we're doing in AI and systems integration in the MarTech world, that is where we're seeing the significant acceleration, inclusive of what others in the industry will feel as a bit of a pinch from cookie deprecation.
Thanks. Thanks, Chris. Does that cover what you wanted, Joe?
Yes, thank you. If I could just ask one further question. I think you were due to conduct impairment tests on the goodwill at the full year. Doesn't look like you feel like you need to do anything on that front. Can you just give a sense of what you looked at and why you've come to the decisions you've come to? Thanks.
Mary, yeah.
Thank you. Hi, Joe. Yeah, so as every year, we perform the impairment tests on the CGUs, which for us are the practices. We've been through that review process based on our budget and three-year plans, as usual. And obviously, we've discussed it with PwC. And we are comfortable. We have carrying value and headroom over the carrying value in each of the CGUs. And therefore, there's no impairment to disclose.
Thank you.
Next question.
Next question comes from the line of Steve Liechti from Numis. Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning, everybody. Thanks for taking some questions. I've got three, actually. First two are related. One is on new business comments, Scott. You said new business slower. Can you just link that to your kind of land and expand strategy? And I know that that's what you do. But are you being invited to new pitches? And if so, are you not winning them? Or are we really saying in the land and expand, people are just not expanding right now? So that's the first question. Second question, you said there is a pipeline of opportunities this year. Maybe some color on that and whether that's different to 2023 in terms of where you are in the year. And then the last one is maybe Jean-Benoit.
I just wonder if you could maybe speak to us, introduce yourself, give us a bit of history, and what's attracted you to the position at S4 and what you're going to be concentrating on. Thanks.
JB, we'll start off with you.
Very good.
Off you go.
Hello, everyone. Thank you. I'm excited to be part of S4 day one. So it's my first meeting. And I still don't have a laptop. So I'm still very native. But my background is over 30 years in professional services, started in consulting back in the U.S. with Capgemini, and then run a couple of CRM consultancies, and then went back to Capgemini, where I led the strategic practice. And then I moved to EY back in 2006 to be part of rebuilding consulting and spent 18 years at EY doing various roles. And part of my roles, I led the TMT sector. And within that role, I also obviously looked after some accounts and spent 12 years advising boards and senior management in the advertising and media sector.
So I not only have experience and expertise in management consulting but also have experience in operational efficiency and effectiveness and strategic growth in the media and advertising sector. And so with that blend of skill set I built over the years, I wanted to have a new challenge and thought that moving into an operational role within this industry would give me a new opportunity to practice what I've learned through those last few decades. And I believe this industry is in the midst of transformation. It will go back to growth. And I would like to be part of that journey.
Thank you, Jean-Benoit. Scott, is that sufficient for you, Steve?
Yeah, just maybe a bit more color in terms of what Jean-Benoit is going to focus in on in his role.
Yeah, good.
So, very much on the operational efficiency agenda to start with and really working with the team across to look at how we can improve margin in areas that we believe can have improvement. So, give you an example around how we price, how we resource projects, how we deliver on these projects. Those are very similar topics that I've experienced elsewhere. My aim with the team is to see how we can improve margin across the board.
Okay, Scott, do you want to talk about new?
New business.
Pitches.
Yeah.
Business and such.
Sure. So I mean, new business was a challenge in 2023. So I think when I was talking about it being particularly challenging, that was more a historical sort of context. As we come into 2024, you asked about land and expand. I think land and expand continues to be a real focus for us. And as I said, while we did see a decline in our larger clients, that decline was certainly a lot less than the decline they saw in their marketing spend. So from that, I think we feel that even in 2023, we were gaining share with our major clients. And a lot of that comes from constantly pitching and gaining new opportunities with them. So it was really more about reduced spend than any losses or lack of ability to develop new opportunities with our existing clients.
As for new, new business, I think we do have actually a pretty strong pipeline for 2024. There's quite a lot of activity, much of it driven, as Wes said, around curiosity around AI. So almost every pitch or presentation we're making right now does include something around AI. And as Brady already outlined, he's got a sort of new approach to driving new business and the top of that pipeline in tech services, which is in its early days, really started in Q4 last year, and they have longer sales cycles. But it is proving to be successful in terms of building the pipeline. So I don't know, Wes, if you've got anything specific to ask. I know you're spending your life at Adobe. Sorry. I know you're spending your life pitching. And there is quite a lot of activity at the moment.
Yes. Pipeline is better. Both at what I would call the scaled Whopper level, we're seeing more of those in the pipeline now than we probably saw in the last year, year and a half or so, and more activity on the ground. I think maybe it's less meaningful difference in pipeline, but the speed of closing is just a lot higher. So we heard some of the new logos that Scott messaged that's a selection. But there are some really good wins in Q1 that we didn't manage to get last year in Q1, sizable clients with real land and expand opportunities. So in general, it feels more positive.
Okay, Brady, do you want to add because we've touched on tech services and the more challenging times? Do you want to talk a little bit about pipeline?
Certainly. So the bets that we're placing in our growth strategy are driving really significant outcomes at the top of the funnel. Our geographic strategy is focused on initially three core markets where we have the highest density of prospective buyers. As Scott said, our sales cycles are traditionally quite long from first contact to close. What we're seeing is higher velocity of opportunities of prospective leads moving through the funnel with this strategy because we're putting our sales force in direct proximity to our target buyers, quite literally within the same block or a three-block radius of the headquarters of our most important buying community.
The upside that we're seeing from the organic collisions that are taking place is really driving a lot of well-qualified opportunities and the kinds of opportunities that we have traditionally seen take a very long time to move through the funnel now, moving at higher velocities. So still early days, but in my opinion, really solid indicators that we're headed in the right direction. And if you look at the scale of our efforts relative to the competition, there's really only upside to be captured here. And I'm personally really excited for the trajectory that we're on.
Chris, do you want to add any more from a DDM point of view? You covered a lot of it in the answer to a previous question. Do you want to add anything?
Yeah, I did. I mentioned our mid-market push. I think we're going to see a lot of our business development efforts pay off in 2024 with the big platforms. They are very cost-conscious on the OpEx side. There's going to be less services and a lot more integration needs. There's going to be a dearth of expertise sitting on top of AI and automation in the marketing services space. We are well-poised to be able to take advantage of that. We're already seeing those channels light up a bit. From a sales and marketing perspective, I think we've placed our bets well inside of the AI space and with our strategic partnerships with the big platforms and tech providers.
Monks. Flow being the connector of all of those endpoints inside of the new marketing services landscape, that is our channel for increased revenue in navigating all of this.
Okay, thanks. Steve, does that cover what you wanted?
Yeah, no, thank you very much, indeed. Perfect.
Okay. Operator, more questions?
Before we take our next question, as one final reminder, please press star one if you'd like to ask a question. Our next question, it comes from the line of Fiona Orford-Williams from Edison Group. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Most of what I had has been covered elsewhere. But perhaps we could have some more information. You made a comment about, in terms of the content practice, improvements being made to the operating model and forecasting and new leadership in key markets. Does that extend beyond what you were talking about in terms of the change in the pricing structure and the AI? Just maybe some more background on that would be helpful. Thank you.
I think we've sort of covered it. I think the changes that were made to the management structure that I think Scott referred to in APAC and elsewhere in the content practice were really not just actually, the APAC covers the other parts of our business too, not just content, but data and digital media and tech services. So it covers across the board. And the same would apply to what we've done in Europe. In the case of the content practice, Bruno Lambertini, who joined Wes as co-CEO, is really focusing on the internal stuff that we've really mentioned before. And Wes, as you've seen from the presentation, is really 100% focused on AI and its impact, which is just not an impact on the content practice but on DDM and tech services too. I mean, it permeates everything that we do.
If you look at the slides in the appendix, you'll see that it affects all the three practices almost uniformly. So I would say we've sort of covered it pretty much in our comments. And Jean-Benoit was to add emphasis. I mean, Chris is now focusing 100% on DDM instead of having both roles. So I think it enables him to focus even more on it. And Jean-Benoit can bring a different outside focus to what we're doing in pricing and billability and duplication and integration. So I think that covers it unless there's any specifics that you want answered.
Well, it was more about how the Talent and Machine structure works.
Meaning what when you say work?
Well, you said moving in terms of pricing, moving from a Time and Material basis to.
Okay. Okay. Yeah. I mean, Wes, do you want to comment a little bit more on that, fill out your comments on outputs as opposed to time?
Yes. So historically, the bulk of our industry sort of sells hours at a rate. The reality is that the time spent on something isn't necessarily going to be the best proxy for value anymore. If you look, for instance, at the Burger King work, models being able to generate eight burgers a second means you can do thousands or tens of thousands of images for output in a matter of minutes. Quite connected to what we saw at Adobe Summit as well, time spent is no longer the best reflection of value created. So what we've done, and Monks. Flow is a huge part of that, what we've done is package talent with our productized workflows to give clients an output and outcomes-based commercial model, which is they're buying a certain level of output, a certain amount of scale that's part of our SAWs.
But then the output also is going to connect to certain business impacts. Sometimes those are a little more around internalized KPIs, speed of turnaround, quality of deliverable, etc., etc. Ideally, it's connected to actual business impact and performance and conversion. That allows us to change a business model from quite a traditional space where you can only pay us for the hours that we have, so the impact that we can have on a business. The complexity there is at scale, a lot of traditional enterprise organizations really are only able to buy rate cards. So we're doing this with clients that are ready to buy through that lens. What we're seeing is that it's very compelling.
I think the clients that understand what's happening and are ready to move into that space prefer an outcome and output-based commercial model over a time and material model. So it's a different way to think about value creation and getting paid for that value creation.
Yeah, I think this is a fundamental point in relation to, there's a question raised by Tom before about competitiveness. AI is changing the way. And that's why I think the incumbents are very defensive in relation to it. We go to market as faster, better, cheaper, and more. We've added more because of AI and our ability to do more, for example, hyper-personalization at a scale we haven't seen before. In that case, it'll mean more assets at a lower average price per asset, but more of them. So revenue generated will probably increase quite substantially. And this is a fundamental difference between our approach and others' approach. We're taking it head-on and facing what we believe to be the reality, which is that in each of those areas that we mentioned, AI is impacting our industry. There may be increased employment. There may be decreased employment.
There may be increased revenues. There may be decreased revenues. It's far better for us to deliver, as Wes just outlined, an output model than a time-based model. On visualization and copywriting, as we've said before, what took us three weeks is taking us a matter of hours. Clients are indicating they want to share in those benefits. The problem with the industry is it focuses on selling time, not selling outputs. Does that get to the heart of what you were asking?
Yes, absolutely. It's just trying to understand how the industry is changing.
Okay. Thank you. Any other questions, Operator?
We have no further questions. I will now hand back to Sir Martin for some closing remarks.
Thanks very much. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. Thanks, Wes, for getting up early in the morning. Another one coming shortly. And Brady, Chris was saved this time. And thanks, everybody here in London. And thanks to the team for the broadcast. Any further questions? Scott, Mary, and myself are all available today. Thank you very much.
Thank you.