Okay. Welcome, everybody. This is our 2nd call of the day. I'm joined Martin Sorrell, Executive Chairman of S4. I'm joined by Peter Rademacher, who's in Amsterdam, our CFO Wes Exaxe, 2 founders of MediaMonths Chris Martin in Boulder, Colorado, some of an earthly well, less so now.
It was unearthly a few hours ago. And last but not least, Scott Spirit, our Chief Growth Officer in Singapore. So thanks for joining us. We've got another big audience today, and hopefully, we'll have some Q and as well. We had significant amount this morning.
So the presentation, as you can see, is split up into several sections. Peter Rademacher is going to deal with the results. Scott Spirit, client momentum and mergers integration. Wes Terhaar is going to talk about our unitary structure and the implementation of that. So Nat will talk about content practice.
Chris Martin and Pete Kim is also on the line as well. I think Pete's in San Francisco, so it's early there as well. So Pete and Chris will talk about Chris, in particular, will talk about the data and Executive Media Practice. And then I'll come back to me for a brief comment on summary and outlook. And then we'll take Q and from anybody who wants to ask any questions.
Over to you, Peter.
Thank you, Martin. Good morning to all of you from the Netherlands, and thank you for joining us in our call. I will present to you in the next slides our financial performance of the 1st 6 months of 2021. And to start with a short summary, we had a very strong first half start to 2021. Our results confirm that S4 capital is converting at scale with our 5 Whopper clients in high traction through land and expand with most of our clients.
On our 3rd birthday today as a listed company, I am proud To you our significant growth of the first and second quarter of 2021. Our growth is significant, especially if you take into consideration the fact that last year during the pandemic each month and as a result each quarter showed Like for like growth, so we don't have the easy comps that's to 2020 that some companies may have. Comparing 21 with 2019, we grew as our sort of 2 year stack with 61%. That's adding this year's exactly 9% to last year's 12%, that's 61%. But if you would do it on a real like for like basis in a constant currency, it was even a 2 year stack of 75%.
Now turning to the financial performance on Slide 4 of the deck. Our billings It's worth 547,500,000 and pro form a 560,000,000 and billings to remind you is our Including our pass through expenses mainly related to media. Our revenue 279,300,000 up 98% from 56% up and pro form a 57 our gross profit, our most important measure, we express everything as percentage of gross profit was 230 6,700,000 up 91 percent from €124,000,000 last year and like for like It was up 49% and pro form a 50% up. Our operational EBITDA 34.3 EBITDA margin was 14.5% and that's the same equal as in 2020 reported and like For like was €16,700,000,000 and pro form a was €15,700,000,000 16,700,000 and 15,700,000, sorry. Our operating Operating loss like for like is CHF 18.1 million.
And our operating loss is especially to this size as a result of of charging €47,400,000 of adjusting items relating to acquisitions, amortization and share based compensation and It includes a €16,100,000 contingent consideration payment and that's tied to continued employment. We'll get back to that in a minute. And this adjustment, We'll get back to that in a minute. And this adjustment was last year was a credit of 1.3 of 16,100,000. Our loss for the period was 21,100,000 which includes these adjusting item after taxation versus a 1.4 Earnings per share were 3.9p versus 2.3p in 2020, which is 66% up.
During the first We had strong liquidity, although or after significant merger payments and some settlement of contingent consideration, And we ended our cash with a net cash balance of GBP 7,400,000 and this excludes our early the August refinancing where we completed a €375,000,000 senior secured 7 year term in a 5 year SEK100 million revolving facility. We had a very good start into Q3. And based on 7 months experience so far, we have increased our guidance for the 3rd time this year to 40% on a like for like gross profit. We started the year with 25% up to our guidance at Q1 to 30%, increase it again at our AGM in And now for the 3rd time, we have increased another 5%. And on the next slide on Page 5 is our quarterly performance since Q1 2020.
As I just mentioned, we have been growing our like for like gross profit basis each and every month with strong percent Gross percentages last year, 19% in Q1 and 7% in Q2 when the pandemic really kicked in, in the whole world. And in Q3 In Q4, we were back in our mid-twenty percent growth on a like for like basis. Over We reported 33% growth and now in Q2, 66% growth delivering for the 1st 6 months a 40 percent growth as I indicated earlier. And on the next slide, our unaudited condensed consolidated income statements with our like for like constant currency numbers and pro formas, which we typically include in these kind of presentations also as a result of our inorganic growth, and we believe that that creates good comparison and good insight on a like for like and a pro form a basis. I'm not going to run through all the numbers, but highlighting a few.
Gross profit, 91% up reported, 49% 50% on a pro form a basis. And in the first half, we realized an operating loss of CHF16,100,000 versus a profit of CHF1,300,000. And as you can see, was heavily impacted by the increase of adjusting items. Last year, the adjusting items were almost €15,000,000 and this year, there are in other words, an increase of kE32 1,000,000, especially acquisition related expenses, they are the The main component of this increase of around of increase of being around €25,000,000 This extra charge is the result of our deal structure in M and A activities. In our deals, This is continued employment during the period of our contingent consideration.
And in line with IFRS rules, this means that contingent consideration needs to be included as personnel expenses and is not treated as a Goodwill or intangible. So in practice, we immediately amortize in a way through the P and L this charge in relation to that continued employment. On the next page, the EBITDA Shown before and after central costs growing with 91% on a reported basis, 30.5% on a like for like and on a pro form a basis. Before Central Coast, the margin in 2021 was 16.5%, again on reported basis and that was the same as in 2020. And after Central Coast 14.5%, again the same as in the first exemplified tooling in the group.
93% on adjusted operating profit and 102% On the next slide, the basic net result per share and adjusted basic earnings Main increase in this adjustment in the adjusting item consisting of acquisition related expenses of €7,500,000 share based compensation of €6,300,000, the Contingent consideration tied to the continued employment of mainly the founders. And finally, we adjusted amortization of our intangibles that are separated from goodwill and are amortized over a period of around 10 years. This all impact, this all results in a basic and diluted net result of 3.9p and an adjusted earnings per share of 3 point which is growing with 66% compared to last year. On the next slide, our balance sheet. Again, I will highlight a Our total assets further increased to SEK1.3 billion in this year as a result of anti organic growth.
So you see all positions move on our balance sheet and also driven by the completed transactions of tomorrow In China, Stout in Germany, JAM3 in Canada and Raccoon in Brazil and it doesn't Our latest announcement around Destined and Cashmere, of course, because that was after 30 June. The net cash for the end of the second quarter is CHF 7,400,000. So we're still in a net cash position And that does, of course, not contain the refinancing that we completed early August. Turning to the next page on our cash flow. The cash flow from operations were almost 60% of EBITDA.
Yes, 60% of EBITDA. And the cash From financing activities, sorry, I must say the 60% of EBITDA and what you see is that we invested around 18,000,000 in working capital. This time last year, we were at 99% EBITDA conversion for the full year and now at 60% some investment in working capital as a result of our growth. And our cash flow from investing activities was almost €55,000,000 mostly relating of course to the Of course, to the combination payments and some of the contingent considerations. And finally, from a financing activities, we We used our existing revolving facilities to finance the combinations as I just mentioned.
And turning to the next page, our profit and operational EBITDA, the 91% growth split between content at a growth rate of 66% against reported of 2020, sorry, and data and digital media at Operational EBITDA margin was at 10.7% compared to 16.4% last There for a stronger second half, build client team structures, integration tools and software across our unitary organization for the longer term. So in other words, in content, there was some investment in OpEx and That basically is the result of that decline in margin. Data and Digital Media operational EBITDA €22,400,000 with a margin of 28.2% compared to 16.9% reflecting the positive impact of a strong organic revenue growth and an operational gearing and the fall in travel, office and other operating expenses during COVID-nineteen. And then turning to my last slide, which is the gross profit by geography. On a reported basis, Americas, North and South grew with 90% compared to last year, EMEA with 101% and with 76%.
And America is still the most important part in our business, 71% of total Last year it was 72% and the pro form a 72% and the year before 74%. EMEA was 20% last 19% on a pro form a basis, a similar pattern. And Asia Pacific, 9% of total and 2020 was the same and pro form this year and last year were an 8% contribution for the from the APAC region. And this And my part of the presentation and I will now hand over to Scott.
Great. Thank you very much, Peter. So if we can move On to the client section. So H1 was extremely strong for us in terms of new business at S4, which was obviously key driver of the impressive growth figures Peter has just taken you through. We've seen excellent progress with our well established client base.
So we've seen strong Existent expansion growth from our larger clients like Google, Facebook, HP, Netflix and Mondelez. And a couple of examples I'd like to highlight here on this slide, which I think really exemplify the speed and the scale of growth that our land and expand strategy delivers for us. So the first one is DoorDash. This was a client we won a small project for last year. We actually
did a Valentine's Day campaign for them.
And that led to a Last year's H1, we're now doing 20 times the revenue that we were. PayPal is another great example. So that was also a win early last year. We put a small embedded or hybrid team into PayPal on the West Coast of the U. S.
This successfully expanded now to similar remits in Europe and Asia. We're doing 10 times the revenue growth in H121 versus H120 and actually they've just broken into our top 10 clients for H121. So all of this happens without any time wasted on pictures in the traditional sense and it's really fast expansionary growth. On the land side, we've added some really impressive logos in H1. So we've got exciting new work launching for clients like Instacart, TikTok, Shopify, Riot Games, OLX and others.
Our fashion and luxury team that we hired a few months back in London. I've got off to a great start with multiple labels working with them. And then if you look at the Toblerone win and the Amazon Fashion win, those are new logos for existing clients with Amazon and Mondelez. We do continue to be involved in several of the larger industry pitches, which was large for us would not probably be instant whoppers on a level of what BMW And Mondelez delivered. But the reality is the progress remains very slow versus our more established land and expand strategy and that's certainly a primary focus for us when it comes to new business.
Move on to the next slide. If we look at our clients by category, there's relatively little So technology continues to dominate, thanks to strong growth from our existing client base and some exciting new wins. Auto It's the one sort of fast emerging category for us. So it wasn't really even on the chart in H120. But thanks largely, but not entirely due To Vic and the BMW team, it now represents over 5% of our revenue for H1 'twenty one.
Mondelez has provided a similar jump in FMCG, so almost 2% jump there for that segment too. Move on to the next slide. So this slide really speaks to the evolution of our WAPA strategy and the growth that we've seen in the scale of our relationships with our clients. So as you can see On the left chart, the average size of our top 10 clients is up over 60%, our top 20 clients up over 75%, And our top 50 clients up 80%, so really significant growth there. The table on the right shows how many clients we each revenue band and the progression again from H120 to H12021.
We now have ten Clients over £5,000,000 for H1 'twenty one versus only 2 last year. And the number of clients in the £1,000,000 to £5,000,000 category in the 1,000,000 to 1,000,000 band have also roughly doubled, showing a really strong pipeline for what we consider to be the potential WAPAs of the future. This is a result of our successful land and expand strategy and Significant investment in our client management function, which Vik will cover in more detail later on. Move on to the next slide and the next section. So from an M and A perspective, we certainly ended 2020 and started 'twenty one with a flurry of deals.
And we've continued To add industry leading capabilities and talent in data, content and digital media. After H1, we've also added sales force capabilities and and creative and cultural capabilities in the recent cashmere deal. Peter and his team raised our term loan of €375,000,000 in July. And And much of this, as we've said, will be directed at further mergers in the coming months years. We have a very strong pipeline of potential deals across all areas of the company and you will no doubt hear more about that in very short time.
Next slide. So this means that I now have almost 6,000 colleagues around the world in 33 markets. And as you will have seen recently, we united them all Behind our single brand architecture of Media. Monks. And with this being up my last slide, that's the perfect segue for Wes, who's going to go into this unitary brand and structure in more detail.
Over to you, Wes. Thank you, brand and structure in more detail. Over to you, S.
Thank you, Scott. Yes, I will run through the unitary The difference that was really the impetus for S4, which is can we build something that organizes And operates differently from the traditional networks because it's truly single P and L. We don't have acquisitions with mergers, which means no progress We added lots of amazing teams and talent. If you go to the next slide, and you can see that hit August of this year when we And the reason we did that was even though we were operating and organizing different to the rest of the industry, if you look at it from a distance All the different logos and labels, it could still feel a bit traditional, which is why we now have media It is really the one thing that the rest of the industry has not been able to do. Going single brand within the networks has It's been a true clunky in some cases as even been rolled back.
So it was really owning the role of being Doing the one thing that nobody else has been able to do. But if we go to the next slide, it's not just the disruptive component, it's Also about delivering on promises, promises to our people. We need all of our people to be colleagues because that means they can work everywhere and Anything allows them to keep going and growing within the structure that we've put in place. This is about bigger and broader career Some of which are also related to just doing very best in class work, but also for us as senior colleagues in this call and globally allows us to Double down in building a best in class place to work. Promised our clients, they need access to the very best talent across all of our integrated capabilities across the Globe operating truly as a single P and L because that makes us a change agent partner.
It means we help our clients accelerate and innovate their spend on advertising, And then of course, our promise to the market because we have a foundationally different model, it is also a better business model that creates It's warmer ongoing stakeholder more and longer ongoing stakeholder value. So with That being said, if we go to the next slide, we integrated Mediobanca and ITI, the 2 foundational launching brands of S4. It means We have two parts of this that I'll dig into. One is the hexagon, which is really mighty high's iconic sort of brand element. I'll talk a bit What that means, this is not just part of the logo, it's part of our operating model.
And then we have the dot. The dot really creates ownable space. And we Talked a lot about that recently. If we go to the next slide, ownable space means it's not just MediaMonks, but it's also DataMonks, it's SocialMonks. It gives ownable space to teams that Emerging into our organization to make sure teams can keep being entrepreneurial and really keep going and building at speed.
Go to Next slide, we'll talk a bit about the launch itself. Often, rebrands and brand launches are in the spotlight. There's lots of Massive complements to our marketing team. I don't think we could have asked for a more seamless launch. Initially, the first wave It was really hitting the big flagship press channels like MadBook and Ad Age campaign, Lots of really positive messaging around MediaMonks and Mighty Hi integrating.
And then if you go to the next slide, from those flagship press moments, we lots of really great local and regional articles as well. That all sort of revolved around this understanding that it was The foundational shift into how our industry tends to organize. If you were on LinkedIn, during about a 2 week period, we did what we like I think it was very difficult not to be aware of what was happening within our industry for about 2 week period as we had so much positive press, but also our own colleagues and clients sharing the news. And then if you go to the next slide, it's all culminated in an article in the In an article in the DRAM titled Why SRAEL is for capital is just so damn attractive right now, which also mentioned our confident rebranding job. So I think that was nicely I'd be very happy with those results.
We've also had great feedback from our clients, which of course is an important part of this. I also think it gives us a moment to talk more cohesively about our aspirations and ambitions as a company. And we've All that the ambition to go win a decade, EDI, Comac, marketing services company of this decade. And our mission to get there is to change the industry. And we talk about changing the work, changing who does the work and changing what The work can do with a mindset of never standing still.
This is really about being a disruptive player in our industry long term and Driven by the entrepreneurial energy that I think is quite distinctive to the model that we've put in place. So we go to the next slide, a bit more about that model. We call our organizational model the API. And if you go to the next slide, that's really the way we allow our teams to connect, In part, that is about the technology that we're integrating and building and making sure we have all of our teams in the same technology stack and Stack and great sort of consistent employee experience across those stacks. It's also about making sure our teams really know what Their ownable spaces are within the organization and we call that the C model.
So we go to the next slide. Let me introduce the Cs. This is what the API Next, we have our client teams. I mentioned this earlier and Victor will talk about this a bit more in the content overview as well. But we've been investing in Our client teams, which is one of the reasons we've been able to land and expand within our distinct client base at much higher rates.
We have Our country teams really focus on winning local markets, finding local hero clients that hopefully we can expand into regional and then global clients, but also make sure that we can We maintain the very best talent in all of the markets we are now active in. Both of those teams, client and company teams have seamless access to our capabilities. These are really end to end Teams that do something really, really well, something like film or social, for instance. Although Massive uplift in the press that we're getting from our client base. All these things are being surfaced by our corporate services, legal, IT, HR and the like.
And then categories where the go to market space where we can closely go to market. We do messaging. Fashion is a great example of that. There's lots of focus at the moment in our metaverse category story as well. So that is a quick update on unitary.
And with that, I will hand it over to Victor.
Thanks, Wes. Hello, everyone, and many thanks for joining today. In the next few minutes, I will run you through the content slides and give you a bit of background what we produced so far. So If we go to the next slide, in short, if it happens on the screen, we do everything it takes to make it happen. And In the following slides, we explain a bit what that means.
And it means We're in it to win it with the best in class craft. We're on the Adweek's fastest growing list. We won 70 Cannes Lions, 6 Webbys and over 170 awards in Creative Craft just in H1 alone. And I think the uncensored library of reporters without borders is a very good example of that. Example of that.
And it also shows the earlier version of how things in the major first can work. And if you Go to the next slide. We will see a short film what we produced so far. Very short overview of the 1st 6 months. Thanks for watching.
This all resulted in becoming a Webby Production Agency of the Year, a long term ambition from WesME. I think we went to We're 10 years ago for the first time, so super proud of that. And actually with 4 projects that really stand out. For Spotify alone With me, Reporters Without Borders, which I just mentioned, the Netflix Guides and Sanofi Move to the next slide. I will run you through the goals for the next 6 months.
So how do we From winning goals to goals. And there's 4 major elements that was referred to as well. And I will deep dive into that in the next sheet. We changed the work. We want to change who does the work.
We're changing what the work can And we're making that work matter. So if we go to the first one, how we change the One of the most exciting products at this moment is our live event business. And due To COVID, we have set the stage for flexible hybrid experiences. We built immersive worlds for And we provided the design elements for the virtual Song Festival. We're focused on Life multi user experience and we will continue to be a focus for brands as they set their sights on the coming metaverse.
We have a close partnership with Epic Games. And we're very well suited to help brands It's all also a very important element of our business at this moment is to look for talent Outside of the traditional agency environment, we want to inject fresh perspective into our teams. And we already made a series To the next slide, you can see what it means for the brands that we're working with. And we took out Mondelez as an example. Our Monolese partnership enters the 2nd year, and it already caught the attention of research firms like Wark and Forrester.
And our work with Monolese is Really helping brand reaches audience around the world with hyper local relevance. And also down to our partnership with Epic Games and our real time production for an OREO that is now Futures an epic future course on creating 3dads So when we move to the next sheet, it's all Around who does the work and what kind of initiatives We spent our time on. We have long realized that we need to drive diversity and inclusion because Our industry historically hasn't has been exclusive for many. And we Welcome our culture agency, Cashmere. But we also built a mix of pro bono work that cast a spotlight on creatives and like YouTube, Adidas, Oreo, TikTok and many more.
So if we go to the last slide of this section, a bit of a wrap up. So H1 has been Land grab and we expanded with scale and with speed. We focused on embedding and scaling 2 Close to from scratch. We won it last year and we're scaling it up today with almost 4 People working across them globally. We managed to get 2 additional whoppers.
So we're in 5 now by the Scaling up our client teams globally and expanding their relationships into new countries and offering new capabilities. And we realize there a lot of work to do still. The client first model will be built out and it will pay off In the future for us and for the brands that we work with. We will see higher profitability in H2 and bigger gains active new business environment we've ever been involved in. And although Wes and me Only 20 years in the game when you compare it to Sir Martin.
It is insane What kind of inbound we're getting. And some of them we expect to become future whoppers. But also A very important part of our business is adding local heroes because it will help us recruit and retain the very best talent in markets where we're active in. And we will keep on expanding our existing clients. We have a very High speed rate and we are able to quickly staff and service request as they come in.
So we will continue this investment in talents, teams and subject matter expertise and it will drastically shorten our BTW, our time to whopper. And we will see many clients moving in to a higher bracket of revenue and earlier than we expected in the beginning of the year. So that's it for me. And I would like to hand it over Chris to talk a bit more about data and digital media.
Thanks, Victor. Hi, everyone. Mr. Martin, Executive Director, but primarily shepherding our data and digital media practice. I love Victor's theme of if it happens on a We do everything it takes to make it happen and much of that magic happens behind the scenes with our data and digital media practices, but increasingly in lockstep with our content and creative groups.
So in our unitary approach and our 6Cs foundational API structure, which
is represented very meaningfully with a hexagon in our
brand new name, the data in Very meaningfully with a hexagon in our brand new name. The data and digital media practice continues to build from the center and uses privacy by design to weave together technology, media, data and content capabilities for all of our clients. DDM has been delivering significant organic and inorganic growth on a gross and contributing margin both year on year as well as the 2 year stack. And in 2020 We started setting our sights on the top content whoppers as well as supporting full AOR opportunities of which we are increasingly finding ourselves being invited to these days. So in the first We're seeing we finding ourselves being invited to these days.
So in the first half of twenty twenty one on the next slide, we invested in 4 Key areas to grow the BDM pillar. 1st, video end to end. Consumer behavior is changing what, where, when and how And that leads to fragmentation and new formats and our clients and brand marketers toolkit is To help drive this very important category, we tapped Richard Lawrence, who joined us from his prior as Amazon Advertising's Advanced TV Product Manager. In his role Amazon, he was to build the products that Amazon uses to grow brand equity and capture hard to reach audiences that have long ago migrated from their linear TV as well as what we purchased, the largest scaled player in that space. So we're pushing very hard and weaving together strategies that combine YouTube, Amazon Prime and many other advanced TV formats including subscription, connected TV, programmatic TV, over the top that makes sense for the brand marketer.
The second area that we invested heavily at the beginning of the Marketing effectiveness, if you remember, if you're on these calls back in early 2019, we set out a goal to build a global analytics deployment capability at MediaMonks to get ahead of the anticipated death of at MediaMonks to get ahead of the anticipated death of cookie and death of deterministic identifier challenges that are going to plague our industry over the next ten and the last merger we did in the space was BrightBlue, who we've now coined as our measurement monks. That Great foundational base to expand comprehensive measurement capabilities in a post cookie world for digital advertising using Advanced Media Mixed Modeling, Modeling and Econometric Modeling packages and reporting in a world where tracking consumers on the Internet using cookies and other deterministic identifiers is coming to a very quick and abrupt end. The The 3rd area, marketing end to end infrastructure, which is really just code name for Salesforce capabilities these days. So Salesforce is the digital journey concierge. They are focusing on investments in e commerce, consumer data platforms, enterprise workflow including Slack, the most recent merger, Salesforce capability.
And we are going to continue to invest in our organic growth around Commerce Cloud, Executive Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud, 3 of the more important cloud frameworks that Salesforce has that impact our Industry. And then the final pillar, performance. The other day, I watched a very interesting Lovely interview with Daymond John from Shark Tank and Sir Martin and they were discussing how our business MediaMonks is really a Disruptive event inside the marketing industry and that interview drew parallels to how Tesla disrupts automotive and Amazon disrupts Retail and it reminded me of yet another Shark Tank star, Evan Carmichael, talking about how 4 years ago, if Somebody had asked him what new college grads or up and coming stars of the industry in the future, What they were going to study and what they should focus on, it would have been engineering and the sciences. And now he It's pivoting to say that it's actually going to be in the next decade, the storytellers, the creatives that have the technology backing to help drive direct Consumer speed and momentum by bringing brand stories in a personalized way to the that consume media in a completely different way than they did just 10 years ago.
So it is that DTC activation energy and distribution that has been And it's really the storytelling and the content enablement across those new platforms that is going to be the game changer in the coming decade. So we Investing heavily in the performance space looking at SMB Growth and Challenger Brands taking you from $0 to $1,000,000,000 And that you will see manifest itself in merger rationale around metric theory or raccoon and perhaps some more where we can take those capabilities Moving into our first case study in healthcare, MediaMonths began working with a non profit about 2 years ago. It was a scaled global non profit. I can't share the name, but they have a mission in building a best in class digital team focused on becoming more audience centric, data driven organizational structure, cleaned up their paid media execution and enabled them to be more data driven in how they optimize those executions. And remember, They are hands on keyboard.
We are a consultant or a facilitator in these relationships. This came to fruition during their end of year campaign where we were able to help them achieve Over 90% growth in donations year on year from this channel and of ROAS exceeding 2 40%, which means for every dollar they They got back $1.40 on that investment or $2.40 net $1.40 So this year They set off on a mission to acquire the next 11,000,000 donors with us, while continuing to cultivate relationships that they have with existing donors. And in order They work with us to increase the maturity across their sales force marketing cloud and bridge the gap between adtech and martech by bringing We lead channels as well as email channels together. And one of the anecdotal sidebars of the story is that the client received a $100,000 donation attributed directly to the direct response TV spot that we help them run YouTube versus one of the traditional channels and that is pretty amazing considering a Doctor campaign that is normally catered to a traditional channel like TV or could be so effective in a digital channel and we were able to help them make that transition.
Our next study, a quick deep dive RB Hot Wheels, Fisher Price, American Girl for over 70 years. And we are helping them think about ways that they can use In a world that is very complex to navigate when you have really 2 customers, both the children and the parents. And those customer relationships are only going to going to be more important to them as DTC and brick and mortar changes happen in the industry over the next decade. Five9 is the case study and we picked them up and helped them effectively sell their company. So Five9 looks to us for programmatic and direct media buying efforts as well as performance media.
We were able to scale their managed budget and hit their performance goals by increasing spend by 15%, generating 20% to 30% more in revenue depending on when you are looking. And we're going to be supporting the integration of Five9 into who recently acquired them. And we're looking to significantly increase the media budgets that we ai recently acquired by ZoomInfo Silver Peak acquired by Hewlett Packard ServiceMax IPO and shortly and acquired They were acquired by GE a few years ago, but now they're going IPO. These are incredibly important growth segments for our business Our final case study, just a quick one. Really this is not a story of woven together in a single comprehensive engagement, bringing a lean team of just 50 people, but they are the best and brightest across the globe and the most And so with that, I'm looking forward to a very strong second half in twenty twenty one.
And I will hand it back to Sir Martin to share our H2 and 2022 outlook.
Thanks, Chris, and thanks, Scott and Victor and Wesley and Peter. So just a brief summary. So just a brief summary. Before going into the summary, it really is a 2 speed World. It's a tale of 2 cities, 2 countries.
We have a digital growth industry and a slow growth or no growth traditional analog media industry. And I think that's exemplified by this slide where we compare the 2 year stacks. There was in the Feet recently about the proclivity of CEOs to talk about 2021 and Q2 20 one as their best ever quarters and ignoring the fact that Q1 of 2020 was their worst. So this looks at the 2 years, obviously, takes into account the impact of COVID, particularly in Q2 of 2020. And you'll see that our 2 year stack takes for Q1 and Q2 and compares them and most importantly, most starkly with Google and with Facebook, Facebook Advertising, Accenture and Globant.
And you can see the directional difference to between the digital companies and the ad holdco. And it reminds me of The Warren Buffett thesis that many years ago in the 1970s '80s that investing in the and it was IPG and In that time was a royalty on the growth of globalization. I think what this demonstrates is investment in S4 is a royalty in the growth of the digital platforms. So with that as background, Let me just summarize where we are at the end of H1 of the first half of twenty in 'twenty one. We had extremely strong organic growth in the first half, doubling up from 33% organic to 60 6% with a 75% 2 year stack.
Growth has continued in July at over 50%. And July last year, we did 18%. So it's a 2 year stack on a simple basis of 68% would more if we looked at it on a full pro form a basis. Continued strong liquidity boosted by the term loan, the euro term The merger pipeline, as Scott indicated, in technology, in data and analytics, in content and indeed in digital Media, and we'll be looking at technology services with increasing intensity in the near future. We've had a very successful medium dotmont's brand rollout, as Wes mentioned, and that's underpinned significant continued progress in our significant continued progress in our unitary structure, which we focus on intently, given the activity that we're generating.
And of course, we have continued new business and WAPA momentum, as Scott his analysis of average size of clients in the first half of this year and the prospects. We raised our like for like net revenue guidance for the 3rd time this year. We started, as you remember, at 25%, which implied a doubling of the size of the company in 3 years. We raised it to 30% to 35% and now to 40%. And we've reiterated our confidence in doubling the size of the company over that 3 year period of 'twenty one to 'twenty three, in addition to the 2 previous triennial periods that we've had 2019, 2021 2020, 22.
We think there are very strong prospects for the second half. Off with a very strong July at over 50% as we've said. There are tailwinds for 2022, 2 in particular, one is GDP growth of 4% to 5% next year against 5% to 6% this year. So slight down trend in worldwide GDP growth after the fiscal and monetary stimulus. But that's natural given the tapering it is going to take place.
But the other tailwind around digital transformation and disruption will continue and in our view heighten as we go into 23, because at times of economic weakness or weaker conditions, what we tend to see is digital disruption and change agents inside companies. So we see significant continued growth opportunities in 'twenty one, the second in 'twenty two and looking further at 'twenty three. So with that as a background, that's about 50, 55 minutes on the company in the we're willing to take any Q and A that we have on the call.
We will now take our first question from Omar Sheikh at Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Afternoon, everyone. Again, just got a couple of questions, if I could. So, Martin, I wonder if you could maybe start with just talking about the growth in the second half that you I mean the land and expand strategy has been super successful in driving your past growth. You've obviously indicated that the WAPAs that you're planning I won't come through till next year. So could you maybe just give us a bit of color on where you're expecting the kind of the revenue growth you guided to in the second half come from, whether it's in client verticals or any other theme you get to choose?
That's the first question. And then secondly, you want to Peter. We heard Wes talk about the unitary structure. I wonder whether you could just tell us what is the P and L investment That you made in that in total, if it's possible to put a figure on that. And actually, if I could just squeeze in the third, if that's possible, whether you're seeing any sort of pressure on staff churn in any way or wage inflation amongst your amongst your employees.
Okay. On that third question, maybe we would pull in Chris and Wes because we had a similar question on the UK call on churn and from Joe Spooner. So we'll maybe Wes and Chris can respond on Let me try and deal with the first question, Omar, and then Peter talk about the extent of our investments in software there an integration and unitary structure. I think, Omar, it's across the board. I think what people and I really think we have to get away from You won't be so bold.
I think analysts have got to start looking at the digital industry and the traditional they're moving in different directions. They are certainly moving at different speeds. And as we go through the pandemic in in 'twenty one and 'twenty two. We're seeing a divergence, an increasing divergence in that speed. If I look at Google and Facebook and Amazon this year and their first half, they were up, I think it was Google, if I Just check, look at my cheat sheet, was up 57% in the first half on a 2 year stack basis and Facebook 66% on a 2 year stack basis.
And if you look at their advertising revenue numbers, Google looks as though it will go from €180,000,000,000 to €230,000,000,000, €35,000,000,000,000,000,000 Facebook from €80,000,000,000 to €115,000,000,000,000 from 25 to 35. Those 3 platforms alone will inject another 100,000,000,000 into digital Media. So if digital media this year is about €650,000,000,000 and if it's growing at about, I think, the HoldCo's are all grouped around sort of 10% to 12% with digital up 20% and traditional up 5% or something like that. There is this divergence and I think that's what you're seeing. So our second half is going to continue to reflect that.
I July reflects that. As you know, we've said it's over 50%. Steve Lifty, I think mentioned to us that reminded us that we were up 18% last year. In July, we did 23% in Q3 Q3 'twenty seven, I think it was in Q4, 'twenty three, 'twenty four in Q3, 'twenty seven in Q4. So obviously, the comps get tougher in a sense.
But of course, if you look at the 2 year stack, I think that's a good indication of what should be happening. So with the industry growing at 20, we're doing 50 in First half, we'll see how it all comes out. I think our thinking around the Second half revolves around a couple of things. Firstly, the comparatives do get harder, but is the natural conservatism. We've taken up our guidance from 25 to 30 to 35 and now to 40.
1 of the analysts on the call this morning asked whether Q3 will take it up to 45. And I said, we'll see when we get to Q3. But having said that, I think we are quite conservative our guidance and we look at the comparatives. In terms of verticals, it's across the board. There is some evidence that the rise of the delta variant or the spread of the delta variant obviously has pushed some live Live events off, you've seen some big film launches being pushed back.
But I think generally, what we see, if there is some delay on live events, the slack is taken up by online events or hybrid events becoming more important. So I think we see it across the board. You would expect travel on hospitality to pick up. We see 1 or 2 things happening in the travel and hospitality area that have been really interesting in the last few weeks and promise interesting opportunities for this year for particularly for next year, but for the end of this year. So I wouldn't distinguish Omar between particular verticals.
Tech continues to be strong. Those clients tend to look at the sky as we've said before rather than their boots. So pretty much across the board. With that, I mean, Peter, do you want to talk a little bit about the investment that we made in Teams, etcetera?
Yes. No, sure. So To your question, Omar, these are always the hard parts to measure. You invest in the growth team, for example, or for our I think I said it this morning as well. This year, our 14.5% Margin in the first half is quite similar to last year.
In a way, I would have expected it slightly higher given And also as I indicated this morning, my expectations, current expectations are that we would end up in an EBITDA Margin of high 19 instead of where we were last year at 21% and so much to immediately say, oh, 21 minuteus 19 or whatever it exactly is, it's a 2%, but in a way from software tooling, investment, consulting, in investment, consulting, implementation and all these kind of things. I would expect us to be in the sort of 2% to 3% investment that's our OpEx investment with ecom a little bit with what Chris elaborated in CTV, the software tooling, the unified brand, that's the sort of range. I don't have Math or the addition of all the numbers, but that's my best expectation.
Yes. I mean, 2% at the The net revenue gross profit forecast that the market generally has, which is around, what, GBP 550,000,000 would would be about £10,000,000 or £11,000,000 so £11,000,000 that is. So that sort of puts it in. You've seen The HoldCo costs have gone up in the first half of this year. And obviously, margins that we show are the EBITDA margins for both content and for data and digital media are before the Holdco cost.
So You can see the investment roughly a mile that we're making in that area. Wes, do you want to talk a little bit about Potential inflation in labor and what you're seeing in the markets and then Chris maybe on data and digital media.
Yes. So as a team, we were looking at some data over last week, which think shows that the 18% to 34% generation range is a lot less We've worked then about a year, year and a half ago. There's a bit of tea leaf reading there, but I think so much of also the social life and Likeliness at that age group tends to revolve around work and offices and the like. And it's definitely sort Leading into what I think somebody coined the great resignation. In taking the industry, I think we're Better than most when it comes to churn and we have lots of really, really active inbound.
I think people really want to join the company. So the churn that is higher, we've been able to balance out. There is definitely some inflation pressure on salaries, which I think is being driven by the companies that weren't growing during COVID. I think we were one of the companies that didn't just not fire In our industry, but we grew quite aggressively. A lot of our competitors weren't able to do so and they needed to pay I mean, when the e commerce sort of rebounded and the pipeline rebounded.
So there was lots of quick hiring that happened because of that, which definitely has impact on price point. I think we've been able to handle that quite well also because we have a strong story with stock incentives that I think is a bit of a moat. But there's definitely inflation pressures because of The quick hiring that needed to happen by a lot of our competitors in the industry. Chris, we were jogging about this yesterday.
I can only echo all of that. And then the only other things that I would add, this is an industry and even just an economy wide problem. When West cited that statistic that's not media months, that is the United States. So 18 The 34 intense job dissatisfaction dropping from the 80s down to the 50s and something like that. So this is a grass is greener on the other side type of challenge where folks are sitting potentially behind the screen for months, Years at a time, potentially not wanting to go back to the service industry job etcetera and they're looking to do something, anything new.
We see it in our own business. But when I'm talking with my peers in the industry, even on the other side of competitive files, they are saying the exact same thing and they keep saying, oh, we're people to you. Meanwhile, I'm looking at my own ranks and we're losing a few to them. In general, net net, I think we are a benefactor of this particular challenge. I even have clients calling me up and saying we have so much churn on our marketing team that we need your team to help us provide business continuity.
You have to come in and to help us source some of the folks that we're churning and then help us recruit and train the new ones coming in. So in a way, the economy We do well, the economy is down, we do well. In this particular case, the chaos has only provided additional opportunities for us to grow relationships with and help them in their time of need.
Okay. Any other Any other questions? No more. Okay.
Exane. Thanks everybody for joining us.
I think there were about 50 or so people on the webcast. We had about just under 200 on the U. K. One. So thanks for all joining us, and thanks to my colleagues for getting up on earthly hours, particularly in America, not staying up too late in Singapore.
See you all in Q on Q3.