Morning, and thank you for joining us for Stagwell's Third Quarter Earnings Webcast. I'm Ben Allanson, and I lead the Investor Relations function here at Stagwell. With me are Mark Penn, Stagwell's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Ryan Greene, Stagwell's Chief Financial Officer. Mark will provide a business update before Ryan shares a financial review. After the prepared remarks, we will open the floor for Q&A. Please do submit questions through the chat function. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that the following remarks include forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial data. Forward-looking statements about the company, including those related to earnings guidance, are subject to uncertainties and risk factors addressed in our earnings release, slide presentation, and the company's SEC filings. Please refer to our website, stagwellglobal.com/investors, for an investor presentation and additional resources.
This morning's press release and the slide deck provide definitions, explanations, and reconciliations of non-GAAP financial data. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mark.
Thank you, Ben. Stagwell's third quarter demonstrates that we are successfully pivoting from a primarily marketing services company to a marketing transformation company, selling AI-based transformation software and services. We aim to be nothing less than number one in AI marketing transformation, which virtually every company in the world now needs alongside its HR, IT, supply chain, and other systems and software. As I've said many times, we're a tech company's tech company, and tech giants like ServiceNow, Adobe, and Palantir are working with Stagwell as their co-innovation partners to build and co-market cutting-edge agentic marketing solutions. We're bringing them to market, and they are second to none. As a consequence of our shift towards software and digital transformation, our third quarter was the biggest on record on virtually every metric. Revenue, net revenue, and adjusted EBITDA were all at the highest levels in the company history.
Last 12-month net new business was yet another record. Enterprise tech bookings year- to- date stand at $59 million, more than double our initial goal, and a healthy pipeline remaining through year-end. Our overall organic growth now leads the marketing services industry, and when you look at the segments, the growth in tech capabilities of our business rival that of successful software and service companies. Let me walk you through the numbers. Stagwell delivered 11% organic growth in the quarter and more than 7% organic net revenue growth. Growth was led by the segments at the center of our shift. Digital Transformation grew 23% organically, driving our two-year stack to 30%, our ninth consecutive quarter of two-year stack improvement. The Marketing Cloud grew 108% organically as software sales of our suite of new agentic AI products accelerated.
Political is running slightly ahead into the 2024 presidential year, helping communications grow 20% organically, a meaningful sequential improvement. Geographically, the U.S., our biggest region, grew more than 11% organically. This more than offset weakness in the Mid East, where we saw a $9 million, or 2% organic headwind due to the ongoing conflict in the region and pause of work. Our shift towards higher growth, higher margin software and digital transformation, coupled with our commitment to cost controls, means that adjusted EBITDA grew 25% year-over-year, to $145 million. This is a 22% margin, 290 basis points higher than a year ago. Our adjusted EPS grew 42% to $0.34. Meanwhile, year-to-date cash flow from operations has improved by $125 million, helping drive a same period, $93 million free cash flow improvement. Third quarter net leverage was 2.7 x, a 0.7 turn improvement year-over-year.
Net new business of $168 million, Stagwell's best ever third quarter. Our last 12 months figure stands at $586 million, 24% higher than a year ago. What is driving our record new business streak? It is what I said at the beginning of my remarks. Stagwell is the partner of choice for companies looking to transform their marketing. We are breaking into new industries and getting invited into new rooms. I have said on these calls that we see government as a real opportunity for Stagwell. Over the last two years, we have been building our team and gaining expertise. This work has paid off. In the third quarter, we won our first major federal assignment, which will really kick off beginning of the year. Stagwell will serve as the prime subcontractor to CACI for work with the U.S. Central Command.
The total size of the win is $1.5 billion over five years. We conservatively expect to capture 10% of this total size in fees, with potential for significantly more. Winning this first federal assignment is often the hard part. We are now established in the ecosystem, and new opportunities are emerging. Just weeks ago, we won a second significant federal assignment. Government-related work can become 10% or more of our business over time. The change obvious from our numbers is that our digital transformation services are just right for the agentic retooling companies need to do to stay competitive, and our products are just right for enabling large-scale marketing transformation. The Machines, as we call them, were crucial to our flagship win with ServiceNow, our largest ever multi-agency deal.
The unified family of products agentically manages all phases of marketing campaigns from orchestration to insight, audience selection, content tracking, and media placement. They significantly reduce the cost of a large enterprise of managing their global marketing units and campaigns. Importantly, they integrate with a company's own data and tech stack and can be run by them, not us. Customers may purchase individual Machines or products, or engage us for a full marketing transformation project, which is typically a $20 million-40 million assignment with lasting long-term revenue. Based on my experience running Microsoft marketing, we can help clients save about $100 million a year or more in their marketing expenses. Our proven AI applications are unlike any of the so-called solutions out there. Many of them are all bark and no bite, all hat and no cattle, all smoke and no fire. You get the point.
Just last week, we expanded our agreement with Palantir, strengthening the Stagwell Machines with Palantir's world-class data and engineering, working side by side with our team, headed by Chief AI Officer, John Kahan, Head of Data and Analytics at both Microsoft and IBM. The agreement also named Stagwell as a Palantir Premier Marketing Transformation partner and establishes joint go-to-market to clients. Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, specifically cited our advanced work on deploying sovereign models as the key to creating new opportunities. Earlier this week, we presented the sovereign model work with a travel client on the main stage at Palantir's top customer event. To bring our technology together under one umbrella, last week, we launched Stagwell AI, a single platform where you can find out about all our agentic products and services. Try this agentic website, stagwell.ai, for yourself or catch one of our ads on CNBC.
We also launched Stagwell Media earlier this month, bringing together Assembly's performance, heritage, and ecosystem expertise with a new model powered by next-generation agentic technology. Adweek noted this move, quote, "Fills a growing gap for clients," end quote, at a time when marketers are demanding greater agility, integration, and practical AI capabilities from their agency partners. We could not agree more. We expect to increase market penetration in the coming year, and we're doubling next year's bookings goal. Turning to capital allocation during the first nine months, we focused on buybacks and deferred M&A. We have now resumed a mix of buybacks, M&A, and leverage reduction. Owned media is an M&A priority because we see synergistic high-margin opportunities with our core businesses.
We increased our investment in RealClearPolitics, and we acquired Freestar after close of the quarter, a tech-driven ad operations platform serving over 1,000 websites, including blue-chip online publishers like Fortune and The Boston Globe. This gives us direct media pipeline for our clients that can be a win-win for them and us. Given our outsized growth in organic net revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EPS, we are increasing our full-year outlook today. We still expect 8%-12% total net revenue growth and free cash conversion of 50%-60%, but we're raising our adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS guidance. We now expect adjusted EBITDA of $490 million-540 million, and adjusted EPS of $1.07-1.21. Looking forward, 2027 is shaping up to be another strong year for Stagwell. Demand for our enterprise tech solutions is accelerating, which we expect will drive growth in The Marketing Cloud.
Today, I'm doubling our initial 2027 enterprise tech bookings goal to $150 million. Our pipeline in digital transformation is strong, and we expect organic growth trends to continue. Our marketing services and media segments are poised to return to single-digit growth with new wins coming online. The largest presidential cycle in history will kick off in earnest in the second half of 2027, with competitive political primaries expected on both sides of the aisle, and newly won government contracts and commercial assignments will kick in. In our view, Stagwell stock has strong upside potential, given strong year-to-date organic growth led by the successful pivot to AI marketing transformation. Do the math. Software and digital transformation revenue is worth 2x or 3x that of marketing service revenue.
With double-digit growth in digital transformation and 30%-40% growth of software sales each year for the next two years, you can see a very different high-value company leveraging our thousands of relationships and deep enterprise in the marketing sector. We believe that could merit a stock price several times our existing value. But you be the judge. With that, I would like to hand it over to Ryan, who will walk you through the third quarter financials in more detail.
Thanks, Mark. Good morning and thank you for joining us. The third quarter was our strongest quarter in the history of the company. Revenue, net revenue, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, and adjusted EPS all set record highs. Revenue grew 10% to $816 million and net revenue grew 8% to $664 million. Organically, third quarter revenue grew 11% and net revenue grew more than 7%, representing our strongest growth in the last seven quarters. We expect the organic contribution to drive the majority of fourth quarter growth. Digital transformation, The Marketing Cloud, and communications led growth. Digital transformation net revenue increased 23% organically year- over- year to $119 million, driven by demand for technology implementation, integration, and workflow optimization, including capabilities associated with the Machine OS. We expect continued momentum in the fourth quarter.
The Marketing Cloud increased organic net revenue 108% to $56 million, driven primarily by the growth in software sales associated with the Stagwell Machines and increased demand for research products. Communication delivered 20% organic net revenue growth to $124 million, driven by corporate communications, public affairs work, and activities associated with the U.S. midterm election cycle. Our political business is on track for low single-digit growth versus 2024, ahead of our prior expectations for a flat performance. Media and commerce declined 2% organically to $159 million. Growth in owned media and our CRM practice was offset by reduced spending in the Middle East related to the ongoing conflict. We expect this segment to return to growth early next year. Marketing services generated $218 million in net revenue, down 9% year- over- year, including a 7.5% reduction organically.
This was largely attributable to the challenging prior year comps and timing related to new business wins. Several significant engagements were awarded in the second and third quarters, and we expect these wins to drive a return to growth in 2027. Geographically, organic net revenue was led by the U.S., up $53 million, or 11%. Latin America grew 54% from a smaller base. This was partially offset by a $9 million, or 35% organic decline in the Middle East. As the top line accelerated, adjusted EBITDA increased $28.8 million, or 25% year- over- year, to a record $144.8 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded approximately 290 basis points to a record 21.8% of net revenue. The margin improvement reflect a mix of organic growth, including higher margin software, digital transformation and advocacy work, together with active management of labor. Digital transformation adjusted EBITDA margin was 32.1% in the third quarter.
The segment benefits from higher value work, workflow transformation engagements, while hiring and other staff cost growth trailed revenue growth in AI-enabled development and coding workflows, improving productivity. The Marketing Cloud generated a 44.3% adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter, reflecting the increased contribution from software sales associated with the Machine OS. Communications margin benefited from higher value political services and disciplined staff costs. As a result, adjusted EPS increased 42% to a record $0.34, driven primarily by higher adjusted net income. We continue to make progress on previously announced cost savings targets. $78 million of the savings have been actioned, keeping us on track to deliver the $80 million-100 million year-end goal. We are taking steps to drive efficiency using technology, and will soon start implementing ServiceNow's Control Tower across business functions, including finance and HR.
Staff costs as a percentage of net revenue declined approximately 400 basis points year-over-year to 57.6%, the second lowest level since our merger, and only 10 basis points above the 57.5% low in the fourth quarter of 2024. Across the cost base, productivity gains and active management of labor are allowing us to expand margins while continuing to invest selectively in growth initiatives. Year-to-date operating cash flow increased approximately $125 million, or more than 400% to $155 million, driven by stronger working capital management, improvement in earnings, and a one-time $3 million adjustment. Year-to-date free cash flow increased by approximately $93 million year-over-year to $52 million. We expect further improvement in the fourth quarter, driven by normal seasonality and the culmination of the midterm election cycle. We remain confident in achieving our free cash flow conversion target of 50%-60% of adjusted EBITDA.
At quarter end, deferred acquisition consideration was approximately $64 million, 13 million lower than a year ago. Our revolver balance is approximately $324 million, with approximately 410 million of remaining availability under the credit agreement. Net leverage was 2.73 x at quarter end, an improvement of 0.7 turns from 3.42 in the third quarter last year, and 0.9 turns below the post-merger peak of 3.62% in the third quarter of 2023. This was the second lowest quarterly net leverage ratio and our lowest third quarter ratio. We remain on track to exit 2026 with a net leverage ratio in the mid -2's. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 260,000 shares, bringing our year-to-date repurchase of approximately 12.1 million shares at an average share price of $6.23 per share. We ended the quarter with approximately 244.6 million shares outstanding and approximately 326 million remaining under our authorization.
Year-to-date capital expenditures and capitalized software investments are in line with our expectations, and we expect full-year capital expenditures and capitalized software investment to be in line with last year. As Mark mentioned, we are updating our full-year guidance today, raising adjusted EBITDA to $490 million-540 million. Raising adjusted EPS to $1.07-1.21, and reiterating 8%-12% total net revenue growth and free cash flow conversion of 50%-60%.
This reflects our expectations for continued acceleration of organic growth in the fourth quarter, combined with margin expansion and contribution from M&A that Mark discussed. I will hand it back over to Ben for questions.
Thank you, Ryan. Just a reminder, if you would like to submit a question, please do so via the chat button at the top of the screen. A lot of questions today, so I am going to dive in here. We are going to kick it off talking about mix shift. First question comes from David at Seaport. Obviously, strong new business trends continuing here, and the mix shift is towards technology, and it really feels like the tech products are contributing to a lot of these sales. Can you maybe discuss the expected ramp in tech over the coming quarters and the incremental margin profile associated with these products?
Well, I had originally set a goal of $25 million of bookings for these tech enterprise products. We have hit $59 million. I originally set a goal next year of about $75 million. I have doubled that to $150 million. I think the margin profile, as you can see, The Marketing Cloud, the margin profile is at least double the margin profile of the rest of our services. This is fundamentally more profitable revenue, even though we will now be adding the sales forces and sales teams in order to achieve those goals. I believe that profitability will be there or even improve over time beyond that.
Great. Related, Jason at Craig-Hallum. Looking at the enterprise tech wins of that $59 million you referenced, including ServiceNow, is there any way to frame the upside opportunity that comes from layering in both AI and digital transformation capabilities on top of what is just a traditional media budget for a company like ServiceNow, for example?
Well, look, I always analyze it this way. I explain, and remember, I was basically co-CMO at Microsoft, so I had thousands of people. I understand a typical company has 10 divisions, it has 10 products, they have 10 SKUs, they market in 30 countries. Then effectively they have 30,000 marketing cells that they have to optimize, and so they will often have 2,000 people across the company and across the products to do that. You implement software like this, and you probably could cut that in half, maybe better, and yet have a better system that can keep track of all 30,000 cells and put the decisions where the decisions should be made. That is where you could save $100 million or more.
I know in a lot of the changes I made in six months, I saved $160 million putting in systems that were similar to this, but not as advanced because we did not have the capability.
That is great. Staying on digital transformation, I suspect. Jeff at B. Riley goes, "Can you just go into the outlook for digital transformation?" Obviously, a really good quarter coming on the back of a good quarter in 2Q as well. Can Stagwell maintain that growth momentum in the segment?
I think we are expecting to maintain that kind of strong growth in the segment because I think what has developed is really what I said about a year ago. I said about a year ago, I said, with the coming of AI, every single company is going to have to redo the way they interact with their customers. Sooner or later, they are going to get there to realizing that, and that later is now. I think what Code and Theory reports is the largest pipeline in their history. Remember also that we tended to specialize in what I call the consumer touch part of technology. Those last mile technologies that every single company, I think, really has to rethink. Even if you look at the stagwell.ai website and you see that it is agentically led by an agent, it is a radically new way.
Look, any company that does not innovate and redo these things is going to be left behind. The cost of inaction here for companies is going to mount considerably.
Question from a number of people, actually. Can you walk us through partnerships, including the Palantir one which we announced last week? Can you explain how you think about partnerships and how they add strategic and execution positives for Stagwell?
Well, just to give you an example, I think the ServiceNow partnership. ServiceNow has something called the Control Tower. The Control Tower agentically helps companies, including ours, run AI, run HR, you know, IT, and CRM. We do not do those three things. We help companies redo their marketing department, their marketing units. So when you look at it, a company that is going to be agentically led can now put in the Control Tower and the Machines as a complete set of agentic marketing and business transformation. So we think we can co-sell products like that. Say, in Palantir, we are building on top of the Foundry to create products that then go out to all their clients, and they are helping us display those products to the clients.
I think as we make this transformation, we are partnering with clients that have significant enterprise clients of their own already built, and we are filling a need here that we have particular expertise in. That is why we can jump more quickly, I think, to get into market, and that is the goal of these partnerships.
Great. I want to just turn a little bit to a couple of the other segments. First question is around our media business, and this is from Steve at Wells Fargo. He says media's obviously lagged a little bit for Stagwell. Does it make sense for Stagwell to be in the business for the long time, since it increasingly seems to favor scale, especially for some of the larger advertisers?
Well, you really hit upon precisely why I think we've come out with Stagwell Media. What we said is, look, for those people who are really the broadest marketers, for whom scale is really the biggest element, we know who they're going to likely choose. But today, there's a growing segment of performance first marketers, for which technology is really the advantage. And we have an advantage in the technology when you combine the Machines, and the Targeting Machine. You look at the team that we're building, headed by Slavi, we're building an amazing team of people. We're giving them an amazing set of technology tools, and we're going to compete for those clients for whom really technology and getting the right ad to the right person at the right time is really the most important element. And at the same time, we're also building owned media properties.
So we'll be able to also give clients special access and special kinds of media treatments across now, when you look at, at, when you look at Freestar, thousands of websites on the open web.
Maybe we could just go into that a little bit closer. Jason at Craig-Hallum had asked about the Freestar acquisition and just asked for some more detail on our owned media strategy in general, the genesis of it. And he does sort of ask a question, which is fair, is how will Stagwell look to mitigate any channel conflict to marketers within that business?
Well, look, I think these things have to be structured as win-wins. I think clients understand that they are getting special treatment, they are getting discounts, they are getting an access to a market where we have more control over getting really the right ad to the right person. And that should make for more effective media. So, I don't think we are going to have a conflict. I think it is really going to result that this is going to be an attraction for clients to come in and say, You know what? I want Stagwell Media. I want the Stagwell technology-first approach, and I am going to kick the tires on some of these other properties you have. If they fit within what we want, I think that is going to be a value add for that.
Marketing services lagged a little bit in the quarter. Adam at Goldman Sachs asked the question, a competitor reported this morning, also highlighted some concerns in the creative segment at the moment. Could you maybe just discuss some of the dynamics we are seeing in creative? Is it a structural problem or is it something where it is just timing?
Well, I think for us, we are continuing to win really high levels of creative accounts, but there is still a lot of shrinkage, and movement, and CMOs being fired. I do think there is a lot of turmoil in general. It is a great door for us. Again, our top agencies here are all up for agency of the year above. I think for us, there is a lot of these timing issues. We have won a lot of the new accounts. Because they are taking longer to, I think, get fully integrated and on track.
I do think that there is a lot of turnover in the creative industry. Our perspective is we continue to invest in premium creative. We think our headline agencies, if you look at the margin of them, they are doing quite well in terms of margin. No real issues there. I think they are going to hold up well. I think government contracts are going to come on. And remember, we lost $9 million out because of the Mid East because a lot of our work there was tourism-based.
Absolutely. A few more questions to go. I am sorry, there has been a lot of them today. Let's give you a break and flip over to Ryan for a quick question.
Sure.
Alex at StoneX. He is asking about the fourth quarter working capital outlook and what sort of the path to the upper half of that 50%-60% conversion range.
Yeah. I think it starts with our year-to-date performance. We have improved operating cash flow, $125 million compared to last year. Free cash flow was $93 million better. If you compare that to last year, we have a seasonal business in terms of our working capital profile. The first two to three quarters, we use cash. We have our debt payments in February and August. What we have been really benefiting from is increased work around working capital, the increase in earnings and profitability of the company converting into cash, and the software sales and the pricing models behind them have also contributed meaningfully to our cash flow. If we layer that on top of our seasonality, where Q4 we get a lot of our cash, we see a real opportunity there.
Okay, back to you, Mark. Laura at Needham. Can you discuss sort of the advocacy impact in the third quarter and what you are thinking about in terms of outlook for that?
Oh, I think as you see, the communication segment's up 20%. Solid advocacy. It's actually running better than the last presidential race. The last couple of days have been exceptionally good in terms of advocacy, and I think what's going to happen is that you're going to see another very significant, let's call it 30%-40% growth, at least into the presidential race. I think the presidential race will start mid-2027. But in the short term, it's very healthy advocacy. People are involved. There's a tremendous amount of both fundraising and getting the vote out work here that we're doing.
Okay, two more questions. Another one from Laura. Can you just update us on how AI, and this may be for both of you, on how AI is lowering costs within the business and also accelerating new product innovation and introduction?
Well, I will say that we've saved internally, I think it's $48 million, right, as we put in.
Yeah, on the front services.
As we put in kind of new tech systems, not just in the back office, but for the management of content and workflow itself. We are finding significant savings internally. At the same time, that is enabling us to put together the engineers, and the sales force on the digital transformation, and to basically go after significantly higher margin revenue, while at the same time keeping our overall labor expense among the lowest in our history.
Last question, and it relates to the illustrative model we put in our deck today, talking about potential valuation. It is an illustrative framework. A couple of questions relating to it, and really the build here, how we are thinking about digital transformation from both a revenue growth and margin profile, 15% and a 32% margin. The software products as well, growing at, I think we put 35% into that model. It aligns with what you said of 30%-40%, with I think a 45% margin is what we said there. The rest of the business growing healthy, some little contribution as well within that, with I think we had a 17%, 18% margin.
Can you maybe just talk particularly about the tech bit of that, The Marketing Cloud bit, why you feel sort of, I am not going to say confident, it is obviously not guidance, but why you feel the way you do and you are excited about that bit of the business, and really the potential for that as we look out two years in particular?
Look, I sat on both sides, from both being the client and an agency, and I have sat in almost every single chair, right? I see what these products can do. I see what we were trying to do for so many years that is now possible. Technology is not just about cutting costs. It is about doing the things that you always wanted to do, but you never could do.
If you look at us, we have a complete suite of Machines, the Machine OS, the Knowledge Machine, the Targeting Machine, the Media Machine, and the Insight Machine. It is every single task now agentically powered that we have gotten ahead of the curve to develop, and develop in a way that we are going to turn over to clients and CMOs so that they can run their marketing like never before. Am I enthusiastic about that? Absolutely. When you sit down and see the hour demo of our products, you will be too.
One final bit on this. I think it's safe to say we would say sum of the parts is probably the way to start thinking about this business as we move forward. We're no longer really a marketing services business. We're something different.
I-- I think, it was.. If you go back to the history of when I founded Stagwell, I always said that I understood that marketing services would be slower growth. We would start there, build up a reputation, a solid client base, and we would increasingly transition over to technology. I think we're able to seize the moment on AI with the right suite of engineers, products, knowledge, and clients to make this transformation just at this time, so that we can continue to grow and succeed in marketing services, but really make the company into the tech-first marketing transformation company, now that I think every company everywhere is going to have to redo not just the way it does IT and HR, but the way it does marketing. We think we're market leader in that answer.
Correct. Perfect. Lot of questions today, but a big thank you to everyone who submitted one through the chat function. If we didn't get to you, I'm sorry about that. We'll be back in the new year for our fourth quarter call. We hope you'll join us then.