JCDecaux on track for 7% organic growth in Q3

The world’s biggest outdoor media company has continued to bounce back strongly from the pandemic, but growth is progressively slowing, as lockdowns harm demand in China.

First-half results out today (28 July) show JCDecaux’s organic revenue growth has slowed from 45.7% in Q1 to 21.6% in Q2 and is expected to be about 7% in Q3.

Jean-Charles Decaux, chairman and co-chief executive of JCDecaux, said: “As far as Q3 is concerned, organic revenue growth rates continue to be either high single digit or double digit in most countries, while in China our advertising revenue remains negatively impacted by mobility restrictions.

“We now expect an organic revenue growth rate at around plus-7% with Street Furniture revenue above the same quarter in 2019.”

Adjusted revenue for the first half came in at €1.47bn, up 36% year on year. It made a loss of €14.9m (£12.5m) on an adjusted Ebit (earnings before interest and tax) basis, improved from a €163.5m (£137m) loss in the same period in 2021.

Developments include strong growth at its programmatic advertising supply-side platform VIOOH, which was declared to have grown first-half revenues by 240%.

JCDecaux claimed VIOOH, which carries inventory from other OOH media owners, is “the most connected” SSP in the OOH industry and covers 11,000 screens in at least 17 countries.

However, it did not include actual revenue figures for VIOOH in its results announcement.

Separate figures for VIOOH Limited are available from Companies House and cover the 12 months to 31 December 2021.

These show that VIOOH Limited’s UK turnover nearly doubled to £7m between 2020 and 2021, while its international turnover quadrupled to £26.3m.

Its operating loss widened by 10% to £14.6m, while average headcount grew by a third to 103.