AD Agencies
Havas hits 2025 targets, posts 3.1 per cent organic growth
Net revenue rises to €2.78 bn as AI push and acquisitions lift performance
PUTEAUX, FRANCE: Havas delivered a solid set of full-year results for 2025, beating its own guidance as steady organic growth, tighter cost control and an aggressive push into artificial intelligence lifted margins and cash flow.
The advertising and communications group reported organic net revenue growth of 3.1 per cent for the year, slightly ahead of its guided range of 2.5 to 3.0 per cent. Net revenue rose to €2.78 billion, while adjusted Ebit climbed to €358 million, translating into a margin of 12.9 per cent, up 50 basis points from last year.
Net income increased 11.1 per cent to €210 million, with group share of net income rising 9.2 per cent to €189 million. Operating cash flow after working capital jumped 53 per cent to €360 million, reflecting improved collections and disciplined spending.
The fourth quarter capped the year on a strong note, with organic growth of 3.7 per cent, driven by momentum across Europe and North America. For the full year, North America led with organic growth of 4.9 per cent, while Europe posted 2.0 per cent growth. Latin America returned to growth, and APAC and Africa were supported by India.
Chairman and CEO Yannick Bolloré, said 2025 marked a “transformative year” for Havas, its first full year as a listed company. He credited the rollout of the group’s Converged.AI operating system and a client-centric model for delivering on guidance in a highly competitive market.
Havas continued its acquisition spree, buying majority stakes in 11 agencies during the year across Europe, Australia and New Zealand, strengthening its media, creative, health and data capabilities. The group also struck strategic partnerships with AI players Vurvey Labs and Akkio to deepen its agentic AI capabilities.
Looking ahead, Havas guided for organic growth of 2.0 to 3.0 per cent in 2026 and an adjusted Ebit margin of between 13.2 and 13.5 per cent. The group plans to maintain a dividend payout ratio of around 40 per cent and pursue five to ten bolt-on acquisitions during the year.
Havas also confirmed its medium-term ambition of lifting margins to between 14 and 15 per cent by 2028, underlining confidence in its AI-led strategy and diversified geographic footprint.
AD Agencies
Kevin Vaz opens FICCI-EY report with a declaration: India’s M&E industry set to breach Rs 3 trillion mark by 2027
In a keynote address at the FICCI-EY report launch, Kevin Vaz says sport, AI and the connected TV boom are driving a multi-screen revolution with no signs of slowing
MUMBAI: India’s media and entertainment industry is growing faster than the economy, reshaping global benchmarks and is on course to blow past Rs 3 trillion by 2027. That was the headline message from Kevin Vaz, chairman of the FICCI Media and Entertainment Committee and chief executive of entertainment at JioStar, who delivered the opening keynote at the launch of the FICCI-EY Media and Entertainment Report 2026 in Mumbai on Monday. He did not waste much time on caveats.
The industry hit Rs 2.78 trillion in 2025, outpacing GDP per capita growth and surpassing even last year’s bullish forecasts. Vaz described the year in three words: scale, convergence, transformation. The numbers, he suggested, were only half the story. The other half was how that growth was happening.
Digital has become the industry’s largest segment, driven by advertising, subscriptions and commerce. But Vaz was quick to puncture the familiar narrative of digital killing everything else. India, he argued, is not an either-or market. It is an AND market. Connected TV is surging. Linear television, mobile, films and print are all still expanding. AVGC, the animation, visual effects, gaming and comics sector, is emerging as a serious growth engine, opening new storytelling formats and new global revenue streams. Nothing, he said, is replacing anything. Everything is reinforcing everything else.
Nowhere is that more vivid than in sport. In an on-demand world where audiences can watch anything, anytime, Indians still show up live. “Sports don’t fragment audiences,” Vaz said. “They unite them, just on different screens.” The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 made the point emphatically. During the final, JioHotstar delivered 72.5 million concurrent streams, a global record. Group chats exploded. Families renegotiated control of the television. Advertisers, Vaz noted with undisguised relish, stopped asking where audiences were and started asking how fast they could get in.
Cinema had its own landmark year. More than 1,900 films were released, with several crossing the Rs 1 billion mark. Dhurandhar was singled out as proof that Indian audiences will still turn up in large numbers for content that grips them. Live experiences, too, are getting bigger and more immersive, though Vaz suggested the surface has barely been scratched.
Then there is artificial intelligence, which he described as quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, reshaping everything. AI is enabling personalisation, efficiency and scale, but Vaz argued its deeper significance lies in what it is doing to creativity itself. He pointed to Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh, billed as the world’s first AI-produced show, as evidence that the technology can amplify creative ambition rather than hollow it out. He also used the platform to call on Indian policymakers to engage seriously with the creative industry on AI and copyright, ensuring that creators are fairly compensated as the technology spreads.
The picture that emerges from the report, and from Vaz’s keynote, is of an industry that has stopped thinking of itself as a fast-growing emerging market and started thinking of itself as a global template. Scale, diversity and innovation, he said, are no longer in tension in India. They are coexisting, and the rest of the world is taking notes.
The Rs 3 trillion milestone is two years away. As the man who chairs the committee that shapes the industry’s policy agenda and runs the country’s most powerful entertainment platform, Vaz set the tone for the day with characteristic directness: India’s media business is not just chasing growth. It is deciding what the country talks about at dinner. That is a different kind of power altogether.
