MAM
Interpublic group first quarter results disappoint analysts
NEW YORK: Advertising company Interpublic group of companies, the world's second-largest owner of advertising agencies has reported a disappointing results for the FY2003. The group also named Christopher Coughlin (ex executive VP and CFO at Pharmacia Corporation) to assume charge of the newly created position of a chief operating officer.
While announcing its results on 7 May, Interpublic reported a first-quarter net loss of $8.6 million, or 2 cents a share. That compared with a year-ago profit of $59.8 million, or 16 cents. The first quarter revenues rose nearly 1 per cent to $1.43 billion as foreign exchange fluctuations masked the weakness in the ad market abroad and project-related businesses such as public relations, says an adage report.
The company, which has reshuffled its management as it contends with earnings restatements and a probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The holding company said it swung to a quarterly net loss hurt by higher costs, including severance, as it tries to turn itself around.
Group chief executive and chairman David Bell was reported as saying that the results were 'disappointing and unacceptable.' He added that the efforts to increase revenues, including cost controlling measures, would begin to bear fruit in the second half of the year.
Interpublic said its new business wins in the quarter totaled $1.3 billion, including clients such as Merck & Co. and AT&T Corp. , which encouraged some analysts.
The company said it will accelerate its cost-cutting in the second quarter and believes the second-half of the year and first-half of 2004 will form a base for the future. Interpublic said it will give further details on its plans in August.
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Unicommerce says it is “Becoming AI-First” as core platform shifts to AI
Q3 revenue jumps 72.2 per cent as SaaS firm pivots from add-on AI to AI at its core
MUMBAI: Unicommerce eSolutions Limited is not just adding artificial intelligence to its software stack. It says it is rebuilding the stack around it. In its Q3 FY26 earnings call, the e-commerce SaaS player declared that it is “becoming AI-first”, shifting from sprinkling AI features across products to embedding AI into the core of its platforms. The statement marks a strategic pivot for a company that already processes nearly a third of India’s e-commerce dropship volumes.
The numbers suggest the strategy is gaining traction. Revenue for the quarter rose 72.2 per cent year on year to Rs 56.4 crore, while adjusted Ebitda climbed 51 per cent to Rs 13.4 crore. Annualised revenue run rate now exceeds Rs 225 crore.
“Our AI journey has progressed in phases,” said managing director and CEO Kapil Makhija. “We began by integrating AI into our internal operations, then introduced AI-enabled features across platforms and are now becoming AI-first, where core platform functionalities are delivered through AI.”
Over the past two quarters, the company has rolled out three AI-led offerings across its ecosystem.
ConvertWay now uses a Catalyst AI Voice Agent that makes automated, human-like outbound calls in multiple languages to recover abandoned carts. Uniware clients can interact with UniBot, a GenAI assistant that executes warehouse tasks through simple text prompts. Meanwhile, Shipway’s ShipSense AI optimises courier allocation by balancing cost, timelines and return probabilities.
The AI voice bot alone has scaled to around one lakh calls a month, a signal that automation is moving from experiment to execution.
For Unicommerce, the logic is straightforward. As a system of record for clients’ e-commerce operations, its platforms already sit on rich operational data. AI allows that data to become actionable, deepening integration and increasing stickiness.
Uniware, the flagship order and warehouse management platform, returned to growth with an 8.1 per cent year-on-year revenue rise in Q3, even after absorbing the exit of a top client that shut its multi-channel operations.
More than 110 enterprise clients were added during the quarter. Revenue concentration among the top 10 clients has dropped to nearly 12 per cent, down from 27 per cent in FY24, reflecting a deliberate diversification strategy.
“All enterprise clients are on a minimum guarantee subscription plan,” Makhija noted. “Once they exhaust the bundled transactions, they move to usage-based billing.”
The company also announced it will discontinue reporting transaction-based metrics, arguing that with newer modules such as B2B, quick commerce and AI-led tools, aggregate transaction rates no longer reflect business quality.
Logistics automation arm Shipway, acquired last year, recorded an annualised revenue run rate of around Rs 100 crore in Q3. Management plans to invest further in AI, product development and brand building, even if it means operating slightly below breakeven in the short term.
“We are making calibrated investments to support faster platform scaling and long-term value creation,” Makhija said.
With consolidated revenue up 70.6 per cent to Rs 152.7 crore for the nine months and profit pools expanding, Unicommerce is positioning AI not as a buzzword but as infrastructure.
Chief financial officer Anurag Mittal highlighted the operating leverage in the model. “Uniware operates with a gross margin profile of around 80 per cent. Incremental volumes have a direct positive effect on the bottom line,” he said.
As India’s e-commerce market matures, Unicommerce appears keen to move from being an enabler of online retail to becoming its intelligent backbone. If its AI-first ambition plays out as planned, the company may well be rewriting not just its codebase, but its growth curve too.
