MUMBAI: Global advertising and communications services group Havas has announced that revenues for the first half of 2005 fell to 700 million Euros, compared to 748 million Euros a year ago.
The net impact of scope of consolidation changes in the first half was a negative 50 million Euros due primarily to the disposal programme completed in 2004. The impact of exchange rate variations was a negative 14 million Euros mainly due to the dollar and the pound sterling.
Organic growth for the first half of the year was 2.2 per cent. Since the beginning of the year, the Group has experienced an improvement in business that generated organic growth of three per cent in the second quarter compared to 1.4 per cent growth in the first quarter. This improvement in organic growth was driven largely by good performance from the traditional advertising businesses and media expertise.
The UK showed an improvement at a four per cent organic growth in the second quarter compared to minus 3.3 per cent in the first quarter. Europe (excluding France and the UK) enjoyed organic growth of 14.1 per cent in the second quarter, giving an overall figure of 8.5 per cent growth for the first half. This performance was driven by the momentum of countries such as Spain, which benefited from an impressive performance by MPG, but also in Eastern European countries and Belgium, all of which experienced very high rates of organic growth, some in excess of 20 per cent.
Business in the Asia Pacific region was down by 5.9 per cent organic growth over the half year mainly as a result of the loss of Intel, a particularly important account in this region. The US was essentially stable over the half year with organic growth of 0.4 per cent. Not surprisingly, after first quarter organic growth at 1.8 per cent, the second quarter was slightly negative at minus - 0.9 per cent as the full impact of the losses of Intel and the Volkswagen media account in the US were felt.
New business for the second quarter was nearly 500 million Euros. In June 2005, Havas was ranked second in new business by Lehman Brothers. Key accounts won in the second quarter of 2005 included Diesel (France), RadioShack (US), Sony Electronics (US), News Corp (UK), Citroen (Russia), Turkiye Is bankasi (Turkey), Superdrug Stores (UK), CareFirst (USA) and Sogecable
(Spain). In the marketing services section it won the account of the 2007 Rugby World Cup (France)
At the 52nd International Advertising Festival in Cannes, earlier this year the Havas Group won awards in a number of categories. Euro RSCG Worldwide shared top slot as the most awarded network in the Cyber category, Euro RSCG 4D Sao Paolo was ranked as the third best interactive agency and Euro RSCG Fuel was awarded four Lions including one in the Titanium category for best integrated communication campaign.
