Earnings Labs

Omnicom Group Inc. (OMC)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 9, 2016

$76.19

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Omnicom Fourth Quarter 2015 Earnings Release Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to introduce you to your host for today's call, Vice President of Investor Relations, Shub Mukherjee. Please go ahead.

Shub Mukherjee - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Good morning. Thank you for taking the time to listen to our fourth quarter 2015 earnings call. On the call with me today is John Wren, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Phil Angelastro, Chief Financial Officer. We hope everyone has had a chance to review our earnings release. We've posted on our website at www.omnicomgroup.com this morning's press release along with the presentation which covers the information that we will review. This call is also being simulcast and will be archived on our website. Before we start, I've been asked to remind everyone to read the forward-looking statements and other information that we have included at the end of our investor presentation. And to point out that certain of the statements made today may constitute forward-looking statements and that these statements are our present expectations, and that actual events or results may differ materially. I would also like to remind you that during the course of the call, we will discuss some non-GAAP measures in talking about Omnicom's performance. You can find a reconciliation of those measures to the nearest comparable GAAP measures in the presentation materials. We're going to begin this morning's call with an overview of our business from John Wren. Then Phil Angelastro will review our financial results. And then we will open up the line for your questions. John D. Wren - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Shub. Good morning. I'm pleased to speak to you about our fourth quarter and the full year 2015 business results. As you will hear this morning, it was an excellent quarter for Omnicom. We recruited some of the best talent in our industry, continued to win significant new business, and made a couple of important agency acquisitions. It was a terrific way to end the…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of Peter Stabler from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Peter C. Stabler - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead

Good morning, and thanks for the questions. Two, if I could. First of all, John, I was wondering if you look at your businesses, your segments outside of traditional advertising, and you did call out the difficult comps, but on a full year basis if you look at those segments, organic growth was about, according to our math, 1.2% for the year. So just wondering outside of comps whether there's any sort of mix shift happening within the business. And as you look forward to fiscal 2016, would you expect a more balanced performance across the operating segments? And then a quick one for Phil: could you let us know what Accuen's contribution in the quarter was? Thanks so much. John D. Wren - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Peter. Below the line, these specialty service businesses that you're referring to are the most numerous within the portfolio of Omnicom. We're constantly looking at that portfolio to find out, gee, are they growing and are they growing in a particular market at a rate that we're satisfied with. And it's a constant evaluation. It's a constant review done by the people here at Omnicom corporate. It's also done by the people at DAS. And unlike most of the advertising and media assignments we have, they tend to be projects. They tend to be projects with existing clients who repeat a certain amount of spending every single year, but it's not as precise and it's not as predictable. So this year, we were particularly happy with our healthcare companies' growth that they achieved, but also the businesses that they've won, well, particularly critical in a very positive way of some of our PR operations. Some have advanced a lot further than others, and we've been spending the last several months getting everybody up to par. There's no easy answer. It's a constant battle. But I'd say on balance today, we're pretty comfortable with the portfolio in which we're going into next year with or into this year with. Philip J. Angelastro - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: And just add to that, your second question, Peter, the contribution in terms of growth from Accuen this quarter was about $45 million.

Peter C. Stabler - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead

Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Alexia Quadrani from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

David Karnovsky - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Alexia Quadrani from JPMorgan. Please go ahead

Hi. Good morning, guys. David Karnovsky on for Alexia. Can you provide a bit more color on how clients are looking at spending for this year and maybe how that translates into organic growth? We've heard good growth domestically in Q4 has continued into Q1 but don't really have a lot of insight yet into full-year spending plans. And then just how much, if at all, do you think the weak financial markets might influence those spending decisions? John D. Wren - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, Phil and I can share this. The world is, as it seems to be reported every single day, the U.S. continues to be strong and the markets that we reported growth are okay, but there are a lot of transition spots and weaker spots around the world. China is in a transition, although its business for us has been good. Brazil, we're expecting weakness and we're expecting the weakness to continue throughout 2016, even despite the Summer Olympics. So when we take a look at organic growth based upon what we've seen, we think 2016 can be very similar to what we experienced in 2015. And if we had to throw a number at it, we'd say it's 3% to 3.5% based upon what we know now. Philip J. Angelastro - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. I think our expectations heading into the year are somewhat similar. We're certainly not sitting here today as very early in the year, very early in February committing to or I guess implying that the overall growth for 2015 will be the same. I think our expectations are the same sitting here in February of 3% to 3.5% organic. I think for us, we haven't seen a correlation between the discussions our agencies have been having with their clients with respect to what our clients' goals and strategies are in 2016 and what their spending might be at correlation to what's going on in the financial markets. I think the themes John touched on more broadly as far as the global economic situation and some pockets of uncertainty, those we expect will correlate a little more directly with what our clients ultimately decide to do. From a spending perspective, less so what's going on specifically in the financial markets over the last month or so. And I think time will tell whether the current volatility is a forecast of something that's going to impact the economy more broadly.

David Karnovsky - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Alexia Quadrani from JPMorgan. Please go ahead

Okay. Great. And then can you provide an update on capital returns? I think some investors are maybe surprised at the lack of a dividend increase this past week. Anything we should read into that? And then maybe just your updated thoughts on priority for dividend buyback in general? Thanks. John D. Wren - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Phil, do you want to take it? Philip J. Angelastro - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. Sure. I think from our perspective, we don't expect any change in our capital allocation strategy. I think the dividend as we've said before is a board matter. It's certainly on the board's agenda. I think our expectation is they'll deal with it sometime in the near future at one of the next board meetings, in that their agenda has been a little crowded with plenty of things as it always is, but we expect they'll get back to that evaluation and consideration as it relates specifically to the dividend. As far as the rest of our strategy, I think our perspective is going into 2016 more of the same. To the extent we can find acquisitions that fit strategically, culturally and pricing makes sense, we're going to continue to look to do more acquisitions rather than less. We expect that activity will pick up. We closed the Grupo ABC deal in the first quarter of 2016. And we've got a pipeline that we continue to pursue. To the extent deals happen, we'll have less free cash to use to buy back shares. To the extent the deals don't happen, we'll continue to deploy the cash through share buybacks as we have pretty consistently.

David Karnovsky - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Alexia Quadrani from JPMorgan. Please go ahead

Okay. Great. Thanks

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Julien Roch from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Julien Roch - Barclays Capital Securities Ltd.

Analyst · Julien Roch from Barclays. Please go ahead

Yes. Hi, there. Thank you for taking the questions. The first one is on the menu reviews from last year, now that we've gone through all of them. John, maybe an assessment of the overall impact of the industry, was it led by pricing, and therefore, will it have a deflationary impact on overall industry growth in 2016? Or was it done on other consideration and have little impact? That's the first question. The second one is again on the review but on your remark at the beginning of the call that you said that you thought that we potentially might see a similar level, which I guess the market will take negatively if we start to have massive review every year. So if you could give us some idea why you're thinking that that's going to be the case. These are my two questions. Thank you. John D. Wren - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay, Julien. Our experience was that it's a new environment and with digital being a very much important component of what happens from a media perspective, and also the utilization of data and analytics of making decisions because of all the channels that are out there, so I'd say on balance, in the reviews we've participated in, pricing was not primary. It was really those capabilities, and whether or not the service provider, in this case us, was the correct partner moving into this next period which is very, very – it's interesting, it's exciting, it's changing very rapidly. And if you don't have the right capabilities, it's very difficult to catch up in a short period of time. So that's what our clients, I believe, were looking at. I also believe that there are probably some, especially on our wins who actually…

Julien Roch - Barclays Capital Securities Ltd.

Analyst · Julien Roch from Barclays. Please go ahead

Okay. Very clear. And then maybe a very quick one. Impact of M&A in 2016 on revenue based on the current deal you have closed? Philip J. Angelastro - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: I think probably right now, we're looking at about $100 million of net acquisition growth, or acquisition growth net of dispositions based on everything we've completed to date. We're going to continue to look to find and close more deals as I said before. And we're always constantly reevaluating our portfolio and making sure we've got the right business mix and the right strategic assets. And if we don't, we're going to look to prune the portfolio of businesses that either aren't on strategy or are not performing to the point where we think that's appropriate to make a disposition.

Julien Roch - Barclays Capital Securities Ltd.

Analyst · Julien Roch from Barclays. Please go ahead

Okay. Great. Very clear. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line Craig Huber from Huber Research. Please go ahead.

Craig Anthony Huber - Huber Research Partners LLC

Analyst · Huber Research. Please go ahead

Yes. Good morning. It's a lot of concern out there in recent quarters from investors that guys, like Google and Facebook, take much of your business, media side in particular. Could you just comment on that? And this concern seems to come and go over the years, but what's your latest thoughts on that? Why is it not a concern I assume you'll say? John D. Wren - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, our relationships with both of those companies are very strong and they've only improved during 2015. We view them really as a partner, a neutral partner maybe, but they've assisted us in many things. They're not looking to provide many of the services that we provide our clients and we learned to work very well with them in most instances. I think clients are looking to us to be the neutral partner in evaluating whether or not we use the media that you'd find at Google versus the approach that you'd take at Facebook, and I think that's really – it's been a question in the past as to whether they were going to be our competitors or going to be an effective media way for us to reach consumers. And I think right today, I'd say it's settling in on them being a partner and clients increasingly depending upon us to do their planning and to do their buying off of their – whatever platforms are available. Philip J. Angelastro - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. We certainly see our clients looking to us to help them make the evaluation across the various media options that they have. Google and Facebook are certainly huge players in the digital space, so they're part of any and every evaluation that we do on behalf of our clients. But I don't think our clients have reached a comfort level or reach a comfort level where they're just willing to turn over a big part of their budget to Google and Facebook directly and feel comfortable that it's going to fit into their overall strategy in a consistent way. John D. Wren - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: In recent conversations I've had with one of the two, but it's true both of them, is an early tell I think is to watch their employment numbers. How many people are Google hiring? How many people are Facebook hiring? And what type of people are they hiring? I think in earlier years, there was confusion as to whether they wanted to hire marketers or engineers. I have a very strong impression that as they look at their businesses, they're hiring more and more engineers every day than they are marketers who could potentially compete with us in any way.

Craig Anthony Huber - Huber Research Partners LLC

Analyst · Huber Research. Please go ahead

Two more quick questions, please. For the fourth quarter, what was your net new business wins? Your future (51:27) goal is usually about $1 billion there. And then also, could you speak quickly about China? Isn't it about 2% of your revenues, I believe. And you said it was up 10%-plus. What's your outlook for growth in that market? It comes up a lot with investors. Thank you. Philip J. Angelastro - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, I'll take the new business one. So the overall number was probably just shy of $2 billion, but that included a large number on the P&G front. So I think the number from our perspective, although we don't place a great deal of weight on a billings number, a new business billings number, was probably in the neighborhood of what we would typically expect our businesses deliver on a typical quarter. John D. Wren - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And with respect to China, the Chinese market is absolutely changing, but it's still growing at a really decent pace. And our market share in China, we have a lot of headroom. We have a lot of opportunities to win new business, both other multinational companies doing business in China, Chinese multinational companies which are looking to develop their markets in China and they then go outside of China, and in the major markets, the more successful domestic companies. So it's interesting conversation when we discuss what's happening with China and what's the impact of growing 7% in a year versus 5.6% a year. But we still have a lot of work and a lot of opportunity just in gaining market share in that market. Philip J. Angelastro - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah, I think overall, given what's going on comes down to your individual client base. Our clients, the majority of our clients, certainly in our agencies in China, are large multinationals who are trying to grow their business in that market. And we think they tend to be a little bit more stable, and that's just a little bit of a difference in terms of the mix of our business versus some others. And I think overall, it's probably not the worst time to be under-indexed in the Chinese market. Our focus has always been on the quality of the agencies that we have in that marketplace, and agencies that can meet the requirements of our clients in a satisfactory way and it hasn't necessarily been on quantity.

Craig Anthony Huber - Huber Research Partners LLC

Analyst · Huber Research. Please go ahead

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Tim Nollen from Macquarie. Please go ahead. Tim Nollen - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc.: Hi. Thanks. And I'm pleasantly surprised my question has lasted this long. I wanted to ask about margin expansion in 2016. Very pleased to hear, John, you were talking about 30 basis points of upside. I would assume your foreign exchange numbers of minus 2% negative impact are included in that. I just wonder if you could put a little bit more color onto what goes into the thinking there as you've been basically flat for about four years now. I know you've been investing in Annalect and so on and it's clearly been generating some returns for example with the P&G win, but what other color could you give on the margin expansion outlook regarding revenues, and also regarding costs? Thanks. John D. Wren - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: First of all, I think the 13.7% based upon what I know today is inclusive of the impact of foreign exchange as we know it today. If we repeated – if we had another $1 billion impact because central banks went crazy, we've talked to you about it during the year, but based upon everything we know and everything that we've told you this morning is that those are our expectations. The reason for it is – Phil can chime in -- the revenue growth has been solid and has continued to be solid, but we've been able to take a lot of actions in a lot of programs which take a long time to get started, but once started, we are starting to realize the benefits of the things like real estate. I don't know what else you want to add, Phil. Philip J. Angelastro…

Operator

Operator

Okay. That question comes from the line of Dan Salmon from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Peter Daniel Salmon - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Hi. Good morning, everyone. I'll keep it to one as I know the opening bell is ringing here. John, as you start the third media-buying agency, how are you doing it differently than when if you might have done that say 10 years ago? I'm sure there's lots of industry slang we could use like digital native and things like that, but I'm thinking a little bit more tactically, smaller office footprint, different board chart. But any insights you can offer on how it will be differentiated? I'd appreciate. John D. Wren - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. First, it will be different than if I was doing this in 1996. We have quite a number of hubs out there where we have a lot of talented people that that's what we're going to build around. There are key very important markets where there'll be standalone companies under this new brand, but there will be many other markets that the service level required by the particular client is not the same. And so that becomes an important factor. Plus, what's different today is our platforms for data and analytics are much easier to leverage over geographies than they were in the past. So that's what we'll be doing. And we'll be leveraging this next network based upon those key markets, and the various capabilities that are required to fully service clients in those markets. So I'd say unlike in OMD you'd find more hubs, other than some of our competitors, you wouldn't have an office say in every single country because we would be able to fulfill our clients' requirements through different means.

Peter Daniel Salmon - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Great. Thank you. John D. Wren - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: You're welcome John D. Wren - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, thanks everybody for... Philip J. Angelastro - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah, thanks for taking the time to join the call. We know it's a busy earnings morning.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude your conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Executive Teleconference. You may now disconnect.