STW Group reports 10.9% revenue growth
STW Group, one of Australia’s largest marketing groups, has reported a 10.9 per cent uplift in revenue for the last financial year.
The company, which runs agency brands including Ikon Communications, JWT, DT and Ogilvy, saw revenue grow from $322.7m to $357.8m between December 2011 and 2012.
EBITDA grew by 10%, while underlying net profit after tax was up 6.5%.
CEO Michael Connaghan said that the STW Group’s diversification strategy, with interests spread across a range of marketing sectors, was helping the company do well despite tough economic conditions.
STW Group’s full-year financial data:
Source: STW Group; full-year ending December 31 2012
Connaghan said in a statement:
“Our full year trading results are strong in the face of continued tough economic conditions. We have continued revenue and profit growth momentum in the second half of the year, underpinned by organic market share gains.
We have also made significant progress in accelerating our growth strategy for the future.”
“Importantly, STW’s continued resilient and consistent growth performance in a fast evolving industry and uncertain, challenging economic conditions highlights the benefits of the diversification that underpins our business model.”
“We operate and lead across all the major growth sectors of our industry, have multiple offerings within each sector, have a wide spread of client engagements with no material reliance on any individual revenue source, diversified early into what is today the market leading, most multi‐faceted digital offering in our industry in Asia Pacific, and now‐ increasingly‐ have diversified our geographic footprint into higher growth new markets,” Mr Connaghan said.
“As advised to the market previously, STW has a three pillared strategic growth focus; to drive growth out of our leadership positions in Australia and New Zealand; to continue to grow and dominate in digital; and to selectively and carefully export our footprint into new markets in Asia. During the second half of 2012, we have continued to make excellent progress on these strategic goals.”
“This strategy, while we continue to fine‐tune and evolve its implementation, is clearly working and we are confident of our ability to accelerate our industry leading position.”
“We have made strong progress in growing market share within Australia and New Zealand, and strengthening and further diversifying our portfolios with investments in quality businesses.
It’s heartening that the very best independent businesses in our industry continue to choose STW Group as the partner of choice.”
“In the critical Shopper Marketing sector, we finalised our investment in Markitforce, a company specialising in POS management, warehousing and distribution, consolidating our growing presence in the fast‐growing Field Marketing and Path to Purchase capabilities. We also completed, as announced at the Half Year, the acquisition of Buchanan Group, a market leader in branded advertising with offices in Australia, Kuala Lumpur, London and Canada, and of Yellow Edge, a training and facilitation agency which operates out of the ACT, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and New Zealand. During the year, Cannings Communications invested in public and investor relations firm, Purple Communications, based in Perth, a transaction that created a national financial PR network. We also completed an investment in market leading experiential agency, Maverick.
“As reported at the Half Year, we have continued to invest in new revenue streams and to incubate new business start‐ups, with four new entities commencing operations during the year.
Our specialist digital businesses continue to lead and win. Our large traditional businesses in advertising and media have evolved ahead of the structural shift and are ideally positioned for further market share gains.”
“Specifically, Ogilvy, JWT and The Brand Agency all made significant, positive progress in 2012.
Our digital portfolio, led by DT (part of Ogilvy) and The White Agency, continued significant growth momentum, and our media agencies, including Mindshare, Maxus, Ikon and new startup Bohemia all had outstanding years.
That’s a strong performance. Most groups would be very happy with a 22% margin.
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