Omnicom Group Inc (OMC) — Q1 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning. Thank you for taking the time to listen to our First Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. On the call with me today is John Wren, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Phil Angelastro, our Chief Financial Officer. We hope everyone has had a chance to review our earnings release. We have posted to our website this morning's press release, along with a presentation covering the information that we will review this morning. 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 statements made today may constitute forward-looking statements and that these statements are 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 are going to begin this morning's call with an overview of our business from John Wren, then Phil Angelastro will review our financial results for the quarter. And then we will open the line for your questions.

Thank you, Joanne. Good morning. I hope everyone on the call is staying safe and healthy. I'm pleased to update you on how we continue to respond to and overcome the challenges of the pandemic. I'll first discuss our financial results. Then we'll cover our performance regarding our strategic priorities and operations and will end with our expectations for the remainder of 2021. For the first quarter, organic growth was negative 1.8%, which positions us for a very strong recovery for 2021. Going forward, we expect to see positive organic growth. Before I go into our results in more detail, as you have seen in our investor presentation slides, we have provided a further breakdown of our CRM discipline. The new disciplines we have disclosed are as follows... Since we launched Omni three years ago, we've continued to invest in its credentials as the industry's leading marketing orchestration and insights platform. Overall, our expectation is that operating margins for the full year of 2021 will exceed our 2020 operating margin, excluding repositioning costs incurred in Q2 of 2020. I will now turn the call over to Phil for a closer look at our results.

Thanks, John, and good morning. As John said, as we move through the first quarter of 2021, we continue to see an improvement in business conditions, particularly when compared to the peak of the pandemic during the second quarter of 2020. As we anticipated, we again saw sequential improvement in our organic revenue performance, a decrease of 1.8% in the first quarter of this year, which is a considerable improvement compared to the last three quarters of 2020... Our diluted EPS for the first quarter was $1.33, up $0.14 or 11.8% from the $1.19 per share when compared to our Q1 EPS for last year.

Thank you very much. So my first question really is on I guess the progression or the recovery. I mean if you can elaborate a little bit on sort of how you saw it in Q1, I'm not asking for like month-to-month, but just sort of any trends you saw. And if you saw a faster pace of improvement maybe than you expected anything surprised you? And then given I guess given what you know year-to-date, I'm curious if any more color about Q2, I know you said that there should be growth in the second quarter, but given the super easy comps I guess should we see outsized growth sort of at least mid-teens not higher in Q2. So any color you can provide would be very helpful? Thank you.

Phil, your two first.

Sure. As far as the months, Alexia, I'm not sure, yes, we focus on them and treat the trends that we might see as meaningful especially given COVID. But I think given the comps in Q1 going into the quarter, we expected the first quarter to be a challenge, but things broadly speaking have been improving throughout the end of the second half of 2020 and into 2021 pretty consistently... As far as Q2 growth, I think we certainly expect to do better than we normally would and there's a lot of positive trends.

And then, just a follow-up if I may. Thank you for giving us further detail on CRM, that's very helpful in the release and then in the commentary. I'm just curious, though given the outsized decline in Experiential even before the pandemic it looks like it was underperforming. I'm curious what your thinking is about that business long-term?

The business we have in Alexia is one we really believe in for the long term. Domestically, our clients typically host significant events, similar to the Olympics, and are well-established, meaning they are unlikely to decline once people are able to return to attending activities. A major aspect of that business, particularly when it recovers, is China, where we've already seen some progress. Thus, we have maintained our commitment to this business and retained all the key personnel.

The only thing I would add, Alexia, is that as we've gone through the pandemic, we've found out that there is quite a bit of strategic work that our businesses are doing for their clients, not just purely big event-driven.

Yes, good morning, John. Good morning, Phil. Thanks very much for the better disclosure and the recasting of CRM from Q4 to continuing the steam of improved disclosure. Could we get other media organic for Q1 or indication of what media did in Q1 and approximately how much is media in total revenue? ... Thank you very much.

So just to start on the media point, yes, we don't break out specifically. And frankly when you go through the practice areas and the disciplines that we report, the vast majority of those disciplines actually have media in their numbers. So we don't carve it out and look at it that way... We're going to continue to invest where we believe the best organic growth opportunities are.

Thanks. One for John, one for Phil. John, I know we're still early in our recovery... So, thanks.

Sure. I’m really confident that because of changes, minor strategic which shifts in our portfolio, doubling down and focused on the area of growth that emerging from COVID, we will see when we compare to the past couple of years continued growth at a faster pace... Overall, I feel very, very confident about the near term and the near longer term us getting back to better growth rates.

On the field marketing front, I think the business, our business is largely pan-European... But we do expect them to get back into growth mode.

Thanks. Phil, I wanted to ask about your comments on M&A. It seems you mentioned wanting to be more aggressive in certain areas, so I'm curious if there are larger acquisition opportunities available.

Yes. I think your view of that is correct... we're going to pursue acquisition opportunities in a variety of sizes and to the extent that we can do more rather than less that's certainly our intention.

I'm happy today with our M&A team and the efforts that they're going through... We're not planning to get silly and try to explain to you as strategic.

I just wanted to ask a question, could you just explain a little bit more about what that business entails... Thanks.

So, on - in CRM Commerce and Consulting, our Brand Consulting businesses are in there... But we think the commerce and consulting discipline are businesses that we have high expectations for in terms of that future growth profiles.

I think we're running out of time. Thank you all for taking the time to join us on the call today.