Interpublic shares were down nearly 5% in Friday morning trading after reporting third quarter numbers that were below Wall Street’s expectations.
Organic growth was 2.4% and within the company’s target of 2% to 3% for the year but below the Street’s consensus estimate for the quarter of 3.2%. By comparison Publicis Groupe reported organic growth for Q3 of 3.5% and Omnicom reported 4.1% growth for the same period.
IPG also acknowledged that it would take an extremely strong fourth quarter to achieve its 2013 goal of a 0.5% improvement in operating profit margins.
Europe was part of the problem and so was the government sequestration and recent shut down, per company officials. CEO Michael Roth noted that IPG is probably “over-weighted” in the amount of work it does for the public sector (about 3%), which he said was probably a good thing in normal times but not when the government shuts down and fees stop flowing in to agencies.
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