Stagwell Inc. (NASDAQ: STGW) has reported a robust start to 2024, with first-quarter revenues climbing to $670 million, representing an 8% year-over-year (YoY) increase. The company's adjusted EBITDA also saw a significant rise, reaching $90 million, up 25% from the previous year.
The growth was attributed to a strong performance in media advocacy businesses and an expanding global footprint, with notable revenue momentum in the United States and Europe, particularly a 14% growth in the EMEA region. Stagwell continues to invest in data, media, and AI capabilities, aiming to double its business outside of North America.
Key Takeaways
- Stagwell Inc. reported a revenue of $670 million in Q1 2024, an 8% increase YoY.
- Adjusted EBITDA grew by 25% YoY to $90 million.
- The company's top 100 customers, representing 50% of net revenue, grew by 25%.
- Revenue growth was driven by strong performance in media advocacy businesses and improving market conditions.
- Stagwell is focusing on expanding its global presence, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, and investing in AI technology.
Company Outlook
- Stagwell reaffirmed its full-year 2024 guidance, expecting organic net revenue growth of 5-7% and adjusted EBITDA of $400-450 million.
- The company anticipates adjusted earnings per share between $0.75 and $0.88.
- Stagwell aims for a 10% YoY revenue growth and sees 2022 and 2023 as transition years.
- The company plans to reduce its debt to the mid-2s leverage ratio by the end of 2024 through stronger cash flows.
Bearish Highlights
- The Consumer Insights and Strategy capability reported a 7% decline YoY, mainly due to reduced spending from entertainment sector customers.
Bullish Highlights
- Revenue increased in four out of five principal capabilities, with Performance Media & Data and Creativity & Communications leading the growth.
- The company saw a return to growth in the United States with a 9% YoY increase and strong revenue momentum in Europe.
- Stagwell's international businesses, especially in the United Kingdom, experienced a robust 7% revenue growth.
Misses
- Despite overall growth, the company experienced a slower recovery in certain sectors and faces increasing competition in the tech industry.
Q&A Highlights
- CEO Mark Penn emphasized the company's focus on developing AI front ends and consumer interactions for large tech companies.
- Stagwell is working on AI projects with 300-400 employees, focusing on text summarization, text-to-video capabilities, and enhancing customer interactions.
- The company expects AI to significantly impact website design and brand interaction.
Stagwell Inc.'s first-quarter performance indicates a positive trajectory for the company, with significant revenue growth and strategic investments in AI and global expansion. The company's focus on its top customers and media advocacy businesses has paid off, resulting in substantial growth in revenue and adjusted EBITDA. While there are challenges ahead, including slower recovery in some sectors and tech industry competition, Stagwell's reaffirmed guidance and strategic focus on AI and international markets suggest confidence in its future growth and profitability.
InvestingPro Insights
Stagwell Inc. (ticker: STGW) has displayed a strong performance in the first quarter of 2024, with its revenue and adjusted EBITDA numbers impressing investors and market analysts alike. To provide a deeper understanding of the company's financial health and stock performance, here are some insights based on real-time data from InvestingPro:
InvestingPro Data:
- The company's market capitalization stands at $1.61 billion, reflecting investor confidence in its business model and growth prospects.
- Stagwell's P/E Ratio is notably high at 6790, which may indicate investor expectations of future earnings growth or a premium for the company's potential.
- Over the last six months, STGW has seen a significant price total return of 54.94%, showcasing strong market performance and investor optimism.
InvestingPro Tips:
- Management's aggressive share buyback program is a positive signal that could indicate a belief in the company's undervalued stock or a desire to increase earnings per share.
- The company has been experiencing a high shareholder yield, which could be attractive to investors looking for returns in the form of buybacks or potential dividends.
Stagwell's commitment to expanding its global footprint and investing in data, media, and AI capabilities is reflected in its recent financial results and stock performance. The company's aggressive share repurchase strategy and high shareholder yield are noteworthy, and these factors, combined with the expectation of net income growth this year, paint a promising picture for investors.
For those interested in a more detailed analysis, there are additional InvestingPro Tips available at https://www.investing.com/pro/STGW. By using the promo code PRONEWS24, readers can get an extra 10% off a yearly or biyearly Pro and Pro+ subscription, unlocking a wealth of expert financial insights. There are a total of 14 InvestingPro Tips listed for STGW, each providing valuable guidance for investors considering this stock.
Full transcript - MDC Partners Inc (NASDAQ:STGW) Q1 2024:
Ben Allanson: Good morning from Stagwell’s office in Washington D.C. and welcome to Stagwell Inc.’s Earnings Webcast for the First Quarter of 2024. My name is Ben Allanson, I lead the Investor Relations function here at Stagwell. With me today are Mark Penn, Stagwell’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Frank Lanuto, the Chief Financial Officer. Mark will provide a business update and Frank will share our financial review. After the prepared remarks, we will open the floor for Q&A. You are welcome to submit questions through the chat function. Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that the following remarks include forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial data. Forward-looking statements about the company, including those related to earnings guidance are subject to uncertainties and risk factors addressed in our earnings release, slide presentation, and the company’s SEC filings. Please refer to our website, stagwellglobal.com/investors, for an investor presentation and additional resources. This morning’s press release and slide deck provide definitions, explanations, and reconciliations of non-GAAP financial data. And with that, I’d like to turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Mark Penn.
Mark Penn: Thank you, Ben, and thank you to everyone for joining us for our first quarter earnings call. On our Q4 call in February, I talked about our excitement and confidence in 2024, highlighting that we expect to return to growth in the first half of this year. Several factors give us confidence, including the abatement of industry headwinds, such as tech restructuring activities, strong business trends, a record-breaking political cycle, and our continued investments in digital innovation beginning to contribute to growth. Today, I'm pleased to share that these trends are beginning to play out exactly as we anticipated. Stagwell delivered $670 million of revenue in the first quarter. These figures represent an encouraging growth in revenue of 8%. Additionally, we continue to post record net new business figures for both the first quarter and last 12 months. Importantly, we delivered these growth figures while effectively managing our costs. Actions we took in 2023, helped us grow our adjusted EBITDA by 25% year-over-year to $90 million. These results are highly encouraging and give us the confidence to reiterate our full year guidance today. We also drove confidence in gathering tailwinds. Advertising is once again growing. Our reputation is expanding and we are participating in record new business pitches. AI will within the year create vast digital transformation opportunities. International work is proving a fertile area for expansion and the advocacy season promises to be historic. This quarter's performance was driven by two double-digit growing capabilities. Performance Media & Data grew 13% in revenue and 12% in net revenue. Advocacy showed 80% revenue growth to 54% net revenue increase. Digital Transformation is a double-digit growing gap, return to revenue growth, but it's still building up their expanded pipeline as tech companies are beginning to come back online and research is still overcoming the impact of last year's [Indiscernible]. Continuing the trend from last year, we saw outsized year-over-year growth in our relationships with our largest, most impactful customers. In the first quarter, our top 100 customers now representing 50% of our total net revenue, grew 25%. Geographically, we saw a return to growth in the United States, our largest market, with total revenue growth of 9% year-over-year. Our international businesses also continued their momentum with revenue growth of 7% in the quarter. Europe has been a major area of focus for us recently, and we opened our new regional headquarters in London just a few weeks ago. This focus is translating into strong revenue momentum with the EMEA region growing 14% year-over-year. Turning to cost and profitability, as I mentioned previously, we delivered $90 million of adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter, 25% higher than the first quarter of last year, and representing a 17% margin, an improvement of 320 basis points year-over-year. This impressive figure is a direct consequence of the proactive steps we took last year to manage our costs. In 2023, we took staffing actions that resulted in $98 million of annualized savings. As a result, our labor costs are 2% lower in the first quarter of 2024, helping to deliver a staffing-to-net-revenue ratio of 64.3%, an improvement of 270 basis points over the first quarter of last year. Also driving this margin improvement is a laser focus on managing our G&A expenses. Despite our growing net revenue in the quarter, our total G&A expenses were almost exactly the same as in the same period last year. We're installing modern systems for back office, utilizing offshoring and adding AI capabilities to streamline operations. We've seen particularly strong growth in adjusted EBITDA from our performance, media and data capability growing 212%, and creativity in communications growing 42%, a testament to the focus that all of Stagwell is placing on controlling our costs. Net new business continues to break company records, giving us increased confidence in our full-year guidance. In the quarter, we delivered $66 million of net new business, a record for the first quarter for Stagwell. This brings our last 12-month net new business figure to $284 million, also a company record. Quarter after quarter, we've increased the LCM net new business figure to $212 million a year ago. Importantly, the size of our wins has grown impressively. We continue to be invited to larger global pitches. In the first quarter, the average win size increased 13% year-over-year. These net new business numbers were driven by some important wins, including Fogo de Chao, the Star Tribune, Basel and Wilson, as well as expansions with Target (NYSE:TGT) and L'Oreal. In Q1, Stagwell agencies captured over 70 of the top awards across major industry shows, including an array of agency of the year designations. Maybe 1% to 2% of the market, we are far exceeding that in terms of industry recognition. These include four agencies featuring on the NHA list, including Code and Theory being recognized as business transformation agency of the year, Yale winning US advertising agency of the year by campaign, Assembly being named media agency of the year and Exponent (NASDAQ:EXPO) PR, a pecan shop within Golden Thoil, took home the disruptive agency of the year crown. Our M&A program was active. We might not have gotten every deal we sought, but the net revenue and adjusted EBITDA from companies acquired in the fourth and first quarters exceeded the net revenue and adjusted EBITDA lost from consensual life debt disposition. We achieved this despite the initial outlay in acquisitions being only about 15% of the disposition's gross proceeds. This is concrete evidence that our M&A machine can be a major driver of value for investors moving forward. As I've discussed previously, we're exploring a further non-core disposition. Hope to have more color on that later in the year. In the first months of 2024, we made strong progress in expanding our global presence through acquisitions. We had a UK digital collective sidekick and our first French-created agency was Next Partners. Just last month, shortly after the end of the first quarter, we announced the acquisition of Pros, a digital-focused brand and marketing consultancy in Brazil, which significantly expands our Latin American presence. We're looking to become more competitive internationally by doubling our business outside of North America, which is 40% of net revenues over the coming years. Our current focus is in Western Europe, the Middle East. This quarter, we took steps to sharpen our capabilities in data, media and AI through a combination of internal initiatives and external partnerships. In the first quarter, we maintained strong investment of $14 million into the Stagwell Marketing Cloud, our AI-enabled suite of products for modern marketers. We're now working to bring our research products under the Harris Quest brand to market and expect to see sales growth in the back half of the year. SMC orchestrated its first software launch with Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Cloud as we deepened the partnership on GenAI announced last year. At Google Cloud Next, we launched a data cleanroom solution on Google’s platform that will provide our clients with a private and secure space to mix and match their first-party data with Stagwell's vast row of payment solutions. We're also focused on growing AI leadership across our agencies. One focus will be scaled on best-in-class use cases such as GALE's Enterprise Alchemy Ai platform announced this quarter, which reduces the time spent on critical tasks across all disciplines in the agency of GALE's almost 800 people work smarter, better and faster. Left Field Labs is incubating customer -- solutions to elevate their customer experience and our largest performance media agency assembly, except to announce a new AI solution player this month. We are making significant progress on our media unit on building the last mile of the media chain from planning, targeting and audience creation down to placement and media supply. On our last call, I announced new building at Stagwell IT solution. Today, we are partnering with Nexxen, a global unified advertising technology platform. We'll have more to share on that partnership in the coming weeks as we grow out our new offerings in data and media. In other parts of our business, we're preparing for Sports Beach this June at the Cannes Lions Festival, where we'll return for a second year with more brand sponsors and more athletes, including Joe Burrow, JuJu Watkins, Mikaela Shiffrin. Sport Beach continues to benefit the company increased our exposure worldwide and leading to new business opportunities. Finally, we're excited later this month to host our definitive future of new summit and partnership with the top publishers across the US, including Axios, Business Insider, New York Times, POLITICO, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Trade Desk (NASDAQ:TTD), and Ad Fontes Media. Recognize that fears around brand safety have made advertisers more cautious about advertising across business opinion sites, we released a first of its kind study for advertisers to better understand where an candidate should advertise across business industry. It's been a busy quarter. We are never standing still. We are marching forward to achieve our goal of offering everything from global full-service platform self service. Wherever you look, Stagwell is evolving and bringing our partners along with us to the cutting edge of marketing services. We're on the forefront of AI, a global performance market, culturally relevant events of advancing online advocacy campaigns of the move to more social media and content and the combination once again of media and entertainment. These efforts and solid quarter of revenue growth gives us confidence about the year ahead. Now, I will hand things over to Frank Lanuto, our Chief Financial Officer, to walk you through some of our financial results in more detail. Frank?
Frank Lanuto: Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our first quarter results. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question after the prepared remarks conclude, please feel free to submit them through the chat function. The company returned to revenue growth during Q1 driven by strong performance in our media advocacy businesses, improving market conditions in the US and continued momentum in the international markets in which we operate. For the quarter, we reported revenue of $670 million, an increase of 8% as compared to the same period in the prior year. Net revenue, excluding pass-through costs, increased 2% for the same period to $532 million. Building on the trend from 2023, our largest customers continue to invest in their relationship with our agencies. In the first quarter of 2024, our top 100 customers now representing 50% of our consolidated net revenue grew 25% versus the prior period, our largest improvement in the last five quarters. The number of relationships also expanded, but the number of customers in our Top100 being serviced by more than one of our agencies, increasing 12% year-over-year, providing further evidence that our strategy of delivering integrated services is working. Another positive signal was the occurrence of an inflection plan where period-over-period revenues with existing customers from growing relationships exceeded those from declining relationships. Our net new business performance for the quarter represented the fifth consecutive quarter of increasing trailing 12-month performance and set another high [indiscernible] of $284 million. We are tangibly benefiting from being invited to participate in larger global fishes as the average size of our wins increased 13% year-over-year. The combined impact of net new business and improving performance of existing clients leads us to reaffirm our guidance for the year. Turning to revenue by capability. The first quarter saw revenue growth in four of our five principal capabilities. Performance Media & Data delivered $77 million in revenue, an increase of 13% over the prior year period. This performance was driven by a combination of new business wins and growth from existing customers. Particular areas of strength included transportation and logic, consumer products and the financial services sectors. Creativity & Communications delivered $292 million of revenue, an increase of 11% over the prior period. We had strong growth from a number of consumer products customers as well as clients in technology, media and communication sectors, which grew about 2% over the prior period. Digital transformation returned to growth in the first quarter with revenue increasing to $196 million, a 6% improvement over the prior period, driven by strong performance in food and beverage, efficacy and technology-based clients, which grew 20% period-over-period. This growth was partially offset by softness in financials as we anniversared the regional [indiscernible] prices for early 2023. Consumer insights and strategy reported $46 million of revenue, a decline of 7% year-over-year. This is largely a consequence of customers within the entertainment sector, increasing spending more slowly subsequent to Hollywood actors and writer strike late last year. Stagwell Marketing Cloud totaled $60 million in revenue, an increase of 7% year-over-year. The suite assortment products continues to be an investment priority for us. In the first quarter, we maintained our investments spending of approximately $14 million into the cloud, as we continue to build an industry-leading suite of tech products for a modern marketing. Finally, advocacy is a significant contributor to the business mix in election years, as we benefit from increased political fund raising and the spending running up to the elections in November. In the first quarter, efficacy revenue grew $65 million, an increase of 80% over the prior period. Now turning to geographical breakdown. We saw continued strong revenue growth in our international businesses of 7%. This was led by exceptionally strong growth of 14% in the United Kingdom. In the US, our largest market, revenue increased 9% over the prior year. Turning to costs. Management took decisive actions in 2023 to rightsize our cost structure to better align with trailing revenue. The results of these actions can clearly be seen in our first quarter results. In the first quarter, the company delivered $90 million in adjusted EBITDA, an increase of 25% over the prior period, and it also increased the related margin to 73% [ph], an improvement of nearly 320 basis points over the prior quarter. Staffing is our largest cost. And in 2023, we took actions that reduced annualized salaries and headcount by $198 million and 4%, respectively. We benefited from the full effect of these successive actions during Q1, as labor costs were lower by more than 2% or $7 million, and the staffing cost to net revenue ratio was lower to 64.3%, an improvement of 270 basis points versus the prior year and the lowest first quarter ratio since our merger. In addition to staffing, we also focus on efficiently managing our G&A costs. For our first quarter, our G&A expenses were just under $100 million, in line with the same period in 2023. This results in G&A as a percentage of net revenue ratio of 18.8%, an improvement of nearly 30 basis points versus the prior period. Our G&A costs, all inclusive of certain unbillable expenses. These costs tend to grow in line with our net revenues for both the first quarters of 2023 and 2024, our unbillable customer expenses as a percentage of net revenue remained stable at 6%. Adjusted G&A expenses to account for these unbillables, our G&A actually decreased by slightly more than $1 million year-over-year, representing a 2% decline excluding unbillables. The cumulative impact of our revenue growth and cost actions contributed to the strong adjusted EBITDA performance during the quarter and allow us to maintain our strong investment in the Stagwell Marketing Cloud. Excluding the $14 million of cloud investment in Q1, our first quarter adjusted EBITDA margin would have been approximately 19.9%. Now moving to the balance sheet. We continue to make efficient allocation of capital to maintain a strong financial position. Starting with deferred acquisition consideration, we reduced obligations of approximately $65 million from the end of the first quarter last year to $101 million at the end of the first quarter in 2024. We remain on track to reduce our guide obligations to approximately $40 million by the end of the year. We also acquired 4 million shares during the quarter, at an average price of $6.11 per share for approximately $25 million. Our existing buyback authorization, as of quarter end, that has $114 million in remaining availability. CapEx to capitalized software for the quarter was $14 million, broadly in line with our targets. As a result, we ended the quarter with cash of $130 million and drawings under our revolver of $182 million. Our leverage ratio, at quarter end, was three times. And finally, as highlighted by Mark in his remarks, we are reaffirming our full year 2024 guidance as follows. Organic net revenue growth is expected to be between 5% to 7%. Organic net revenue, excluding Advocacy growth is expected to be 4% to 5%. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $400 million to $450 million. We expect to deliver approximately 50% free cash flow conversion and adjusted earnings per share, is expected to be between $0.75 and $0.88. That concludes our prepared remarks this morning. I will now turn the call back over to Ben Allanson to open the Q&A portion of the call.
A - Ben Allanson: Thank you, Frank. Just a reminder, if you have any questions, please submit them via the chat buttion on the top of the screen. We will start with a question here from Barton Crockett at Rosenblatt. So can you please walk us through what you see as the drivers of acceleration of organic net revenue growth over the balance of 2024 from the 2% reported in Q1 to 5% to 7% you guide today? How much visibility do you have into this acceleration? Do you think it's going to be steady ground or is that going to be one of alteration which they're really going to tick up?
Mark Penn: Sure. Thank you, Barton for that question. Look, I think as you analyze it, you can see international would be along nicely. Advocacy is going would be along nicely. Media is moving along nicely. And then next to really come up and continue to, I think, grow is digital transformation has room for growth. Look, Media aspiring on all cylinders already with double-digit growth. Our pipeline, when I look at our pipeline, it's 50% higher than it was at this time last year. We are in the record number of some new pitches of enhanced size given the enhanced reputation. Also, AI is beginning, I think, to -- customers are beginning to get over the -- let's take a look at it and start to implement the base. So I think that you're going to really see a good second quarter and things will build to the third and fourth quarters, because that's when Advocacy and Media in the holiday season tend to crescendo. So, I look at it, as you're going to really kind of have see strength building through the year, as I think digital transformation will strengthen, and Media and Advocacy will really take off in the second half of the year. So that's how I see it developing in meeting the goals.
Ben Allanson: How just on digital transformation? A question here from Jason Kreyer at Craig-Hallum. He is asking about green shoots we're seeing in digital transformation that kind of gives us confidence to growth there?
Mark Penn: Yes. We're seeing, I think, some of the companies that have cut back last year, beginning to come back. We're seeing growth and that's again, really AI. I mean if you make the chips and then you have all the cloud, you need the applications. And I think the people are discovering the applications and we are in the AI application building business. That is what we're doing. I think first customers have to be assured that their data would not go into the worldwide global data pot. And I think that's why we put together the clean rooms for both internally and for our clients in order to provide that kind of confidence. And I think as customers get confidence that AI can be used safely and securely, you're just going to see this take off. We're going to go back to the biggest problem being finding engineers as opposed to the biggest problem finding work. And I think that really shook it in the second half of the year. I think you can see that building in all of the tech companies in terms of what they're reporting.
Ben Allanson: Maybe some of the tech customers as well. And if that's the question here, just talking about tech coming back, some of the key trends we're seeing with technology customers and then sort of rebounding in this year?
Mark Penn: Yeah, I mean, we're seeing them slowly. They're not back to full throttle yet. I think they still have more to go. It is shaping up to be a year of competition. We chose some increase. Again, our list of top clients would be a list of large-sized tech companies. In many ways, we're a tech company's tech company, helping to develop AI front ends, consumer interactions, as well as to build new applications for our clients. But I think you're still seeing some caution on the side of those companies, but again, they are building out their programs, how to bring AI to the masses. That is where we're going to benefit. And I think at a certain point the floodgates will open here and that that can't be too far away.
Ben Allanson: Changing gears a little bit just onto the international side of things. A question from Mark, he says a Western Benchmark. He says, with just about 12% of net revenue outside the US and the UK, how should we think about growth by geography being factored into our guidance or growth by geography moving forward? And he asks, is expansion to Asia Pacific still a meaningful initiative for you to unlock the biggest global contracts on the opportunities?
Mark Penn: I think you can see when you go through our acquisitions, you can see clearly our strategy. A group of those acquisitions are frontiers of marketing, people like Movers and Shakers, people like Leftfield Labs and AI. And the other group of acquisitions is clearly Brazil, UK. And you're going to see really more focus in Asia and the Mid-East in the next few months. I think that you're going to see us to build in the global network that we need to win. Look, for the first time we're in a $40 to $60 million pitch. People are looking at Stagwell and seeing us as the logical company taking on the majors at a growing scale. So we're going to complete the global network. We also think that, you know, we put together Blue Fin, which is an office where we brought together 17 European agencies in London, and we can see the benefits, 14% growth, just beginning, frankly, because they used to get very small pitches because their services were fragmented. And we can see the benefits, 14% growth just beginning, frankly, because they used to get very small pitches because their services were fragmented. Now it's almost like a shopping mall. You can see advertising, research, media, a set of coordinated services, and they're getting more than million-dollar opportunities. So while the European marketplace may not be a high-grower, our ability to grow market share in Europe, I think having put together our agencies and having added a structure with James Townsend, a CEO, having brought in a whole marketing team, I think we have very good prospects. And that's what we're going to do region by region until we have a complete functioning scale global network here.
Ben Allanson: Great. We'll just have a question on net new business first and then we'll shift the advocacy number of questions on that topic. But Laura Martin over at Needham, she goes, $66 million of net new business wins in Q1, very impressive, up to 284.5 [ph] for the training 12 months. What do you think is the normalized revenue growth like in the mid-single digits or high-single digits currently?
Mark Penn: Well, look, I think that we'll see a little bit of what the Fed does today with our economy. But I think we're building back to our targets, right. We are getting to 10% year-over-year growth. We know that we have 15% in 2022, 2023 for a number of factors was not the year we had planned, but a lot of those factors were exciting to us. They were in a period of recession. There were media slowdowns. There were strikes across the border and in other industries there were tech products. We're striving to get back to those numbers. And I think this is a big transition year. By the end of the year, we'll have an expanded global network. We have our Stagwell Marketing Cloud products, at least to the Research. I think about the Prophet. We'll have our Media and in our ID graph that will extend our capabilities. I think, into Deeper Media Services that will also open up. We got more revenue opportunities. Digital Transformation will be in the sector of AI. So to me, this is a transition year back to that kind of growth that we believe is the long-term target that the firm is capable of.
Ben Allanson: Thank you. A couple of questions on this, first up from Steve Cahall of Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), did Advocacy out for your expectations on the revenue -- net revenue and adjusted EBITDA side in Q1, we obviously did adjusted guidance today, but does that strengthen our Advocacy as well as the new business talent discussed, give you some more confidence in terms of your guidance?
Frank Lanuto: I think the strength of advocacy obviously gives us -- it's one of the elements that could give us certain confidence. I think advocacy was a little stronger than expected, particularly since there were no real primaries on each side. And so when you see that kind of strength in advocacy and you look at it well, 2028, they'll probably be -- I thought at 2024 will be the record, but now I realize it will to 2028 because there will be a matter who wins, open presences on both sides, and it will be double primary. So I think the building strength of this given the fact that there are no primary, essentially shows that this is going to be a record year. You can see it forming people are really going to intensively focus on those rates, particularly once the conventions get kicked off. And even though there's a little bit of a lull now, advocacy is the comp people are planning on an incredible rates and I think the services we provide will continue to diversify in the year.
Ben Allanson: Just sort of following up on efficacy another question from Laura, she's asking, there's obviously some press speculation that some legal fees we might capitalize media spend and focus from the top campaign. Do you think that those legal structures might lowly be spending and advocacy revenue in '24 versus expectations? And how many might that impact all businesses?
Mark Penn: We don't do fundraising for the [indiscernible] campaign. So it's not our focus is really on house and senate races and super packs that are not directly that can make. So, that factor would come into us as you know, really either way. Look, I think Americas poised for very big rate. And people -- there used to be kind of no tradition of people getting involved and active. It used to be about only 1% that we contribute. Now, it hits around 10% to 12%. And I think you're going to see really strong participation. And those factors are not going to [indiscernible].
Ben Allanson: Great. One question on growth rates, and then we're going to talk about AI a little bit, but a question from Cameron McVeigh from Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS). Can you discuss what drove some of the -- and this may be for Frank as well? What drove some of the divergence in growth rates between gross and net revenue in the quarter? And how much of an impact might performance needed to do that?
Frank Lanuto: It's less about Performance Media. We have now acquired a number of companies that have more -- that recognize more GAAP revenue versus net revenue when you look at kind of we acquired Team Epiphany, Left Field Labs, some of these new companies are more oriented. Some of the digital online fundraising also generates higher levels of GAAP revenue. So I think those two or three factors for this divergence. We showed that -- we talked about the GAAP revenue because after it is evidence of economic activity. We're looking at how we're going to make money in fact that those kinds of revenues changed are part of showing kind of the building secrets of events here. I think it's going to be quite favorable to Stagwell through the year.
Ben Allanson: Great. Shifting gears, AI. A question from Jeff Van Sinderen. So two parts. One, can you talk about latest customer projects in evolving AI? And then the other part of it is, it needs to be more of how we're using AI in our shared services platform and internally and efficiently?
Mark Penn: Sure. We have about 300 to 400 people internally. Well, just to go back to see -- remember that we have the Stagwell market cloud and we have a central innovation group. And that, that was one of the key principles in building Stagwell. And as Frank pointed out, our EBITDA would be another $14 million higher if we were not investing heavily in AI and other tech products, as a central innovation function. We've got 300 to 400 employees who are signed on to the central kind of AI experimental. Right now, we're actually completing our survey of what everybody is looking for AI. Obviously, on the word side, people are looking for lots of the ability to summarize information and the ability to help the right things more clearly. And I think there's a lot of interest in text to video, give me a picture of a dog its now kind of thing. And I think on the client end, clients want to make sure that before they dive into AI, they can be safe and secure, and that's why we are working on safety security first. And then I want to understand, we're seeing applications where shopping box will make it is far easier due to safe ends like I'm having an office party tell me, what to buy. The whole ability for you to look through data sets and say, "Hey, can you bring up all the polling on the presidential approval for the last five years. These are unprecedented ways in which people can interact with technology and get -- other response that would have taken hours and hours. And so we think there's going to be an enormous amount of work in redoing virtually every website to be AI-enabled in order to provide that kind of confidence. That's where I think we're focusing a lot of our work with clients is exactly there. How does AI change your brand, if you're going to effectively interact with the brand's AI as much as you're going to see advertisements that becomes the absolute critical part of how you market and establish our brand image. And that's why particularly benefits of us as we're used to really engineering and designing the last mile, that connection between the company and the customer. And if you're going to see that work explode.
Ben Allanson: Great. Just one final question on us, I think this one’s for Frank. Between your appetite to grow your media business and digital capabilities internationally at potential divestitures, DAC what should we expect in terms of deleveraging by the end of 2024 I mean 3 times is that what dealing with [ph]…
Frank Lanuto: Yes, we're at 3 times now. We expect to be somewhere in the mid-2s by the end of the year, I would say. And that comes from the stronger cash flows that we'll experience in the back half of the year. It steadily ramps up Q3 and then Q4 really drives a lot of cash and that will drive down the leverage ratio, right?
Ben Allanson: Well, that brings us to a close day on our first quarter earnings call. Thank you very much for joining us. And I hope you'll be able to join us in a few months' time for our second quarter.
This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.