Global outdoor advertising leader JCDecaux recorded a 5.2% jump in revenue for 2018, which included a two month boost from its Australian business following the $1.2 billion takeover of APN Outdoor.
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| JCDecaux in Australia |
“2018 was another record year for JCDecaux with revenue at €3,618.5 million ($A5.72 billion),” said Jean-Charles Decaux, chairman and Co-CEO of JCDecaux. “Our full-year organic revenue growth rate of +5.2% was driven by a better than expected Q4 which grew +5.4% on an organic basis.”
The company’s Asia-Pacific business was its best-performing region, jumping by more than 16% to €957 million. “Growth acceleration was driven by a two-month contribution from APN Outdoor,” the company said in statement.
“While the OOH industry worldwide consolidation continues, we completed, on October 31st, 2018, the acquisition of one of the Top 10 OOH companies, APN Outdoor operating in Australia (world’s 7th largest media market) and in New-Zealand,” said Charles Decaux. “Both markets enjoy good growth potential given the low penetration of OOH.”
The company’s Street Furniture’s organic revenue was up 2.7%, “mainly driven by a very strong digital revenue increase at +30.4% with digital revenue representing 18.1% of total Street Furniture revenue…Asia-Pacific was up strongly with a double-digit growth, mainly driven by new contracts in Australia.”
Billboards revenue increased by 1.4% to €513.9 million “Reported growth was fuelled by the contribution of APN Outdoor since October 31st, 2018. Europe was down, affected by our multi-year plan to reduce our traditional UK billboard portfolio, while our UK digital billboard business remained strong and our performance in France was good. The Rest of the World was virtually flat and North America was down.”
Full-year Transport division revenue increased by 8.4% to €1,517.0 million, with Asia-Pacific again posting strong double-digit growth.
“This strong performance reflects both, our exposure to faster-growth markets which represent 37% of our Group revenue, as well as the growing contribution of our prime DOOH media assets delivering a revenue increase of +28.4% and representing 20.4% of Group revenue with 5 countries (UK, US, China, Australia and Germany) delivering 68% of our DOOH revenue worldwide,” said Decaux.
