Scary Growth for Sorrell's 'Pumpkin' S4Capital

WPP founder Sir Martin Sorrell's recently launched marcoms business S4Capital has reported third quarter revenue up almost 54% to £56.6m, with a nearly 50% increase in gross profit to £42.1m during the period. The figures reflect rapid organic growth as well as M&A.

The company was formed in May 2018 and two months later beat WPP in a race to buy creative digital production company MediaMonks; then in December it agreed to merge with programmatic solutions provider MightyHive. In April, it bought film production studio Caramel Pictures and programmatic consultancy ProgMedia. More recently, it merged MediaMonks with influencer marketing company IMA and with digital marketing agency Firewood; and merged MightyHive with digital analytics and data science consultancy ConversionWorks and Google Analytics Certified Partner Datalicious Korea.

The latest financial figures include the impact of the two mergers with Progmedia in April and IMA in August, and the asset purchase of Caramel Pictures in April. Subsequent to the third quarter end, the mergers with Firewood, ConversionWorks and Datalicious Korea were completed at the end of October. The previously announced merger with BizTech is expected to be completed in early November.

Sorrell (pictured) comments: 'Our very strong organic growth of well over 40%, so far this year, indicates that clients are responding very well to our purely digital, unitary, 'holy trinity' model of first party data fueling digital content and programmatic. The mergers and asset purchase we have completed, so far this year, will broaden and deepen our capabilities and client relationships and convert clients to scale. The peanut has morphed into a pumpkin in time for Halloween 2019 and we have also achieved US$ Unicorn status'.

Web site: www.s4capital.com .