By Kevin McCauley
Interpublic today reported a 50.5 percent increase in Q4 net to $195M on an 11.7 percent jump in revenue to $2B. Organic growth rose 11.2 percent.
Buoyed by that robust performance, CEO Michael Roth announced a $300M share buyback program and declared a six cent quarterly dividend to “signal confidence in the sustainability of our competitive offering.”
Roth said IPG enjoyed “organic growth at the top end of its peer growth” during the past year and anticipates “aggressive margin expansion” for 2011.
Harris Diamond, CEO of IPG’s constituency management group and Weber Shandwick, told O’Dwyer’s that PR growth was up 6.5 percent for the year, spread among the WS, GolinHarris, Rogers & Cowan and DeVries units.
Solid gains were made in both traditional PR and social media, he added.
Severance expense during Q4 dropped to $54.7M from $70.6M for last year’s period.
For the full-year IPG earned $271.2M vs. $93.6M in `10. Revenues rose 8.4 percent to $6.5B.
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