S4 Capital plc

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to our Q3 results for 2027. I'm joined here by Radhika, our CFO in London, and Scott, our growth officer in Singapore. So we're going to run through a brief presentation on Q3. First section, a trading update from Radhika, then Scott will weigh in with an analysis around our clients, and I'll come back with a Brief summary and outlook, and then we'll take Q&A. So over to you, Radhika.

Thank you, Martin. Good morning, everybody. I will start with the financial headlines for the third quarter of 2026. Throughout the third quarter, trading continued to reflect the challenging macroeconomic conditions. Clients remained cautious, with hyperscalers and other technology clients prioritizing capital expenditure on expanding AI capacity over operating expenditure. The benefits of the 2025 second half cost actions continue to materialise and we have maintained our strong discipline on cost control. Third quarter net revenue was £156.3 million, down 6.4% reported and 7.3% like for like. Nine month net revenue was £464.3 million, down 6.2% reported and 5.6% like for like. We now expect 2026 full year like-for-like net revenue to be marginally below previous guidance down high single digits. Operational EBITDA remains at the current analyst consensus level of 85 million and operational EBITDA margin is now expected to increase by at least 160 basis points to 13.7%. Adjusted basic earnings per share is expected to be in excess of current analytic consensus of 6.1 pence per share. Liquidity improvements have significantly reduced net debt levels year on year. Net debt at the 30th of September was significantly better than anticipated at 76 million or 0.7 times pro forma trailing 12-month operation EBITDA, a reduction of 75.1 million compared to 30th of September 2025 or 66 million like for like. Our year-end target net debt range remains at 50 to 80 million and the company expects to be comfortably within this range. The company repurchased a further 50.9 million euros of our term loan fee after 30th of September 2026, of which 10.5 million euros remain subject to settlement. Together with 125.3 million euros previously repurchased, this reduces the term loan fee outstanding to 198.8 million euros down from 375 million. Looking across our two practices, marketing services and technology services, my commentary here is all on a light-for-light basis. Marketing services delivered third-quarter net revenue of $142.7 million, which is down 6.2%, and $424.6 million year-to-date, down 5%, reflecting ongoing caution among technology clients as they continue to prioritize and increase AI infrastructure capex over operational marketing budgets. The practice was further impacted by a scope reduction in BMW, primarily in EMEA, and the ongoing conflicts in the Ukraine and the Middle East. Technology services generated third quarter net revenue of $13.6 million, down 17.6%, and $39.7 million year-to-date, down 11%, similarly impacted by broader macroeconomic headwinds and continuing longer sales cycles. From a regional standpoint, we saw some encouraging momentum in the third quarter, with both EMEA and Asia Pacific up 3.1% and 9.4% respectively, while the Americas declined 10%. Year-to-date, the Americas declined 4.1%, EMEA 13.3%, and Asia Pacific 5.6%, representing approximately 81%, 14%, and 5% of the net revenue respectively. Our improving liquidity continues to support our capital allocation priorities, which remain unchanged. We have established clear capital allocation priorities, focusing on delivering shareholder value through first dividends, second further debt repurchases, and third share buybacks as net debt falls further. On the 6th of October, we were pleased to pay our first interim dividend of £1.35 per share, announced at the interim results. As previously announced, the Board has implemented a dividend payout ratio of 50% of adjusted basic earnings per share, subject to financial targets being met, and will recommend a final dividend for 2026 in line with that policy. There will be increased flexibility to consider share buybacks once the company is net debt free. With that, I will hand over to Scott for the market updates.

Thank you very much Radhika and good morning everybody. Thanks for joining us. A couple of slides from me on our clients. So the first one, this slide illustrates where our revenue comes from in terms of industry sector. As you can see, we maintain that exposure to the technology sector with 43% of our revenues from primarily big technology companies. Whilst the sector continues to prioritize capex spend on AI capabilities over marketing spend, This remains an important client segment for us. Clients like Google, Amazon and Meta are also important partners for us. And there's pressure mounts on tech companies to show a return on their AI investments. We are increasingly working with them to illustrate the benefits of AI driven marketing transformation with both them and our wider client base. We have a really compelling client list with some of the world's leading and most innovative companies and these are strong relationships that help us attract and retain talent to work on them. Next slide, you can see on the left here that spends per client have begun to stabilise versus the previous year across our top 10, 20 and 50 client cohorts. So they're only slightly down. The main challenge for us has not been on existing clients or larger clients, but on that longer tail, which is primarily project based work. A lack of new business conversion has impacted us here. The focus now is very much on returning the company to growth. And with that, I'll hand you back to Martin for the summary.