Omnicom Group Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the Omnicom third quarter 2022 earnings release conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. To participate, please press 1 then 0. If you need assistance during the call, please press star then 0. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to introduce you to your host for today's conference, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, Gregory Lumber. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining our third quarter 2022 earnings call. With me today are John Wren, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Phil Angelostro, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. On our website, omnicomgroup.com, we've posted a press release along with a presentation covering the information we'll review today, as well as a webcast of this call. An archived version will be available when today's call concludes. Before we start, I would like to remind everyone to read the forward-looking statements in non-GAAP financial and other information that we have included at the end of our investor presentation. Certain of the statements made today may constitute forward-looking statements, and these statements are our present expectations. Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are listed in our earnings materials and in our SEC filings, including our 2021 Form 10-K. During the course of today's call, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP measures. You can find the reconciliation of these to the nearest comparable GAAP measures in the presentation materials. We will begin the call with an overview of our business from John. Then Phil will review our financial results for the quarter. And after our prepared remarks, we'll open up the line for your questions. I'll now hand the call over to John.

Thank you, Greg. Good afternoon, everybody. And thank you for joining us today for our third quarter results. I'm pleased to report that in the third quarter, we continued the very strong performance we've had throughout 2022. We exceeded our expectations with organic growth of 7.5%, which was broad-based across our agencies, disciplines, regions, and client sectors. Year-to-date organic growth is 10.3%. Operating profit margin for the quarter was 15.9%, 10 basis points higher than our comparable margin in 2021. Earnings to share for the quarter was $1.77, up 7.3% versus 2021. The negative currency impact on EPS of the strong US dollar was approximately 5%. On a constant currency basis, EPS would have increased approximately 12.3%. Our cash flow Liquidity and balance sheet remain very strong and continue to support our primary uses of cash, dividends, acquisitions, and shared purchases. Phil will cover our financial results in more detail during his remarks. On last quarter's call, we mentioned several first-of-a-kind e-commerce collaborations with Amazon, Instacart, Kroger, and Walmart. This quarter, we expanded and enhanced our e-commerce capabilities by announcing Transact, a dedicated practice focused on connected commerce consulting and e-retail execution services. Transact will capitalize on the unique partnerships we've entered into and will focus on driving sales for clients and growing market share on e-retail platforms. Transact adds to our best-in-class e-commerce services in digital transformation and MarTech consulting, CRM and precision marketing, media, campaign activation, and creative content. We also continue to invest in our iconic agency brands. A recent example was TBWA Worldwide, which recently acquired innovation agency Dot Dot Dash. Dot.Dash builds future forward brand experiences at the intersection of culture and technology, a valuable addition for the total brand experience company like TBWA. We will continue investing to enhance our capabilities in high growth areas, including CRM and precision marketing, digital transformation, performance media, and e-commerce. Our investments in these areas to date have been very effective and are reflected in third-party validations. A few weeks ago, we were named leader in Forrester's WAVE assessment for global marketing services. We received the highest scores possible in five criteria, creative content and services, media management services, integration services, global client teams, and innovation road Our performance highlights our ability to deliver creative and strategic solutions to our clients through integrated multidisciplinary teams. One way we do this is through our global client leaders group, which has led the industry in developing innovative service solutions for our largest clients. Since 2014, our GCL group has been led by Peter Sherman, After a successful 25-year tenure at Omnicom, Peter has made the decision to become a full-time undergraduate professor teaching marketing and communications at a top-ranked university. I want to thank Peter for his countless contributions at Omnicom and wish him the best of luck. We're expanding on the foundation Peter helped build to further enhance the services we deliver to our largest clients and to pursue new business opportunities aggressively. As a first step towards that goal, we announced the appointment of Andrea Lennon to the new role of Chief Client Officer. Andrea has a strong track record in marketing transformation at Critical Mass, Omnicom's digital experience design agency, where she spent seven years working in Asia, Europe, and the United States. prior to being named president two years ago. Andrea will focus on transformative marketing solutions and capabilities that drive business results for our global enterprise clients. In partnership with the GCL team, she will accelerate solutions that draw on the group's best talent, integrating Omnicom's leading capabilities in data, creative, media communications, and technology. We will be sharing more updates on our client solutions strategy and the business team in the coming weeks. We are fortunate to be making these changes from a position of strength. We were recently recognized by the FEs with one of the industry's most prestigious honors, identifying ideas that work, the 2021 Global FE Effectiveness Index named Omnicom the most effective marketing communications company in the world. Four of our agency networks, BBDO, DDB, OMD, and TBWA, placed in the top six of the most effective agency network category. In addition, OMD was named the most effective media agency network. These notable rankings demonstrate our standout talent I want to congratulate all of our agencies and people on executing the most effective and creative work in the industry for the benefit of our clients. Overall, we're very pleased with our quarterly and year-to-date financial results, as well as our progress on our key strategic initiatives. Based on our strong performance this quarter and for the first nine months of the year, we are increasing our prior organic growth forecast from 6.5% to 7% to 8% to 8.5% for the full year 2022. We also continue to anticipate delivering the same strong operating margin of 15.4% for the full year of 2022 that we achieved in 2021. While we're confident in our forecast, we retain a healthy level of caution due to macro factors including the ongoing war in Ukraine, the continuing disruption of global supply chains, the economic risk posed by rising interest rates here in the United States, and higher inflation around the world. In light of these risks, we are actively taking actions to mitigate the potential negative effects of these macro factors on our business. I'm confident we are well equipped to handle any economic downturn, and have the leadership teams in place to minimize the impact on our top and bottom lines. I will now turn the call over to Phil for a closer look at our financial results. Phil?