Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Shareholders,
With sales up 9.1% to €217.8m, net profit (Group share) remaining strong at €10.1m and more than 1,000 employees, the Group is continuing to implement its Ambition 2025! plan.
2024 was a positive year for our Group, despite a difficult economic environment. Political and fiscal uncertainty led many companies to be even more cautious in their marketing investments, but thanks to our leadership since the beginning of 2023 in Artificial Intelligence and technology, our Group maintained a strong differentiation and ensured a robust growth trajectory.
Our consolidated sales rose by +9.1% this year, driven mainly by very strong growth in Digital Marketing, which now accounts for 65.6% of the Group’s total sales, compared with 36.5% in 2020, and recorded a sustained increase in its gross margin of +15.8%. Despite an increase in our investments (offices and technology), our net profit (Group share) remains robust at €10.1m (or 6.0% of our gross margin), demonstrating the relevance of our offerings and our transformation.
Our activities
Despite a consulting market under pressure in France, Converteo is continuing on its excellent trajectory, with gross margin growth of +9.8% over the past year. At the end of 2024, it had more than 400 expert consultants serving our prestigious customers, including two-thirds of the CAC40 companies. It was a year of investment and transformation, with the introduction of a new organisation to take account of the strong traction of our Pricing, Product Management, Technology and AI offerings, and the move to new, larger premises in Bercy village to support future growth. 2024 was also the first year of international development for Converteo, with the opening of offices in the USA and Canada to support our major customers.
We expanded our Agencies & Marketing Engineering Solutions activities in France, with strong growth in activities with a technological component (Agence Dékuple, Smart TraffiK and Reech), and with the acquisitions of Ereferer (Netlinking) and Coup de Poing (Loyalty), which strengthen our ability to support brands in high-growth areas. Overall, gross margin rose sharply (+17.9% in France).
The year was also marked by growth in our Agencies and Solutions business outside France, in line with the Ambition 2025 plan. With a sharp increase in activity in China, and the acquisition in October 2024 of the Creative and Strategic Agency GUD.berlin, and despite a cyclical downturn in activity in Spain, the gross margin for International Agencies & Solutions rose by +49.3% in 2024.
At the beginning of 2025, DÉKUPLE continued its international expansion with the simultaneous acquisition of DotControl (a digital agency based in Rotterdam) and Selmore (a creative agency based in Amsterdam).
The press market remained difficult in an unfavourable consumer environment. We have nevertheless maintained significant commercial investment with new, better-segmented offers and new partners, in order to bolster our portfolio of contracts and consolidate our vital role for press publishers. Against this backdrop, sales in our magazines business fell by 6.7%.
Insurance sales were down by a limited 2.6% in a complex economic environment. This resilience in sales is based on an innovative marketing approach, particularly in health insurance, with a strategy aimed at securing the long-term future of the policyholder portfolio.
A greater capacity for innovation thanks to technology and AI
We are convinced that to pursue their development, brands will increasingly need perfect integration between marketing strategy, creativity, communication, data, performance and technology. This is the choice we announced in our Ambition 2025 plan, and which we are pursuing with determination. This year has been an opportunity for the Group to maintain our
leadership in Technology and Artificial Intelligence. We have continued our exceptional internal training plan initiated in 2023 for our more than 1,000 employees, and have integrated AI into all our offerings. This sustained effort positions us as recognised experts and has enabled us to support more than 130 brands in the acculturation and training of their managers in AI.
We have also stepped up the pace of our efforts to build a platform for our services, taking advantage of our technological strengths and our unique ability to exploit proprietary data or work in partnership with others.
The DÉKUPLE Group further increases its visibility in France and Europe
As a sign of the growing strength of our creativity in the market, we received more than 43 awards in 2024. Awards such as the Grand Prix for Brand Content, the Montreux Golden Awards, the Grand Prix for Data and the Trophée Études et Innovations illustrate the recognition of our specific offerings, which integrate creativity and data. This momentum has also helped us to reach 13th position in the Stratégies/Altarès rankings.
In 2024, we initiated a close partnership with ESCP Business School, participating in the training of Master’s and Grandes Écoles students by presenting practical subjects to the management of the DÉKUPLE Group on our premises. We continued our sailing partnership with the sponsorship of William Mathelin-Moreaux’s Class 40 boat. In 2024, this sponsorship was a major driving force behind the Group’s internal activities, as well as providing an opportunity for exchanges with customers and partners. In 2025, we are continuing our partnership with William in a different form, with the boat bearing the name of ‘Les Invincibles’, an association fighting Charcot’s disease. We’re delighted to be working together in this new way to help this wonderful cause!
Corporate Social Responsibility
As a family-owned group for over 50 years, we have always put the common good at the heart of our concerns. This is the deep conviction of our shareholders, directors, management, employees, customers and partners.
During 2024, we pursued our Corporate Social Responsibility policy in line with our membership of the UN Global Compact. In particular, we renewed our ISO 14001 certification for our customer loyalty activities, continued our partnership with the Office National des Forêts, and with Perce-Neige and Cèdre – two organisations supporting people with disabilities – and made a commitment to the Ligue contre le cancer.
The year 2025 will be the occasion for a new Scope 3 carbon assessment (based on 2024 data), following the one carried out in 2021, which will enable us to take stock of the results of the actions taken and define the objectives for the coming years.
We confirm that we will continue to pursue our growth plan for 2025 and beyond
The economic context in 2025 remains uncertain, but we are convinced that the digitalisation and datafication of businesses, and in particular their marketing, will continue to accelerate. Our Group is ideally positioned to meet these challenges. We are entering this year with confidence, and our teams are fully mobilised to maintain profitable growth, particularly in digital marketing, which will continue to grow significantly as a proportion of the Group. This expansion will be achieved both organically and through strategic acquisitions of companies with complementary skills, as opportunities arise, in France and Europe.
In 2025, we will further strengthen our capacity for innovation and take full advantage of the Group’s many areas of technological expertise, with major initiatives on the platformisation of our services.
On the social and environmental front, we will capitalise on the actions we have undertaken in recent years: employer branding, high-quality training, responsible consumption and production, attention to well-being and health in the workplace, gender equality and the promotion of diversity, all of which are commensurate with the challenges and impact of a European Group with over 1,000 employees.
At the beginning of 2021, we announced the ‘Ambition 2025’ plan, aimed at becoming a benchmark player in communications and data marketing in Europe. While continuing to pursue this plan with determination in 2025, we will shortly be announcing the ‘Horizon 2030’ plan, which will project our Group over the next 5 years, confirming our ambition for profitable growth, internationalisation, and creative and technological leadership in brand transformation.
I am fully confident in our ability to adapt, to pursue our growth and to continuously improve the relevance of our offerings and the quality of our deliverables. We are fortunate to operate in a dynamic sector and to be able to rely on the exceptional skills of our teams, at the service of our customers and partners. Our Group stands out for its stable family shareholding, its network of multi-entrepreneurs
network of multi-entrepreneurs, its long-term vision and its wealth of expertise.
We look forward to another successful year in 2025. I would like to extend my warmest thanks to our employees, partners, customers and shareholders for their trust and loyalty.
