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Monks owner S4 Capital has reported a 11.4% drop in like-for-like net revenue to $217 million (£163.7 million) for Q1 2025.
The company said trading reflected “volatile macroeconomic conditions” and clients remained “generally cautious”. It added that net revenue and operational Ebitda in 2025 would be “broadly similar to 2024."
Under the unified Monks brand, the business operates two practices: Marketing services and technology services. Like-for-like net revenue for marketing services dropped 7.5% to $196 million (£148.3 million), “reflecting ongoing caution and lower activity with some of our larger technology clients, who continued to prioritise spend on building AI capacity." Technology services revenue fell 36.9% to $20 million (£15.4 million), “primarily reflecting lower activity with one key client."
Net debt debt stood at $192 million (£144.8 million) in Q1, down from $273 million (£206 million) in the same period last year.
By geography, Americas, which represents 80% of the company’s income, was down 10.5% and EMEA, which accounts for 15% of income, was down 15.9%, “with lower activity in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands”. Asia-Pacific was down 11%, “affected by Australia and Singapore."
The company reported that Radhika Radhakrishnan, former global chief financial officer at Wavemaker, had been appointed as CFO on 1 May 2025, succeeding Mary Basterfield.
Staffing dropped by 8% to about 7,000 staff in Q1, compared with about 7,600 in Q1 2024, and down 2% on the year-end figure of about 7,150.
Last November the company confirmed redundancies were taking place.
Sir Martin Sorrell, executive chairman of S4 Capital, said: “The global macroeconomic environment has become even more challenging in 2025. Assessing the impact of US imposed tariffs has been added to the three principal risks around US/China relations, Russia/Ukraine and Iran/Middle East. Clients, therefore, are likely to remain cautious.
“However, once the levels of tariffs are negotiated and impacts assessed, we believe clients will become more selective about the geographies in which they operate in order to find growth and focused on implementing technologies, such as, but not only AI, to drive efficiency in a slower growth, higher inflation and higher interest rate environment. This may be the time when AI-adoption accelerates at scale.”
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