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Thanks very much, Fraser. Welcome, everybody. I'm joined by my colleagues, Scott, Scott Spirit in Singapore; Peter Rademaker in Amsterdam, with Victor Knaap in Amsterdam; and Peter Kim, poor chap, in Scottsdale, Arizona. So some god-awful time in the morning. So thanks for getting up early in the morning, Pete.So this is our Q3 trading update. Peter will take you through Section 1 on the trading update, then Scott will go through the market as we see it. And then Victor will chime in on the content practice, and Pete on data and digital media practice. And back to Scott for clients and mergers, and then I'll come back with a brief summary. So over to you, Peter.
Thank you, Sir Martin, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us in our third quarter trading update. The group continued to progress with a very strong third quarter despite the impact of COVID and is now more in line with its targets of doubling organically in size in 3 years by 2021. And basically, that shows, if you look at our Q3 reported revenue at GBP 86.4 million, which is 53% more than last year on a reported basis. And our gross profit Q3 was GBP 75.3 million, which is 79% up compared to our reported number in the third quarter in 2019. More importantly, on a like-for-like basis, revenue grew with 13%, and our Q3 gross profit, our most important measure, as you know, grew with 23%. And again, like we have seen in the first half year that our gross profit grew significantly stronger than our revenue due to change of mix in our projects that we deliver to our clients. All regions showed a very strong growth, and I'll come back to that in a minute. And our cash flow remains very strong, with net cash balances averaging GBP 87 million in Q3 compared to approximately GBP 13 million in the first half. And that, of course, includes the placing -- share placing of net GBP 113 million, which we did mid-July. And that takes into consideration the merger payments of around GBP 19 million, which we did in the third quarter of this year. And for 2020, we remain with our earlier expectations and now more substantiated by the strong Q3 performance that it will be sector-leading double-digit growth on a like-for-like basis for revenue and gross profit with reasonably strong EBITDA margins. So if I go to the next slide, there you have some of the numbers that I will elaborate on. So content, from a revenue point of view, our content practice delivered GBP 69.3 million of revenue, which is 69% up compared to last year. It's 15% up on a like-for-like basis. And year-to-date, our revenue was GBP 181 million, which is 74% up and, on a like-for-like basis, 10% up. Our data and digital media practice grew with 10% on a reported basis to GBP 17 million, GBP 17.1 million, which was 7% up on a like-for-like. And year-to-date, it was GBP 46.7 million, which was 15% up reported and 7% up on a like-for-like, delivering the 53% up for the full quarter to GBP 86.4 million and GBP 227.7 million, which was 58% of reported and 9% on a like-for-like basis for the full quarter for both practices. Gross profit, like I just indicated, grew faster. On a reported basis, content grew to GBP 58.4 million, which was 119% up compared to last year reported and 28% up on a like-for-like basis; year-to-date GBP 152.7 million, 113% up and 19% up on a like-for-like basis. And our data and digital media practice grew with 9% to GBP 16.9 million, which was 6% up like-for-like; and on a year-to-date number, it was GBP 46.5 million, which was 15% up and 7% up on a like-for-like basis and year-to-date. And then if you look at our next slide, where you see our geographies, like I just indicated, it's very strong growth. Americas grew in the third quarter with 93% to GBP 55.1 million. And our EMEA activities grew with -- to 12 point -- or almost GBP 13 million, with 34% on a reported basis. And Asia Pacific grew with 83% to GBP 7.2 million. So you see that the Americas still very strong in our total performance with approximately 73% contribution in the third quarter, EMEA with 17% out of the total and Asia Pacific with a 10% contribution of the total of GBP 75.3 million gross profit for the quarter. And if we go to the next slide, you can see that we started the year, as we indicated also in our half year numbers, with a 3% up, in line basically with our budget that we prepared at the end of 2019. Of course, at that moment in time, we didn't factor in any COVID because it was nonexisting at that moment. So we started with 33% in January. And then as in February, COVID hit already in APAC, we saw a decrease in the growth to 21%. And that bottomed at still at a growth level in April at 3%. And ever since then, we saw stronger growth. And in the half year, we already show to you our July numbers at 18% and a sequential improvement to August with 24% and in September with a 25% growth, delivering that almost 23% growth on a gross profit basis, like-for-like in the third quarter. So as a summary, very strong growth in the third quarter with very strong liquidity and basically well on track to reach our expectations for this year. So that was my short summary of our tradings. Over to you, Scott.
Great. Thanks, Peter. Welcome, everyone. Good morning. So I have a couple of slides here just on some of the trends we're seeing in the market, specifically with regard to digital. So the first one here illustrates advertising spend as a percentage of GDP, which is something that's remained remarkably stable at around 0.7% globally in the past decade or so. But when you split out the spend as digital and analog, then you can clearly see the different directionality of those 2 sectors with it being much more correlated to digital spend, and you can see analog in a decline. The next slide shows the results and the projections for some of the leading platforms, so Alphabet, Facebook, Snap and Twitter. These are charts from MoffettNathanson in the U.S. And as you can see, they all suffered significant COVID-related declines in Q2, but they've also all staged remarkable V-shaped recoveries to their fortunes. And given that these are our clients and our partners, then it's not surprising our own top line trends have delivered a similar-shaped chart, as Peter showed you. Next slide. This all feeds through to the strength from the dominance that online advertising has continued to show. And again, this is a chart from MoffettNathanson showing their projections that by 2024, digital advertising, which is already the dominant sector, will have a share of almost 70% and with continued steep declines in all traditional media. And as you know, we at S4 are 100% focused on digital. And that's not just because of the seat growth perspective but also the scale of that market. And so if we could go to the next slide. This last slide in this section gives us some perspectives on our total addressable market. And that's a question that I know some of the investors have asked us recently and some of the analysts. The first chart on the top left there is the Zenith Media projections for media spend. So it's similar to that MoffettNathanson chart we just saw but it's in billions of dollars rather than percentage. And it also illustrates that digital, again, is the dominant sector. So it's over 50% of spend for the first time and continues to show significant growth in the years to come. Actually, their projections were done fairly early on in the COVID crisis. And other analysts have come out since then with even more progressive projections showing growth this year, too, so not even the dip that Zenith projects. If you move across, you can see the market sizes for media spend, which are an obvious starting point for calculating our addressable market given the market we're in but it's far from our entire market. So you can see the total media spend, the digital media spend, total marketing spend. But if you take trade marketing, for example, this is a $500 billion-plus market, which traditionally has been direct transactions between brands and retailers in exchange for shelf space or promotions. Now this is rapidly shifting to digital spend. So you're seeing marketplaces like Amazon and Alibaba or Instacart and even Walmart and Target in the U.S. making huge inroads into this spend. And it's spend that is now flowing through agencies and something we're seeing a lot of, particularly on the commerce side. Underneath that, you can see Adobe and Salesforce. So they're the leading marketing technology firms, billions of dollars of license sales annually. And as you know, our strategy at S4 is to be a key service partner for firms like them. And so I've just taken 2 there. There are many others. And the service revenues are widely estimated to be a multiple of their license fees. So again, this is another multibillion-dollar market for us. Table on the bottom left is Gartner's view on the scale of the cloud computing market. Now obviously, a large chunk of these dollar revenues go to the tech players. So that's Google Cloud, AWS from Amazon, Microsoft Azure, et cetera, et cetera. But again, the significant service revenues here for our data practice, around data engineering, systems integration, cloud migrations, analytics, visualization, et cetera. Now this is not an exhaustive analysis of all the components that make up our addressable market. But hopefully, it illustrates that it is a multi, multibillion-dollar opportunity, and all parts of it are in serious growth mode. Now that final chart on the bottom right that shows the revenues of the top 25 advertising groups according to Ad Age, including all the holding companies, the digital parts of the consulting companies, so Accenture Interactive, Deloitte Digital, et cetera, and many of the large independents. And this adds up to $120 billion of revenue. Now that's an area we're determined to disrupt and take revenue from and win far more than our fair share of. So as you can see, there's plenty of scope for us, and it's going to be a long time before we worry about hitting the ceiling on our addressable market. Now with that, I'll hand over to Vic.
Hello, everyone, and thank you, Peter, Scott, for explaining our last quarter's numbers in detail. And as you can imagine, looking at the numbers, it was a very interesting and positive couple of months. The growth at the content side of the business returned after the COVID dip, and the majority of it comes from the U.S. and APAC. And I'm super happy to announce, and it's a bit of a spoiler alert for the rest of the presentation, but we see a bright future for the European growth as well, with the recent BMW and Mini pitch win. So if we go to the next page, I will explain a little bit more what happened this year. So to summarize 2020 in one sentence and with a lack of a better word, let's call it fascinating. We had a very promising and positive start of our business in January and February, then COVID hit. And although I don't want to look back too much, I would like to say a few words on what happened on the content side from mid-March to May. Our business got hit on film, experiential, some consultancy capabilities. And obviously, we had reduced revenues from some of our travel clients. We lost more than GBP 10 million of revenue that was already secured, and we lost a few weeks of sales force. But we responded fast and aggressively with new COVID-proof solutions: Virtual events, COVID-free studios, quick e-comm. And we made a very big statement and proving a point by winning a whopper, expanding our European presence during this process. And we're looking very hard to future-proof our business by creating scalable and modern solutions, which I will tell about in the next pages. Next page, please. So we launched our XP live (sic) [ LiveXP ] streaming tool, a scalable, virtual event solution that is customizable for trade shows, education and entertainment events. Secondly, our COVID-proof studios and post production capabilities are fully equipped to comply within safety standards and with live stream sessions and broad creative possibilities. So we can shoot content now in a safe environment instead of the large-scale shoots that are prohibited in many countries. And lastly, a lot of the brands we work with have been looking at e-commerce for years, yet COVID has meant that they need to move way much faster. So a quick commerce solution are designed specifically to swing up direct-to-consumer sales and optimize marketplace presence and maximize conversion. So from idea to content and launch in weeks and create a solid base to build out for the years to come. If we can shift to the next page, please. So by helping our clients grow, it leads to our own growth. And our own growth is getting noticed by the trade press. So Adweek named MediaMonks, Circus and Firewood in its yearly list of fastest-growing agencies. And what's important about this list is that it get us into the long list of the major RFIs. And if you can imagine, this list also gives us a pretty good indication what would happen with our ranking if we start combining the brand names. Next page, please. And the most important piece of news of the last quarter is obviously the BMW and Mini pitch win. After a process of almost a year, the decision in the biggest auto pitch of the year has been made. And I'm very proud that BMW announced in their press release that MediaMonks will be at the heart of the new setup working on creative and production. And I will give you, in the next sheet, a little bit more information about our whopper. And although I can't give you the exact details of the deal, I can share that it will be that BMW will bring us a whopper status in 2021. The first projects are already in, and we're currently ramping up the teams all over Europe and offboarding existing agencies. And our job is to build a customized modern marketing engine, which will be built on the delivery centers and the creative execution power of MediaMonks. The high-performance marketing engine will modernize BMW and Mini customer relationship management across all touch points for 26 markets in Europe. All product campaigns, creative and production, will be handled by our engine. Which leads to the next sheet. We launched MediaMonks Germany. We hired exceptional leadership with award-winning Creative Director Till Eckel, ex-Chief Creative Officer and partner at Jung von Matt; and Thomas Strerath, the ex-CEO and Board member of Ogilvy and previously Partner at Jung von Matt. That's just to start. We will announce many more talented new hires to come. Berlin is expected to be at 40 FTE mid-2021, and there is a lot of interest already from other German brands to build similar solutions. And from Germany, we go to fashion. Three weeks ago, we announced a whole new team to service our fashion and luxury clients. The former Wednesday leadership, the fashion specialist of Omnicom, decided to join MediaMonks and build a dedicated creative and execution team to help serve fashion brands with their digital ideation. And I am very proud to have Liam and his team on board to make this happen. And from fashion, it's just a flip of one page to France. We have very great news on our European merger front as well. Dare.Win joined MediaMonks as of September 10. Founded and led by Wale, we have added a very respected social media specialist and bring us a lot of entertainment knowledge as well. We already won our first client together, and we have many conversations about servicing our global clients in France, Europe's third largest advertising market. And with all these new wins, teams and mergers, let's flip to the next page to see some work. Two pieces of work that I want to highlight on this page, Hasbro's iconic PulseCon convention, where we helped reimagine the whole event to drive in the current restrictions. Two full days into a 3D board game for tens of thousands of attendees to go through. All were broadcasted on the Hasbro's Pulse YouTube channel. And for the release of the new Air Jordans, we created a release event and microsite that helped Nike virtualize the iconic shoe for fans around the world. And the last piece of work I want to highlight in the next page is that I'm very proud to say that we built the world's largest PR event for the world's largest PR company, Facebook, and produced a VR. We created customized software that people could experience the 10-hour event on Facebook Live and Oculus Venues. And if we go to the last slide, I explain a little bit what is to come. So a quick glimpse of our modern, scalable solution that we're working on to help future-proof our business. We're very well known about our always on communication. And our partner-of-record model will add a creative layer to always on, which will make people talk about our work and talk about the projects we do for our clients. We call that feed the feeds. Secondly, we're working very hard on transforming broadcasting, as you could have seen in our live event and also the market that Scott described earlier on. Brands need a partner that can push technology forward in new content formats and experiences like cloud technology and digital green screen rooms, so talents can join from all around the globe. And from quick commerce, we want to move into everywhere commerce. A customer demands e-commerce capabilities across the entire digital ecosystem, and it needs to be fit for brands and create content and media every day and all day. And lastly, we're taking the first steps into creating original content. We work with the best in the industry, like CAA, to create digital-first iconic stories. So that's it for me. As you can see, there's a lot going on, a lot of positivity. Many thanks for your time and hope to see you next quarter. And I'm looking forward to the question you might have. Pete, over to you.
Thank you, Victor, and hello to everyone from Scottsdale, Arizona, as Sir Martin mentioned. I'm very pleased to talk about the data and digital media practice that's for today. Obviously, 2020 has been a very challenging year, what with the pandemic and all of the other events that have been really in the markets. But I do think that in November, as we are now, it is safe to say that the pandemic and the events of the year have truly accelerated the changes that we've seen worldwide, and we see this generally as a move forward towards the future. I'm pleased to report that the MightyHive employees are safe and well around the world. And we keep track of their health and safety regularly every day as a matter of fact. And so that is the first thing that I'm just very, very pleased with. They are safe and well and adapting rapidly to the challenging environments, both work from home and all of the other changes to the working environments inside of this year. Next slide, please. We do believe that digital media spend has rebounded from the depths that we saw earlier this year. We are pleased with the results that we've seen over the last few months and are cautiously optimistic for the future. Obviously, these projections are still very, very dependent on the macroeconomic factors, which seem to be changing by the day as we seem to be in a 24-hour news cycle where every day brings new and important information about what the future may hold. That being said, at this moment, we are pleased with the media rebound and the activity that we see increasing from the depths [ that governed ] this year. Next slide. What we are seeing is that we are harnessing the growing momentum in digital media and redoubling our efforts inside of data for continued growth. What I would say generally is that one of the accelerants that we have talked about earlier was really around just the future coming a little bit faster, and the future is definitely going to be ushered in via data. And that is one of the fastest-growing parts of our business. And increasingly, we are seen as a data partner of record as we are trying to help our clients tame the very important question throughout how to use the data, how to protect the data and what will the future hold for these data strategies. Of course, data in and of itself must be paired with media and creative. Thus, our holy trinity model in order to make all of these things worthwhile and real. So -- but inside of digital media, we -- obviously, we're seeing transformation, talent and training, social commerce and customer experience, all trending upwards and the data with strength across the board, cloud, analytics, measurement. Customer data platforms, or CDPs, have been particularly interesting over the last few months, and we're seeing a strong uptick in activity inside of these particular types of engagements. Obviously, privacy continues to be an ongoing topic of discussion, visualization and storytelling, et cetera. Next slide. We are also pleased to say that we are seeing an uptick in interest in in-housing. Earlier this year as the pandemic hit, it not only impacted some of the media spend but also slowed down some of the decisions that were out there around in-housing. As you know, MightyHive does do a bunch of in-housing globally. I will, for the record, once again, say that we're not zealous about this particular thing. We don't think that everybody needs to in-house, but it is certainly an option that's very interesting for many, many of our customers. That being said, earlier in the year, as the pandemic was really starting to push forward, we did see some folks start to pump the brakes a little bit on these decisions just because I think that people were a little bit cautious and rightfully so about potentially starting and in-housing engagements in the middle of a global pandemic. That being said, in the past few weeks and months, we have seen this interest pick back up. And you can see some of the sort of value proposition and persuasion points, et cetera, are associated with that if you're not familiar with that. Next slide. This has resulted, this uptick in interest, has resulted in some great wins for us. Not to let Victor take all of the -- have all the fun with his BMW win, T-Mobile, who is now the second-largest mobile provider in the United States, has decided to engage with MightyHive in order to in-house their media. And this is really, really exciting news for us, and we're very, very pleased indeed and looking forward to working with them. Next slide. What we can say is that, of course, the T-Mobile win was made possible by the fantastic results that we have seen with Sprint now a part of T-Mobile. And just -- that has just been a category-defining win for many, many, many reasons and has been immortalized in a Harvard Business School case study, which, if anybody would like to see, a copy is available online. And so congratulations to Sprint on the publishing of that case study, literally making the textbooks, which we're very, very proud of. And a quick shout-out also to our other in-housing client, Bayer, who is progressing along very, very well inside of this. And for those of you that didn't know this -- that client, Bayer, was recently named the best in-house media operation in the world. Next slide. So we're expanding inside of the media and the data. But probably the most exciting areas of growth that we are seeing is where Victor and myself and Wes and Chris and all of the folks at MediaMonks and all of the folks at MightyHive and S4 and all of -- everybody within the company are just starting to see the unitary structure. And this is where we can see the true synergies of bringing all of this together and really kind of pursuing the vision that Sir Martin brought us together in order to chase. And so we're definitely seeing these integrated wins. And I, for one, can report that they are very exciting indeed. And I can report that in one after action kind of meeting when we were analyzing what went right and what went wrong in the particular pursuit, probably my favorite part was listening to the folks all saying, "We would not have won this pitch without our partners." And so that is something that I think is just tremendously exciting. Next slide. And so as you know, we are continuing to bring more capabilities to our clients, trying to predict the future and be responsive to them. And as you can all see, in all sense, there's lots of change in the air. So whether that is social commerce or performance or cloud or artificial intelligence and measurements, I won't steal Scott's thunder by going too much into our sort of active merger and acquisition activities over the last few months, but they have all been very, very impactful already. And we think that as they continue to settle in, there will be even more synergies to be had. So with that, actually, I think I can pass it over directly to Scott, and he can continue on from here. Scott?
Great. Thanks, Pete. So I'm just going to cover quickly clients. I think, actually, if we go to the next slide, Pete and Vic obviously covered 2 of the major wins we had this quarter on BMW, obviously, our new whopper on the content side and T-Mobile on the data and digital media side. But you can see here some of the other clients that we've landed this quarter, so some great names on there. Big win for us in Latin America with Whirlpool. You saw the Hasbro work that Vic referenced there, doing a lot of work for Shopify. St. Jude's in the U.S., another big digital media client. We've won Mercado Libre in Latin America, which is a creative content, digital media and data client for us. And you can see some interesting new clients as well. So companies like Klarna, which is one of the leading fintech platforms; Beyond Meat, which is a disruptor in the FMCG sector; Sunrun in the energy sector; and then a couple of NDA clients in consumer electronics and automotive as well. And then we continue to expand some of our larger relationships. So you'll recognize many of the logos here from previous presentations. These are big existing clients of ours who continue to give us new assignments and provide new revenue streams for us. If we head to the next slide, the star portfolio. So this is based on 100% of our client revenue, unlike some companies that cherry-pick their top clients. So this is based on all our client business. And it's remarkably stable, I think, from previous quarters. Slight uptick on technologies, we're up to 55% now of our revenue coming from the tech sector, which is something we're very happy with and proud of. I think, obviously, tech companies have grown well in recent months and invested heavily in marketing. So that's probably what's driven that slight uptick. And I think projecting forward, we will keep that as stable as possible. But obviously, we're going to see an uptick in auto, in particular, given the BMW win and potentially other whoppers coming in, in other categories as well. Move to the next slide. As Pete said, just cover the M&A, so move on to the merger slide. We did 3 transactions this quarter. So Orca in July, which is the full-service Amazon agency based in Seattle, Brightblue in September, which is a measurement -- econometric measurement company based in London. And as Victor mentioned, Dare.Win, giving us our French market presence with Wale and his colleagues in late September as well. So we continue to have a strong pipeline on the M&A front. We have several deals in due diligence right now. The sectors we're looking at, data and particularly digital media, some geographical stuff. So we continue to explore markets like Germany, e-commerce and digital transformation. And we are actually seeing a bit of an uptick in activity or certainly inbound activity and willingness to have conversations, I think, around M&A, potentially, some of that driven by fears around tax regimes getting tougher for entrepreneurs, so people looking to do deals. And we've seen some quite interesting and larger transactions that we're having a good look at, at the moment. So there will be no doubt more to talk about in the future on that. So with that, hand you over to Martin for our summary and outlook.
Thanks, Scott, and thanks, Pete. Thanks, Victor. Thanks, Peter. So just to summarize on the last slide, just a few key points. Firstly and most importantly, as Pete said, people. Our people and their families are generally safe, mostly still working from home but probably more working from the office in Asia Pacific, but EMEA and the Americas still mostly from home. And we anticipate that will continue to be the case well into 2021 when we perhaps start to see a vaccine being more widely distributed. Secondly, we have extremely strong and broad diversity in both gender and race. But there is more to do, as we pointed out in our statement, with our black community. We're about 40% people of color in the United States, in the United Kingdom. Black community represents about 5% to 6%, whereas it should be about 13% in the U.S. and in New York where we operate and we've committed to operating as the communities in which we work in. So in New York, for example, it's 25%. So we have to up our game and have already started to do so, for example, with the black minority recruitment programs, both at the black universities and at high schools. Second point -- third point is we have strong Q3 performance, as you heard from Peter. And we're now back to pre-COVID levels and indeed our targeted performance. So we, as you know, are targeting to double the size of the company organically '19 to '21 and '20 to '22, and our new 3-year plan for '21 to '23 embodies that, too. So Q4 is on track to deliver strong double-digit growth, both top line and bottom line in terms of performance and our targeted margins for 2020. So we're not exhibiting any of the caution that we heard from, for example, the ad hold companies in their Q3 calls where they exhibited uncertainty about what's going to happen in Q4. And we believe we have an even stronger fighting chance than ever before of delivering on our '20 to '23 3-year plan, which was to double the size of the company organically as well. Our new plan for '21 to '23 is to double the size of the company, again organically, with the same 20% EBITDA margins after central costs. And our 2021 budget targets, 25% like-for-like growth, both top and bottom line, is consistent with all the 3-year plans, obviously driven by Victor's good news around BMW and perhaps some other things that to come. 2021 looks to us like 2010. We're very bullish about 2021. We have macroeconomic tailwinds to this rebound in GDP, down 5% this year, up 5% or so next year, and indeed the micro tailwinds around the whopper wins that we already indicated and the client activity, which is being driven by digital acceleration, particularly in tech and health care, which, as Scott pointed out, is almost 60% of our business. There's concrete evidence, most gratifyingly, of client conversion at scale. That's our central objective for 2020. Brand awareness was 2018, brand trial was 2019, and conversion at scale or the beginnings of it was 2020. We've seen that with BMW, Mini and The Engine. And there's more to come on that -- in that area before the end of the year. And we're making very significant progress on our '20 squared client objective. That is to generate 20 clients with more than $20 million of revenue so far each year. And so far, we have 3, and we're on the cusp of a 4th.Merger -- the merger pipeline, as Scott mentioned, is extremely strong and is particularly active at the moment given the potential of U.S. tax hikes, although that seems to have receded a little bit following the results of the presidential election in the United States. And last but not least, we have a very strong management team, part of which is on this call. We're committed to the unitary P&L and the elimination of any silos. And our integration focus remains extremely strong and our heightened unitary rebranding is being worked on by Wes and his colleagues will come in early 2021. So Fraser, that's the end of the presentation. We took about 40 minutes. Over for Q&A, please.
[Operator Instructions] Okay. Our first question is over the line of Paul Richards at Dowgate.
Great to see the development from your tech focus into automated in Q3. There's been suggestions that some of the FMCG, CPG companies that have actually fared quite well in COVID-19 are looking to further accelerate the digital transformation. And I wondered if you could share your thoughts on that. Second question is, very interesting the market size and scope that Scott shared and some of the deals that mergers have come through in Q3. How far do you think you can extend your range of business into what would typically be seen as sort of Accenture-type areas? And then finally, could you give us a bit of color on October if you have it? It certainly sounds like the momentum has continued into Q4 very strongly.
Victor, do you want to answer on the FMCG and what you're seeing from FMCG? And Scott, maybe you can talk about deals and vis-Ã -vis Accenture. On October, I think the continuation of what we've seen, Peter, you want to comment on that first?
Yes. So indeed, the numbers are not in yet. So they're expected in the next couple of days, but all indications are indeed further strong growth or sort of in the range of what we've seen in the third quarter. So indications are there, but they're coming in. We know within a week or two.
Okay. Victor, do you want to FMCG and what you see there?
Yes. Paul, thank you for your question. So as you know, from 1.5 years ago, MediaMonks client base was very, very tech-heavy. And we're moving in, and that's why the -- a whopper win as BMW is super important. But we also won some significant roster positions at FMCG companies, which we hopefully want -- are going to announce in the next couple of months. So I completely underline your view on -- that FMCGs need to move into digital aggressively as well. And we're teaming up in order to do so. So I completely believe and know we have the right knowledge and products to help out as well as on the digital media side, on the data side and the content solutions that we have. Look at our film studios, for example, or our focus on food and liquid expertise. So we have the knowledge in-house. We have the products in-house. We see the trends. And the major step that we're going to take is to -- or land and expand the existing roster positions, so MediaMonks gets and S4 gets a bigger part of that business. Or secondly, win something very extensively that we hope to announce soon. So we're ready for it. We really come from the technology side but we see that more and more of the FMCG companies are also getting people in on important places from the managing processes on that side. So I think we will see a big uptick in that part.
Scott, do you want to talk about deals?
Yes. Just to point out on FMCG, Paul, that's our second largest category. So we do have quite significant business there already, and as Vic said, we're hopefully be winning more shortly. On your question around the market and sort of extending our business, how far we can go versus Accenture. I mean Accenture is clearly -- and I should be clear, Accenture Interactive, so Accenture. Accenture Interactive is clearly our main competitor. So they were our major competitor in the BMW pitch, which we won, and we compete with them pretty aggressively on a lot of the other business that we've won recently, definitely our most consistent sort of competitor we come up against. We're quite clear about what our service offering is. So as you know, the 3 areas, data, creative, digital media, and I think that does already overlap quite a bit with what Accenture does. So I'm sure we'll see more of them. And I think if you think about where we're heading in terms of building out capabilities around digital transformation, I'd imagine our service offering is probably going to look more like Accenture Interactive's in the future and is already heading in that direction and pretty different from the holding companies.
Just add one thing to what Victor said on FMCG. The sort of model that you're seeing at P&G under Mark Pritchard with, which is what I'd call a Netflix-type model, using first-party data, they have, I think, 1.2 billion, 1.3 billion consumer profiles, looking at how they produce more personalization at scale, which MediaMonks, for example, specializes in, and the use of data analytics, the sort of things that Pete and his colleagues at MightyHive are developing, those are all part of the model that we see FMCG companies increasingly starting to do. And I think the other thing to say is that one of the things we see and we think you'll see this very shortly is where the data and analytics capability MightyHive has penetrated, it gives us opportunities to leverage those relationships into the content area.
Next question is from the line of Adrien de Saint Hilaire, Bank of America.
So first of all, Pete, you mentioned the win of T-Mobile. Just curious if this is part of the ongoing media review, or is that completely separate? Secondly, like-for-like growth year-to-date, about 16%. The broader ad market is down 10%. If you look at next year, media agencies are expecting something like 4% to 8% market growth, and you're looking, if I may say, at just 25% like-for-like. So can you just explain why would the gap between your performance and the ad markets, why would that reduce?And thirdly, perhaps maybe more for Martin, do you think there will be any impact from the new U.S. administration on the digital ad market, any chances of breakups potentially? And what sort of impact do you expect for digital ad spending and perhaps your own performance?
Okay. Do you want to talk about T-Mobile, Pete?
Absolutely. So T-Mobile is going through a review at the moment. And the decision to -- for the in-housing is not a part of that. And so we have been -- we have hands on keyboard now and are working our way on T-Mobile, and it's been a very good start so far. In terms of the second question there around the media and the growth in these types of things, I would say that we're feeling bullish about next year for all the reasons that we've already covered inside of our remarks today, being fully digital and seeing the trends in terms of which way digital spend is going and which way other spends are not going, tends to give us a little bit more confidence in these types of things. And we just kind of see a rebound in all of the other types of functions, whether that be data. And I can't be -- I can't decide whether to be more excited about the ongoing stuff that we're doing inside of data and media or the types of possibilities that are going to emerge as we continue the process of merging everything together into a single unitary offer. And so -- but all of these things together are what give us confidence for next year.
Yes. I think, Adrien, just on the gap front -- I mean when you cycle 10% to 15% down or 15% to 20% down, you're, at some point, going to get some relative improvement. You're also going to get a GDP gain next year, some are more bullish, some houses are more bullish about what's going to happen to GDP. Some government, for example, are talking about 6%, 6.5% for next year as a rebound. Clearly, some traditional media are going to -- if there's 1 year that you will see maybe the ad holdcos improve, it has to be next year, particularly Q2, because they're going to be cycling minus 10% or minus 15%. I mean if they don't show positive growth next year, they never will.But I still think the fundamentals, if you look at what's happening to the projections for digital market spend next year, I think the stuff I've seen in the U.S. for next year is something like 17% to 20% growth. With that GDP rebound, as we showed you in the slides, in the presentation, we think there's a very high correlation now between digital ad spend and GDP growth, not dissimilar sort of correlations that we had in the previous millennium, the 1970s and the '80s between traditional media spend and GDP. So I think that's that phenomenal.On the U.S. administration, we were talking about it amongst ourselves before we came on the call, and we've been asked questions, obviously, in relation to our Q3 trading statement this morning by the media. I think the result -- the election result is probably, from a market point of view, that the -- as good a result as they could have got or as the markets could have got. What we -- it's an uncanny -- the electorate seems to sort of always eliminate the -- not always, sometimes, it eliminates the extremes. And what you have is 2 Americas, you have a rural Republican America, and you have an urban Democratic America, which we've seen with this very heavy voting, 2/3 of the electorate having voted, and the margin -- well, the weight of the voting for both presidential candidates.So I think the result probably is a happy medium and a happy balance. We'll have to see what happens in Georgia on January 5. It seems that it will be a tough road for the Democrats, and it's likely that -- or more likely than not, the Senate will be Republican-controlled. If that is so, you have a balance where President-elect Biden and Mitch McConnell are going to have to work out a modus vivendi. They have good experience of one another, good experience generally, and maybe we'll see a balance. And as Scott mentioned, in terms of deal flow, we saw I would describe it as frenetic activity in anticipation of not only the increase in corporate back to where they were of corporation tax rates of 28%, but also the prospect of capital gains tax rates being doubled to income tax rates. That seems to have receded.We obviously have to wait for Georgia, and that may not be the case if the Democrats get control and -- but Stimulus Bill, we're probably going to get one. Question is when and the weight, we'll see probably not as much if it was a Democrat blue wave sweep, but certainly significant stimulus. So that's good news for the markets. And then the extremes on the tax, perhaps limited. And the progresses in the Democratic party didn't get to where they thought they were going to get, that 2 nations in America or certainly that rural Republican, those roots prevent the extremes on the Democratic side, too. So I think all in all, a pretty balanced solution, and I think that's what the market so far seem to be reflecting in terms of their weight. In terms of breakup on tech, probably, again, the pressure on tech breakup is less than we thought it was going to be. I just -- personally, I think that breaking up the tech companies wouldn't achieve much. Interestingly, in this second lockdown, if you're a small, medium-sized business in the U.K., for example, or Western Europe, what do you do? You don't advertise on ITV. It's too expensive, and it's too inflexible. What do you do? You use Google. You use Facebook. You use Amazon, and you use the online solution. So all the second lockdown has done is -- in my view, is to increase the likelihood of digital transformation and acceleration. So tech breakup, be careful what you wish for because you may actually make it even more difficult for small and medium-sized businesses, which are the life blood -- or part of the life blood of the economy. So I think on balance, the result was probably, as Pete said in our pre-call chat, as good as from a market point of view as it could get.
Our next question is over the line of Emily Johnson at Barclays.
It's Emily Johnson from Barclays here. First question, I just wanted to ask about the different organic growth rates across the different businesses, across content and digital. How much of that is -- the difference is land? So content clients having sort of stronger growth in the existing base versus expand and there just being more new client assignments there. And then secondly, looking at Q4, have you seen any impact from advertisers plans changing because of the new lockdowns across Europe? Is it that they -- this time though, they aren't changing their plans because Q4 sales are even more important than ever, and they need to market to maintain their share of voice? Or are they adjusting their marketing plans again?
Okay. Thank you, Emily. On Q4, no change. Peter, do you want to comment on whether we've seen any change on Q4, I think there has been none.
No. I think that's a short summary, that we don't see any change or at least not yet and also are not expecting it. We have a strong pipeline. We have our strong, secured pipeline and compared to, I would say, early or March this year, we don't expect that panic -- sort of panic reaction where budgets were frozen or like event business was totally stopped. And by the way, like Victor elaborated, that model changed for us into far more digital events. So we're sort of less dependent on that, if there was dependency at all in the first quarter. So Emily, I would say, all in all, we don't see these changes and are well on track in order to reach our terms position.
Yes. I mean, on content, I think, Victor, it's fair to say that we come to Pete on data and analytics and digital media. But on content, I think it's more what I would call, expand so far, the impact of BMW is too early. I mean it's started. But do you want to talk a little bit about how you see that calling land would be in BMW and whatever else where it is coming along and expand is more the project by [Technical Difficulty]. Go ahead.
Yes. There has been no financial impact of BMW until Q3. There will be minimum amount of impact in Q4, and it's literally, we're ramping up for 2021. So it's -- the main focus for this year was twofold: show that we could increase the volume that we do with our clients and help them with different parts of our business and solutions; and then secondly was, can we prove that we can win a nontechnology brand? So can we land a new wafer from an RFI, which we did. But there's no financial impact on it now.One additional note on the Q4 plans. What I noticed, and this is besides just the financial impact of it. But what I noticed is the change that brands need to do is real. So there's no denying anymore that digital transformation plans need to be executed, that the move to e-com needs to be executed. And while the summer was promising for retail again, the second lockdown is really showing that you need to get your digital house in order. So that is what I can see from the brand side. That there's a real big push of execution bringing...
Pete, do you want to talk from data and analytics and digital media?
Yes. Similar to the comments before, I'd say we saw more contributions from the expand rather than the land over the last few months. And actually, that's kind of the way I like it. I actually really enjoy when we start with something quick, skipping the sometimes seemingly never-ending RFP processes that can take months and quarters and even years sometimes to complete. And as Martin has said many times in the past, who's got time for that these days. The market simply moves too quickly. So we are seeing some great motion inside of the expand. And I think that we will continue to see that type of expansion.I mean we are always obviously looking to hire -- to bring on new clients into the mix. But I would say that oftentimes when we kind of get those, especially on the data and the digital media side, they tend to be sort of projects that are a foothold. And then they move from there into something larger and something larger. And then from there, as we expand, we move it, not only at the expansion side of the data and digital media side, but into the creative side. And so we hope to show you some more evidence of that type of motion in the near future.
Do you want to say a little bit, Pete, about data and analytics? So I think it's interesting what we've seen there in terms of first-party data, third-party cookie pressure from Google and Apple?
Sure. I think it's pretty clear that there's been a lot happening inside of our industry beyond just sort of the macroeconomic things that are certainly some headlines. And so inside of programmatic and inside of advanced digital, there has been quite a bit of motion inside of technology standards as well as potential regulation and those types of things. And so we've seen quite a bit of outreach from our clients who are seeking our guidance around what the possible strategies will be for making sure and securing the future of their data strategies regardless of how the market turns over the next few months and what are the different types of things that happen in this regard. And so this against the backdrop of general acceleration and transformation in the first place, I think that it has created almost a perfect storm of data questions that we have been seeing tremendous activity inside.
Our next question is over the line of Steve Liechti at Numis.
Two from me, please. They're not meant to be negative questions, but everything is so good, I might as well try it. One, just on -- have you actually had any major client losses this year? If so, why? And then the second question is more for Pete. On the data and digital side, look, 7% growth is great compared to most companies I follow, but it's not great compared to content. If we look forward to next year, given media market should improve and stuff like that, what's the chance of you sort of doing sort of, let's say, 20% growth rather than 7% growth from here, especially given the market drivers that you talked about as well?
Okay. Let's start with losses. I think losses -- no, have we -- I can't think of major losses, but have we not won things? We had. What's your pitch rate, Victor, now running at? What proportion of pitches do you win? Honestly now, not just to understand.
Yes. We moved in the time of -- to honesty now, I believe.
No fake news.
No fake news anymore. So it depends a little bit per market. So our pitch rate in the U.S. is super high. It's around 80%. Smaller markets where our brand name isn't established yet like in the U.S., the pitch rate tends to be a little bit lower. So we moved in quite some markets, Japan, Korea, Australia. So our pitch rate needs to go up there. And that we're trying with the growth of the team and the reputation that we built and the people that we hire. So let's say, in new markets, our pitch rate starts at 50%, and we need to move it up until 80%. So yes, we're going to test it out in newer markets, which is fine. It's also making a point in those RFI processes. And we sometimes or often see that even when we lose a big RFI in a smaller market because they say, well, you're too small here still, the client comes back within a year's time to grow within a smaller piece of business. So I haven't seen a major loss of business this year. So we're growing within our existing client base, and we hope to add some new in the end of the year.
Yes. I think we would say, Victor, we -- sometimes we're not included in things that we think we should be included in or sometimes we're included in things, and we don't win them. And I think to Steve's question, that that's -- if I was going to say what an irritant, that's an irritant, maybe it's our self-belief, but we think we should be included in various things. I mean sometimes, you don't win things -- I mean you always claim that the reason you don't win things is because of price, the other people cut their price, and that's the way they won it. But I would say, it comes back to this sort of awareness trial conversion at scale progression. And I think on the content side, and in fact, on the base, so I'll come on to that in a second. On your second part of the question, I mean I'd respond to that by saying, well, our budget for next year, as Peter said, we're looking at 25%, which is consistent in our budgets. And that's evenly spread or more evenly spread across content and across data and digital. But do you want to talk, Peter, a little bit about how you see things in data and digital and the different component parts? I mean, how digital and analytics is done, U.S. media, non-U.S., international media?
Sure. It's a great question, Steve, and I will start off just by just acknowledging, a, that the content side has done one hell of a job over the last few months. And so hats off to them. And it has -- and -- but by no means is the data and digital media side sort of second guessing our own results. As you already noted, Steve, by comparison, we've done extraordinarily well. That being said, I think my colleagues will note that I thrive on competition. And so we are excited, right, to try and close that gap with the crew. And that being said, like as I noted earlier, I'm not sure if there's almost an embarrassment of riches here. I'm not sure which one to be more excited about, the chase and the race or the synergies and the fact that we can combine together and get an even better result. And so the -- I think that that's kind of the way that I would answer it. And with so many question marks in the air, time will tell. But as you can tell from the overall sort of tone and vibe that you're sensing here, we're pretty excited for the future.
Yes. Just to add to that point is that as will become apparent, without wanting to go into the detail now, I mean there are things that happen at S4 or that happened on -- in the content practice around MediaMonks that would not have happened but for the work of MightyHive in data and analytics or digital media. And whilst we report to you and even though we're going to do a unitary branding exercise early in 2021, which is the 20th anniversary of MediaMonks' birth, even though we're going to do that, we'll continue to report the 2 practices, even though we're unitary. But I mean the point I'm making, Steve, is that whilst we report to you and try somewhat arbitrarily assign growth to content and to data and analytics and digital media, they feed off one another. And I would say BMW MINI has been a pure content win. But I think you're about to see things happen at S4, which would not have happened but for the twin pillars. And what's interesting about BMW and MINI is that if we're successful, I'm sure we'll get other opportunities, both geographically and functionally, that will flow-through from it. In fact, I think we're already starting to see that. So, yes, I think the 2 together, we'll continue to separate them for your purposes, but you have to look at the thing in the round as well.
We now go to the line of Matthew Walker at Credit Suisse.
Obviously, strong results for Q3. I had a few questions. The first one was back to Adrien's question about the 25% like-for-like and the gap between the other companies. I mean, including the BMW win, which was pretty significant, doesn't -- I mean I know that the 25% is sort of on track with your 3-year growth. But specifically for 2021, given that it's a rebound year for GDP plus you've got easier comparisons from '20, and you've got the BMW win on top, are you being deliberately pretty conservative there? The second question is...
We can't win with you on that. It reminds me of yesteryear. We can't win. I just -- one thing I'd point out is BMW, as Victor said, I mean, BMW has not influenced the numbers really in Q3. It will start to influence them in Q4. I think we did get some revenue in from BMW in September I think. Right, Peter? We did a little bit.
It's basically starting in October. It's really starting in Q4.
Okay. So just to that point, point to that. Sorry. Go ahead.
The other one. Yes, on the media side, to Steve's question, I mean, can we expect -- maybe being a bit more specific, can we expect for media to tick up to double digits in Q4 this year? How significant is the T-Mobile win and when does that kick in?And then finally, on the merger contributions, you've got some additional clients or companies coming into the group for the numbers in Q4. How much in terms of million pounds will they contribute to revenue in Q4? Or put it in another way, if you include all the M&A stuff that you've done previously plus the M&A that's going to kick in, in Q4, how much is that M&A revenue going to contribute to the Q4 revenue, please?
Peter, do you want to answer that one first?
No, I don't want to answer that one. No. The thing is -- and I know, Matthew, we've talked about this before in a sort of one-on-one conversation but -- so there will be -- of course, there will be the contributions of the new mergers like Orca has been announced [indiscernible] has been announced. And they will start contributing in Q4. That's one thing. Sorry, there will be. But honestly, it's going to be not very significant in the greater scheme of things, that's one thing.And second, in attributing it to the merger contribution or, let's say, the going concern of the existing group without demergers, that's -- we don't measure it like that because as we have indicated before, we look at ourselves in a unitary structure. So in a way, if a new company comes in and has some attribution or there is something sold on new projects or it's in land and expand, we don't mind where it lands. So it can land in MediaMonks, although it may have been a client from Circus in the old structure. Because in the unitary structure, it's not so much, hey, where does it land, whose P&L does it contribute? And that's why we basically don't measure it like that and also don't quantify what is the exact contribution. What we tend to do is, as you know, is that we compare on a like-for-like basis because that creates for us by resetting around basically the basis from -- for last year or previous quarter or whatever, and then compare it, and this is our organic growth. And again, we don't mind where it -- who counts for it, in which P&L or in which geography.
Do you want to comment, Pete, to talk about how you see data and analytics and digital in Q4 and going into next year? I mean you'll obviously -- I made the comment about the budget for next year. And our growth, it really is across -- more across the board, but go ahead.
Sure. I think it's a little bit early to tell. Obviously, it's very early inside of Q4, and there's a lot of things up in the air. What I can say is that we are excited for the future, and we're going to give it a hell of a try. And I can -- I'm sure that we will be talking about this in a few months' time, and we can give you the exact numbers as to how it all goes inside Q4.
Yes. On the specific on T-Mobile, T-Mobile starts next year, doesn't it, Pete?
We've got some preparatory work that's already started, but it doesn't really kind of hit full swing for a while.
Our next question is over the line of Patrick Wellington at Morgan Stanley.
A couple of questions. Firstly, I greatly enjoyed the return of the chart with no scale on Slide 26, the data and digital growth. So can you relate that slide to the narrative? Because there's not a huge downturn in Q2 on that slide. And yet there's a big step-up in September. So can you talk about the dynamic of that? And in relation to the clients that Scott was pointing out, Alphabet, Facebook, Snap, all turning up very sharply, but your data business, not turning up at the same time. So that's the first question. Secondly, just going back to the one that Matthew bravely tried, which was are you going to do more than 25% growth next year to double from a '19 base, you did 39% pro forma last year. If you grow 16% this year, which is your 9-month growth rate, then you will need 25% growth next year to get up to 200. Everything on this call suggests that your growth rate will be faster than 16% this year. So how do we interpret that? Is 25% too conservative? Or is actually 25% too aggressive if you're only going to hit 200 for next year?And then thirdly, in a slightly old-fashioned style, can we talk about EBITDA and your likely margin trend. EBITDA like-for-like was down at the first half, presumably, given you've had a strong EBITDA quarter, is up at the 9-month stage. You talk about some of the compensation costs coming back and so on. But what's the picture? You've got strong revenue growth next year, presumably you're not going to be putting back all your travel and entertainment next year. So are you going to get a particularly strong EBITDA growth as you go into '21 because you'll have the extra revenue, but maybe not the regular cost?
Okay. Let's deal with the EBITDA question first, Peter.
Yes, I'll certainly try to answer that question. So indeed, in the first half, we were -- after central costs, I think we were somewhere in the 14% to 15% range of our EBITDA. And as we have seen and this year shows it in a sort of similar pattern as last year because last year, I think we were in the first half, something around 16%, 17%, and it's somewhere around 23% and a little bit in the second half. And that's sort of the similar pattern that we see also in -- because we don't -- this is a trading update, so we don't add into our EBITDA numbers. But from a trend point of view, you see that also happening in this year -- or sorry, in this quarter and also our expectation for the fourth quarter, that it will be in the sort of size or growth percentages or not growth -- in absolute percentages what EBITDA is going to deliver in Q3 as well in Q4. It's the same or sort of same pattern as we see -- as we saw last year.
Okay. Just turning to your data and analytics question, which I think was the point. I think, Patrick, you're saying, why haven't data and analytics take -- have grown significantly given the rebound that we've seen in the big tech advertising revenues. Is that it?
Yes. I mean there's obviously a big step-up between August and September. And if you want to put an absolute number on any of those months, please feel free. But you definitely appear to be lagging that step-up from your counterparts.
Well, I'm not sure I really agree with that. I think you have to look at the picture overall. And I think we -- now, would we like the 24% or the 25% in August and September to be even greater, of course, we would. But when I compare it to where we were, I mean, true, in January, we were at 33% and in February, we went to 21%. So we're in sort of pre-COVID terms, we're midway between where we were in January and February. And we started to see impact of COVID in Asia in February. We really didn't see it in Europe until late March. So I think that the rebound pretty much follows what we've seen elsewhere. It's not a trade best.
Martin, I hate to interrupt. Martin, I hate to interrupt, but I'm specifically talking about digital media. If you look at the digital media chart on Slide 26, there's a definite uptick between August and September, but only 7% growth overall year-to-date?
No. Data and analytics and digital media, I take together as a whole. And I think the rebound we see and if you split the 3 -- you split out data and analytics and digital media into 3 component parts. Digital media in the U.S. was under more pressure, I think, in COVID than digital media outside the U.S. And I think data and analytics continue to grow quite significantly from a smaller base than digital media as we went through COVID and in the -- through the months. So I think overall, it was consistent with what we saw in the industry as a whole. I mean anything you want to add to that, Pete, from your perspective?
No. I mean I think it's just -- as we're taking a look at some of these V-shaped recoveries, like you have to remember that the sectors that Google services in terms of their overall step, there's a lot of SMB inside of there. As Martin has pointed out, very often that there's sort of -- there are certain safe parts of the economy that we don't have quite as much exposure to. So I don't think that there's always going to be a perfect correlation between the shapes of scrap in there. But other than that, I agree generally with what Martin said.
Let me put it the other way, Patrick. I mean what would you have expected, given what you just said?
Really, I'm just fishing for the -- what was the September number there on that numberless chart on Slide 26.
Which number are you fishing for?
I'm looking -- I'm assuming that this is the organic gross profit growth rate of your MightyHive operations being shown on Slide 26. So if you want to fill in, and we've got a nice trend line, we've got some nice bar charts, but we've got no numbers. So I'm just -- we've got the number 26, which is the number of the slide, but nothing more on numbers on that slide. So do you want to fill in?
On that, on Slide 26, do you want to take a look at that?
Yes. That's Pete's slide, but I'm not sure how transparent we want to be in it.
Okay, Martin. And then just moving back, as we said, you did once -- you did 39% net sales growth in like-for-like in 2019. If you do 16% this year and 25% next year, you almost exactly hit that doubling. What messages are we saying about that? I mean, really, you're going to be over 25% next year.
Well, look, we're at the beginning of the year -- or we're coming into the beginning of the year. We've just done our budgets. The budgets are, in theory, meant to be reasonably conservative on what we know. The plans are meant to be targets, and the budgets are meant to be what we think is going to happen. But we've already referred to BMW MINI. The other part of it, we think there is more to come. So I think the answer to your question is when we've seen and you've seen what more there is to come, we could be more definitive. I mean to answer your question directly, if we were to add another whopper or additional opportunities, it's probable that we would sit down and revise our budget -- well, if not our budgets, certainly our forecasts for next year as a result. So if you were pushing me to the wall, I would say that when I look at the budgets for next year, given what we know might come down the line, they're probably conservative.
Okay then and pushing you against the wall and then twisting your arm up your back, so when is the next whopper do you think going to be decided? And surely, BMW is roughly the run rate of 2 whoppers anyway, isn't it?
Well, I mean it's certainly more than $20 million of revenue. When the whopper lands or whatever whoppers do, whether or -- when we eat the whopper or whatever, however, whatever is the right analogies, you will be the first to know.
I'll take that before the year-end then.
Yes. Yes. You'll be right in this year-end then.
Our final question in the queue is over to HSBC, Joe Spooner.
Actually most of the questions have already been asked. But given what you're saying about the strong pipeline for M&A and some of the reasons why the activity is picking up there, are you still seeing price expectations in that kind of 5 to 10x range? Is that still kind of the working assumption we should be thinking about? And on that M&A program, what are the priorities now after the recent additions you made in the third quarter and beyond?
Yes. I would just say that the market is very febrile is what I would -- or febrile is the way I would call it. It's very buoyant. And pricing is very firm. Do you want to give us more, Scott, please?
Sure. So I think on pricing, I mean, as I said, we have a few deals on the smaller side, similar to what you've seen us do so far this year in due diligence right now and I'm pricing on those as well within our kind of stated goals, as you said, 5 to 10x EBITDA, 1 to 2x top line. So that's all kind of in order. We are -- as Martin said, we're seeing some other opportunities come up, some of which are a little larger and some really very strong assets and quite competitive in some areas. So I think the pricing might stretch on a couple of those slightly beyond at the top end of our metrics, but nothing crazy. And then in terms of the areas we're looking at, I mean, it's a lot of what we've seen already. So on the data side, we have a kind of what we call a service road map. So we've done quite a lot of stuff on the site side analytics and measurement. And we have some more things we're looking at more on the data engineering and the cloud side there. On e-commerce, we're looking at building out skills, particularly on Adobe and Salesforce and further kind of systems integration capabilities there. There are a couple of geographical things we're looking at, particularly in Germany, but a couple of others as well. And then on the digital media side as well, looking at what we can do to kind of expand our service offering there. So there's plenty for us to be getting on that.
And just while I have the line, I think during the presentation, you spoke about getting to 40 heads in Germany. How are you thinking about resourcing that BMW contract beyond that footprint? Victor, do you want to talk about that one?
Yes. Thanks for that. No. This is specifically the -- what I'm talking about is specifically the creative hub in Berlin that we're expanding at this moment. So Germany in total will be a much bigger operation that covers Munich, Berlin and another city. Secondly, the production of all of it is done in our existing hubs, and that's also the main reason that BMW and MINI chose for us because we have the execution power that some of the consultancies that were pitching for this business lack. So it will be skilled over our Hilversum, Ukraine and India operations. So in total, it is a couple of hundred people that will dedicatedly work on this account, which is a part built in Germany, and the majority is the scale solutions that we already have in place. Does it answer your question?
Great. Yes.
I'd just add that we're already preparing -- coming back to Patrick's question about growth rates next year. We're already preparing for what more may come down the road, and we're already starting to hire in the U.S. for other things that may be happening. So we're anticipating quite significant increases in our head count. You've seen our head count's up 26% like-for-like in the first 9 months of the year, plus point to point. And I anticipate by the end of the year, it will be up even further. And then as we go into next year, both for BMW [Audio Gap] anything else, it will be increasing quite significantly. I mean we've said, Victor, that we thought we'd be hiring an incremental 300 people for BMW. Is that right?
Yes. It's not just 40 accounts because we are reassigning people that are already working with us. But indeed, it will be something like that.
Yes. And then for other things that may be coming down, again, coming back to Patrick's question, I think probably there will be another 300 that we'll be recruiting in the United States and elsewhere. Okay. Fraser, are there any more questions?
There are currently no further questions in the queue. So can I just pass it back to you for any closing comments at this stage?
All right. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for joining. I think we've been on the line for about an hour or so. I hope you enjoyed the presentation, and thank you for all the questions. Any further questions, we're all at S4 Capital or at MediaMonks or MightyHive to answer the questions. So thank you. And we have another call for -- primarily for our American audiences at 1:00 p.m., which Peter, Scott and I will be taking. So thank you very much, indeed. Thank you. See you next year for the full year. Bye-bye.