S4 Capital to buy Circus Marketing; trading in line

Martin Sorrell’s S4 Capital said on Wednesday that it had agreed to buy Mexico City-based data-driven content agency Circus Marketing for an undisclosed sum.

Circus is a purely digital agency that creates content strategies and high impact campaigns for "the world's top new economy brands", S4 said. It counts Netflix, Spotify, Google, Facebook, Uber and others among the clients on its roster.

The business will be merged with S4’s content arm, MediaMonks. The company said the acquisition will further strengthen its content expertise and position in the Latin America region through the addition of projected revenues of $38m and gross profit of $20m in 2019 and 350 professionals, working collaboratively as one team across eight locations.

S4 did not say how much it was paying for Circus but it said half the consideration will be paid in cash and the remainder in shares.

Executive chairman Sorrell said: "Bruno Lambertini, Ignacio Liaudat and Luis Alonso and their colleagues at Circus share our vision of focusing on purely digital content, unencumbered by analogue baggage. Circus also embraces our data-driven holy trinity model and embodies faster, better, cheaper or speed, quality and value. They are buying into our unitary model, combining seamlessly with our content and programmatic practices."

The company also said that trading for the first 11 months and expectations for December remain in line with market expectations.

It pointed to like-for-like revenue and gross profit growth "well in excess" of 40% and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation margins improving "significantly" in the second half as flagged at the half year.

At 1245 GMT, the shares were up 0.9% at 190.60p.