Message from the co-CEOs

After a year of decline in 2020, and a year of resilience in 2021, 2022 was the year of a renewed momentum for JCDecaux. All teams in all geographies demonstrated exceptional agility with the aim of consolidating our footholds to project ourselves forward. The entire Executive Board warmly thanks them for their unwavering commitment.

In 2022, in a challenging geopolitical and macroeconomic context, JCDecaux recorded good results which reflect the recovery in its business driven by its commercial agility and momentum, its digital and operational innovation, its responsible commitment and the mobilisation of its teams. The Group’s revenue for 2022 increased by +20.8%, +16.6% on an organic basis, to reach €3,316.5 million. All geographic regions and all businesses saw doubledigit growth, with the exception of China, which was impacted by a historically low level of mobility, following the resumption of the pandemic in 2022. Our organic revenue, excluding China, was up by +24.1% in 2022. By activity, Transport (+22.5%) and Street Furniture (+21.3%) recovered most strongly, followed by Billboard (+15.9%).

In digital, our revenue grew by +41.1% in 2022, reaching a record level of 31.4% of the Group’s annual revenue for the year. At the same time, non-digital advertising revenue recorded double-digit organic growth. We continued the selective deployment of digital screens in premium locations as well as the development of our data-related services. Programmatic advertising revenue via the VIOOH Supply Side Platform (SSP) doubled in 2022 to reach €61.3 million, i.e. 5.9% of our digital advertising revenue in fiscal year 2022. It is a source of mainly incremental revenue from dynamic and innovative campaigns by many new advertisers, optimised through data.

Our customer portfolio is highly diversified, with the Top 10 accounting for approximately 14% of our revenue in 2022. Our largest category, Fashion, Beauty and Luxury, represents 17% of the Group’s revenue and continues its strong growth at +41% in 2022. Travel and Entertainment/Leisure saw a strong post-Covid recovery, at +54% and +31% respectively.

The attractiveness of our model is confirmed across all our activities. This is evidenced by the renewal or winning of strategic contracts: Street furniture (Aix-Marseille-Provence, Dresden, Aalborg), Airports (Aéroports de Paris, Bangalore in India), Metro (Shanghai, São Paulo), Retail (Galeries Lafayette in France, Sonae Sierra in Portugal), Automated Public Toilets (Paris). In addition, our soft mobility services recorded unprecedented performance (+400% in electric bike rentals in Luxembourg, +10.5 million in Vélo’v rentals in the Lyon metropolitan area).

We recorded a strong improvement in our operational indicators. The adjusted operating margin of €602.9 million increased by 42.8%, more than twice revenue growth, and our net income became positive again at €132.1 million. Our cash flow increased by €161.8 million to €399.4 million and our free cash flow reached €43.2 million in 2022, while investments increased notably due to the increase in contract wins and renewals, including the payment of more than half of the advertising rights related to the 15-year contract with the Shanghai Metro.

Future growth will also involve external growth. In order to provide a full service programmatic solution to our clients, we have forged a strategic alliance with Displayce, including a majority stake. In France, we have strengthened our anchoring in the Mediterranean Arc with the acquisition of Pisoni, a French player in street furniture and billboards in the South of France. In the United States, we increased our stake from 49% to 100% in Interstate JCDecaux, a company that operates the Chicago digital network, consisting of 52 large format displays under a long-term contract with the city of Chicago, which is the 3rd largest media market in North America.

As a responsible media, backed by the excellence of our extra-financial performance recognised by the rating agencies (EcoVadis: Platinum, CDP: A-), in May 2022, we announced an ambitious ESG strategy for 2030, respecting our UN Global Compact commitment. Our carbon footprint is down by -27% in 2022 compared to 2019 (scopes 1, 2 and 3). Because it makes it possible to finance service and transport infrastructures, our virtuous business model contributes to the fight against climate change. Nearly 50% of our revenue in 2022 is thus eligible and aligned with the European taxonomy.

While we have been contributing to collective carbon neutrality across our activities in France since 2021, we are pursuing our carbon reduction strategy and, in March 2023, on the occasion of our Annual Results, we announced a new “SBTi committed” Climate Strategy. This includes strong and proactive commitments to continue to optimise our carbon footprint, reducing our scope 1 and 2 emissions by 60% by 2030 and our scope 3 emissions by 46%, and achieving Net Zero by 2050 (scopes 1, 2 and 3).

Present in the daily life of hundreds of millions of people, JCDecaux media is an accelerator for the ecological and social transition: it provides information on sustainable products and services, encourages responsible behaviour and supports major causes. In 2022, JCDecaux signed a global strategic partnership with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to support the “Joint United Nations Fund for the SDGs”, a fund intended to accelerate the development of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) around the world.

As you can see, 2022 was a very vibrant year from an economic, social and environmental standpoint.

We are well positioned to benefit from the recovery, thanks to our unique global leadership, our geographical exposure, our ability to bounce back in regions such as China, our welldiversified client portfolio, our permanent focus on innovation, driven by data and digitisation and our ESG strategy enhanced by a new Climate strategy.

Because it is efficient, useful and sustainable, we are more convinced than ever of the power of our media in an increasingly fragmented and multi-channel, advertising landscape, and of the important role it will continue to play in economic growth as well as in the positive transformations of our society.

We would like to take the opportunity to thank all our shareholders for the trust you have placed in JCDecaux since our IPO in June 2001.