French-based global outdoor advertising company JCDecaux has reported a plunge in revenues in its first half 2020 results released overnight. The company doesn’t break out its results for Australia, instead including the performance in the Asia Pacific block. The figure for that region showed revenue down 41% for the half.
Global revenue was also down 41%, while the Q2 fall was -63%.
The biggest fall in the half was felt in the transport sector where impacted airports saw revenue down 44%. Street furniture dipped 39% and billboards were down 37%.
Commenting on the 2020 first half-year results, Jean-Charles Decaux, chairman of the executive board and co-CEO of JCDecaux, said:
“During the Covid-19 lockdown period, the temporary historic drop in urban and transport audiences as well as severe economic uncertainties led companies to react immediately and to reduce their advertising spend in an unprecedented scale. Once lockdown measures were lifted, urban audiences started to recover progressively in Street Furniture and in Billboard while Transport audiences are still lagging significantly, mainly in airports.
“Advertising revenue has, for the time being, not followed the same pace of recovery and we see an important difference between audiences’ levels, which are in some geographies close to pre Covid 19, and revenue levels which do not yet reflect the positive momentum in urban audiences.
“Looking forward, the global advertising market remains highly volatile with low visibility. Considering the risk of new waves of Covid-19 and new local lockdowns being implemented, it remains very difficult to give a guidance for Q3 2020.”