The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. (NYSE:IPG) Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call July 24, 2024 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Jerry Leshne - Senior Vice President of Investor Relations
Philippe Krakowsky - Chief Executive Officer
Ellen Johnson - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Adrien de Saint Hilaire - Bank of America
David Karnovsky - JPMorgan
Steven Cahall - Wells Fargo
Tim Nollen - Macquarie
Cameron McVeigh - Morgan Stanley
Julien Roch - Barclays

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Interpublic Group Second Quarter 2024 Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer portion. [Operator Instructions] This conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time.

I would now like to introduce Mr. Jerry Leshne, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Sir, you begin.

Jerry Leshne

Good morning. Thank you for joining us. This morning, we are joined by our CEO, Philippe Krakowsky and by Ellen Johnson, our CFO. We have posted our earnings release and our slide presentation on our website, interpublic.com.

We will begin with prepared remarks to be followed by Q&A. We plan to conclude before market open at 9:30 Eastern Time. During this call, we will refer to forward-looking statements about our company. These are subject to the uncertainties and the cautionary statement that are included in our earnings release and the slide presentation. These are further detailed in our 10-Q and other filings with the SEC. We will also refer to certain non-GAAP measures. We believe that these measures provide useful supplemental data that, while not a substitute for GAAP measures, allow greater transparency in the review of our financial and operational performance.

At this point, it is my pleasure to turn things over to Philippe Krakowsky.

Philippe Krakowsky

Thank you, Jerry. As usual, I'll begin our call with a high-level view of our results and the business overall. Ellen will then provide additional insights on the quarter and I'll conclude with highlights at our agencies to be followed by your Q&A. This morning, we are reporting a solid second quarter highlighted by moderate acceleration of our growth as well as margin expansion from the same period a year ago.

To begin with revenue, second quarter organic growth before billable expenses came in at 1.7% bringing organic growth in the first half to 1.5%. In the quarter, we were paced by growth in Continental Europe, LatAm and the U.K., followed by increases in our other markets group and the U.S. Each of our 3 operating segments grew organically from a year ago. And underneath that, consistent with our performance over some time, we were again led by IPG Health and IPG Mediabrands. We saw strong performance as well at Deutsch LA, Golin and at Acxiom, we saw solid growth in the quarter. Also in keeping with recent quarters, underperformance at our digital specialty agencies weighed on our consolidated growth. That drag was about 1% of organic growth in the second quarter.