The first quarter revenue of JCDecaux ended March 31, 2020 fell by 13.9 percent to €723.6m, compared to €840.0 million in Q1 2019. The street furniture’s organic revenue decline of -5.0 percent was entirely driven by lockdowns introduced late February in Italy and starting mid-March in many other countries across the world such as France, Spain, UK, Australia, US etc. Billboard’s revenue declined -9.5 percent organically for the same reasons. Transit was the most impacted segment with a -23.8 percent organic revenue decline mainly due to a significant passengers traffic decrease in both airport and transit systems and to a material drop in advertising sales in Asia-Pacific with China being the first country to be affected by the pandemic.
As the lockdown measures are reminding billions of people around the world that all need to be Out-of-Home in order to live a normal life with friends and families. For this reason, JCDecaux expects OOH/DOOH media to benefit from the reopening of countries and cities with street furniture and billboard advertising rebounding faster than transport which will be affected by social distancing. For example, in France, when the govt announced lifting the lockdown starting on May 11, JCDecaux’ started to book both national and local street furniture and billboard advertising campaigns. In China with metro passenger traffic in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou the company’s advertising sales are improving.
