Havas CEO: We are gaining market share in China
Chief executive of French advertising agency Havas (Euronext Paris: HAV-FR) has said the group is seeing strong demand in China, even though it was one of the last of its advertising peers to invest in the country.
CEO Yannick Bollore said that while the size of its business in China was smaller than its U.S. operations, it was gaining market share in the region and had decided to organize itself different to its rivals.
"I believe what we have done in China was to assess that we were a challenger and we decided to be different," Bollore told CNBC on Friday.
"We decided to be more integrated, innovative, not to be organised as our rivals that have arrived earlier. At the beginning it was complicated, but since a couple of years we can see Havas gaining market share," he explained.
His comments come as Havas, which has market capitalization of around 3.1 billion euros (Exchange: EUR=) ($3.5 billion), reported solid second quarter and first half results that beat expectations. It posted 19.2 percent revenue growth in the first of the year, driven by North America and Europe and outpacing larger rivals like WPP (London Stock Exchange: WPP-GB).
"I am having daily conversation with our team in China to make sure everything is fine, because it is the largest market for a lot of our clients. They are telling me that that they are receiving a lot of incoming calls from Chinese companies and multi-nationals saying 'I want to know more about Havas,'" Bollore told CNBC.
"I think this crisis in China is a wakeup call for clients in that they need to make changes," he added.
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