UBS maintains its Neutral rating on the stock and adjusts its target price to €36.7 (up from €36.5) following the group's announcement of its new strategic plan.
"Ambitious targets, with a strong acceleration in organic growth, margin improvement, and investments in the company. Implementation remains, in our view, essential," UBS states in its report.
Ipsos plans to invest more than one billion euros over the next five years in transformation operations, mainly through acquisitions and strategic investments. This plan will be financed primarily by free cash flow.
The group is targeting an annual organic growth rate of 5% or more by 2028, with an improvement in operating margin expected to reach 13.5%.
At the current share price, the stock is trading at a 2025 P/E ratio of nearly 7 times, with a yield of around 5%.
Ipsos is one of the world's leading market research companies. Net sales break down by type of customer as follows:
- consumers (49.2%): dissemination of barometric studies (to monitor changes in brand awareness and image), studies to measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, market studies, etc. The group also provides media research (including positioning research and audience measurement research for the press, TV, radio and Internet);
- clients and employees (20.7%): including the development of recruitment site studies, employee engagement measures, quality measurement, customer satisfaction and retention;
- physicians and patients (15.2%): development of case studies of the physician network, customer segmentation and targeting, market evaluation, sales force effectiveness, patient flow and satisfaction, etc.;
- citizens (14.9%): dissemination of studies of public opinion trends, studies of changes in lifestyles, etc.
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: Europe/Middle East/Africa (45.6%), Americas (37.6%) and Asia/Pacific (16.8%).
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