Ipsos SA
PAR:IPS
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Ipsos SA
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Good afternoon, everybody. Didier Truchot speaking. I'm the Chairman of the Board and the CEO of the company. And I'm, this afternoon, with Ben Page, who will take over my job as the CEO of Ipsos mid of November, and also with Laurence Stoclet, the Deputy CEO and Group CFO. All of us, we will go through the presentation of our Q3 results. And we have, let's say, we have a title, which is Proven Growth. And you will see that during this period, we have done a good job to grow in a profitable way the Ipsos activity. So we will have an overview of the third quarter and then we will talk about why we have been successful at least for what we know and what we have already told and worked with our clients. And then Ben will take over, as I said, the job as the CEO of the company/. He will share with you a quick version of his vision for the future. So first of all, Laurence Stoclet, to overview the third quarter performance of the company.
Thank you, Didier, and hello, everyone. It's a pleasure, of course, to be with you, especially when the third quarter are showing a proven growth. We have posted revenues of EUR 1.5 billion, which is representing a growth of 24% organically compared to last year, but also comparing ourselves to 2019. It's still a strong growth of 12%. And we believe it is relevant to compare ourselves to 2019, as in 2020, our activity has been, of course, strongly impacted by the COVID but not exactly in the same way across all the quarters of 2020. For the sole Q3 of this year, we have posted a growth of 11% compared to 2020 organically and of 8.5% compared to 2019 organically. If we look at the breakdown of our growth by, first of all, region of the world. EMEA is the region, which had performed still very well in 2020 despite the COVID. Because altogether, for the whole year, the growth was positive at 2%. And this is thanks to a lot of programs that we have run around COVID testing for a lot of governments in -- especially in Western Europe. But our growth was also strong in countries such as Turkey or Russia within EMEA. In the Americas, we had a decrease of our activities by 12% last year. But we are back in growth road compared to 2020, but also compared to 2019, all across the region, especially in the U.S., but also in Canada and in Brazil. The only region of the world where we are not yet back at the level of 2019 is Asia Pacific. But this, I would say, is not -- it's an average and is not representative of our activity in all the markets in Asia Pacific. We have posted strong growth in China and in India, where we are above the levels of 2019. But it's not the case in other countries of the regions such as Japan or Australia or Malaysia, countries were strict lockdown measures has been imposed and which are still impacting our activity. What is worth noting, like in 2020, in the emerging markets, we are performing a bit less strongly than in the developed countries. So it was true in 2020, still true in 2021, but it was quite unique, in fact, in the Ipsos history because usually, we have grown in the emerging markets at least 5 points above the developed countries. So this is something which is also worth noting. Also, in our view, linked to those lockdown mergers and the fact that a lot of the people in emerging markets are still not vaccinated like it is the case in the developed countries. Looking at the breakdown by audience. Our largest segment is the consumer segment. In this segment, we are strongly growing. This is a segment, which was heavily impacted in -- at the end of Q1 and especially in Q2 last year because a lot of our clients in this sector are of the CPG or FMCG companies. And they had suddenly stopped doing a lot of work, but they had resumed, starting in September last year. And you can see that we have now a strong growth, plus 31% compared to 2020 and plus 9% compared to 2019. The segment where we have suffered the most is the customer and employee segment, especially in the customer type of solutions because there is a strong, I would say, activity with some sectors, which are still impacted. You will see that in a minute, the automotive sector or our work with airlines companies. But still, as you can see, we are growing strongly compared to 2020. This is still also the case for our citizens audience segment. This is the segment, which performed very well in 2020, thanks to those COVID testing programs that we run for a lot of governments. But there still have been run in 2021 because, of course, the pandemic is still there, and they have enabled us to post this strong growth versus last year, but also versus, of course, 2019. And last but not least, our doctors and patients activities where had a slight growth in 2020 and is posting of course, a very strong performance in 2021. So altogether, of course, we can be very happy with the fact that all, of course, our segments are going back to growth. And if we look at that with a bit more detail by industry segments of the clients, this is not the way Ipsos is organized but this is the way we can analyze our data by client and by industry sectors of the client. As you probably all know, the CPG segment remains our largest segment with 24% of our activities. And this is, of course, a strong growth that we have posted. We are -- our second largest segment is the TMT segment, knowing that in this segment, we have both the traditional medias, which were strongly impacted at least in terms of the type of solutions that we run for them, which are requiring for a lot of them face-to-face field work that we were not able to convert. So this is why it was heavily impacted. But we have also our activities with a lot of technology companies, knowing that some of the work that we do with some e-commerce companies are recorded under the retail segment. And this is why this retail segment, as you can see here, the second to the last segment, is posting a strong growth because this is because of the work we do for a number of customers giving more details, but you can imagine which are those e-commerce retailers. Our pharma sector is strong, remains strong, our public sector as well. And what is worth noting, as I mentioned a bit earlier, is our work with the automotive sector, which is growing compared to 2020, but still negative compared to 2019. And it's the same case for our work with travel and leisure clients. So altogether, we are growing. We are growing strongly in 2021 compared to 2020 altogether. And we believe that this is of course, going to continue. And the way we look at that is looking at our book of order because it gives us some visibility about what's going to happen in the next months or the next quarters. So the definition of our book of order is all the sales that has been made, net, of course, of any cancellations or rebates or whatsoever. But that will be recognized, and it's an important point, all the sales that will be recognized in the same fiscal year. So here in 2020 or in 2021 on the right part of this slide. And -- but it gives us some indications and visibility. And considering where we are in -- at the end of '20 -- of September 2021 and even looking at our sales middle of October, as we have explained in our press release, we are growing by 15% middle of October compared to the same period of last year or the same period of 2019, so plus 15%. And this is why we are positive. And we have, I would say, upgraded a bit our outlook. We will look at that at the end of this presentation. And we believe that for the total year of 2021, we can reach a minimum of 17% of organic growth. This is, we think, the positive impact of our total understanding program that we launched in the middle of 2019 -- 2018, sorry. And I will let Didier remind you about the different aspects of that program, TUP.
Laurence, thank you very much. So for those of you who have followed Ipsos, you may remember that we had a very strong growth trajectory during the first decade of this 21st century and then after the acquisition of Synovate in 2020 -- 2011. We started to have -- to be more -- a little bit more flattish with some, let's say, growth of 1%, 2% every year. And that, of course, we were not totally happy with that, knowing once again that Ipsos has been a growth company for a long period of time. So we started to work on how we could adjust our organization and our offer to our clients. In 2015, we launched a program called the New Way program, which was -- and we will talk a little bit about that later, which give us, let's say, some momentum in terms of developing some new services. We also to that period to revamp our values and to start to be more coherent in how we behave with the clients. But this interesting, I would say, first step was not enough in our view to make this company growing faster, catching up, not just with the market but also with our best competitors and going back to its tradition of successful and profitable growth. So in 2017, 2018, we worked together, altogether, different teams within the company. And we made some decisions based on the idea that our industry would be pretty successful and very necessary for the clients if we are able to, some ways, manage and combine the development of different sciences, including, by the way, the data sciences, the technologies, which were more and more prevalent in our industry. And our know-how because all of that also about how we can do a good job with some experience with some talent with some, I would say, engagement, especially from a team perspective. So we had this magic triangle that we developed. And we start to revamp to reset our organization. And we did that through 5 pillars, which are -- that I would like just to give you some quick explanations. We -- what we sell to our client services, meaning an electoral pole is a service. A product testing for a superior consumer goods company is a service. A brand tracker that we do in 50 different markets at the same time is a service. So we have developed some services. In fact, we have developed a lot of services, which fit with our clients' needs, which are, I would say, as good as the services that they can get from our competitors or hopefully, in many cases, better than what our competitors are able to offer. Why they are better simply because we have done this activity for a long period of time. We have some strong experts in the different parts of the world, and we know how to manage the geographies and the expertise at the same time. And of course, because of the new services concept that we developed in 2015, we asked also our services, our service line to include within the offer some elements in terms of data sciences, in terms of new way to get access to people, in terms of behavioral sciences and so on and so on. So we set up for all our services, there are 75 different services that Ipsos offer to its clients in most of the market, and at least in the large and important market in which we operate. We offer to our clients to work through these different services, and we set up this global organization that we call the service lines. The service lines are some global teams who have as a responsibility to work on our offer, on our solutions, but also to be sure that they are well implemented in the different markets. And that they are well executed by the team that we train and that we develop and we train to make that working well. Second pillar, the client organization is something, which have been new for Ipsos. It maybe seems obvious. But in our previous organization, we were mostly working with the client based on our offer, means our services, but not based on a more holistic view on what our clients need and also not necessarily by engaging the clients on how we could help them not just by selling them some services but also by working with them on their challenges and their business questions and how we could combine different services to give -- to provide to them the information that they need to run their business successfully. So we dedicated more than 200 of our most senior people in this current organization, which is working not as a sales team, but as really a team, let's say, dedicated to better manage the relationship, the opportunities between the clients and our company. Of course, we do that for some of our global clients but also locally when we have the opportunity to do, I would say, an ongoing job with some clients. The third pillar, I've been to clarify the role of, I would say, our different countries and markets. We gave to our country organization some, let's say, accountability in terms of the development of our business, also the profitability of it, the necessity to recruit the best possible professionals and, in some ways, to be the representative of the whole company, of Ipsos' as one organization into their own market and to adapt, of course, what we are doing based on their -- the specific needs of each market. We are offering the same solutions in China, in U.S., in France and in U.K. But of course, there are some specificities in each of these markets, which requires on our side, let's say, a good level of adaptation. We enforce, this is the fourth pillar, the cross-company capabilities because, of course, all of that need some support in terms of science and technology. Also in terms of knowledge, Ipsos run 70,000 projects every year. And we know a lot, and -- but we need to organize also our knowledge in a way in which this knowledge is not just a viable on a project by project base to our teams and clients, but also is available to all the markets at the same time and using, of course, the same framework. And finally, we have started to do a huge work to become more efficient, meaning Ipsos is also a factory. We are interviewing. We are following. We are tracking millions of people every year all around the world. And of course, thanks to our experience, thanks to our resources, thanks to new technologies, which are available right now that we developed, we are doing, let's say, we are running a certain number of projects to have a better access to people, to be able to work more quickly. But of course, with more security, which means also that we can always offer to our clients the comfort of working with a company, which deliver what it sells. And finally, we started to make some acquisitions, not at the level that we were enjoying in some ways, 10 or 15 years ago, but in a more, I would say, in a more precise way, either because we needed some addition in terms of expertise and specialty or in terms of technology. Also because there are some opportunities in the market. And of course, we are looking at them and look if one of them or several of them can help us to make this company even stronger in its work with its clients. So this is, in some ways, how we have reorganized our company in 2018. The services are in front of you. That is the main service line. So you can see that -- of course, we can classify these services through the different audiences that we are looking at. As I said, there are 75 services, which are offered by Ipsos right now. They are -- for most of them, well known. They are, of course, maintained and developed, and we see a lot of tractions for many of them right now in the market, which explain why also Ipsos is able to grow fast these days. The new services that we started to look at in 2015. Now they do represent 20% of the overall revenue of the company. In 2015, it was 7%, so they have moved from 7% to 20%. And these services are, in some ways, helping us to measure differently, to get data in world times, to be stronger in analysis, some behavioral databases and to do some work in terms of integrating different flow of data, which, of course, is very important these days as there are more data but not necessarily easily more insightful information. And of course, we also work to offer to our clients, if it's needed, if this is what they want, some advisory services, meaning some services that we -- that in some ways are growing with the data, with the information, but which help our clients to better understand, to better act based on all these flows of information. So 7% in 2014, a little bit more in 2015. And then there have been a movement. And you can see that right now, we are at plus 20% with the growth for the first 9 months of this year of 34% against last year, so more than what we do overall. The acquisition policy, you, of course, we got some information for each of them. So I will not, let's say, go through all these acquisitions. Some of them were very small but very important to develop either our plans in terms of efficiencies or our plans in terms of data analytics or in terms of offering to our clients some new digital solutions. Ben will talk a little bit later about the EIS contract in U.K. And this contract is using some of the capabilities that we have found in the technology company that you have in front of you. And the largest acquisition that we have made was made in October 2018. It was the custom research business of JFK. It did help us to -- on one side, to grow our company, to get some new clients, but also to get some specific tools that we are using more and more whatever they are tech-based or based on some, I would say, specific solutions that JFK developed in the past and that we have been able now to extend to our overall business. The last one, the last acquisition in photos. It's a company from New Zealand. So it's, of course, it has been an interesting exercise without being able to travel to talk with the Infotools owners and staff. It has been -- of course, this acquisition has been held by the fact that we knew Infotools already. We are -- they are working with the same set of clients than Ipsos, and we are sharing some program with some important clients already. It's -- Infotools is -- have developed some advanced technological capabilities in terms of being a portal, which help our clients to get access to the information in a way where this success is well organized. So let's say it improved a lot the usability of the information that we produce. We are -- we have a part of our plans is to expand the usage of Infotools solutions to some of our tracking programs. We run several -- for EUR 700 million of tracking programs all over the world. And of course, the usage of Infotools, the more systematic usage of the Infotools solution should help us to deliver a better set of information's to our clients. So this is where we are now. This -- in our view, does explain why we are successfully going through this interesting and, I would say, unexpected period 2020, 2021. I would like now to introduce Ben Page. Ben, as we explain, I've been working within Ipsos for 15 years. But before that, it was already in the world of the market research in U.K. He have done very -- is a modest guy. So I will speak for him, our U.K. organization have been extremely successful through the -- in the last 10 years, and especially in the last, by way, 3, 4 years. And we have been very happy to select him and to offer to him this job as the second CEO in the history of the company because they have run that company for more than 40 years. And now, of course, this is a time to give to a young, talented, English-speaking professional, the possibility to transform again and again this organization. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Didier. So I start on the 15th of November, and this is a huge opportunity. There are a lot -- there are many things that I want to do. But I think would like to just stress that what we're doing is building on all of the amazing work that we've done that has taken place over the last decade to get Ipsos where it is today. And actually, what has happened during the pandemic shows the strength and resilience of Ipsos. So I'm building on all of that and what I've learned over in my 35 years in the industry. But absolutely, I am about the people. We have people. We have technology. And my approach, of course, is around a values-based leadership and really focusing on the behaviors of our 17,000, 18,000 people and how they serve our clients. There is more that we can do to get global consistency and more discipline sometimes in our individual territories, which will actually improve our margins. We can raise our profile there, but we have more information than virtually any other type of organization like this that is publicly available about what the world is thinking, what citizens are thinking, what patients are thinking, what people are doing. We will be communicating more vigorously in the future. I want this, and we are in a war for talent at the moment. We have the great resignation taking place in America. People come -- have come out of the pandemic looking at reappraising their lives. This needs to be the best place to work in the industry with the best training, letting people do their best work, and that is absolutely one of my top priorities. And then the other amazing thing about Ipsos is just the diversity and strength of innovation here, the different things that we do, and I will show you some examples in a second. And what we can do is across our huge network of 90 countries, there are many more opportunities to build and scale best practice from different parts of the network, more innovation. And all of this has to be underpinned, of course, by technology. And one of my key challenges will be helping our technologists go faster because we need to give our people the tools they need to get the work done. We've got some amazing technologies. One of those, for example, is Iris, which is a world first in terms of understanding people's total digital behavior. It's part -- we are now the official provider of all Internet measurement in the United Kingdom. And this product can be used in countries all over the world. But it gives us total data on everything, 10,000 households are doing on their PCs, on their laptops, on their smartphones, on their tablets, what they're looking at, where they go. And although we're using it primarily to start with to measure the value of different media owners, digital content, et cetera, what people are reading, we can also, of course, look at people's purchase journeys in minute detail. We can look at, for example, the effectiveness of campaigns to persuade people to get vaccinated. What did they see? Did they then go to the government website and actually book an appointment? Or did they go to an anti-vax site and read that? We can see all of that. And I think, again, when you -- at the surface level, when you look at this company, you might not be aware of that type of thing or indeed the work that we have been doing around the world using artificial intelligence to support humanitarian operations. So when the fertilizer warehouse exploded in Beirut, we were flying drones around the city within days to understand the extent of the damage using radar, using satellite imagery, combining that with what we were picking up on social media, looking at mobility data from phones, the Internet of Things. And this type of ability to bring together different data sources in a world where data is exploding is hugely valuable. And it also shows, I think, the flexibility and resilience of Ipsos. The fact that during the COVID pandemic, we have been able to respond incredibly quickly to requests from government to help them design testing programs so that we can make sure that we understand the overall prevalence of the disease, working with academic experts, working with laboratories. And that flexibility, resilience to use the tools in the network, is hugely important, I think, for the future. If you -- and it's -- and of course, the digital world is where a lot of people spend a lot of their lives. And so we are absolutely mastering the understanding of the digital world. This was a study we did with Samsung recently to understand Gen Z. So these are people born after 1995. And here, we are potentially reaching 75 million people with an interactive live shopping experience, which mixes social media and interactive mini games to look at just how Samsung can build engagement with younger consumers in a very, very competitive marketplace. So those types of projects are world away from political polling, still vitally important in democracies, but very, very different. Similarly, understanding in real time what people are doing with something as mundane as they're washing. So using our own Ipsos app, we can now connect that to sensors on people's washing machines. You can actually see how their use of a brand correlates with their feelings about the brand, so when they use it, how they use it. And rather than relying on their memory about when they use their washing machine, what they do with the detergent, et cetera, you're actually picking up real-time data, so you're getting a far more accurate picture. In the same way that Iris doesn't ask you just to remember what you listen to or what you watched, we now know exactly what you watched or looked at. So that in-moment behavior tracking, again, is hugely important using the Ipsos app. So my vision is that we will have absolutely the best people in the industry. And I can -- I am absolutely committed to doing that. We've done a great job in a number of markets. There's a lot more we can do. And merging those people, giving those people the very best technology. And if we do that, we will continue to outperform. I'd now like to hand over to Didier. Look at 2021, 2022.
Okay. 2021. For 2022, you will have to come back. Okay. So just to summarize what already you have heard. From an organic growth perspective, we will do at least 17% when we compare ourselves with 2020, and at least 10% when we compare ourselves to 2019. But as we went down by -- from an ordering perspective, a bit less than 7%, sorry, in 2020 against 2019. Of course, there is a clear, let's say, a mathematical link between these 2 percentage. So -- and we have been able to upgrade this forecast just because we had a very good summer and also a good September and beginning of October as Laurence has just said. Our operating margin -- thanks to this very good revenue stream but also thanks to some good, I would say, financial discipline, we will exceed in the second half of 2021, what we have already recorded for the first half. First half, we reached 11%, which was great for the first time in our history that for the first 6 months of the year, we had an operating margin, which was double digit, 11%. And -- but every year, we do even better in the second half. Once again, there is something, which is very pretty automatic. It's just because our revenue is higher in the second half of the year than in the first half of the year. So we will do better than what we expected from an operating margin perspective. And the growth of the company will continue with Ben. You have -- for those of you who did not go in, you have started discovering. You will have many more opportunities to see and to talk with him, to question him, to challenge him maybe from time to time. So I'm really pleased to have Ben as our new CEO. And I will give him the opportunity to say a couple of words about 2022.
So clearly, as we go into 2022 at a global level, the globe -- world is an uncertain place. We don't know how the pandemic will play out. It will undoubtedly become endemic. But there are large -- in large parts of the world, most people are unvaccinated. You can see in the data how the developed world in our business has performed far better than the developing world. And that's because, where in the western world, where people can just pivot to working at home, the world can largely go on during a pandemic. If it hits some of the developing countries where most people work outside the home, there is still real uncertainty. We don't know about inflation and how persistent the inflation that we can see at the moment is going to be the supply chain crisis, the chip crisis, the shipping crisis, all of those things, I think, we face, the international tensions between the China and the West between the European Union and others and potentially deglobalization. We can see in our studies, in the Ipsos global trend study that we launched fairly soon, we see that overall, although the public aren't turning against globalization, they are moving in favor of national brands. And that's actually one reason why Ipsos' strategy focused very heavily on its countries, allows us to pivot, to be flexible, et cetera. And I think as we go into 2022, and I start my tenure as a CEO, we're in an incredibly strong position. The market is dynamic. Demand is high as we come out of the pandemic. Our teams have done some amazing work in 2020 and 2021, things that we literally couldn't -- I -- personally, I wouldn't have even imagined 5 years ago. So we are planning to grow. We have some great acquisitions that are underway at the moment that we'll be able to tell you about in due course. And I look forward to working with you and, obviously, we're continuing to work with Didier as Chairman. If you'd now like to ask some questions, of course, you can dial in with the French, American and British numbers here. I like the British one, right.
[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from the line of Emmanuel Matot from ODDO.
I have questions for each of you.
So you have 3 questions.
For you, Didier, first, you are leaving the position of CEO of Ipsos at the time the group should release record profits this year. However, you are not yet at the 15% operating margin you have always set as a long-term goal for your company. What you haven't had time to do yet that would have made it possible this target of 15% of EBIT margin?
Okay. I may -- I'll answer to that question first, and then you will have the opportunity to ask the questions -- your questions to Laurence and to Ben, if you don't mind. Or...
It's okay for me.
It's okay. Okay. So the 15% is not -- it's a goal more than a dream. And why, why 15%? Just because we are in a segment of the activities, the economic activity, which is the business, which is we are selling professional services with some kind of intellectual touch or scientific expertise to a large base of important clients. And when you are looking at the margins of companies which have the same set of clients, 15% is something that many of them are able to reach. The reason why we have not reached yet this 15%, it's just because we have, of course, a pretty large cost base of, I would say, people, of employees. And the work that we need to do in the next 5 to 10 years is to be sure that, science, by the way, to more automations to more usage of more technologies that we will include step by step and not just in just one moment in our way of working. We will be able to have, let's say, a set of employees, which should be more skills, which will work more, I would say, on services that we can monetize better to the clients. And at the end of the day, thanks to that, which will make this company more profitable than what it has been. We are now, let's say, somewhere at around 11%, which is already, I would say, online base better than where we were a few years ago. But we still have a long way to go. I just want to add another element is about the size. We think that Ipsos, even if this year, we will have a revenue significantly above EUR 2 billion, we could because of our coverage, because of the number of markets in which we operate, also because of the diversity of our offering we could -- we should be larger. And of course, if you are larger, you can amortize some of your investments, some of your tools, some of your platforms on more, I would say, euros or more pounds. Now we will have to learn to count. And this is important for us. But should we look at this 15%? Absolutely, yes. Will we go to -- from where we are to 15% in a couple of years? Absolutely not. I don't think that Ben would be ready to do that. And I don't think that there is anybody in the Board of the company, which will be -- which will look at that. But step by step, we will build a company which will go to this 15% threshold.
Now 2 questions for Ben, if I may. When do you think you will be ready to communicate with investors and analysts about the next road map for Ipsos? And also, you have described some key strengths of Ipsos. But maybe that would be also interesting to know what are the main areas of improvement according to you.
Good question. So I mean I think we -- look. Look at the results. The business is profitable. It's growing. We have amazing performances in some individual markets. So one of my tasks is not to make everybody reapply for their jobs by rearranging the furniture but actually to ensure more consistency across the network. And that's really important. But no. Things are changing. Markets are changing. The technology is changing. So we will do something next year. But it is -- but there is so much that can be done by really working with people on their individual performances because there is variation, obviously, from market to market in performance. And that's something that I'm absolutely -- what I absolutely want to focus on, because so much depends on individual leaders and individual behaviors. It's very much a people business, although technology matters, too. But with the same technology, you can see very different performances in different places. So those are some of the things that I will be focusing on. But yes, we will be looking at bold new avenues next year. I don't know if that's answering your question.
And maybe a question for Laurence. What explains this positive surprise regarding the growth of the order book during the summer. Is it specific to one sector? Or is it across all sectors, including the public sector?
Yes. It's true across all the sectors, all our territories. Part of that is linked to the fact that we have continued some COVID testing work and will do so until the end of the year, which was not necessarily planned initially when we started the year. Some of those programs were supposed to stop around the summer time. But this was known when we released our forecast at the end of July. So the reason why we are upgrading our forecast versus what we said to the market at the end of July is simply because our activities, I would say, across all countries and sectors has been stronger than what we were actually expecting, not the double. I mean we are not our forecast. If you remember well, we said that we will be slightly under 10% of organic growth compared to 2019. And now we say that we will be at 10%. So we have not -- we have upgraded the forecast by, let's say, 1 or 2 points of organic growth, not more. But this is explaining why we are also upgrading our forecast in terms of operating margin for the full year.
The next question comes from the line of Conor O'Shea from Kepler Cheuvreux.
A couple of questions from me as well. First question, just to go back on the order book and the guidance full year 17% minimum implied about 5% for the fourth quarter. Just wondering how that reconciles with the growth in the order book, which is strong double digit. Would expect that to be significantly higher if everything goes to plan in Q4? Or are we seeing maybe a slowdown carrying on from Q3 in the public sector activities or the citizens activity, which I think was about flat in the third quarter, could maybe that be declining in the Q4. So explain that. That's the first question. Second question, just in terms of inflation. I think, Ben, you mentioned that in your speech about 2022. Can you just cast your mind back, Ben or Didier, in terms of how this business reacts in a more inflationary environment? Is it good for your business? Or is it bad for your business? And maybe also, Ben, you could maybe have a general say on the 75 different services that Ipsos provide. Is that -- do you think that, that may be -- that number is a little bit too high? Or are there reasons to maintain that breadth of service going forward? And then just last question maybe for Didier or Laurence. In terms of the change of strategy relating to the new CEO, you maybe say whether this change, the decision will lead to any exceptional cost in terms of indemnity or anything relating to the previous candidates contract dominated by unusual consensus. Maybe you could talk around a little bit about that.
Okay. I will answer on the order book, first. At the end of September, our -- in comparison with 2019, we are at plus 12%, and we say now that we will be at around plus 10%, which means that there will be, of course, a slowdown of our organic growth in the fourth quarter. But this slowdown is not a real slowdown. It's just the fact that, last year, the profile of the year was very special because the first quarter was already impacted by pandemic, especially in Asia, by the way, because as you may remember, the program started in China, in January already and then move in the region and then in Italy, the beginning of March and so on. But for instance, the first quarter, North America was not impacted by the pandemic. So the third quarter was already not very good. It was more or less flat. And then, of course, the disaster came with the second quarter with a huge drop in terms of revenue, if I remember -- I don't want to remember, but let's say it was minus 25% or something like that, a little bit less, by the way, in terms of the order book. The order book was fragile. Because nobody knew when we would be able to restart some of the work that we had to stop for different reasons. And then our activity started to pick up in the third quarter and the fourth quarter. Help it's true by the contract that we won to track the development of the pandemic, what we call COVID testing. But there were also some other work that we have done. But overall, even with our commercial clients, the -- some work we started. And so in the last quarter of 2020, we were already growing against the last quarter of 2019 by a small percentage, 1% or 2%. But when you have been down by 25%, plus 2%, it's a kind of great achievement. So overall, now we are comparing ourselves with a base, which is much higher than the one that we had in the first part of the year. So we are back, I would say, to the normal life. So this was -- by the way, we have been very pleased with the -- our commercial activity in July, August, September and the beginning of October. Even if, of course, this plus 15% or even more than 15% of growth is applied to a volume of order, which is pretty low because in the second part of the year, we sell less for the current year, and we start to sell for the next year. So I would say, our sales activity for this year is starting, of course, to be very limited because if we sell something, let's say, today, some of that will be done this year, but a lot will be -- will start or at least will be achieved next year. So this is why, in some ways, we are at plus 12% in terms of organic growth against 2019 at the end of September. We will be a little bit lower than that just because the base of comparison is much higher than what it was at the beginning of this year. So this is for that, for the 75 services. I let Ben give -- telling you that it's not enough and that he wants more.
Well, we like profitable services at function. But could I -- on the inflation, I think a key point about the business is that a lot of our projects are very short turnaround, so we can put the price up pretty quickly to deal with that sort of situation. So -- and we've also got a huge amount of flex in terms of our payroll, which is something that we demonstrated in 2020. So I think we're not too worried about a high inflation environment or a higher inflation environment. In terms of the 75 services, it's a slight misnomer because many of them have quite a lot of similarities with each other. But what we're trying to do is focus those on particular issues and challenges that our clients need. And I don't think there's a magic number. The point is getting them to the right sort of scale and getting -- and if they can't, then they will eventually not work. But overall, there isn't -- I don't have a magic number. I mean if we have 75 highly profitable services, that's fine by me, because the key thing about them is how they work in tandem together to deal with different challenges that our clients are facing. And the whole purpose of organizing things this way was to give us absolutely excellent delivery on those things from a position before where we had a fewer larger divisions where sometimes they were lost. And I think that -- the total understanding strapline isn't just a strapline. It is because this organization is able to bring understanding of people as consumers, understanding of people as voters, citizens, patients, the total position. And to do that, we do need a wide range of services. And what happened during the pandemic was that some of those things obviously stopped, and you can see that in those numbers. But other of them, we had massive expansion because we were there in that space. If we decided -- in fact, there was a meeting back in the 1990s before for one of these things, where there was a decision about whether or not we should have -- we should have pulled out of the market altogether. And if we had done that, we would have lost hundreds of millions over the years.
And I will answer your last question, Conor, about the change of -- our change of mind as simple as that, which we recognize was a surprise for the market. And we all want to apologize to our shareholders. I'm talking here as a Board member. So we changed our mind. And we all decided to appoint Ben as our next CEO instead of the candidate that we had previously chosen. Of course, the candidate that has not started and will never start to work for Ipsos will get some slight, I would say, compensation, nothing significant. It will be released in our annual report, but it's not significant and does not require any specific, I would say, indication.
The next question comes from the line of [ Dion Muroff ].
Congratulations, Ben, on your new role. Maybe 2 questions for me. The first one on personnel costs. Are you seeing wage inflation in some of your regions? That's the first sub point. And the second one would be, if you could give us some guidance or color on the evolution of the workforce level. And the second question will be more on the -- if you could elaborate a bit on the new clients that you're on boarding, particularly, I can think of the dose that you're onboarding, thanks to the new services.
I mean I don't think -- wage inflation is high in particular areas like data science, for example. But it's not something that's affecting things across the Board. When we look at our staff turnover, for example, as we come out of the pandemic. And we -- you will read every day in the media about how certain sectors are having a huge turnover, it isn't actually higher at a global level than in a normal year. In my own -- in the market I know best, where I'm currently CEO, in the U.K., there is -- yes, there is expansion in areas like data science, but not -- but overall, nothing more than we would normally see. And I think the challenges we have are more because of our rate of growth. The challenge of getting extra people rather than losing anybody. But -- so I think we can cope with that. In terms of new services, we attract new clients all the time. I don't think there's a particular pattern of -- we already work for most of the world's largest companies. And it's -- there aren't sort of whole new sectors of people springing up. But what we're getting is much deeper relationships and more spending from those clients. And we have an amazing set of clients in terms of the diversity of who we work for, but also most -- as I say, most of the world's largest businesses. And a lot of it is about getting more business from those existing clients rather than simply adding more clients to service.
There are currently no questions in the queue. [Operator Instructions] We have no further questions in the queue. So I'll hand the call back to your host for some closing remarks.
I just want to thank you for your interest and your ability to follow our company, which is a passion of our life. Just please remember that we are in a people business. And as such, we are especially pleased to have been able to choose Ben. Because in U.K., have been a great, I would say, success for our company in terms of the development of the market. And one of the main reasons why it has been like that is precisely because our company in U.K. led by Ben since more than 10 years have been able to attract and to keep and to train and to develop a lot of unique people who are now part of our best, I would say, professionals. So I think I'm sure that in the years to come, more technology, but also more skilled people will make this company an even more successful organization. So thank you very much. And, okay, so next time, I will be in the room but not necessarily in front of you. Thank you.
Thank you very much.