NEW YORK — Stagwell’s creativity and communications group saw revenue drop 4.8% in Q4 2023 and 3.5% for the full year, in line with declines seen across the holding company.

In its earnings report Tuesday, Stagwell said the creativity and comms group — which include PR agencies Allison, Hunter, KWT, Sloane & Company and SKDK — generated 43% of the company’s total Q4 net revenue, $551.1 million, which was down 7% on an organic basis from Q4 2022.

Stagwell’s full year 2023 revenue, $2.1 billion, was a 5.9% year-over-year decline on an organic basis over 2022.

Other divisions include digital transformation, which in Q4 generated 24%; performance media & data (14%); marketing cloud group (10%); and consumer insights & strategy (9%).

During the three months that ended Dec. 31, the PR group performed better than digital transformation (-13.2%) and the marketing cloud group (-7.8%) but didn’t fare as well as consumer insights & strategy (-3.4%) and performance media & data (-1.6%).

In the US, net revenue was down 7.8% in Q4 and 7.6% for the full year. UK revenues, however, rose 13.9% in Q4 and 9.4% in the full year 2023.

Chairman and CEO Mark Penn said, "Despite a challenging year for marketing services and digital transformation—accentuated by our client mix — Stagwell grew share with some of our largest customers in 2023, took prudent steps to manage our costs, and invested in digital innovation to stay ahead of the future of marketing. In Q4 we returned to sequential net revenue growth, sold a non-core asset for significantly above our initial investment, and saw our tech company clients begin to re-engage.

"2024 promises to be a year of growth and expanded margin as we go into the political season and our AI and AR products come to market — including inclusion of ARound into Major League Baseball's native Ballpark app.  We will be helping our clients transform with the three E's of AI — enabling stronger operations, adding efficiency to marketing and helping revolutionize their engagement with consumers."