Sir Martin Sorrel’s marketing group S4 Capital has revealed further cuts to its workforce as it continues to battle amid increasingly tough market conditions and a pull-back in corporate spending.
The firm said it had shed another 150 roles since the end of 2025, with its workforce now standing at around 6,200, down 11% from about 7,000 a year ago.
S4 Capital continues to expect revenues to fall over the full year by low single digits to between £632 million to £663 million.
Sir Martin, former chief executive of marketing communications giant WPP, said: “Market conditions in the first five months of 2026 have remained challenging, if more so, with clients generally cautious given continued geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty.
“However, trading has been in line with our expectations.
“We continue to see growing opportunities as clients increasingly focus on implementing technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) to drive efficiency and effectiveness.”
Despite the wider trading pressures, S4 Capital noted sales had improved in the second quarter so far and confirmed it expects profit margins to increase over the year, but Sir Martin said the group needs to do more to grow sales and margins.
He said the group was making “some progress” on driving sales growth, but stressed it was “not sufficient”.
On margins improvement, he added this was “progressing, but not where we ultimately want to be”.
“Effectively, we are half-way through our AI-driven turnaround, with the more significant half to come,” he said.
The group, which is holding its annual general meeting for shareholders on Thursday, said it plans to pay total dividends of 2.2p per share in 2026 and put in place a 50% dividend pay out policy out of adjusted basic earnings per share over the medium-term.
This article was written by Holly Williams from The Independent and was legally licensed through the DiveMarketplace by Industry Dive. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.