M&C Saatchi shares slashed on results warning

The price of shares in FTSE 250 advertising agency M&C Saatchi (LON:SAA) has dropped by 45.99% to 79.26p (as of 15:20 GMT) after it warned that results for the 2019 full year would be below expectations. The company also faced charges of £11.6 million split over the current and previous year following an accounting review.

CEO David Kershaw commented: “This restatement of our numbers and the reduction in forecasts make for very difficult reading – both for us as a management team and for all of our stakeholders. The only positives that we can offer are that a robust review has been undertaken and we have, under our new Group Finance Director, started implementing processes and procedures to prevent such issues arising again.

“The trading performance in the second half of this year is disappointing. However our operating businesses remain strong, creative and competitive and we expect that, when combined with the impact of our restructuring coming through, we will have a stronger trading performance in 2020“.