Ipsos - The impact of the Coronavirus epidemic (Covid-19) on activity

Paris, April 8th, 2020 – During the first 10 weeks of 2020, Ipsos had its best start of the year since 2011. The order book was more than 5% higher and the prospects for winning new contracts were at a particularly elevated level. Only China and a few other Asian markets were at a standstill.

The situation brutally changed around in mid-March in many parts of the world. Obviously, the triggering factor was the confinement which was put in place in the main countries of Europe, in the United States and in other countries, while being only at best relaxed in some Asian countries.

For the month of March as a whole, including the first two weeks, orders were down 40%. If we exclude the first two weeks of the month, the drop is slightly more than 50%. That said, new orders held up better, with declines of around 20% and 25% respectively. The difference comes from a very significant volume of cancellations and postponements.

 For an order book in mid-March close to a billion euros, postponements and cancellations represented around 7% of this total, compared to a usual level of less than 2%.

 Ipsos' activity is hampered by 3 main factors:

-          the difficulties, significant or major as the case may be, that businesses and client institutions encounter;

-          the uncertainties and misunderstandings that the situation generates;

-          the very direct consequences of confinement which, for essentially technical reasons, has led to the postponement, if not to the cancellation, of many programs whose execution requires direct, personal, physical contact between people, for example researchers and interviewees.

A third of Ipsos' turnover is conducted using "face to face" protocols. Everything that was executed before March 15 - January 15 in China - is done. As of the start of lock down measures, the vast majority of these programs were stopped. Some have already resumed, changing working methods, for example by using telephone or digital survey procedures. Most will not resume until after containment periods and successive restrictive measures end.

Under these conditions, Ipsos indicates:

    - that it suspends any estimate of what its activity should be for the whole of 2020

    - that its results for the first quarter of 2020 are lower than the commercial dynamics recorded until the end of the second week of March gave hope for.