Ipsos SA (ENXTPA:IPS) is looking for acquisitions. During the presentation of the half year results, Jean Poitou, said, "As to the question regarding external growth and acquisitions that might enable us to strengthen our ancillary activities, well, we started an acquisition strategy. Well, this was a message heard by a number of companies that might be targeted.
We've been talking with intermediaries and bankers. So we have a deal flow. We've been looking at some -- I mean, talks are underway.
But of course, before anything happens, I cannot divulge too much. But these are the main categories of acquisitions are technological bricks that will enable us to buy where we will not be able to build by ourselves to implement our augmented -- well, strategy using artificial intelligence and other technological tools. And then there are other acquisitions that enable us to go to neighboring markets, in particular, anything relating to data analysis and the integration of multiple sources for our customers, sources not just provided by Ipsos itself, but our customers' first-party data and indeed external sources from other origins.
And then the third type of acquisitions are those that look like Ipsos, but in markets where we propose to broaden our footprint by acquiring companies that are engaged in the same business regarding the ancillary activities and indeed, that's what refers to data integration and analysis. So we don't even have to have acquisitions because we've already strengthened that business using data labs with data scientists and AI experts who work on behalf of our customers. And this has improved our ability to provide predictive services based on analytics in a number of areas".
