JCDecaux France acquires Abri Services Media, street furniture specialist in France’s Grand-Ouest region

JCDecaux SA (Euronext Paris: DEC), the number one outdoor advertising company worldwide, announces the acquisition of Abri Services Media by its subsidiary, JCDecaux France. Abri Services Media is a French street furniture player operating under the Abri Services brand in France’s Grand-Ouest region (Brittany, Pays de la Loire and Nouvelle-Aquitaine).

Abri Services Media, founded in 1969, is a family-owned company with 76 employees. It was taken over by Yvon Suillaud in 2004 and currently operates more than 2,600 bus shelters and 2,100 City Information Panels (CIPs) in France’s Grand-Ouest region. Beyond manufacturing street furniture, Abri Services also markets and leases non-advertising street furniture displays, including bus shelters, electronic message boards, bike shelters, and free and micro-sign billboards.

JCDecaux and its Street Furniture business has established a foothold across regions by leveraging a network that meets local needs of cities, brands and citizens in France. This merger integrates a regional street furniture player into JCDecaux’s portfolio, with premium assets and values of excellence to serve cities and advertisers, similar to those that have always driven JCDecaux’s teams.

Conversely, during post-lockdown, street furniture demonstrated its robust business model by quickly reconnecting brands and consumers as soon as audiences returned to the streets. Cities increasingly need innovative and sustainable products to address the expansion in their transport networks, coupled with their expectations for contextualised advertising to citizens in real time. The need to keep citizens informed is ever more pressing since the Covid-19 epidemic, and multiple community health messages have been successfully communicated through street furniture.
 Yvon Suillaud, CEO of Abri Services Media, said: “At the end of a competitive process organised by CIC Conseil, our Board of Directors has decided jointly to embark upon this project with JCDecaux on the basis of the values that we share, such as passion for our business and the sense of achievement that comes with a job well done. The choice to unite our expertise and join forces on this new adventure was clear. We hope to bring a part of ourselves to this Group, our closeness to our stakeholders, which we have solidly built alongside our deep ties to the region, with the support of advertisers and local authorities.”

Jean-Charles Decaux, Chairman of the Executive Board and Co-Chief Executive Officer of JCDecaux, said: “Abri Services shares many of the same values as JCDecaux, as well as concrete expertise in delivering local community services. “The family-owned business was founded in the 1960s, at the same time as our Group. Since then, Abri Services has developed an established high-performing portfolio in the Grand-Ouest, one of the most demographically and economically dynamic regions in France. Together, we will provide even better solutions to meet the service needs of cities and citizens, and particularly regional and local advertisers, who now more than ever are seeking out sustainable, effective and impactful local communication.”