JCDecaux renews and extends its contract with the Beijing Metro for 20 years

JCDecaux SA (Euronext Paris: DEC), the number one outdoor advertising company worldwide, announces that its joint-venture (JV) with Beijing Metro Operation Co. Ltd (BJ Metro) has renewed and extended its advertising contract for the 9 central lines of the Beijing Metro for 20 years.

Based in the Chinese capital, a city of over 20 million inhabitants, this JV, since its acquisition in 2006, has managed advertising for the 9 central Beijing Metro lines. After acquiring a stake in Clear Media, JCDecaux is continuing to reinforce its presence in China’s domestic market. It will hold the advertising contract for the 9 central lines until 2040, with currently 8,500 lightboxes and 160 digital screens, which reached a daily audience of 10.5 million passengers in 2019. Beijing is still recovering from the effect of COVID-19 where precautious health measures continue to affect the movements of its inhabitants though Beijing Metro has regained in the last weeks a daily audience around 6 million passengers.

JCDecaux will hold significant influence at the end of this period of renewal, with 33% of the JV.

At the same time, the JV has founded a new entity in Hohhot, a city of 2.9 million inhabitants and capital of the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia. Owned 51% by the JV and 49% by Hohhot metro, this entity holds an exclusive 15-year advertising contract for the first two lines of this metro: the recently opened line 1 and line 2, which is set to open in the second half of 2020.

China became JCDecaux’s biggest market in 2017. The Group is present in the country’s main metro systems, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Chongqing, Nanjing, Suzhou and Tianjin, totalling an audience of over 36 million passengers in 2019.

Zheng Guang Xie, Chairman of Beijing Metro, said: “Beijing Metro is extremely happy to continue our long-term partnership with JCDecaux. Together, we will give our best endeavours to forge forward development of high quality advertising, in particular with a high level of integration of our media and the internet, to achieve creativity & innovation in all developments”.

Jean-Charles Decaux, Chairman of the Executive Board and Co-Chief Executive Officer of JCDecaux, said: “We are delighted to be renewing and extending our collaboration with Beijing Metro for another 20 years. This strengthened partnership recognises JCDecaux’s operational capacities. It marks the start of a new era of collaboration in advertising in one of the busiest metros in the world. We will continue to optimise the solutions made available to our customers, including a strong digitisation plan going forward, in order to enhance the travelling experience in a country, I have no doubt will bounce back from COVID-19 in the coming months.”