The company continues to invest in strategic areas including digital commerce, retail media, artificial intelligence, audience resolution and production across world markets. This is intended to help clients succeed in a data-led and digital-first world.

The company continues to pursue a disciplined acquisition strategy, focused on high-growth capabilities and regions of the world. During 2023, IPG continued to further evolve our offerings, investing in new capabilities and innovation to help our clients succeed in today's digital economy.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, the Company took Real Estate Actions related to new real estate exits and lease terminations to further optimize the real estate footprint supporting our office-home hybrid service model in a post-pandemic economy. These real estate actions further reduced the occupied global real estate footprint by approximately 6.7%, or 500,000 square feet.

The company remains focused on meeting the evolving needs of our clients while concurrently managing our cost structure. We continually seek greater efficiency in the delivery of our services, focusing on more effective resource utilization, including the productivity of our employees, real estate, information technology and shared services.

IPG and our agencies are committed to diversity and inclusion, and we reinforce these values through a comprehensive set of award-winning programs. We seek to ensure accountability by tying executive compensation directly to the ability of our leaders to hire, promote and retain diverse talent.

IPG understands that climate change has consequences for all of us, bringing challenges for environmental protection, social wellbeing and good governance. It is a priority for our company to take action to address both causes and impacts of climate change. Our commitment includes measuring our carbon footprint and working toward limiting that footprint.

The company is exposed to risks associated with weak or uncertain regional or global economic conditions and disruption in the financial markets. Economic downturns or uncertainty about the strength of the global economy generally can have a negative effect on the demand for advertising and marketing communication services.

The advertising and marketing communications business is highly competitive and constantly changing. Competitive challenges also arise from rapidly evolving and new technologies in the marketing and advertising space.

The company relies extensively and increasingly on information technologies and infrastructure to manage our business, develop new business opportunities and digital products, and process business transactions. The incidence of malicious technology-related events, such as cyberattacks, is on the rise worldwide.

The company's agencies and media services compete with other agencies and other providers of creative, marketing or media services to maintain existing client relationships and to win new business. Our competitors include not only other large multinational advertising and marketing communications companies, but also smaller entities that operate in local or regional markets as well as new forms of market participants.

The client's perception of the quality of our agencies' creative work, its confidence in our ability to protect the confidentiality of their and their customers' data and its relationships with key personnel at the Company or our agencies are important factors that affect our competitive position.

On the other hand, because an agency's principal asset is its people and freedom of entry into the industry is almost unlimited, our relationships with clients can be affected by the departure of key personnel and a small agency is, on occasion, able to take all or some portion of a client's account from a much larger competitor.

We continually seek greater efficiency in the delivery of our services, focusing on more effective resource utilization, including the productivity of our employees, real estate, information technology and shared services, such as finance, human resources and legal.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, the Company took Real Estate Actions related to new real estate exits and lease terminations to further optimize the real estate footprint supporting our office-home hybrid service model in a post-pandemic economy.

Furthermore, unexpected revenue shortfalls can result in misalignments of costs and revenues, resulting in a negative impact to our operating margins.

To help our clients win in a data-led and digital-first world, we have made and continue to make investments in strategic areas including digital commerce, retail media, artificial intelligence, audience resolution and production across world markets.

As appropriate, we also develop relationships with technology and emerging media companies that are building leading-edge marketing tools that complement our agencies' skill sets and capabilities.

Competitive challenges also arise from rapidly evolving and new technologies in the marketing and advertising space, creating opportunities for new and existing competitors and a need for continued significant investment in tools, technologies and process improvements.

On February 8, 2023, the Board authorized a share repurchase program to repurchase from time to time up to $350.0 million, excluding fees, of our common stock. On February 7, 2024, the Board authorized a share repurchase program to repurchase from time to time up to $320.0, excluding fees, of our common stock.

We announced on February 8, 2024 that our Board of Directors (the "Board") had declared a common stock cash dividend of $0.330 per share, payable on March 15, 2024 to holders of record as of the close of business on March 1, 2024.

Net cash used in investing activities during 2023 consisted primarily of payments for capital expenditures of $179.3 which were related mostly to computer software and hardware.

IPG understands that climate change has consequences for all of us, bringing challenges for environmental protection, social wellbeing and good governance. It is a priority for our company to take action to address both causes and impacts of climate change. Our commitment includes measuring our carbon footprint and working toward limiting that footprint.

IPG and our agencies are committed to diversity and inclusion, and we reinforce these values through a comprehensive set of award-winning programs. These include business resource groups that develop career building programs, as well as training around topics like unconscious bias.

In recognition of our commitment to and implementation of sustainable business practices, IPG is listed on several ESG-related indices, including the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) North America.

The macroeconomic backdrop moderated in 2023, in contrast to the robust business environment that had characterized much of 2022, as economies navigated change and uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic, higher inflation, regional military conflicts and other factors. The impact of greater macroeconomic uncertainty resulted in a more cautious client operating environment.

As 2023 drew to a close, we experienced a return to growth in the fourth quarter, while consumer markets and media continued to evolve at high velocity, supporting the need among large marketers for the advanced capabilities in which we specialize.

The principal macroeconomic risks to our performance include the economic impacts of geopolitical conflict and resulting potential for uncertainty and restrictions on spending on the part of some clients and consumers.