Stephen Joseph

CEO

Ocean is a boutique media company that fills a unique position in the Outdoor advertising landscape. Specialising only in large-format digital, iconic landmark and super-premium banner locations, Ocean creates inspirational canvases for inspirational advertising. My role at Ocean is to develop and implement commercial objectives that increase shareholder value. A key part of this involves structuring and negotiating commercial contracts and investments. Cost savings, renegotiating contracts, improved margins and cash flow have been key successes. I also cover the breadth of operations which has ranged from designing the company incentive scheme ( influencing behaviour for profitability and retention) to selling the idea of advertising revenue to potential partners and managing key landlord relationships. We completed our £450m take private with backing by Atairos private equity and continue on our growth and acquisition plan in the private market. Ocean was bought by Ocelot Partners, a SPAC, for £200m in Mar 2018 with the aim of consolidating the fragmented out of home advertising market. The business was then relisted on the London Stock Exchange. Soon after joining with Ocelot we completed our third acquisition purchasing Forrest Outdoor Media, the leader of digital Outdoor in Scotland. We have since acquired 3 businesses in the Netherlands (Ngage, Interbest and Beyond) and two companies in the Nordic’s (Visual Art and Ad City Media), creating the Ocean brand in a further 6 countries. Back in 2012 we completed an MBO of the business with backing from Lloyds Development Capital and in the summer of 2014 the acquisition of Signature Outdoor. In late 2014 we completed a second MBO with sponsorship from Searchlight Capital and then in early 2015 our second acquisition, Mediaco Outdoor. I pride myself on being very approachable and enjoy being hands-on across all business disciplines.