WPP plc Q1 FY2025 Earnings Call

Thank you for being here today. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter trading update. I appreciate your participation. Joining me on the call are Joanne Wilson, our CFO, and Tom Singlehurst, our Head of Investor Relations. Before we begin, please review the cautionary statement presented on Slide 2 carefully. Now, moving to the overview on Page 3, I will summarize our progress this year. Joanne will discuss our financial performance, and then we will review our strategic developments before opening the floor to questions. On Page 4, let's start with our first quarter 2025 performance. In February, we discussed the challenging macro environment and how it would influence our growth throughout the year, particularly after a tough fourth quarter. We were cautious in our year guidance, factoring in ongoing tariff discussions. Our Q1 results reflected that caution, with net sales down 2.7%, aligning with our expectations. However, we are not satisfied with these results; they fall short of our goals. We have actionable plans to improve competitive performance, including our recent acquisition of InfoSum. On a positive note, we noticed some encouraging trends in Q1. The U.S. market showed improved performance from Q4, aided by a softer comparison. New business momentum at VML and Burson has picked up after last year's intense integration efforts, and Hogarth rebounded to strong growth following a difficult fourth quarter. However, GroupM's growth slowed in Q1, especially in Europe, due to a weakening medium environment. While GroupM in the U.S. grew in the low to mid-single digits, it still lags behind our competitive standards. We will delve deeper into GroupM later. Additionally, the macro environment remains tough with tariff uncertainties. Though WPP is not directly affected, our clients might adjust their spending priorities in response. So far, we have not observed significant changes in client spending patterns, and our full-year guidance remains consistent with our initial projections. We anticipated macro uncertainty and are closely monitoring our outlook while being disciplined about our cost management. In the short term, protecting our P&L is crucial, but for the long term, it’s vital to continue making strategic investments, particularly in WPP Open, which supports our future growth. Lastly, on strategic progress, we outlined three key actions in February: increasing WPP adoption, enhancing the GroupM proposition, and securing more new business. I believe we are making encouraging progress on all three fronts. I will provide more details shortly, but now I will turn it over to Joanne to discuss our first quarter performance.

Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. So let me take you through some more detail on our first quarter 2025 performance starting on Slide 6. Like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs fell 2.7% in the quarter, which is broadly in line with our expectations. Consistent with messaging at our full-year results, the drivers of like-for-like performance were a continuation of the challenging macro environment seen in the fourth quarter, coupled with the sequencing of historical client losses, a continued challenging environment in China and the mildly dilutive effect of the FGS disposal on like-for-like growth. The move in reported revenue was amplified by the full run rate effect of the FGS Global disposal, which represented a drag on reported sales of 3.3% as well as a headwind from FX moves, in particular the strong pound versus the euro in Q1. Overall, revenue less pass-through costs were down 7.6% in the quarter. Moving on to Slide 7 and looking at performance across our departments. Global Integrated Agencies saw a like-for-like decline of 2.8% for the quarter. Within this, GroupM was down 0.9%, which reflected growth in the U.S. offset by the impact of prior year client losses and performance in the U.K. and a more challenging media environment across Europe. GroupM saw good growth in India, which only partially offset continued weakness in China. Like-for-like for our other global integrated creative agencies fell 4.4% in the first quarter and compared to the decline of 6.5% in the fourth quarter of 2024. Within this, we continue to see an impact from continued weakness in project-based work, weighing on AKQA performance, a tougher comp, but there will be a further impact in a challenging environment in China. Against this, we saw a return to high single-digit growth within our production business, Hogarth, driven by strong trends across CPG, tech and also a new business. The reacceleration of growth here is particularly encouraging given the more challenging performance in Q4 2024. Turning to Public Relations. Like-for-like decreased by 6.2% in the first quarter. While overall performance has not much changed from the fourth quarter, reflecting a more challenging environment for client discretionary spend, in particular in Europe, we are encouraged by improved momentum on new business in North America. Finally, Specialist Agencies saw like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs increasing 1.2% in the quarter, with particularly strong growth from CMI Media Group, our specialist health care and media agency and moderating declines at Landor Design Bridge and Partners. Turning to performance by region on Slide 8. North America declined by 0.1% in the first quarter, locking a mid-single-digit decline in 2024. The automotive, TME and financial services sectors grew as well as technology client spend, which continued the recovery seen in the second half of 2024, while CPG client spend saw mild declines. GroupM continued to grow in the first quarter in North America, but were offset by declines at Ogilvy and AKQA. The United Kingdom declined by 5.5% in the first quarter of 2025, impacted by higher weighting towards project-based work and the impact of client losses at GroupM. By client sector, growth in tech, automotive and financial services was offset by pressure in CPG and tech & development. Western Continental Europe saw an overall like-for-like decline of 4.5% versus a challenging comp from 2024. The region was weak across the board as a result of pressure primarily on our project-based businesses and the impact of a more challenging media environment for GroupM. Rest of World declined 3.8% in the first quarter, largely driven by consistent pressures in China, which declined 17.4% in the quarter on the back of continued macroeconomic pressures and client assignment losses. We expect performance to continue to be challenging in China in the first half of 2025 with some improvement later in the year. Against this, we saw a strong performance in India, which was up 5.5%, driven by GroupM, Central and Eastern Europe also saw a robust performance up 2% in the first quarter. Slide 9 shows Q1 performance across our client sectors. This reflects growth across our designated clients, which represent 82% of our net sales. Despite the tough high single-digit comp from Q1 2024, CPG showed a stable performance during the quarter with growth of 0.3%, reflecting pressure in the U.S. and the U.K., offset by growth in the Rest of the World. The technology client sector showed further sequential improvement with growth increasing to 4.5% in Q1 from 2.5% in Q4 2024 with growth relatively balanced across the world. Healthcare started to stabilize with flat growth in the quarter as 2023 client losses start to roll off. Automotive and Financial Services performed well with growth of 5% and 2.6%, respectively. We saw a weaker performance from Telecoms, which was impacted by client losses, while Retail sector client spend declined by 2.9% compared to a high single-digit decline in 2024. The performance of our top clients continues to be robust with our top 25 clients growing 2.5% in the first quarter. And moving on to Slide 10, which shows the movement in net debt to the end of March, with adjusted net debt at GBP 3.7 billion, down year-on-year, but up from year-end, reflecting our typical cash cycle. Average adjusted net debt better captures the normal pattern of working capital moves across the year, and this is slightly down through the first quarter at GBP 3.4 billion and should improve as the impact of the FGS Global disposal annualizes. The average adjusted net debt to headline EBITDA ratio is expected to be within our 1.5 to 1.75x target range in 2025. The weighted average maturity of our GBP 3.8 billion of bond debt is 7 years, and this is an average coupon of 3.6%. Meanwhile, our total available liquidity across the group stood at GBP 2.9 billion at the 31st of March 2025, including a $2.5 billion revolving credit facility, which matures in February 2030. It is important to note that neither our bond debt nor our RCF have any covenants. And in March, Moody's reaffirmed our Baa2 rating with a stable outlook, coupled with our BBB rating from S&P, our credit is comfortably investment grade. And finally, turning to Slide 11, which shows our guidance for the full year. At the beginning of the year, we set our guidance based on a like-for-like range of flat to minus 2%. This reflected a degree of caution in light of what then appeared to be an uncertain macro environment as well as our expectation of the impact of net new business through the year. Since then, the macro environment has remained uncertain and is likely to be so for a large part of 2025. For now, we remain confident this is reflected in our like-for-like range for the year. We do think that heightened uncertainty on the macro outlook has the potential to further impact second quarter performance. This, coupled with the sequencing of client wins and losses through the year means we don't anticipate a material change in trajectory in the second quarter compared to the first. We continue to expect like-for-like performance to improve in the second half as more recent wins fully ramp up. Overall, we expect to hold headline operating margin broadly flat, excluding the impact of FX, with the benefit of annualized structural cost savings and continued disciplined cost management, offsetting incremental investment in WPP Open AI and data. We expect GroupM to continue simplifying its structure to accelerate the move to a more client-centric operating model. The impact will be largely P&L neutral over the course of 2025. However, the timing of associated costs will weigh on H1 margins, which will also be impacted by the phasing of revenue growth. Looking beyond revenue and headline operating profit, we make no major changes to our guidance. On cash flow, we continue to expect a reduction in our cash restructuring costs to GBP 110 million versus GBP 275 million in 2024 and adjusted operating cash flow before working capital of around GBP 1.4 billion. The one change I would note is that we now expect the impact of FX moves to be closer to a drag of 2% for the full year versus around flat at the time of prelims, reflecting a stronger pound relative to the dollar. At current rates, we estimate this as having a circa 20 basis points impact on margin given the relative weighting of our North American business. So thank you, and I will now hand you back to Mark.

Thanks very much, Joanne. So turning to our strategic progress on Page 12 and then Page 13. Before we dive into that, I think we do need to deal with the broader market environment. I think it's fair to say that it is challenging. We're absolutely seeing much greater economic uncertainty impacting business and consumer confidence. So at our prelims in February, we made the point that the macro environment will be challenging. We've seen that in Q4. And I think it's fair to say that since then, this uncertainty has increased. The decision by the U.S. administration to initiate tariffs has created much greater uncertainty for all of our clients whether or not they are directly or indirectly impacted. And historically, in uncertain environments, it's not necessarily hugely favorable for investment of any kind, whether it be longer-term capital projects or investment in brand building or short-term investment in activation. But in the time I've been doing this call, we have had COVID, Ukraine war, inflation and now tariffs. There's nothing we're not used to dealing with. And clients, I think, as well have learned how to prioritize their spending. They see it to some extent as a cost in the short term and an investment in the long term. And when they do cut, we should have the confidence to know that they will come back into the market. The impact of tariffs is also going to have an asymmetric impact both in the U.S. versus the rest of the world and also by industry. If we take our top 25 clients, 5 or so are most directly impacted by the tariffs on the cost of their product. Of the rest, around half have a more minor impact and the other half have limited direct impact, but may be affected by the broader economic impact in the U.S. and the rest of the world. So the pattern does vary by client. And so what's the response we're seeing from our clients? I think as we said in February, we'd already seen a more cautious outlook from clients from Q4 onwards. We've not yet seen any major step down in spending patterns from this. At the same time, we do have to be vigilant and agile. There's no doubt that there's a range of economic and political outcomes over the next day, month, quarter that could cause clients to take a different view on spending. And while that creates an uncertain environment for WPP, I do think it's important to note that our absolute and relative exposures are somewhat different from peers. We've long seen our geographic exposure as a key strategic advantage with the apparent global agency group with 60% of our business outside the U.S. And while the U.S. is an incredibly important market for us and always will be, geographic diversity does have its value. Likewise, WPP's balanced exposure by client industry is one of our key strengths. And while there is inevitably disruption for some of our clients, our strong positions, in particular within CPG and technology should be supportive of our growth. I think you saw some of that in the comments over the last 24 to 36 hours from some of the major CPG companies. And thirdly, there's the nature of our clients to consider. In the first quarter, it's important that the spending by our top 10 clients was up 4.6% and by our top 25 clients up 2.5%. So continued investment by major clients in marketing has continued into the first quarter despite the impact on specific markets and sectors. And the final point that I would make is in regards to the short-term uncertainty created by the macro environment. Our clients' focus on and interest in the impact of AI is undiminished. Indeed, if anything, based on my conversations with clients, the level of interest and focus has increased as clients consider how AI and automation can be used to deliver marketing effectiveness and efficiency, both in the short and medium term. On this point, I think the current macro uncertainty is actually acting as a catalyst for some advertisers to revisit how they approach marketing to deal with cost pressures. I think we feel stronger than ever that WPP via WPP Open has an enormous opportunity to help clients to drive ROI on their marketing spend as well as save money through delivering greater efficiency to reduce the number of suppliers and reduce costs, but also to embrace a new way of working with more strategic partnerships. And clients are looking, I think, at marketing partnerships much more like technology partnerships with more of the rigor and discipline perhaps the IT departments bring on supplier selection. And against this background, the industry moving from 4 players to 3 players is undoubtedly beneficial to us. And with that, we're being very proactive, as you would imagine, taking our integrated AI proposition to clients. So looking forward, let's cover priorities of 2025 on Slide 14. I think we met in February, we highlighted 3 priorities in which we were laser-focused as an organization: first, the importance of driving take-up of WPP Open within our organization and embedding it in our daily work; second, to support Brian Lesser and his team in reaccelerating growth at GroupM; and thirdly, to deliver and improve our new business success rate. Starting with WPP Open, we continue to see strong progress in take-up. The number of 48,000 users represents about 60% of our client-facing people using WPP Open last month, up from about 40% at the end of the year. It's important for a number of reasons. First, from a practical perspective, our people are using the platform and delivering greater efficacy and efficiency and understanding how they can do that. There are around 80,000 client-facing people within WPP, and it's our strategic objective that all of them are using this to deliver daily better work certainly by the end of the year. Secondly, our conversion in new business pitches does move up by around 10% when we put WPP Open at the heart of our offering, which we're doing in every pitch, not just because it increases the chance of success, but it unlocks the potential to explore more innovative commercial models, allowing us and clients to share in the value we create and dealing with some of the pricing pressures that sometimes we're seeing in the market. And I hope we'll see continued progress on this metric as the year goes on. Turning to GroupM. I mentioned at the prelims that the lion's share of the growth gap between us and our leading peers is attributable to the gap in performance of our media business, in particular, in the U.S. As Brian outlined in February, we see some encouraging signs of progress on the strategy we launched in January 2024 to simplify and integrate the GroupM offering, but it is important that we redouble our efforts, and there also have been some challenges. Brian talked about 5 key priorities he's pursuing around data and technology, people and talent, innovation, collaboration, and the organization. But we're making good progress on each of these areas. But I'd summarize the overall progress of business. first, we have to make sure our go-to-market is as simple and integrated as it possibly can be. Further simplifying GroupM not only drives greater cost efficiency, but makes it a simpler and easier business for our clients to do business with, and that's what we mean by moving to a more client-centric model, taking out silos and barriers and costs within the organization to focus all of our resources on client success. Secondly, it is essential not only that we catch up, but leapfrog a competitive set in terms of how we use AI, data, and technology to drive business outcomes. And I'll talk about InfoSum in a moment, but that's a significant step forward in that area. And then lastly, in terms of new business, it is lumpy, but I do think we're making progress. The loss of the Coca-Cola North American media business in the quarter was difficult, but we do have a very detailed debrief from the client and a good understanding of our strengths and challenges. We're making good progress towards renewing our broader agreement with that client. Meanwhile, in the first quarter, there are some important tangible signs of success, whether it be the win of the media mandate for EA, Godrej Consumer Products in India, the global consumer shopping market for Heineken, and many, many other new business pitches, which are less public, but work through the system, including expansion of scope from our existing clients, which you do see in the results of our top 10 and top 25 clients. And an important common thread across all of this is WPP Open. We are putting WPP Open at the heart of what we're doing. So before we wrap up, turning on Page 15 to InfoSum and why we believe this is an important step forward. Now, as you know, data is central to delivering best execution for our media clients, but actually more broadly across the work that we do with clients. And this transaction transforms the breadth and scale of data intelligence for WPP's clients in a way that we think leapfrogs traditional identity-based solutions. Think of it as improving our access to more data and unlocking the power of AI on that data, connecting that data to more premium and quality inventory and doing so using privacy-compliant technology. So how does it do that? Well, InfoSum allows WPP's clients to maximize the value of their own first-party data with privacy-enhancing connection to data providers and media partners across the marketing ecosystem, and that's something that WPP can strengthen. In this context, it's important that not only does it have the world-leading cloud-based technology, but it's an established player with an extensive global data network. That includes hundreds of billions of data signals across multiple dimensions of data for media platforms, including Channel 4, DIRECTV, ITV, Netflix, News Corp, Samsung Ads as well as major retailers around the world and identity and data parts, including Experian, TransUnion, Circana, Dynata and NCSolutions. All of that data we're able to better integrate into our media planning and media activation and results measurement. So even before joining WPP and having the strength of our relationships to broaden that data set, it's a real world leader in data collaboration. But the power of the transaction and what it means in the context of WPP Open and GroupM more broadly. By integrating InfoSum's capabilities within WPP Open, our clients can unlock the full potential of their customer data enriched through AI in strong quality media environments that are not always available to people using legacy first-party data systems. And using federated learning techniques, clients are able to build, trade, and deploy custom AI models that can use that in a privacy-compliant way. They can generate insights and audiences to create precise predictive models to optimize campaigns and deliver measurable improvement in real-time. So the conversations we have with clients have been very positive, dozens of conversations over the last few weeks and the feedback has been very positive. And we're confident the deal alongside our broader simplification efforts will drive a step change in performance, particularly in competitive reviews. And it happens to be as well a business that Brian knows well. So the integration, I think, is proceeding extremely well. So to wrap up on Page 16, I think in summary, there are 3 key points that we wanted to make in this presentation. The first that our first quarter performance, while weaker than we would like, is in line with our expectations, and we remain confident on achieving our full year guidance. At the same time, there are some important developments in the first quarter that encourage our belief that we're on the right track, whether it be the strong performance of our top clients or the improvement in new business momentum of VML and Burson. Secondly, while the macro environment is uncertain, we view the diversified nature of our business, both by geography and by client, as a key strength. It's an important hedge in the short term and will be a significant opportunity longer term. And thirdly, I said in February, there are 3 priorities in 2025: staying at the forefront of AI, fixing GroupM and winning more new business, and we are making progress on each of those. So I'm sure you all have questions, and we're ready to take them. So operator, maybe hand back to you and Joanne and I will take people's questions.

Our first question comes from Nicolas Langlet from BNP Paribas.

I've got three questions, please. First of all, on GroupM. So you referred in the press release to acceleration of the simplification at GroupM. So does that mean you expect increased cost efficiencies compared to the previous plan? And when do you expect to see the full benefit from the initiatives at GroupM? Are we talking end of '25 or more '26? Secondly, on net new business, what was the impact in Q1? And what phasing should we assume for the next 3 quarters? You said in the past, you expect a neutral impact for the full year. Is it still the case? And finally, on margin, it seems there is a lot of headwind in H1 and then better trend for H2. So what sort of margin decline should we assume for H1?

Okay. Well, I think I'll let Joanne take the questions from the financial business. Just one comment on GroupM. I think we are expecting strategic progress from today as a result of the actions that we've taken both last year, also this year with InfoSum. So that's ongoing. I think Joanne can talk to you about how you think about that from a financial perspective. And I think your first and third questions are largely related to each other, but Joanne?

Thank you, Nicolas. Regarding GroupM, Brian outlined his five priorities in February, and he and the team are actively working on them. This builds on the simplification efforts we implemented last year to enhance our operations, create a more client-focused approach, and streamline our market strategy. We expect to see cost efficiencies from these changes. More importantly, this positions GroupM for sustainable growth that meets or exceeds market expectations over time. Concerning the P&L, we anticipate a margin impact in the first half. For the full year, we expect it to be roughly neutral in 2025, with most benefits appearing in 2026 from a P&L standpoint. In the first quarter, the net new business impact was slightly down compared to last year, reflecting a decline in new business activity. Looking ahead to the next three quarters, I want to reiterate what I mentioned in February; we expect net new business to be a challenge in the first half due to previous client losses experienced in 2024, fully realized in the first half. In the second half, we expect to see improvements from recent new business wins, which will help mitigate some of those losses. So, we anticipate a decline in the first half and better performance in the second half regarding new business. When considering margins this year, two factors are crucial. In the first half, we discussed the impact on margins, and we also noted that our performance should improve throughout the year. Consequently, top-line performance in the first half will influence our operating leverage and margins. It’s essential to highlight that we expect to maintain flat margins for the year, excluding foreign exchange effects, primarily due to the annual benefits from the structural cost measures taken last year, our careful discretionary spending, and back-office efficiencies, which in turn allow us to invest in AI and data initiatives.

Our next question comes from Simon Baker from Bernstein.

So three quick questions, please. Firstly, you mentioned the economic uncertainty has increased. I just wondered at a high level, what your thoughts are in terms of the way that the ad market behaved versus, say, the last major downturn in 2009. I mean clearly, social media is a lot more, digital is a lot more marketing funnels, et cetera. So the question really is, today, is it faster or slower to wind up and wind down in terms of marketing campaigns? And similarly, is it sort of sticky or less sticky today, please? And the second question is, any early thoughts in terms of the third quarter versus fourth quarter phasing, specifically in terms of the way that the China and net new businesses and improving tech spend factors interrelate whether the third quarter is broadly the same as the fourth quarter or whether you would say anything in terms of the bias there. And finally, one for Joanne please, in terms of the Kantar Group tax reference base value. Have you made any comments on that? Can you give any indication on the tax reference value, please?

I'll address the first question. I've been here for most of that time, and Joanne can respond afterward. You mentioned 2009 as the last significant downturn, but we also had COVID in that timeframe. Additionally, a couple of years ago, around this same time, we experienced the situation in Ukraine, possibly before the preliminaries. I don't think we currently view 2025 the same way we did 2009. The outcomes we face today are quite varied, and at their worst, I don't believe this is what people are anticipating. Major banks are projecting various probabilities of a U.S. recession rather than certainty. Clients have gained insights from experiences with COVID and Ukraine. I mentioned earlier that marketing is an expense in the short term but an investment in the long term, and certainly, under pressure, they find a balance. The recent results from Unilever, Nestlé, and P&G show that our top clients continue to prioritize ongoing marketing investments even amidst pressure. As we noted in Q4, the main challenges are more about discretionary spending. We need to see how tariffs will play out. I don't believe the process will be drastically slower or faster; it might speed up slightly since people had existing commitments that they couldn't alter. Alternatively, clients may prefer to wait and see because they can adjust their plans more quickly if necessary. Until we obtain better clarity on tariff developments, we won't likely see a significant reduction in spending. Conversations I've had with several clients recently reflect that we haven't observed any major drop beyond what I consider a cautious outlook for the year. I hope that provides some insight, Joanne.

Yes, Simon, we don't guide by quarter, but just as you think about H2, obviously, Q3 is a tougher comp of 0.5%, Q4 was down 2.3%. You specifically mentioned China; it's balanced comps between 3 in Q4. And we'll see the impacts of net new business and that ramp-up as I've talked about as we go through the year. So overall, I think at this point, it's probably fair to assume that it will be very balanced between Q3 and Q4. And then on the Kantar tax reference, making good progress in Kantar. I think we need to see what happens with the remaining business. There will be some tax, but I don't think it will be significant just based on the structure of our business.

Our next question comes from Adrien de Saint Hilaire from Bank of America.

So a few questions or points if that's okay. So I think the link between the advertising market and the economy is pretty clear, but maybe what's less clear to me is the link between ad spending and the agency's organic sales growth. So could you just elaborate a bit in terms of how your fee structure has evolved? How much of your revenue is tied to actual media dollar spending or how much is based on retainers? Secondly, I think, Joanne, you highlighted that you assume that new business contributions would be a positive contribution in H2. But since you provided that guidance, Coke was lost. I think there were some headlines about PayPal the other day. Mars is under review, and I think you're defending that account. So what sort of elements do you have to be sure that H2 is going to be positive indeed for net new business? And then thirdly, if I look at your performance by sector, automotive was really quite strong in Q1. Do you think there was maybe some pull forward there in terms of spending ahead of tariffs or anything that you would call out because that seems a bit counterintuitive.

I don't believe there was any pull forward in spending. We've had some success in acquiring new business and expanding our assignments with automotive clients, who have been investing. While the automotive sector could be significantly affected, we haven't experienced specific pullbacks so far. The overall outlook remains uncertain. Regarding the relationship between the ad market and ad spend, they are indeed connected. Clients' investments with us are closely tied to overall ad spending, which can fluctuate based on their discretion. A significant decrease in client spending would affect our fees, regardless of whether we have a retainer. However, we have not observed a significant reduction in client spending yet. We have been more cautious than some peers and perhaps observed impacts on discretionary spending earlier than others. Joanne, would you like to discuss the new business phasing?

Yes. So just in terms of the comps to H2, I think I'll say a few things on this, Adrien. So first of all, we have talked about that ramp-up of new wins from H2 last year, which we'll see a fuller impact from that in H2 than we have done in H1, which will help offset some of those historical client losses. Second thing I'd say is you talked about Coke and PayPal, but we've also seen new business wins in the first quarter. So Electronic Arts, Heineken, obviously that we've shared in the release. And linked to that, I'd say the pipeline is healthy, so broadly at the same level as last year. And we have seen good momentum of VML and Burson that has come through a lot of the merger activity that they were focused on last year. So we'd expect to continue to improve that new business performance as we go through the balance of the year. And I think the final thing just to say is we talk a lot about new clients and new client wins and losses, but there are other factors. So we talked about growth with our existing clients, top 25 growing at 2.5%. There is plenty of headroom with our existing clients. We're seeing our existing clients move more towards integrated opportunities. And so we see an opportunity to continue to grow with those existing clients. I think we need to think about that as well as new business wins as we look at the second half.

Our next question comes from Steve Liechti from Deutsche Numis.

Yes. I've just got two left, actually. One is on GroupM in the first quarter. Can you just explain your comments on Europe a little bit more? Just I guess that minus 0.9% could be a bit by surprise. And what's the danger that European pressure continues through into further quarters? So just more clarity there. And then the second question is your comments on Healthcare like-for-like being relatively more stable. I don't know if I got it wrong, but I thought Pfizer was still a drag into the first quarter and a bit into the maybe the second quarter as well. So just help me there in terms of that better performance than I expected.

Yes. So on healthcare, I think Pfizer was a drag in Q1. I think it stopped – I mean, the decision made in May 2023 was still a drag in Q1. So I think it stops from Q2 onwards. But we have had some success with other healthcare clients. And so I think that's provided a better environment on healthcare. Joanne, do you want talk about GroupM in Europe?

Yes. In Europe, I think if you look at Western Continental Europe rather than the U.K. where the U.K. was really impacted for some of these client losses. We have a tougher comp. But in media, specifically, we saw some weakness in the environment, particularly in Germany and France. I'm not vague on, I guess, the share of clients that we have in media, and we have a weaker comp in Q2. So we'll have to see how that plays through in the second quarter. But it was really that tier where we just saw softness, which is more macro-related than anything else, Steve.

Our next question comes from Lisa Yang from Goldman Sachs.

I have a few questions. First, regarding cost flexibility that you mentioned to address macro uncertainty, could you elaborate on the current actions you're taking? What are the key levers available if your top line declines further? It would be helpful if you could quantify the number of freelancers, discretionary spending, and bonuses. That's my first question. Second, concerning the actions implemented at GroupM since the beginning of 2024, you noted some encouraging signs. Could you provide more details on how that has influenced client retention, scope expansion, or new business wins? Why is there an acceleration in simplification this year, and how much more simplification can we expect in the coming years? Do you think this is the final phase, and can you explain how this could assist GroupM in returning to growth? Lastly, regarding the level of new business, do you anticipate any slowdown in overall lab marketing pitches given the current uncertainty? Or do you expect a potential increase going forward? How do you evaluate the risks versus opportunities for WPP for the remainder of the year?

Okay. Well, I’ll tackle the GroupM and new business question. And look, I think on GroupM, as you know, as a reference, Pfizer, the decision made in May 2023 is still weighing on our results in the first quarter of 2025. So the impact on the business is very long-term. And I think GroupM didn’t perform as we had wanted in Q1. And some of that is a result of decisions made some time ago. If you look at the sort of the big new business wins in GroupM last year, we did retain and expand our Unilever relationship. We did win J&J in North America, and we did win Amazon outside the United States. And those are 3 of the world’s 10 biggest advertisers. So we are not without our success in new business, and we did retain EA in Q1, again, competitively. We won that business against some of the toughest competition in the industry. Now it’s true. We didn’t retain Volvo after the pitch. And while we’re renewing it overall Coca-Cola relationship, we won’t be working with them in North America. So it is balanced, but I do think that we are seeing more competitive success in new business, and we can beat the best when we’re at our best on the best day. And the InfoSum transaction is going to strengthen significantly our data proposition and we’re seeing that with clients. So I think greater clarity on that is perhaps the thing that we have been missing a little bit. And one of the reasons we brought Brian back was to strengthen the growth of proprietary media, which would drive both financial success and a little bit greater financial flexibility. So I think we know what we need to do in our media business, and I think we can start to see some of the impacts of that, although we’re not seeing it necessarily in the quarter-by-quarter numbers. On net new business, look, I think that the pipeline might be a little bit smaller than last year. And as ever, there are some things with risk and some areas of upside. I do think that clients – I think major clients are starting to look at and review bigger, more integrated assignments. Many of those things, I think we tend to overfocus perhaps on some of the big media reviews because with the billing numbers, they look much bigger than they are and they’re more public. But I can assure you, we take part in more than I would like to imagine. I think we’ve done 6,000 or 7,000 new business pitches this year, very few of them hit the headlines. So there’s a daily cadence of new business opportunity. And I do think we’re seeing some bigger consolidation from clients, things that are not necessarily in the headlines and things people don’t necessarily know about that support what we’re doing. And again, within that, I think we’re seeing advances in our ability to demonstrate what we have operating today in WPP Open, not a sigma – not a mockup on sigma, but an actual operational pool has been very compelling to clients who take the time to really dive into what we’re doing. Joanne?

Yes, thank you for the question, Lisa. In 2024, we showed our ability to effectively manage our financials even when revenue is slower, and we are setting our margins for this year. We will benefit from the cost actions we implemented last year, and we are also adjusting our workforce in response to the softer revenue. Our cost structure is flexible, and we have proven our capability to manage it successfully. Regarding freelancers, they constitute a high single-digit percentage of our staffing costs, and we manage that carefully. We've seen improvements over the past 12 to 18 months. Additionally, we have made progress on back office efficiencies, leading to reduced costs and opportunities for further improvements, which allows us to invest wisely in our business in the medium term, particularly in areas like open AI and data. Lastly, we are very disciplined with our discretionary spending. We've learned to be careful with expenses during COVID, and we continue to apply that discipline as we navigate a challenging external environment.

Our next question comes from Adam Berlin from UBS.

I've still got three questions if that's okay. My first question is regarding the fact that you're the fourth large agency to report, and the average growth across all agencies was about 0.5%, the lowest we've seen since the first quarter of 2021. Do you have any insights on why the sector performed so weakly this quarter? With all the business changes happening, I would appreciate your thoughts on this and what might lead to improvement for the rest of the year. My second question pertains to AKQA, which continues to show very weak and depressed growth in creative agencies. Should we view this situation similarly to the R/GA Huge case we saw at IPG? Could this be an asset you might need to divest to enhance growth, or are there reasons you can share that suggest improvement is possible, making it distinct from what we observed with those assets at IPG? Lastly, concerning your views on Q2, which is expected to be around minus 2.7%, would it be realistic to anticipate a positive outcome in the second half of the year to reach the midpoint of your range? Should we be more inclined to consider the lower end of the range, or is the change in new business wins significant enough in the second half to support a positive performance despite potentially challenging macro conditions?

Yes. I think on your last question, I know you've been looking at a sort of change in new business quarter-by-quarter balancing the balance of the year, but I'll let Joanne tackle that. I think on your first question, why is it 0.5% and why is it the weakest quarter since Q3? I think that's the economy. I mean you only have to look at what's going on and we saw some of it in Q4 maybe ahead of our peers weighing on discretionary spend and maybe smaller companies. We are seeing, as you've seen in our numbers, strong spend from our biggest clients. Maybe we're gaining some share with our biggest clients, but also I think that big companies continue to invest behind ongoing marketing. But things are a little bit tougher around sort of digital technology areas, more discretionary spend. I think that links to your second question, and there have been management changes to AKQA. Actually, although we haven't yet seen it in the results, AKQA had a very good first quarter in terms of new business wins. We are looking at the performance of that unit improving over the year. I don't think we want to do what IPG did with R/GA and Huge. Frankly, our job and the reason we get paid is to fix businesses that we have in our portfolio. I think that AKQA is a very strong business. Joanne has built an amazingly strong agency with a very strong brand. They get amazing access to new business opportunities and talent. And the read-through from R/GA and Huge, I'd say is the economic outlook on that sector has been tough. But within that, I think that we have a really strong asset, and our job is to put the right management in place and get the business growing. And that's what we're very focused on, not just disposing of it. We're not ready to surrender yet. I mean, Joanne, do you want to talk about the guidance and expectations for the first half?

Yes, our guidance for the full year, which we're reiterating today, is really based on no net new business impacts. We've talked about the sequencing of that and client spending plans as they are today. And as new business ramps up, we'll see a benefit in the second half. And we also talked about existing clients, the growth of the largest clients. We were very thoughtful when we set our guidance for the full year, as we talked about at the time, we started to see talk of tariff, and we exited 2024 a little bit softer than what we were expecting. And so we built a range of outcomes into that guidance for the full year. It's too early to narrow the guidance or reiterating today. I think we'll have to see how recent events play through in the balance of the year before we look at narrowing the guidance.

Our next question comes from Laura Metayer from Morgan Stanley.

I have two questions. First, could you discuss the competitive landscape for InfoSum? Who do you see as its closest competitor and how quickly do you anticipate integrating it with WPP and GroupM? When do you expect to start seeing benefits from this integration? My second question is about revenue visibility. You mentioned this before, so it's a follow-up. Is there a portion of the revenues for 2025 that is currently guaranteed, giving you full visibility, or do you mean that all revenues could be affected by the macro environment?

So on InfoSum, I think that actually, their 2 biggest competitors, both been bought by cloud providers to integrate into their cloud data platform. So I think it shows the attraction of the sector. There’s not necessarily stand-alone businesses out there that do something similar. It takes a different approach to the application of data from classic first-party data systems. The classic sort of CRM-based system is you see a cookie, or you see a phone number or you see an e-mail address and you try to use it identified to link one dataset to another. InfoSum takes a more AI-driven, federated learning is a technical term, approach to combining those data sets. It’s both more privacy compliant but also more nuanced. And because of that, it enables us to take that data into more premium media environments. Some of the social platforms don’t let sort of traditional systems integrate into them. So it gives us a broader range of media environments for our clients, which is important. In terms of the integration, I mean, given the relationships within the business and the CEO has taken on a role with GroupM. I think it’s pretty seamless. It’s as fast as it takes to integrate InfoSum into a client, which I believe can be done in a matter of days and weeks. So they’re already working with existing clients. I mean, they work with Coca-Cola in Europe already and many of our media partners. So I think it’s really sort of integrated from Day 1 and it will only get stronger over time as we bring more data sets and more media owners into the ecosystem. Joanne, do you want to take that?

Yes, thank you, Laura. In terms of visibility, most of our clients are large global companies, and we have multiyear contracts with them. This provides a good level of visibility into their spending plans for the year. However, when the macro environment shifts, those spending plans can be adjusted, and we have observed this in previous challenging macro conditions. Our guidance for the full year accounts for this, as we noticed some of it in Q4. We also discussed project-based spending, which significantly affects some of our smaller agencies and firms like AKQA that focus more on digital work. This type of spending is more discretionary for clients, meaning they have the ability to postpone or eliminate these projects. We haven't seen this trend in the past 12 months, but we do have good visibility for the next quarter and regarding the new business we have already secured, which should improve as the year progresses.

Our next question comes from Julien Roch from Barclays.

Three questions, please. Revisiting a full year new business, now that you have more clarity, is that fair to say that new business was about minus 2% last year, it should be about 0 this year based on what has been done so far and excluding future wins and losses? Second question is how bad does organic need to be before you cannot be around flat margin? Is it minus 3%, minus 4%, minus 5%? And then on kind of macro and reiterating guidance, now it's pretty obvious to everybody that you are a macro-sensitive business. Right? And IPG yesterday was very clear that their guidance reiteration was based on current performance and clients not changing behavior. But if macro is weakening, it could change guidance. Now what about you? I mean, normally, the answer is pretty obvious. But you said many times during that call that you had put in some conservatism in your full year guidance because you've already seen that macro is weakening. So what kind of conservatism and anticipation of macro weaknesses in the full year guidance is kind of my question.

Yes. I think all three of those factors are interconnected. We mentioned that new business was a challenge last year and that it won’t have a positive impact this year, especially early on. We’ll need to see how the year unfolds. Regarding our guidance, we have provided it as it currently stands, and those factors correlate with each other. When it comes to changing our guidance, I sense you’re trying to prompt me into making a statement I prefer not to make. What we have expressed clearly is that we've incorporated some caution into our outlook. While it’s hard to quantify how much caution we built in, given our insights from Q4 and the pressures on discretionary spending at the start of the year, we based our guidance on the assumption that this pressure would persist throughout the year. We’re not expecting a significant recovery in the second half that would lead us to adjust our guidance. I don’t believe you can force us to specify what would lead to a change at this time. Our current perspective doesn’t indicate a need to alter our guidance, although we recognize there are various possible outcomes. As you've suggested, we are sensitive to macroeconomic conditions that could prompt a revision. Like many companies, we acknowledge our current situation. Our guidance reflects a more cautious macro environment as influenced by our experiences in Q4 and Q1, which is why we are maintaining our guidance as of now. I hope this clarifies our rationale.

And just on the second question on how far does it need to get before margins start to see impact... Sorry. Julien, did you want to say something else?

No, no. Go ahead.

If we just step back and look at the industry as a whole, maybe during COVID and 2008, ‘09, the peak to trough was 8% and the margin impact was around 150 to 200 basis points. But the more important thing is the margin bounces back because of that flexible cost base that exists in our industry. I mean, for us, we’ve guided 0% to minus 2%. We said we’ll hold margins flat at the bottom end. Obviously, that requires more action around that flexible cost base and given the negative operating leverage. But beyond minus 2%, I don’t really want to go there because that’s not really our guidance. And if we were in that situation, we’d have to look at what other actions made sense for us to take on the P&L. It’s important for us as well as being disciplined around our cost base, making sure that we’re investing for the medium term and making sure that we’re continuing to reallocate investment into open AI and data. So that’s very important for us as we go through this year. And we think about both the near-term and the medium-term priorities.

We currently have no further questions. So I hand back to you, Mark, for closing remarks.

Well, thanks very much, everybody. So I think we've discussed the main points on the call, particularly related to the economic environment. I think there's no doubt that it is challenging. Overall, I think we're making good progress strategically and we'll see the benefits of that. So we look forward to updating you on the current over the coming months. Thanks very much, and we look forward to seeing you soon.