WPP PLC 2026 H1 Earnings Call

Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. When we reported our 2025 full-year results back in February, I laid out in detail our Elevate28 strategy. I made a commitment that we would be transparent about our progress along the way, forthcoming with lead indicators of our momentum, and disciplined in how we measure success. Today, I'll share an update on where we are against the plan and why I'm encouraged by the steady improvements we're delivering across the company. I'll hand over to Joanne, who will take you through the financial detail. Before I start, I'd like to pay a personal tribute to Paul Richardson, who recently passed away. Paul served as WPP's Group Finance Director for 22 years until he retired from the company in 2019.

He joined WPP in 1993 as Group Treasurer, over nearly three decades played a central role in helping to build WPP into the global company it is today. I know many of you will have fond memories of working alongside Paul and will have also known him personally. Our thoughts are with his family at this time. Coming back to where we are today, the headline is that we're on track with where we said we would be, stabilizing the business and delivering on our ambitions with clear evidence of progress across all leading indicators. As part of Elevate28, we aligned on a new company purpose to be the trusted growth partner for the world's leading brands.

To fulfill this new purpose, we announced four strategic objectives: to deliver superior growth for clients, to become a simpler, more integrated company, to unlock the advantage of WPP Open, our agentic marketing platform, and to create firm financial foundations for the future. We also outlined a detailed execution plan that spans three distinct phases. The priority in 2026 has been to stabilize the business, make the structural changes needed, and strengthen our execution. The next phase is to build on these foundations, returning the company to growth sometime during 2027. The third phase will be accelerating our growth so we can win our share of a growing market from 2028 and beyond. The building blocks of the new strategy are now firmly in place.

We're moving from a holding company model to a single company model with four operating units, Creative Media Production and Enterprise Solutions, that operate across four regions with common incentives aligned to WPP's overall performance, all underpinned by WPP Open, which enables and connects everything we do. We've made encouraging progress. Today, we are a simpler, more integrated company, but our work is by no means complete. Our focus remains firmly on execution and delivering against the commitments that we've made to our clients, employees, and investors. The journey ahead won't be linear. There will undoubtedly be ups and downs along the way. I'm confident that we are on the right path and setting WPP up for sustainable success well into the future.

In May 2025, we launched WPP Media. WPP Production in January this year, WPP Creative in February. To complete the reorganization on July 1st, we officially launched WPP Enterprise Solutions to the market, a unified technology-powered services offer that helps our clients modernize their marketing operations and unlock new sources of growth. Let's have a quick look at WPP Enterprise Solutions.

Great work is only as strong as the system behind it.

Businesses grow when they drive purchases. They grow faster when their experiences feel effortless.

We are fixated on making intelligent, streamlined experiences for owners.

They grow deeper when they humanize relationships.

They grow stronger when platforms power everything.