WPP - H1 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to WPP's 2023 first half results conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session, at which time, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Today's conference is being recorded. Now I would like to hand the call conference over to WPP's CEO, Mr. Mark Read. Please go ahead, sir.

Mark Read (CEO)

Thank you very much, and welcome everyone to WPP's first half results. I'm here in London with Joanne Wilson, our CFO, at her first set of results, and Tom Waldron, who leads our Investor Relations team. Please do read the statement on page 2 of the presentation. It's important. In terms of the presentation on page 3, I'll cover the highlights for the year. Joanne will take us through the financial performance, and I'll come back at the end on our strategic progress and the opportunities ahead of us before we take everyone's question. To turn into the highlights on page 4, I'd say we had resilient growth in the first half overall, with growth of 2%. It's important to understand the breakdown of this growth, so we can evaluate really what happened.

To start with, we did see growth slow from 2.9% in Q1 to 1.3% in Q2. The world outside the U.S., which represents around 63% of our business, we actually saw growth accelerate from 3.2% in the first quarter to 5% in the second quarter. This reflects the pretty strong performance in the second quarter in the U.K. In Germany, at 6.6%, we saw a recovery in China from negative to 4.8%, having been down 13% in the first quarter. All of this suggests actually a pretty robust client spending environment. Similarly, we saw continued growth in GroupM at 6.1% in both Q1 and Q2, globally, reflecting a strong client spending.

Our public relations business, businesses grew, you know, perhaps somewhat more slowly, but actually fairly consistently at around 2% in both the first and the second quarter. Ogilvy, in particular, had a strong performance in the first half, on the back of good client wins, at the end of last year, and really a recovery in the performance of that business after perhaps a couple of disappointing years. The part of our business where we have seen a shortfall has been in the United States, with the gap versus our expectations in the prior year, really being focused on technology clients and technology-related projects. We did flag earlier this year that we've seen some slowdown in spending from technology clients on marketing, but this accelerated in the second quarter and perhaps took us maybe a little bit by surprise.

The reasons differ by client, and actually not all clients are down, but the general trends, one, I think, cost control, a focus on margins after a significant slowdown in their own rapid rates of growth and perhaps a different stage of the innovation cycle. As others have mentioned, we've also seen delays in decision-making on some technology-related projects, primarily in our creative agency, that is Wunderman Thompson, VMLY&R, and AKQA. We saw work being pushed out and lower revenue in the technology, consulting, and development parts of these companies. In this context, it's worth reminding ourselves that our creative agencies have a broad service offer, and an increasing amount of their work comes from outside of the traditional agency remit in areas such as marketing technology, e-commerce, data consulting, and other technology-related services.

Together, this meant that our revenues in North America declined by 4.1% in Q2, having grown in Q1. There's some other minor elements impacting this, from some weakness in the telco sector linked to technology delays on a client loss, and also a client loss in the retail sector. The primary explanation is the reduction of technology and telco spend. You look at it overall, it had around a 1.9% impact on WPP's revenues in Q2, and obviously a significantly bigger impact if you look at it just in the United States. It's fair to say that we do see our technology clients as important long-term partners and drivers of our growth.

It's not the case, as I mentioned, that revenues in all of them have declined, and we're not going to call them out one by one, but we are confident that our relationships are in a good place. This doesn't reflect the loss of assignments, but we don't see any reason why their spend should not recover in the future. Our clients in this sector are some of the world's largest companies by market capitalization. They're growing and investing in exciting new areas, but we do believe that they need to put significant investments behind their brands and into their customer relationships in the future. With that as background, at the same time, we have continued to strengthen our offer to clients and to invest in the future.

We had a very strong performance at Cannes Lions, winning five Grand Prix and a total of 165 Lions. Mindshare were named Media Agency of the Year. As importantly, the Effie Awards, which recognize effectiveness in marketing, WPP was named the most effective communications company in the world, with Ogilvy leading as well. There was a lot of talk in our industry about partnerships around AI. We're doing an increasing amount of work in this area. Every week, I see strong examples of work we're doing for clients, and we'll share some of that later on in the presentation. We've also made a number of acquisitions. I'd like to highlight two, particularly in the area of influence and marketing, Goat and Obviously.

Turning to our profitability, given our revenue performance, we saw disciplined cost control, it's been important, and as a result, we delivered an operating margin of 11.5%, which is up 1.1% on a like-for-like basis, albeit down 0.1% on last year due to FX effects. Our margin benefited from good control of staff costs, was achieved despite higher IT costs from further investment in modernizing our platforms and higher severance costs. Taking that all together for the full year, we considered our guidance, as you can imagine, very carefully, and have decided to revise it to 1.5%-3% the year overall, while holding our margin guidance at around 15% for the year 2022 exchange rates.

I'm sure we'll get into a discussion about guidance in the Q&A, but it's worth saying that some of the reductions due to the softness that we saw in Q2, we've really taken three factors into account. First, I think we're being rightly cautious about the pattern of spending by technology clients and on technology projects in the second half. Secondly, we have seen continued growth, as I pointed out, actually an acceleration in the rest of the world, and the issues we've seen have been largely concentrated in the United States. It's fair to say the economic environment does remain uncertain, and while there's some more positive signs in the U.S. regarding the control of inflation, there are also issues around consumer spending as COVID savings get spent.

Then the third area that we are aware that comparatives in the second half of the year are somewhat easier in, than in the first half of the year. Taking these sort of pluses and minuses together, we think a range of 1.5%-3%, while wider we may like, is probably the right place to guide you at this point in the year. With that as the introduction, Joanne, why don't you take us through the financial performance?

Joanne Wilson (CFO)

Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. Let me take you through the financial results for the first half of 2023. I'll start on slide VI. First half revenue, less pass-through costs, was up 5.5% on a reported basis and 2% on a like-for-like basis. Our reported growth includes a 2.6 percentage point tailwind from FX due to sterling weakness and a 0.9 percentage point contribution from M&A. As Mark mentioned, this is softer like-for-like growth than we had anticipated, impacted primarily by a slowdown in spending at our technology clients in the U.S. and delays in technology-related projects.

Turning to the headline income statement on slide VII, overall revenue, less pass-through costs, was GBP 5.8 billion, an increase of 5.5% year-on-year, with headline operating profit of GBP 666 million, up +4.3% year-on-year. This resulted in a reported operating profit margin of 11.5%, down 10 basis points year-on-year. We have seen an adverse FX impact on margin of 20 basis points as a result of the recent strengthening of sterling. On a constant currency basis, our margin improved 10 basis points year-on-year, reflecting improved staff and other costs, offset by planned higher IT investment and higher severance costs.

Moving down the P&L, as shared at prelims, income from associates excludes any contribution from Kantar in 2023 under IAS 28, due to its nil carrying value on our balance sheet. Net finance costs increased year-over-year due to higher levels of debt and lower investment income as a result of a disposal in 2022. That was partially offset by higher interest income. Reflecting the tax rate of 27% for the half and non-controlling interest of GBP 37 million, the profit attributable to shareholders is GBP 361 million, resulting in a headline diluted EPS of GBP 0.331, which is broadly flat year-over-year.

Moving to slide VIII and the reconciliation between our headline and reported profit, as well as the usual amortization and impairment of intangibles, our headline operating profit of GBP 666 million is adjusted for a goodwill impairment totaling GBP 53 million, which relates to 2 of our smaller businesses within specialist agencies. In the half, we incurred restructuring and IT-related transformation costs of GBP 54 million and ERP costs of GBP 24 million, consistent with our full year guidance of GBP 180 million. As indicated at prelims, we have conducted a review of our property portfolio, and as a result, we are consolidating our office space in the U.S. and a small number of other markets.

The full year 2023 impairment costs related to this review are primarily non-cash and are expected to be GBP 220 million, with GBP 180 million in the first half. The expected cash impact of GBP 20 million will be incurred as leases expire. The above, together with some smaller items, results in an overall adjustment of GBP 360 million and a reported operating profit of GBP 306 million. Moving on to slide IX, our global integrated agencies grew 2.2% on a like-for-like basis. GroupM, our media planning and buying business, grew 6.1%, with consistent performance across Q1 and Q2.

This is offset by a weaker performance from our integrated creative agencies, which saw an overall decline of 0.8% in the half, with growth in Q1 being more than offset by a decline in Q2. GroupM benefited from growth across all regions. We saw the ramp-up of some good assignment wins, including Discovery in the U.S., Flutter in the U.K., Maruti Suzuki, and Reckitt in India. We also saw continued strong growth in programmatic and connected TV advertising, driving double-digit growth in GroupM Nexus. Digital is now 49% of GroupM billings, up from 48% in full year 2022. Across our integrated creative agencies, Ogilvy grew well, supported by recent new business wins, including Verizon and SC Johnson. Hogarth, our creative production agency, also enjoyed strong growth and expanded its collaboration with other WPP agencies.

Our other global integrated agencies, Wunderman Thompson, VMLY&R, and AKQA Group, were adversely impacted in the first half by reduced spend across tech sector clients, predominantly in the U.S., longer lead times on technology-related projects, and expected client losses in the U.S. retail sector. For the global integrated agencies as a whole, headline operating profit was GBP 540 million, up 6.6%, and the margin was broadly flat year-on-year at 11.3%. Moving on now to public relations on slide X, where we see continued demand for strategic communications, with like-for-like sales up 2.1% overall. FGS Global, our leading strategic advisory and communications consultancy, grew high single digits. KKR completed their minority investment in FGS Global last month, becoming a 29% shareholder in a transaction which valued the business at over $1.4 billion.

H&K also continued to grow, while BCW saw a small decline in the first half. Headline operating profit of GBP 88 million represented a margin of 15% and was slightly down year-on-year. Now turning to specialist agencies on page 11, revenue less pass-through costs was up 0.2% on a like-for-like basis. CMI, our U.S. specialist healthcare media agency, delivered strong double-digit growth, and Landor & Fitch saw an acceleration of growth. The performance of the longer tail of smaller agencies in this segment was impacted by tougher comps and clients delaying projects. Operating margin of 8.6% was 2.8 percentage points lower year-on-year, primarily reflecting the runoff of a COVID-19 related contract in Germany. Turning now to trends across our key client sectors on slide XI.

We delivered strong growth in consumer packaged goods, driven by our work with The Coca-Cola Company, and we also saw good growth in the healthcare and pharma, financial services, and travel and leisure sectors. Against that, we saw declines in retail as expected, given the loss of a couple of clients in the U.S., one competitive and the other related to supermarket consolidation. Less anticipated was a reduction in spend from clients in the tech and digital services sector, which was down almost 5%, with most of the decline coming in Q2. In terms of our performance by market on slide XIII, the U.S., our largest market, saw a decline in net sales of 1.2% in the half, with a 4.5% decline in Q2.

This was primarily driven by reduced spend from technology clients and known losses in the retail sector, together with delays in technology-related project spend, which primarily impacted our integrated creative agencies. Excluding the U.S., we saw good growth in the first half and an acceleration of growth in Q2. The U.K. continued to show strong performance, with 8.2% growth in the half and faster growth in the second quarter, with particularly good performance in CPG and healthcare clients and across our media business, which grew double digits. Germany grew by 5.4% in the half, with strong performance in travel and leisure, boosting our media business. In China, we saw a 4% decline in the first half, with growth recovering in Q2 to 4.8%, albeit slightly slower than we anticipated.

We expect China's growth to accelerate in the second half, reflecting easier comps and new business wins, including Estée Lauder. Finally, India grew 0.8% in H1, with a tough comp of 37% growth last year. Like-for-like performance improved in Q2 to 2.5%, driven by CPG clients and media wins. We expect a further acceleration in the second half, reflecting softer comps and recent new business. As mentioned, first half operating margin reduced 10 basis points to 11.5%. Our headcount-related actions drove a 30 basis points improvement to margin. Our average headcount for the period was slightly lower year-on-year, with freelances over 20% lower, improving our overall mix. These savings were in part offset by higher severance payments as we moved to adjust our cost base in response to a more cautious client spending environment.

Personal costs were higher, driven by more in-person client meetings, increasing travel spend. Additional G&A savings came from operating efficiencies, in part relating to our transformation program, establishment costs fell as more of our people moved into campuses. IT costs rose, as we previously flagged, reflecting investment in our IT infrastructure, cyber capability, and our move to the cloud, partly offset by offshoring savings. Finally, we saw an FX headwind of 20 basis points. Turning now to our transformation program on slide XV. Overall transformation savings are on track to deliver at least GBP 450 million of annualized savings in 2023 versus a 2019 base by the end of this year, and we remain on track to achieve the targeted GBP 600 million by 2025. We are seeing further efficiency improvements, driven primarily from a consolidation of our office footprint.

As mentioned, we continue to rightsize our properties, and we'll see further savings from actions taken this year to consolidate our offices in the U.S. and elsewhere. In procurement, we are starting to see benefits from our category-driven model, which is helping to consolidate our supplier base and better leverage our global scale. The secondary savings focus, focuses on improving our operating model from simplifying our ways of working, and the final area is from our functional spend, including shared services. In addition to the IT offshoring that I referenced, we continue to make progress with our ERP consolidation. Economy is now rolled out in 17 Latin American and APAC markets, and we continue to deploy Workday in North America. Moving to slide XVI, and cash generation and uses over the last 12 months.

In June last year, our net debt was just over GBP 3 billion, and since then, we generated GBP 2.1 billion of operating cash and saw a benefit from trade working capital of GBP 165 million, with much of that coming through in the quarter just gone. Our non-trade working capital was an outflow of GBP 360 million, with the largest drivers being landlord incentives relating to our campus program, sales and other taxes, and bonus accruals. Interest, lease payments, and corporate tax out flows were as normal. CapEx was GBP 210 million, with investment primarily in our tech capability and campuses. Total cash returned to shareholders was GBP 584 million in the form of dividends and share purchases. We saw acquisitions and disposals of a net GBP 433 million.

Other movements primarily include the impact of FX on our operating cash flows and earn outs. Together, these increased our net debt by around GBP 300 million on our average adjusted net debt to EBITDA ratio of 1.68 times. I'm now turning to a reminder of our capital allocation policy on page 17. Our first priority is organic investment to support growth, which includes investment in Choreograph, our data company, and WPP Open, our AI-powered agency operating system, as well as our IT infrastructure and campuses. Our dividend policy targets a payout of 40% of EPS, we've declared an interim dividend of 15 pence. We will also invest in acquisitions in attractive growth areas, which accelerate our capabilities, with recent examples being in influencer marketing, PR, and branding. Finally, we will seek to return any excess capital to shareholders.

With our leverage ratio currently within our target range, we will limit the buyback of shares to cover the dilutive impact of our employee share program, which will be around GBP 37 million in the first half. Finally, for me, just to take you through the guidance for 2023 on slide XVIII. As Mark has already said, we expect like-for-like revenue, less pass-through costs growth of 1.5%-3% for the full year. This compares to previous guidance of 3%-5% growth for the year. Our expected M&A contribution remains at 0.5%-1%, and we now expect a 2 percentage point headwind to net sales from FX over the full year. Previously, that was a 1% tailwind.

FX is also expected to have an adverse impact of 25 basis points on the full year margin, based on 31st July rates. Guidance for headline income from associates of circa GBP 40 million is unchanged, with no contribution from Kantar included in that figure. Headline tax rate of 27% is also unchanged. We now expect CapEx to be GBP 250 million, down from previous guidance of GBP 300 million. Restructuring costs, including property impairments, are now expected to be around GBP 400 million, with restructuring and transformation-related spend of GBP 180 million, as previously guided, and approximately GBP 220 million of costs relating to the impairment of right-of-use property assets, of which GBP 200 million is non-cash.

Trade working capital is expected to remain flat, with a non-trade working capital outflow of approximately GBP 150 million, consistent with previous guidance. Finally, in net debt, we expect our average ratio to within our target range of 1.5-1.75 times, with forecast net debt at the year-end expected to be GBP 2.5 billion, consistent with the year-end 2022. Thank you, and I will now hand you back to Mark to update you on our strategic progress.

Mark Read (CEO)

Thanks very much, Joanne. Turning to our strategic progress, I wanted to update you on what we're seeing in the market, what we're hearing from our clients, and also share some, some more progress on our investments in AI. On page 20, it's clear that our clients are facing an evermore complex environment. Leave aside the macro uncertainty and the need to spend behind their brands to support price increases driven by inflation, the market environment just continues to pose more opportunities and challenges, to name just three. First, there are many new ways to reach consumers, from Netflix taking advertising to Uber, also building an advertising business. These present new opportunities to advertise, but also more fragmentation and complexity for clients.

There's also a more difficult political environment where positions taken a year ago on social issues that may have felt right are now coming under question. Thirdly, there's the whole topic of AI and how that may impact marketing and where clients need to invest. Faced with this, on slide XXI, we highlight what we see as our clients' priorities, and let's take each one of these 5 priorities in turn. First, on slide XXII, it is evident that clients continue to invest in brands. Whether you look at the GroupM advertising spend forecast or the recent Citi CMO Survey, you can see that advertising expenditure, paid media, is continuing to hold up well. We're seeing this in GroupM, where we achieved 6.1% growth in both the first and second quarters.

As we've covered, we've seen some softness in Q2 in technology clients and technology-related projects. We don't see this as a broader pullback, because clients understand the importance of supporting their brands. On slide XXIII, we continue to do well in new business, winning assignments from many of the world's leading companies and brand owners. In the first half, these included new assignments from existing clients such as Ford, new clients such as easyJet, where we won their European media, and Maruti Suzuki, India's second-largest advertiser, now takes us to working with, I believe, 48 of India's top 50 advertisers and marketers. The second priority to highlight on slide XXIV is creativity and effectiveness, which both remain probably our clients' number one priority.

At Cannes Lions, WPP did very well, as I mentioned, winning 5 Grand Prix and 165 Lions in total, with Mindshare being named Media Network of the Year. The other half of marketing is effectiveness. If you do great creative work for clients, it will be reflected in the effectiveness of the work and the results that clients see. Here we also did well with WPP being recognized as the Most Effective Communications Company globally, and Ogilvy taking Network of the Year at the most recent Effie Awards. Thirdly, on slide XXV. In the face of this complexity, and the need for big creative ideas to deliver effective marketing, clients are looking at their marketing partnerships and seeking simplicity, transformation.

Perhaps the most ambitious example around the world is our relationship with The Coca-Cola Company, which we believe is the first of its kind model, and in our view, not the last. At its heart is creative excellence, powerful creative platforms that leverage one data and technology platform, but also provide local intimacy with the benefits of global scale. These all focus on driving revenue growth and consumption growth, so top-line growth for the client, but at the same time, there are two important principles: the first is to deliver efficiency. The company consolidated from really 7,000 agencies to one global marketing partner, and at the heart of it is also transformation, where a simple model allows The Coca-Cola Company to transform how it's marketing while it's marketing, not as a separate exercise, but part of how it approaches the future.

We're now seeing nearly 2 years into this partnership, it's delivering great results, which you can see in this quote, but more importantly, in their financial results. The fourth priority is technology and data on slide XXVI, as these two elements really underpin modern marketing. Here you've seen yesterday our partnership with Spotify, as well as other recent partnerships with leading data and technology partnerships. The Spotify partnership gives us access to their rich insights into music consumption and consumer trends. It also allows us to access their audiences without the use of cookies and to build innovative new products and creative platforms with them. It's a very broad and very deep partnership with one of the most important new platforms or fast-growing platforms. That takes us to slide XXVII, and last but not least, the topic of AI.

We thought it'd be helpful to look at some data on the impact of AI on marketing. This data taken from research by Citi, we think it's the first of its kind, but we do think it bears some consideration, given the debates about the impact of AI on marketing and on the agency business. What this data shows is that whether it's overall advertising spend or marketing intentions, or the amounts that CMOs believe they will spend on agency services, they don't see these amounts going down. In fact, 85% expect the amount they spend on advertising to go up significantly more or somewhat more, and 78% expect the same to be true of agency services. Only a tiny number of clients expect their spend to be down, somewhat less or significantly less.

It's early days, but I do believe that this survey points to the understanding by CMOs that a lot of what we'll use AI for is to deal with complexity in their business, to help them overcome this complexity and produce the volume of assets they need more cost effectively, to target their media marketing more effectively, and to power their creative ideas. This investment in AI will allow them to succeed in this new environment, not allow them to significantly reduce their spend. This really tallies with our experience to date with technology, where the parts of our business have been most impacted by it, media production, have for some time been the fastest-growing parts of the business. On slide XXVIII, we do have broad capabilities across our client, across WPP.

If you look at what we're doing with clients today, creatively, we've been using AI to power our creative work for some time. To give example, The Next Rembrandt from Wunderman Thompson for ING was back in 2016, so some 7 years ago. In production, we'll talk later about our unique partnership with NVIDIA, this really highlights the opportunity to use AI to create more personalized and relevant work, also much more cost effectively. Lastly, in media, as you'd expect, given the amounts that we're investing, AI is an extremely important lever driving up returns in a much more complex digital environment. On page 29, rather than announcements, let's talk about some of the work that we're doing today for our clients. The work really spans 3 areas of our business. First, supercharging our creative work, secondly, scaling personalization, and thirdly, maximizing performance.

Taking each of these in turn, we've shared many examples with you or a few examples with you over the last few calls of how we're using AI to power our work, from the Nike work featuring Serena Williams to the Nestlé work for La Laitière. This time, we'll share some work for Virgin Cruises starring J.Lo, and you can see how AI brings this idea to light. Please, would you play the film?

Speaker 9

Hi, it's me, Jennifer Lopez, Chief Celebration Officer of Virgin Voyages, here to invite you to celebrate. Come, celebrate.

... Celebrate your anniversary, your birthday, or just generally being fabulous.

Really, Kyle?

It's good, right?

Gen AI is supposed to be inviting people to Virgin Voyages, not doing whatever that was. You know, just give me that.

As I was saying, why not celebrate on an award-winning voyage with Michelin-starred chef-curated menus, world-class destinations, award-winning entertainment...

Boring! I'll hop in there. I'll hop right in that suit.

Jennifer Lopez (Chief Celebration Officer)

Subtle.

Speaker 8

I can't watch this. Give it to me. There's no kids here. That's all you need to know.

Speaker 9

No kids.

Ooh, can I live there?

Gen AI, invite your crew to voyage. Create your custom invite at virginvoyages.com.

It's not just a yacht, it's a superyacht!

Mark Read (CEO)

Okay, that's, you know, a fun example of using AI. I think what's important is it indicates how our creative teams are really embracing the technology to bring their ideas to life. I think that's a pattern that we see really across the business. The second area of our work is really around scaling personalization. Personalization we found is really one of the greatest drivers of production, complexity, and cost. This example relating to the work that we've been running for Cadbury in India, shows how we can use technology to produce highly scaled, personalized work to reach millions of people. It uses AI to create personalized birthday songs for individuals.

It uses some key AI technologies, so text-to-script to write the script, machine-generated gen AI to write the music, and also gen AI-based images for the video. We're not going to play it today, but you can click on the link and see how we used these three different AI technologies to bring the idea to life. The last area of work we're delivering to clients is this Creative Lift, Creative Lift product that's come out of our partnership with Google. This uses the Google Vision API to understand video, to understand the elements of the video, and really to figure out how to optimize those to drive performance.

It's based on a benchmark database of 3,500 videos, and rather than using A/B testing, really evaluates uses AI to evaluate the elements of the video against previous work, allows us to drive the creative work to optimize the various creative elements of the video and drive performance. I touched on page 30 earlier about our partnership with NVIDIA. This is something that we announced back in May. Actually, Jason Jensen Huang announced it at their Computex event back in May. It's been a source of a lot of interest from our clients who are using to use the power of generative AI, but are concerned around copyright and using brand safe assets.

At the heart of this partnership, the video will do a better job than me of explaining it, is the ability to combine generative AI images with brand safe and product-compliant content that comes directly from a client's systems. It really brings us the best of both worlds, as the film would highlight. As you watch the film, please bear in mind that all of the video in it was generated by AI. Peter, would you play the, the film on page 31?

Speaker 9

The world's industries are racing to realize the benefits of AI. NVIDIA and WPP are building a groundbreaking generative AI-enabled content engine to enable the next evolution of the $700 billion digital advertising industry. Built on NVIDIA AI and Omniverse, this engine gives brands the ability to build and deploy product-accurate and brand-compliant content faster and more efficiently than ever before. The process starts by building a physically accurate digital twin of a product using Omniverse Cloud, which connects product design data from industry-standard tools. Then, WPP artists create customized and diverse virtual sets using a combination of digitized environments and generative AI tools by organizations such as Adobe and Getty Images, trained on fully licensed data using NVIDIA Picasso, ensuring that generative AI content remains accurate and on brand.

This unique combination of generative AI and manufacturing data allows WPP to build accurate photorealistic visual content and e-commerce experiences that bring new levels of realism and scale to the industry.

Mark Read (CEO)

Thank you very much. As you can see, we're really bringing this type of technology used to create Hollywood movies to the advertising business. Solves a number of issues, facing our clients, and we're starting to use that to produce work for clients. Lastly, it will be worth highlighting Amp, an acquisition of a sonic branding company we made in April last year. It's an excellent example of how generative AI can be used to build a business and strengthen one's relationship with clients, ensuring that we can build an enduring, relationship rather than somehow being disintermediated by, the technology.

As a leading branding agency, Amp decided to approach the opportunity to sonic branding from an AI perspective. They use AI to understand a brand's sonic identity. Our clients have been able to use this to produce new sonic branding elements like ringtones or jingles, or background music, or music for adverts themselves. The platform provides both governance of the brand and the branding, also very low-cost assets. We license this platform to brands, charge them to use the platform to create new solid elements. At the heart is obviously the creative work, Amp also generating ongoing license fees from using their technology platform, which is one of the models I think that's likely to proceed in the future. I hope you can see we've got a very comprehensive approach to AI.

These are many of the products and services that we're deploying today, and we have further products in development that we'll be able to talk to you about when they're ready. In summary, on page 31, it's fair to say we're facing a mixed market environment. You know, GroupM continues to perform well. The regions of the world outside of the U.S. saw a good Q2 with growth accelerating and China recovering will be maybe a little bit slower than we had anticipated. At the same time, lower spending by technology clients and on technology-related products has impacted our business, primarily really, in the United States.

We continue to make good strategic progress, and I think we have a particularly strong approach to the opportunities of AI, but we are continuing to invest in data and technology to grow the capabilities in the business via bolt-on M&A, and our transformation program remains on track to deliver the savings. Through disciplined cost control, we've been able to improve the margin by 10 basis points, excluding FX. As we said at the start of the call, we are revising our guidance for the year from a revenue perspective to 1.5%-3%, and maintaining our margin, headline margin at around 15%, excluding the impacts of FX. Those are our sort of formal remarks. We can now take questions.

We'd like to invite the first question, then Joanne and I will see how we can help.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question at this time, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure that the mute function on your telephone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. If you are also watching the webcast, please make sure to mute the computer's volume to prevent feedback through the phone while asking a question. If you find that your question has already been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star, followed by two. Again, please press star one to ask a question. We'll pause for a moment to allow everyone to signal. Our first question today comes from Lisa Yang, from Goldman Sachs. Lisa, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Lisa Yang (Analyst)

Good morning, thanks for taking my questions. I've got 3. The first one is on the weakness you're seeing from tech clients. I'm just wondering, what has really changed in the last sort of, you know, 1-2 months that sort of caught you by surprise? What message are you getting from your tech clients in terms of, you know, when they would intend to basically resume spending? I'm just wondering, like, how much is that weakness is sort of more temporary and just a pure postponing of spending, as opposed to, like, a post-COVID reset and something a bit more structural? Any color on that would be really, really helpful. The second question is on margin.

Obviously, you've done a great job at protecting the margin despite weaker growth. Just thinking longer term, I think question for Joanne Wilson, what makes you confident that you'll still be able to achieve that sort of 15.5%-16%? I think previously, you said this could be achievable in 2024, 2025. Just wondering, like, you know, based on your observations so far, you know, what makes you confident you'll be able to get there, and what are the actions sort of you're really sort of, you know, taking to improve your margin, you know, going forward? The third question is on net new business.

Obviously, there's always some wins and losses, could you maybe just help us, you know, quantify the potential impact on the net new business, on the organic growth in H2 and also in 2024, based obviously on what has been announced so far? You also said there's a larger pipeline of potential new business activity, so how big of an opportunity you think is that for WPP? Thank you.

Mark Read (CEO)

I, I'll take the first and the third question, and Joanne will add anything, and then discuss the margin. I think on, on tech clients, and we had flagged that we've seen a little bit of weakness earlier in the year, but I think it really accelerated in the second quarter, and you can see that, you know, you can see that both in the numbers and, and also, the impact, you know, the impact really in the U.S. I'd, I'd say, you know, I don't believe that it's a reset. I think others have said the same thing. I think that those companies are some of the world's largest advertisers, and the impact on us is greater, given that, that, you know, we have, I think, 18% of our revenues from technology companies.

You know, by implication, we'd probably be a little bit more impacted than others. Again, I don't think that it's, I don't think we see it as a reset. I think that they faced both, you know, two or three years of strong growth. They had, you know, their own cutbacks to make, and then at the same time, I think we're in an interesting point in the innovation cycle where they've got a lot of products ready to market, but the business models are not necessarily entirely clear for them. I think they've become clearer. I think that we'll see a greater volume of marketing around many of these new products.

On, on the net new business number, you know, it, it is, as much as we'd like to win everything, that's impossible, and there are some things that we win and do well on, like Coca-Cola, and there's other things that where we do less well on. I'd say it has been a little bit, you know, being open with you, a little bit disappointing in the first 6 months of the year. We did have 1 loss in the healthcare sector. We'll have to see, you know, how that, how that plays out over the balance of the year into next year. It will be a little bit of a drag that we're expecting towards the sort of the fourth quarter and, and into next year. As I said, we have a very strong pipeline.

Yes, perhaps some of that pipeline is built up because of the length of decision-making in people, but we have got a strong pipeline, and we continue to have a strong offer, and I think lead in many areas. You know, there's many strengths in WPP's business, and that it will be reflected in our, in our new business in the future. Joanne, do you want to take the margin question?

Joanne Wilson (CFO)

Yeah. good morning, Lisa. Thanks for the question. Look, just in terms of the, the medium-term 15.5%-16%, look, I'd, I'd say three months in, there's nothing that I see and no reason why we won't get there within that timeframe. What I would say is, you know, more than that, we are incredibly focused as a business on delivering our, our medium-term margin target. Yes, for now, we're, we're absolutely focused on that. In the first few months, your reflection is, you know, it is a flexible operating model, and, and we've shown that in the first half, you know, in how quickly we've been able to respond to some of the cautious spending signals that we have seen from clients...

You know, we ended June with our, with our permanent headcount down year on year, and our freelancers actually down 20%. A mixed benefit as well as an overall quantum. That really helps as, as we think about, you know, in a cyclical business, you know, how we manage the margin around that. Looking more medium-term, you know, there are a number of areas where I see opportunities, and it's probably worth just giving you a little bit of flavor on that. In the back office efficiencies, you know, if I look at what the business has done in the last few years, I think a, a really great job in simplifying and driving efficiency across mostly our front office, including, you know, some of our long-tail smaller markets.

We have done work on our back office as well, including some offshoring, and we're on a program, as you know, ERP consolidation, which will be a key enabler to standardize, automate, and then drive further efficiencies. That is gonna be an unlock for us. You know, that is a multi-year program, as I think you know, and we always said that that would be towards the back end of our program through to 2025. The other area, we talked about the flexible operating model. I think as well, you know, there's more that we could probably do on utilization, you know, on pricing across all of our markets, so that will be another area for us to continue to work on.

We have done some country simplifications, I talked about, but, you know, there is more that we can do. Continuing on that country simplification will also help drive profitability. In our front, and medium office, if you like, we have done some offshoring, so primarily around production and in Hogarth, and Wunderman Thompson, in our commerce business, and GroupM around our ad ops and other areas, just to give you a flavor of what we've done. There is more opportunity. We have now got scale across our offshoring hubs, and certainly, we'll be able to do more of that and look to consolidation, to consolidate more of our production. Finally, you know, a big opportunity for us is just really leveraging our scale better. We've started to do that with procurement and our category management approach.

We've had some quick wins, and we'll continue to focus on that, you know, across both our IT contract spend, travel, and other areas of the business. Hopefully that gives you a flavor of how we're thinking about it. I just leave you with, we are incredibly focused on it as a business, and, and looking to deliver that by 2024, 2025.

Lisa Yang (Analyst)

That's very helpful. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question is from Julien Roch from Barclays. Julian, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Julien Roch (Analyst)

Yes, morning, Joanne, Mark, Tom, Caitlin, and Anthony, and welcome, Joanne, to your first results call. Props, baptism of fire, I suppose. For my scene, WPP has been one of my top picks, and today I'm not getting much love. Apparently, your P&L are made up because you are more addicted to constant restructuring than I am to Grand Cru Burgundy. Believe you me, that's not a good thing, you generate poor cash flow because of working capital. Ouch! That brings me to my first two questions. Joanne, can you tell us how do you feel about restructuring charges and your view of a normalized level of restructuring by 2025 once the heavy lifting is done? I'm hoping for zero as an answer. Two, can you tell us what you can do to a working capital about zero like most other agencies?

You are the only one splitting working capital between trade and non-trade, with only one of the two at zero. Third, unrelated question, what was the organic in the first half 2023 of your offer in experience, commerce, and technology? Thank you.

Joanne Wilson (CFO)

Okay. Thank you, Julian, for that introduction. Let me just take your first question on restructuring. You know, as we embarked on this program, I guess when Mark took over, we talked about the complex nature of WPP, and the fragmentation across the business, and it would be a multi-year program to unlock some of that. As I said, you know, I think we've made good progress on our front office, more to do on our back office. In answer to the question of what should normalize restructuring be, I agree that it should be nil in any business.

We have elevated restructuring costs this year, most of which, or a large chunk of which, are non-cash relating to the property impairment. The restructuring costs relating to really two buckets, our IT transformation, IT infrastructure transformation, and our ERP program, is, is GBP 180 million, and that is cash. You know, through to 2025, I think we'll continue to see restructuring costs around IT and ERP program. I think most of the IT restructuring costs will finish in 2024, and the ERP ones will, will certainly go on to 2025. So we'll see them for the next couple of years. I mean, looking at our cash more generally, you know, we are also focused on, you know, how do we improve our cash conversion?

I think our CapEx as well has been elevated in the last few years as we have embarked on our campus strategy, which has been a positive for the business. We've had to pivot a little bit with changes in ways of working post-COVID, but that is a much more efficient way of working, for, for, for our people, and that CapEx will start to come down from 2024 onwards. We'll see CapEx nudged down a bit. In terms of working capital, just starting with trade working capital, we saw, you know, a big outflow last year in 2022, which we talked about. If you look at performance since 2019, actually, our trade working capital has improved by about GBP 1 billion. Now, we won't stop there.

You know, we had a better performance in Q2 this year, where the business was very, very focused on it, and we'll continue to be focused on that trade working capital in the back end of the year. You know, as a reminder, our media business, is billions, of over $60 billion a year, so it is incredibly volatile and can be volatile quarter to quarter, but we need to be focused on, on our trade working capital to make sure that that's optimized, and we continue to make progress on it. Just on our non-trade working capital, you know, I touched on, you know, some of the buckets that's within that.

It's really as our bonus accruals move year on year, our landlord incentives, which, you know, hopefully we run off as we come to the end of our campus program or, or it, it, it reduces slightly. And those incentives are, you know, where, where landlords pay us back cash for, for building campuses. That, that's a big number within that. Then we have some sales and taxes relating to GroupM, and that can fluctuate in a year to year. The final one is, is around IT contracts, where we have more prepayment. That will just give you a flavor of what's on in non-trade working capital, and that has been elevated in recent years. This year, we are forecasting a GBP 150 million outflow, and again, that will be an area of focus for the business.

Overall, working capital, an improvement this year versus last year, but still more to go, and a big focus area for us as well, as is our overall cash conversion.

Mark Read (CEO)

[crosstalk ]Then you had-

On ECT, Julian, I mean, I think that, it's basically flat in the first six months of this year. I think that probably shouldn't be surprising, given what we talked about in terms of technology-related projects. I think that that, you know, the progress will return as, you know, that part of the business, you know, returns to growth as well. We continue to see it as a long-term driver of growth. I think what you've seen this year, actually, maybe the last 18 months, is perhaps stronger growth in, you know, communications in the more traditional part of our business than people expected. You know, the ECT sector has not progressed, perhaps as we would have expected, but I think that it continues to be, you know, a long-term, faster growth part of our business.

We shouldn't forget that there's many parts of our communications business that are increasingly digitally driven as well.

Joanne Wilson (CFO)

Just, just to clarify, Julian, when Mark says flat, it's flat as a percentage of our overall creative agency's revenue, so around 39%. We, we have seen some growth, but it's flat as a share of, of that revenue.

Mark Read (CEO)

Yeah.

Julien Roch (Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question is from Matthew Walker, from Credit Suisse. Matthew, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Matthew Walker (Analyst)

Thanks a lot. Hi, Mark. Hi, Jo. The first question is on tech. Obviously, you don't have a crystal ball, but, you know, the tech actual advertising numbers are getting better in terms of their revenues. When do you think that they will start marketing again? Is it related to product innovation, or is it going to be related to their revenue growth? Could we see some in the second half of 2023, or do you think it's more likely that they rebound from a marketing point of view in 2024? Second question was, you mentioned margin and staff utilization, hopefully getting better. Do you have something like Marcel, which can increase utilization? Are you working on anything like that, or, you know, what is the sort of WPP solution to utilization?

The final question was on the property. Are you going to increase the GBP 600 million savings target as a result of the charges taken against property?

Mark Read (CEO)

Okay. If I tackle technology clients, I mean, as you say, I, I don't have a crystal ball. I do think that there's we're sort of at a unique point where growth has slowed. The companies have driven their share price by, you know, rebuilding margins, and we're at a point in the innovation cycle where there's an article in Financial Times today that talks about, you know, the number of new products being launched, but technology companies not entirely clear on what the business model is associated with that. That very much bears in line the conversations I've, I've had with these companies around their product innovation.

I would expect that to, to, to revert, but I think that we're rightly being cautious about the likelihood of that happening in the course of this year, and that's reflected in perhaps the range of the guidance. If you think about our guidance on a second half basis, it's sort of 1-4 in the second half, and that's reflected in that range. You know, these clients haven't totally stopped spending. You know, it's, it's really that they pulled back, and I don't think that that will continue to forever. On the topic of sort of Marcel and staff allocation, you know, we do have systems in each of our businesses that help us identify staff. We are using AI to pull staff from, from our systems, to put on projects.

Actually, it's interesting, Satalia, the AI company we use, is used by one of the Big Four accounting service firms to allocate their staff to projects. We have had a lot of success. You'll see, you know, some of the success we've had in reducing our freelance cost by better utilizing staff across the business, both within our agencies and across our agencies. That is something that I think that we will continue to implement. Jo, do you want to take the?

Joanne Wilson (CFO)

Yep. Yeah, so just on the, and hi, Matthew. Just, just on the property savings. This year, you know, certainly underpins the 450, which gives us confidence we'll deliver at least the 450 this year. I mean, looking at real estate as a whole, there, there are other areas of inflation. You know, energy is higher. As we open campuses, we see higher facilities costs associated with that. All of that savings this year, which we estimate to be around GBP 30 million, doesn't necessarily flow to the bottom line. In terms of the 600, the way I think you should-...

consider it is it accelerates us towards the 600, rather than we'll now overlay the 600 and say the 600 is a bigger number, but certainly, it will help us accelerate to that, to that, target.

Matthew Walker (Analyst)

Okay, thanks a lot.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Before we take our next question, I'd just like to remind everyone, to register a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question is from Tom Singlehurst from Citigroup. Tom, please go ahead. Joanne is open.

Tom Singlehurst (Analyst)

Yeah. Good morning, it's Tom here from Citigroup. Thank you for taking the question. I've got two broad questions, although the first one is a two-parter, so I'll just warn you on that.

Mark Read (CEO)

That sounds like four, Tom.

Tom Singlehurst (Analyst)

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's 3 questions, really. If we characterize it as being sort of spend that is quasi CapEx that's being delayed, and spend that is Cogs, that's continuing. I think that's possibly the way we interpret GroupM chunking along at 6 and some of the project-based work coming under pressure. I suppose the first question is, are you more exposed to CapEx-style work in the U.S. and Cogs-like work internationally? Is there a sort of structural exposure issue that explains the growth differential, or do you think it's macro? That was the first question. Then the second one is linked to that.

When you, when you speak to your fellow CEOs, what is the factor that they're looking for to help get the confidence to turn the CapEx-style spend back on? Those are the first two questions. Then the second one is, or the third one, is, you're guiding to 1.5%-3%, which is for the second half, 1%-4%. Given what's happening in the rest of the world, and that's quite robust and possibly gets better, are you really just saying that the U.S. could be anywhere between -5% and +1% in the second half? Is all of that variance the U.S., essentially? Thank you.

Mark Read (CEO)

I don't even know where to begin, Tom. I think, I think the answer to your first question, I think that's a good way of thinking about it in terms of sort of quasi CapEx and quasi cost of goods sold, and it kind of explains why, you know, GroupM has continued to grow. I think the, the reason the impact is in the U.S. and in our integrated creative agencies is more to do with where those clients spend most money and where we do most work for them, and also we happen to be probably stronger in our creative agencies, and we probably we do some media for those technology companies, but not media for all of those technology companies. It's really a question of where the, the balance of work has fallen. I think you might talk about client confidence.

I was at a CEO event earlier this week. I think that, you know, confidence is, is not bad, but, but not good. I think it's probably pretty much where it was 3 months ago. You know, you, you have seen, you know, your peer, Goldman, you know, reduce their, their recession risk. I think there's a sense that U.S. inflation is a little bit back under control, but some nervousness instead of thinking about consumer spending. I think we're really seeing, you know, trying to evaluate what would happen to technology spend and technology-related projects, and how clients will start to reinvest in the more, as you call it, CapEx-intensive parts of the business. I'll let Joanne sort of talk, talk to the guidance for consistency.

Joanne Wilson (CFO)

Yeah. You know, Tom, if you think about 1%-4% in the second half, maybe, maybe let me start at the bottom end of that. In Q2, we saw our like-for-like drop to 1.3%, and as we roll forward, I mean, what are we seeing today? I think we'd say things feel like they're stabilizing, so they're not getting any worse, they're not getting any better. If that like-for-like performance continued through the second half, you know, with, with a little bit more caution, would that be about 1%? That's really how we, how we think about that bottom end, albeit we do have softer comps in the second half. It does assume a further deterioration, and it's probably a cautious bottom end of our range, as you'd expect.

In terms of the top end, the 4.4%, that reflects really the softer comps that, that, you know, we see in the second half. If you look at last year in H1, we grew at 0.9%, in H2, we grew 5.1%, so, so that should be a tailwind in the second half. We have visibility over new business, some new business that we won, you know, only at 2022, that's ramping up, and we'll start to see, you know, more of a benefit from that as we go through the, the back half of Q3 and into Q4. Also some more recent new business wins from the last 4-6 weeks that we will ramp up again, you know, sort of in that time period, so the end of Q3 and through Q4.

Good visibility on that. I think what is unknown, of course, is what stops. You know, in the tech space in Q2, we haven't lost clients, it's clients choosing to either reduce spend or delay projects, you know, across mostly ECT. What happens to that in the second half? That, that's really, you know, the unknown. Then, of course, as you know, Mark talked about the macro, it's still very uncertain. Business doesn't like that. That's really resulting in the caution, you know, that we're seeing across our client base, which our, which our peers have talked about as well. That's really how, how we're thinking about the 1% to 4% in the second half.

Tom Singlehurst (Analyst)

Very clear. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We have no further questions, so I'd like to hand back the call to Mr. Mark Read for further closing remarks.

Mark Read (CEO)

Very good. Well, thank you very much, everybody, for listening. You know, as you can see, we did, you know, we had a mixed first half of the year, but I think we should take some comfort from, you know, the performance, you know, outside the United States. No doubt, the United States was impacted, as we talked about, by the impact of technology companies. I think we should be pleased as well with the disciplined cost control and the improvement we made in the margin on a like-for-like basis in the first half of the year. We'll continue to, to focus on those elements in the rest of the year. Thank you, everybody, for joining us.