WPP plc

Welcome to the WPP 2022 interim results conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's opening remarks, there will be a question and answer session, at which time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Today's conference is being recorded. I will now hand over to your host, Mark Reid, CEO of WPP, to begin. Mark, please go ahead.

Thank you very much, and good morning, everybody. I think we'll take... sort of this morning's presentation as viewed. If you want to look at it, it's available online. In the interest of efficiency, I'll make a few opening remarks and then return to questions. So I think if I look at, you know, we look at the first half, I think we had continued, you know, strong demand from our clients. You know, we had good growth in the first half, 8.9%, actually 8.3% in the second quarter. So only slightly lower than the first quarter, despite, you know, somewhat tougher growth. And that reflected strong growth across all of our business. The GIAs, the integrated agencies, up 8.2%, with perhaps a slightly stronger performance in media, but actually a very credible performance in our creative agencies across the board, around 6% in Q2. Public relations up 7.3%. PR has been our standout, performing business through the pandemic, reflecting its importance to clients. and need our specialist agencies actually up 10.9%, so better than the average overall. Geographically, good growth across all our major markets, notably the U.S., which in the first half, you know, accelerated WPP's growth. So I think we're seeing outperformance relative to the rest of us in the U.S. Again, you know, marked turnaround from where we were sort of pre-pandemic, you know, mind you, our last quarter of growth, before the recent outperformances, Q1 2016, and growth in all markets, except for China, obviously due to the impacts of lockdowns there. I think that our business is stronger creatively. We were most creative company of the year at Cannes in 2022, and Ogilvy, Peter, they were named Network of the Year. In our media business, we're ranked by Convergence as the world's leading media group. And that's reflected in a very strong new business performance, $1.6 billion in the second quarter. Good wins from the likes of Audible, Danone, Audi, Nationwide. Actually, a very solid group of wins across both our creative and our media business. Probably a little bit more evenly split, creative and media, this year than compared to last. We continue to invest in the business, both organically, initiatives like Every Mile and Choreograph, our data business, and through M&A, so Barrowhouse Digital, a Salesforce marketing cloud company in Australia, and Corbiz, really a significant e-commerce company in Brazil, and in simplifying the business to make it easier for our clients and to improve integrated service, so the creation of Essence Mediacom and Design Bridge and Partners. The transformation program's on track, expect to deliver $300 million of savings this year, And given the position of the balance sheet, the strong position of the balance sheet, we're able to execute £637 million of our eight living calendar programme for share buybacks of the year in the first half, as well as raise our guidance. So net-net, that means we're able to increase our guidance for 2022, our net sales from five and a half to six and a half to revise guidance of six to seven, really taking into account the outperformance in Q2, leaving perhaps our expectations for the balance of the year and change with the headline operating margin up around 50 basis points. So that's a net summary for the first half. I'd say good start to the year, confident in delivering the balance of the year. At that point, why don't we turn to any questions that you have?

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question today, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you choose to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. And our first question goes to Tim Nolan of Macquarie. Tim, please go ahead. Your line is open.