WPP Plc. - ADR Aktie

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining WPP 2026 Interim Results Call. My name is Desmond, and I'll be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions] I'll now hand over to Thomas Singlehurst to begin. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Desmond. Good morning, and welcome to WPP's 2026 Interim Results. I'm Tom Singlehurst, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm joined today by Cindy Rose, CEO; and Joanne Wilson, CFO.

Before we get started, please take a moment to review the important cautionary statement on Slide 2. Let me also quickly take you through our agenda. We'll start with an overview of key messages as well as an update on strategic progress from Cindy. Joanne will then review the H1 numbers in more detail. We will then open up the lines for Q&A. And with that, I'll hand over the call to Cindy.

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. Then 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 and over nearly 3 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.

And to fulfill this new purpose, we announced 4 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 3 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. And 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 4 operating units, creative, media, production and enterprise solutions that operate across 4 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, and 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, and there will undoubtedly be ups and downs along the way, but 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, then WPP Production in January this year, WPP Creative in February and to complete the reorganization on July 1, 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.

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As AI reshapes our industry, the winners will be those companies that can effectively embed technology directly into their marketing operations, put data and AI to work to gain a deeper understanding of their consumers, reimagine workflows and skill their workforce.

We believe WPP Enterprise Solutions is unique and differentiated because it's not a separate company that sells bolt-on services. It's been built from within and remains deeply integrated with our creative, media and production businesses.

Enterprise Solutions brings together commerce, customer experience, CRM, content transformation and leverages our deep technology partnerships to help design, build and operate the growth systems that our clients rely on. The business is now live in the market and already partnering with global brands such as IKEA, Ford, L'Oreal and Nestle, to deliver marketing modernization and business transformation.

In April of this year, we launched WPP's Commerce practice. This is a cross-company connected practice that unifies our capabilities across creative commerce, media, enterprise solutions and high-velocity production under dedicated global leadership.

Commerce is no longer just a channel. It is the ultimate organizing principle for modern marketing with global commerce ad spend now surpassing total TV advertising. Our commerce practice will enable us to capture this massive market opportunity without adding complexity or overhead.

Our talent remains embedded within their agency homes while seamlessly connecting across the entire group using WPP Open. It's yet another decisive step in removing internal silos and simplifying how we go to market and ensuring we deliver the connected outcome-driven growth that our clients need and want.

In June of this year, WPP once again triumphed at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. That achievement matters not just because of the recognition, but because of what it says about the strength and breadth of our offer and the enduring importance of human creativity. for our clients, the value is enormous. They can now access the #1 global network in Ogilvy, the #2 network in VML, the #1 global PR agency in Burson and the most awarded media group in WPP Media.

Together, that combination is a significant differentiator for our business and a powerful proof point of the world-class talent and capability that WPP offers. So as I've said, we've made encouraging progress in many areas, and I couldn't be prouder or more grateful to my team for the incredible work that they're doing across the board.

We're 6 months into a 3-year plan. Phase 1 is about stabilizing our performance, arresting the decline, building momentum and demonstrating that the changes we've made are translating into tangible results. At our full year results in February, I said organic growth was a lagging indicator and that we expect the first half revenues to be down mid- to high single digits. We've delivered in line with this guidance at minus 4.7% like-for-like net sales for H1.

And while this shows the continued impact of historical client losses, it is in line with our expectations, and I'm encouraged by the improving trajectory quarter-over-quarter with Q1 at minus 6.7% like-for-like net sales growth and Q2 improving to minus 2.8%. I also said that while we would execute cost savings initiatives and deliver around GBP 100 million of in-year savings, we would reinvest this into growth initiatives. I'm pleased that we're making these investments while delivering broadly stable margins in the first half.

Joanne will take you through the numbers in detail shortly, but these results underline that the actions we're taking are having a positive impact on our main financial metrics.

As we outlined earlier this year, it will take some time for the impact of these changes to fully flow through our numbers. So what I want to focus on with you today are the leading indicators that demonstrate our strategy is working and also look at the areas where we need to continue evolving to ensure we deliver on our plan.

At our Strategy Day, I shared the leading indicators that my team and I hold ourselves accountable for, new business wins, client retention, strategic technology partnerships, cost savings and portfolio discipline. So let me briefly update you on each.

In Q4 2025, WPP was #1 in JPMorgan's net new business rankings for the first time since 2020. And I'm pleased to say that the momentum has continued with WPP topping the rankings as #1 for net new business for H1 2026 and for the 9 months to Q2 2026. That's thanks to some landmark wins, including the Estee Lauder Companies, Jaguar Land Rover, Henkel, Just Eat, Bet365, Fuze Tea, Airbnb, S.C. Johnson, Wendy's, Heineken, Honda and more.

But beyond these headlines, what matters to me is how we're winning. These are integrated multidisciplinary mandates awarded to WPP as one team. This is the direct result of the strategic changes we've made to our client proposition.

Just a few examples to bring this to life. Wendy's appointed WPP Media as their U.S. media partner, building on a 14-year creative relationship with VML. That's a client choosing to consolidate with us because of the benefits of integration.

Natura and Avon consolidated their marketing activities in Latin America for the first time, awarding their business to a combined team of VML, David, F.biz and WPP Media, creative production, media and enterprise solutions, all together, one brief, one team.

And the Coca-Cola Company awarded us the Diet Coke business across EMEA for a brief spanning creative, social and influencer marketing, expanding on our existing media relationship. Again, these wins demonstrate that when we show up as one WPP, media-led, data and technology-enabled, structurally integrated with creativity at our heart, we are the growth partner of choice for the world's leading brands. But market share growth doesn't come from winning new business alone, right? That's only part of the story. What's also critical is how we retain and grow the partnerships we have with our valued portfolio of existing clients.

I'm pleased that we've improved on our client retention rates in the first half of this year, which included Huawei in China, Tesco in the U.K., L'Oreal in Australia and New Zealand, Skechers across multiple markets globally, Reckitt in India, Toyota in Europe and many more.

I strongly believe that by bringing more operational discipline to our client engagement model, we can drive even further improvements in this area. This will be a key focus for us in the second half of this year and into next year as we stand up a holistic client success program.

This program will be organized around 3 areas: systems that give us a single view of our client relationships and a data-driven approach to performance tracking, process that formalizes our approach to governance and client management, including success metrics and joint business planning and people to build the critical capabilities, leadership skills and mindset needed to meet and exceed client expectations.

This framework will create a more systematic approach to client life cycle management, bringing greater operational discipline and excellence to our service delivery model. I've personally put this kind of program in place before, and I'm confident it will help us improve client retention and expand our most valued partnerships. And it will do this by freeing up our global client leaders and their teams to spend less of their time on internal process and more of their time doing high-impact work for our clients.

Let me give you 3 examples of what I think exceptional client engagement looks like. And I'll start with the KitKat Heist campaign created by VML and Burson in close partnership with the Nestle team.

Fast risk assessment and decision-making turned a potential disaster of a lost shipment of KitKats into a global award-winning campaign, dominating the critical Easter sales window, capturing 44% of category conversations on Meta, nearly 3x its nearest competitor and delivering a 600% spike in search interest, generating over 70 billion impressions in social media, equivalent to 224 million of earned media in only 10 days.

This campaign was a testament to the talented teams from both Nestle and WPP who rewrote the traditional crisis management playbook in real time, but also a great example of how our simplified, more agile WPP is working in deep partnership with our clients as they themselves transform for growth.

Just 2 weeks ago, Philipp Navratil in the Nestle earnings call referenced this work specifically as a powerful illustration of the changes already underway in their own organization, including their evolving approach to marketing and their shift to a performance culture. Secondly, during the recent Unilever earnings call, Fernando Fernandez noted the work that we did with Dove in partnership with Reddit during the launch of their new intensive repair hair mask. Let's take a look at that campaign.

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What's striking about this campaign is not only its success. I mean, it created 1 billion in earned impressions, more than doubled sales and helped Dove become the #1 hair mask product in the U.S. during the campaign. But in addition to this, the campaign successfully addressed the challenge of making products discoverable by conversational AI, appearing in 56% of all hair mask ChatGPT responses and the top recommendation across major LLMs while remaining true to Dove's real Beauty philosophy.

The third example and final example is -- the Coca-Cola Company and the work that we delivered during an incredible FIFA World Cup 2026 campaign. Together, we reached 180 markets with the trophy tour alone making 70 stops across 30 markets and engaging around 700,000 fans.

Digital and social activations generated 60 billion impressions with 9 billion views, helping trademark Coca-Cola become the #1 brand by share of voice during the tournament. And importantly, these efforts contributed to quarterly growth of 5% for Coca-Cola and 8% for POWERADE.

It's an absolute honor to partner with such an iconic brand and company. In February, I also updated you on our progress on our technology strategy, WPP Open and our growing partner ecosystem. As the name suggests, WPP Open is open by design. It works with client and partner solutions and doesn't lock clients into a single closed ecosystem.

Having spent a decade at the frontier of enterprise transformation, I know how important it is to build a robust partner ecosystem. In a fast-changing world, no single company can go it alone. Our partners keep us and our clients at the cutting edge of innovation. They help us scale our impact faster and open new routes to market.

That's why in the first half of 2026, we continue to deepen our strategic technology partnerships with Google, Adobe, Meta, AWS and Microsoft, giving clients a simpler, more powerful alternative to managing multiple point solutions by bringing the best of the partner ecosystem together in one integrated platform, WPP Open.

With Google, we expanded our partnership by launching a new frontier research initiative with Google DeepMind that embeds advanced AI research directly into WPP Open. Together, we've built a predictive cultural intelligence engine that forecasts emerging trends by giving clients the ability to both anticipate and respond to cultural shifts. These solutions are live in WPP Open today across multiple clients, including Duracell, Airbnb and Lexus, redefining the future of the new marketing flywheel and changing how our teams generate work from data to insights to creative to production to media in ways that just weren't possible before.

Our expanded partnership with Adobe brings together their industry-leading AI capabilities, content platforms and data orchestration with WPP's strategic insights and creative expertise through a new joint client transformation practice. Adobe Firefly Foundry is now integrated into WPP Open and Adobe has invested in HEX, our frontier creative technology studio to deploy AI talent directly with clients.

This is a clear example of how we're expanding our go-to-market channel for enterprise solutions and tailoring new AI solutions to meet the needs of our clients. With Meta, WPP became the first advertising partner to pilot their newest creative intelligence solution, also integrated directly into WPP Open, giving our teams the ability to diagnose, generate and scale high-performing creative with AI.

Unilever is the inaugural client with broader rollout planned in the coming months. That unique access puts our clients at the forefront of culture and insight, turning real data and media performance directly into stronger creative outcomes. With AWS, our Enterprise Solutions business signed a multiyear strategic collaboration agreement focused on operationalizing agentic AI for enterprise brands and helping clients move from AI experimentation to agentic marketing solutions at scale.

And with Microsoft, we're working with MAI, Microsoft's in-house AI research team to secure early access to their generative media models for integration into WPP Open. We're already an early enterprise partner on MyImage 2, Microsoft's newest image generation model, bringing the best of Microsoft technology into WPP Open so that our clients gain new productivity and creative capabilities.

Together, these partnerships give our clients early access to cutting-edge capabilities, co-innovation investment, direct lives into partner product teams, open important go-to-market channels and new routes to market. All of this converges in one place, WPP Open, strengthening our competitive advantage and most importantly, the value we deliver for clients, and there's much more to come.

So moving on to cost savings. As part of the broader Elevate28 program, we committed to GBP 500 million of gross annualized cost savings across the next 3 years, of which GBP 100 million will be delivered in 2026. I'm pleased with our progress in the first half of the year, and I remain confident in our ability to hit these targets.

That said, I do want to remind you that my priority, my North Star is to get WPP back to positive organic growth. And our plan is to reinvest the targeted savings in FY 2026 into key growth areas, including media and Enterprise Solutions.

Finally, we said in February that our portfolio review was complete, and we were moving to action. In the first half, we completed more than 15 non-core asset disposals that will generate over GBP 200 million in sales proceeds in 2026. One great example is XTEL, a leading provider of revenue management and trade promotion software that we owned through Kantar Holding.

We've agreed a sale of this asset that will generate value for us of more than GBP 100 million. This is just one example, but it's representative of how we're approaching this process more broadly. We've been very vigorous in exploring whether we're the best owners of our assets and also very focused on withdrawing capital from passive or non-core positions. We continue to make progress on asset disposals and we'll provide updates as appropriate.

Proceeds will be used to improve financial flexibility, strengthen our balance sheet and create further capacity to invest in growth. So those are the leading indicators, and they confirm that we are executing against the plan that we set out.

But I want to take a couple of minutes just to connect the what to the why, because the momentum that we're seeing isn't just about better execution. It's about being positioned in the right markets with the right proposition at the right time.

September 1 will be my 1-year anniversary in role, and this is a great opportunity for me to just step back and briefly share some personal reflections on how I see our industry and our company because the conviction I have in our strategy has only deepened over the last few months.

Firstly, we operate in an attractive market. When I set out Elevate28 last February, I said that I believe we're living in the golden age of marketing. I believe more strongly in that today than I did even a few months ago. We're forecasting that global ad spend will grow by 8.9% in 2026. That's up from our previous forecast of 7.1%. And as a share of GDP, advertising revenue is now at its highest level in almost 30 years, a clear sign of the important role that media plays, not just in shaping how consumers discover, evaluate and engage with brands, but in helping businesses generate demand, differentiate and drive long-term value.

Media is everywhere and increasingly, its influence is extending into adjacent and fast-growing markets from social influence to commerce to high-velocity production and enterprise solutions. Secondly, we operate in an increasingly complex market. It's a really tough time to be a Chief Marketing Officer. The fragmentation and constant change our clients face is pretty relentless across media channels, platforms, data environments, the AI and tech landscape and commerce touch points.

And all that complexity is driving brands to consolidate around fewer, more integrated partners who can simplify things for them and help them grow. Those dynamics play directly into the strengths of the new WPP. Thirdly, I think AI is fundamentally changing how we deliver growth for our clients.

Look, for the past 20 years, the marketing industry has built its advantage around identity-based consumer targeting. But marketing in the era of AI has changed and the industry has been slow to adapt. Identity remains a useful starting point, but identity alone cannot tell us how someone's preferences, beliefs or behavior changing in real time or what they might do next.

Marketing has entered the era of intelligence, and that has significant implications for brands. To engage consumers today in a meaningful way, brands need to access a diverse range of live data signals on what people are watching, what are they buying, who are they following? What are they listening to? How are their interests changing in real time.

Through WPP Open, clients can connect their own data with signals across WPP and our more than 350 data partners, giving them access to 5 billion consumers in more than 100 markets, drawing on trillions of real-time signals. We use AI to turn those signals into marketing intelligence that's unique to every brand, enabling them to anticipate consumer behavior, identify untapped growth audiences and deliver higher ROI and engagement than traditional identity-based targeting.

And here's the important part. We deliver these results without ever moving underlying client data out of the client's environment. Traditional identity-based systems require brands to move their data into a centralized third-party system. In doing so, brands risk giving up control of one of their most important and unique competitive advantages, their data and data insights.

Our approach to WPP is fundamentally different. InfoSum, which we acquired in 2025 is what makes this possible. InfoSum is now embedded into WPP Open, enabling brands and partners to collaborate, connect real-time signals and generate marketing intelligence without sharing, moving or co-mingling their underlying customer data. This is more than just a technology choice. It reflects a fundamentally different belief about where competitive advantage should sit. We believe it should sit with our clients.

And that brings me to my fourth and final reflection, which is the importance of trust, not just consumer trust in brands, which according to our research is at an all-time low, but brand trust in agencies as well. At Cannes Lions last month, I shared our WPP trust principles publicly for the first time. These are 5 foundational commitments to our clients that define how we operate in the era of AI and give us a real point of differentiation in the market.

Here are the 5 trust principles, which we unpack in detail on our website at wpp.com. But our core commitment and belief is that our clients own and control their data and intelligence, full stop. It is one of the most valuable and distinctive competitive advantage any brand has, and it should remain exclusively theirs.

With WPP, underlying client data never moves. It stays exactly where it is in the client's environment and under the client's control. We believe this is a winning strategy. It now features in every client pitch, and it's one of the key reasons why we have the momentum we do.

In an environment where AI is rapidly transforming our industry and trust is scarce, I believe our commitment to client data ownership and control will become increasingly important. Everything we do is in service of one objective, to be the trusted growth partner to the world's leading brands.

Our momentum over the last 9 months gives me confidence that we are firmly on the right path. The organizational structure and operating model are in place. Our integrated client proposition is working. The cultural shift towards accountability, client obsession and a hunger to win together as one team is real. We're delivering the stabilization phase of our plan, and the leading indicators demonstrate the progress we're making. WPP will be a fundamentally stronger, simpler and more competitive company.

Growth is our North Star, and we are well on our way. So looking ahead at what you can expect from us in the coming months. Well, operationally, you will see us laser-focused on delivering for our clients, continuing to embed the changes we've made in service of driving their growth. Strategically, you'll see us continuing to invest to make our return to growth sustainable as we move to the build phase of our plan in 2027.

And finally, you'll see the improving trajectory in organic top line growth, margin expansion and improved financial leverage that we anticipate in 2027. While we'll give you a comprehensive update on progress at the full year results early in 2027, I'm really eager for you to see the execution of this strategy along the way in real time.

We've already hosted deep dive sessions for you into WPP Media and Creative, and we'll host further webinars specifically exploring next-gen production and enterprise solutions during the second half of 2026.

So with that, I'm delighted to hand over to Joanne, and then we'll both come back to answer your questions. Joanne, over to you.

Thank you, Cindy, and good morning, everyone. So let me start by taking you through the main headlines from our first half results, which you can see on Slide 20.

Like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs fell 2.8% in the quarter, which leaves the first half organic decline at 4.7%. This is consistent with our guidance of a decline in the mid- to high single digits in the first half and reflects an improved sequential performance, in particular, at WPP Media as well as the benefit of easing comparables. You will recall last year, we identified some one-off factors in Q2 that impacted performance. Adjusting for this, the underlying Q2 like-for-like decline was 3.8%, an improvement quarter-on-quarter.

Turning to headline operating profit. This came in at GBP 398 million, which is consistent with the margin of 8.4% and up 20 basis points year-on-year, benefiting from cost-saving actions and lower headline severance costs.

Our headline diluted EPS is 15.1p, down on the 20p reported last year, mainly due to the normalization of our headline effective tax rate year-on-year and reflecting lower year-on-year profit. Turning to cash flow. Adjusted operating cash flow pre-working capital came in at GBP 309 million, which includes GBP 83 million of non-headline cash restructuring costs.

The H1 performance brings total adjusted free cash flow, including working capital moves over the last 12 months to GBP 730 million, which alongside a one-off benefit from IFRS 9 amendments resulted in a reduction in adjusted net debt of GBP 326 million year-on-year to GBP 2.9 billion. Our average adjusted net debt meanwhile, is down GBP 100 million year-to-date and GBP 79 million year-on-year.

Moving on to Slide 21, and performance across our business. As a reminder, we now only report on the basis of one segment, Global Integrated Agencies, which is consistent with our strategic plan for WPP to operate as a single unified business.

Global Integrated Agencies saw a like-for-like decline of 2.8% in the second quarter, a sequential improvement from a 6.7% decline in the first quarter. FX contributed to a 0.6% tailwind with a marginal M&A headwind of 0.1%, leaving a reported decline of 2.3% for the quarter. If we look at the trends by business, we saw a sequential improvement in our largest business units in the second quarter.

The most significant move is within WPP Media, which declined 2.8% in Q2 versus a decline of 8.3% in the first quarter. If we look at the drivers of this, easing comps were definitely a factor. And adjusting for the one-off factors I mentioned, underlying WPP media performance was a decline of around 5%, an improvement quarter-on-quarter. As anticipated, the impact of net new business losses was less significant in Q2 than in Q1, and we saw a lower drag from existing clients.

Turning to WPP Creative, although we saw a top line decline of 4.9%, we delivered a sequential quarter-on-quarter improvement, reflecting the growing positive impact of new business as well as again, the impact of an improving trend with existing clients. The various disciplines captured within WPP Creative Brand & Design continued to see growth in the low to mid-single digits, while PR is now declining in the very low single digits with an improving sequential trend and growth in their key region, North America.

As discussed in February, we will give more precise detail on net sales performance for Enterprise Solutions from the 1st of January 2027. And finally, WPP Production continues to see positive growth with an improving quarterly trajectory supported by new business wins.

Turning now to performance by region. North America declined by 4.3% in the second quarter, following a decline of 7.8% in Q1, supported by a mild improvement in the impact from net client losses and an improving trend in client spend from existing clients, which is encouraging.

In EMEA, too, we saw an improving trend with the first half down 4.3% and the second quarter down 3% with particularly strong trends in Southern Europe. The latter benefited from the impact of one-offs we mentioned last year. We note a mild improvement in underlying performance quarter-on-quarter, excluding these and despite the impact of ongoing uncertainty in the Middle East, which was down around 10% in the first half.

As part of our new regional disclosure, we are now giving separate disclosure on Latin America and Asia Pacific. In both cases, we saw an improvement in underlying trends. In Latin America, like-for-like in the half declined 1.2%, but was up 0.9% in the second quarter, driven by strong growth in Argentina and Uruguay, albeit with the former tracking inflation.

In Asia Pacific, like-for-like was down 3.8% in the first half, but grew 0.3% in the second quarter. Within this, I'm pleased to report a return to growth in China, up 2.6% in the first half and up double digits in the quarter, which reflects some timing benefits, but nevertheless, we are seeing improvement trends in new business and a stabilization of spend across local clients.

We are encouraged by the performance in China and expect the business to continue to stabilize in the second half, albeit not at the level of like-for-like in Q2. By contrast, India saw a moderating trend into the second quarter, largely driven by the timing of events. We expect a resumption of growth in the second half.

And turning finally to trends by client sector. We continue to see negative trends in CPG, which was down 6% in the second quarter, largely due to the impact of assignment losses, but seeing a sequential improvement quarter-on-quarter, helped by easing comparisons.

Performance across technology clients is largely unchanged from the first quarter, with the second quarter down 8.9% after a Q1 decline of 9.6%, again impacted by the effect of assignment losses. As per our commentary at the Q1 results, we continue to see a high degree of polarization across these categories.

By contrast, we've seen a material sequential improvement within both healthcare and auto, which have both returned to growth during the second quarter. While we have seen an improvement in the longer tail of local clients, we are also pleased to note the improvement in the performance of our top 25 clients. This group still saw a decline of 6.3% in the first half, but with the second quarter declining at 3.2%. As a reminder, this includes the impact of assignment losses. And excluding this impact, our top 25 clients returned to growth in the quarter.

On Slide 22, we show the evolution of our headline operating profit, and Slide 23 bridges our headline operating margin from 8.2% in the first half of 2025 to 8.4% in 2026, a 0.2 percentage point uplift on both a reported and like-for-like basis. If I unpack the moving parts through the first half, starting with the impact of operational gearing and margin during the period, while our net sales is down GBP 281 million, our overall staff costs, excluding headline severance and incentives is down GBP 245 million, reflecting the benefit of cost actions taken in the second half of 2025 and early in 2026.

Adding in savings across other operating costs such as property and personnel costs, this added around 90 basis points to margin. Lower headline severance and other associated costs added another percentage point. And completing the bridge to the full move in headline operating profit margin in the first half, investment in our growth drivers, including incentives, went up by 170 basis points, leaving H1 headline operating margin at 8.4%.

I want to say at this stage, though, that the movements in the first half are not necessarily reflective of expected margin performance for the full year. Starting with severance, the positive move in the chart is representative of a GBP 51 million reduction in headline severance and other associated costs year-on-year and will not have as significant an impact in the second half.

On cost savings, the Elevate28 savings will be skewed to the second half, reaching a run rate of GBP 250 million by year-end and achieving GBP 100 million of savings in year. We note, though, that we start to anniversary the action taken last year at WPP Media in the second half. So these savings are against a tougher comparable.

Turning to incentives and investment in growth areas, we continue to expect a significant uplift in the second half of the year.

Reflecting this, while we are pleased with the first half margin performance, as expected and in line with our planning, we nevertheless expect second half margins to be down by as much as 200 basis points year-on-year as continued investment in growth drivers and the rebuild of incentives ramps up. Slide 24 shows our headline P&L. Overall, reported revenue less pass-through costs was GBP 4.7 billion, a decrease of 5.6% period-on-period.

Moving down the P&L and a reminder that income from associates excludes any contribution from Kantar in accordance with IAS 28 due to nil carrying value on our balance sheet. Net finance costs of GBP 135 million was up slightly year-on-year, reflecting the additional carry cost of debt ahead of maturities later this year and early next.

Our effective tax rate at 33.5% is up year-on-year, but note that the rate in 2025 was positively impacted by the benefit of credits from the successful resolution of a tax matter. We continue to expect the full year effective tax rate to be in the range of 33% to 34%. Noncontrolling interest of GBP 18 million were down compared to the prior period, impacted by M&A and lower profit. And as a result of those factors, headline diluted EPS of 15.1p is down 24.5%.

Turning to the dividend. We indicated in February that we anticipated a full year dividend of 15p. And consistent with this, the Board has declared an interim dividend of 7.5p, which is flat year-on-year. Slide 25 looks at our adjusted operating cash flow and bridges the year-on-year movement in adjusted net debt to June 2026.

Our 12-month adjusted operating cash flow before working capital to June 2026 was GBP 1.1 billion. In addition to this, we saw an incremental benefit from working capital, which includes GBP 169 million one-off impact from the IFRS 9 amendments. Factoring in GBP 66 million from the net impact of dividends from associates and to minorities and including M&A earn-outs as well as GBP 527 million of net interest and tax, adjusted free cash flow for the last 12 months stands at GBP 738 million.

Net M&A and disposals was a GBP 43 million outflow, consisting of direct disposal proceeds of GBP 80 million. But against that, we spent GBP 123 million as we continue to invest in our commerce capabilities. To round off the picture, cash dividends paid in the 12-month period were down significantly on the previous year, given the decision to reduce the dividend in July 2025.

Adding in the impact of buybacks and other items, which amounted to an outflow of GBP 369 million, overall adjusted net debt was down GBP 326 million year-on-year. Looking specifically at the first half, adjusted operating cash pre-working capital was GBP 309 million, while free cash flow was a GBP 725 million outflow, consistent with the seasonal buildup in working capital typically seen in the first half.

I'm moving now to Slide 26, which shows how net debt has trended since June 2025. As already mentioned, adjusted net debt at the end of June stood at GBP 2.9 billion, down year-on-year, but up from year-end, reflecting our typical cash cycle. This also reflects the benefit from the IFRS 9 amendments.

Average adjusted net debt better captures the normal pattern of working capital moves across the year, and this is slightly down through the first half and down year-on-year at GBP 3.3 billion. Our average adjusted net debt to headline EBITDA ratio at 30th of June is broadly unchanged since December 2025 despite the downward pressure on headline EBITDA.

I want to reemphasize that creating firm financial foundations is a core tenet of the Elevate28 plan. And at the heart of this is a commitment to maintaining an investment-grade balance sheet. As discussed in February, we anticipate our leverage metrics to remain elevated in 2026 before starting to come down in 2027 and beyond. In this context, our balance sheet remains robust.

The weighted average maturity of our GBP 5.1 billion of bond debt is 5.7 years, and this has an average coupon rate of 3.7%. Meanwhile, our total available liquidity across the group stood at GBP 4.1 billion at the 30th of June 2026, including a $2.5 billion committed RCF, which matures in February 2031 and remains undrawn. Neither our bond debt nor our RCF have any financial covenants and our credit remains investment grade.

And finally, turning to Slide 27, which shows our guidance for the full year. And starting with the outlook for like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs. In February, we indicated that at that point, we anticipated the impact of gross client losses to be in the range of 500 to 600 basis points, while we expected the impact of gross wins to be more positive than last year with the phasing of wins and losses consistent with an improving trajectory through the year.

Based on our new business performance in the second quarter, while we would estimate the impact of incremental losses to be at the top end of the 500 to 600 basis point range, the impact of wins means that as we progress through the second half, we expect the year-on-year drag from net new business to continue to lessen. And as such, we remain confident in an improving trajectory.

A key unknown is the trend with existing clients. And while we are encouraged by the Q2 performance, we note the ongoing uncertainty in the Middle East as well as the polarization of spend patterns, both between and within sectors. Reflecting this, we take a balanced view of the outlook and having seen H1 like-for-like decline of 4.7%, we expect like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs to decline low to mid-single digits in the second half. We continue to expect a return to growth during 2027.

Turning to headline operating margin. While we are encouraged by the H1 margin performance as we discussed, the first half was helped by the lower headline severance and cost savings. We anticipate investment in our growth drivers as well as the rebuild of incentives to step up significantly in the second half.

Reflecting this, we still expect headline operating margin to be in the range of 12% to 13%, consistent with the second half margin decreasing by as much as 200 basis points. As per our original Elevate28 commentary, we continue to anticipate 2026 to be the low point in terms of profitability and expect margins to rebuild from 2027.

Looking beyond the net sales and margin guidance, our expectation for cash flow is unchanged with adjusted operating cash flow preworking capital in the range of GBP 800 million to GBP 900 million. As a reminder, this includes the anticipated restructuring costs associated with the Elevate28 program and historical restructuring programs.

Excluding these, we would anticipate adjusted operating cash flow before working capital of GBP 1 billion to GBP 1.1 billion. Looking further down the cash flow, as you know, we don't guide on working capital given the scope for this to show volatility around year-end.

However, given progress with asset disposals to date, we expect the overall impact of disposal-related activity, some of which will come via direct disposal proceeds and some via associate dividends to contribute at least GBP 200 million to our cash flow.

We continue to make progress with our asset disposal program and are working on a number of future potential asset disposals, and we'll provide updates as appropriate. Finally, we continue to expect the improvement in average adjusted net debt to be sustained across the balance of the year. So that wraps up the formal part of our presentation, and both Cindy and I will now be delighted to take your questions.

We'll now begin the Q&A session. In terms of housekeeping, if you could please state your name and that would be very much appreciated. [Operator Instructions] But in the meanwhile, operator, Desmond, can you open the lines to questions, please?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Ciaran Donnelly from Citi.

It's Ciaran Donnelly from Citi. Two for me. One, just on quantifying the net new business contribution for 2027. Can you give us that number of basis points? And if you don't want to give us the exact number, can you just talk about how that contribution has evolved since the Q1 update given the moving parts in terms of client losses and client wins?

And then two, just in terms of the pipeline of activity heading into H2, there's clearly a lot of unknowns. But just could you give us a sense of the balance of pitches versus defense and just in terms of activity overall?

Ciaran, thanks for the questions. Let me take them. I think you mean net new business in 2026, right, not 2027. But let me take you through the numbers on that one.

So in terms of net new business, it's really our gross wins less our gross losses. So let me unpick that for you. And before I do, I would just say that very encouraged by the new business momentum that we saw continue in Q2.

Our gross losses for the full year are at the top end of the range that we shared at the start of the year, so around 600 basis points. And we'll see those gross losses fairly steadily through the year, but with a slight easing in the second half of the year. On the gross wins, we said at the start of the year that they were more than for the full year 2025.

And with the new business performance in the Q2, we're now comfortably ahead of gross wins in 2025 for this year, which is which is very encouraging. Now I do expect net new business to be a drag for the full year, and I expect it to be a drag in every quarter this year. However, with those new business wins, I do expect that drag to ease as we go through each quarter. And indeed, we saw an easing of that from Q1 into Q2.

So hopefully, that gives you some color on what we're seeing and obviously, a big area of focus for us. In terms of the pipeline, the pipeline is, I would describe it as very healthy. Last year, we talked about the lower volume of new business than we typically see. We did expect to see somewhat of a catch-up in 2026, and we're seeing that.

So the pipeline is higher than last year. And there are some defensive and offensive opportunities within that. What I would say is it's much more nuanced than what we've seen in the past. So with many of the pitches that we're in, there is some opportunity for winning more revenue and net sales, and there's some revenue net sales that we are defending in those pitches. So very balanced between defensive and offensive. And as you heard from Cindy, very, very focused on continuing that new business momentum, but also focused on that client retention as well.

Okay. I was wondering just in terms of 2027, whether we have a picture now. Obviously, I get it things can change between now and 2027, but just based on what you can see today.

Look, I think it's just a little bit too early to start talking about net new business impacts in 2027. I talked about the pipeline looking to continue to hold on to the momentum that we've seen in the last 3 quarters and on retention to minimize the losses. But yes, I think it's just a little bit too early, Ciaran, to comment on '27.

Next questions will come from the line of Adam Berlin from Goldman Sachs.

A couple of questions as well. You talked a little bit about improving momentum in terms of existing clients having fewer cuts in their spending in Q2 versus Q1.

Can you just give us a little bit more color on what sectors you saw that in and what you think was driving that additional investment in marketing than we've seen in previous quarters because that seems to be quite an important change in the trend that we've seen previously.

Secondly, you talked about China, which had this very dramatic improvement in growth in Q2 versus Q1, and you mentioned some timing effects. Can you just give us a little bit more detail about what's happening in China? That would be very helpful.

And then thirdly, I've noticed that WPP Media is now like 46%, 47% of your revenue where it used to be 40%, 41% as you've restructured the business. What has got into WPP Media that wasn't there before?

Okay. Let me take all of those, Adam. So look, just in terms of the improving momentum in existing clients, you characterized it correctly. We've had a challenging time last year, in particular, we saw significant cuts to spend around about this time.

And it's very encouraging that, that is now stabilizing. And we're seeing a lower drag from those. We talked about the performance of the top 25 clients, so a significant improvement where they were down 9.4% in the first quarter and down 3.4% in the second quarter.

Obviously, there was some comp impact. But specifically to your question on sectors, in Q2, we saw actually growth in the auto and health care sectors. So those sectors doing very well for us. And across CPG and tech, we saw those sectors really impacted by the client losses that we've had across CPG and tech.

And in tech as well, a little bit of reduced budgets more focused on our hardware tech clients. But encouraged by existing clients that stabilization and continue to focus on that. In terms of China, China has been a challenging market for us for some time where we have seen double-digit declines. We did talk in the Q1 that we expected to see an improving trajectory.

And indeed, we did in the Q2, which was up double digits. There are some timing factors within that, and I wouldn't expect that level of like-for-like to continue in the second half, but I would expect China performance to continue to stabilize.

And just a little bit more color on that. We have seen important retentions, Huawei and Uber in that market, but also wins. We talked about Honor, China. And really, we're seeing a good stabilization in that market, particularly in our media business.

And even in creative, we were down single digits, albeit high single digits, which is an improvement from the trajectory that we have been on. We launched Open in China in May. So a lot of activity in that market, and it remains an important market for us and our clients and a little bit more balanced between global and local clients.

In terms of media, yes, the share of net sales from media has gone up from 41% to 46%. So what some of the agencies that used to sit within spec agencies, we have moved under media as part of our new segmental reporting. The most significant agencies are CMI and TMP, which are much more appropriately set under our media business. So that's really driven that change.

The next question comes from the line of Adrien de Saint Hilaire from Bank of America.

Congratulations on the progress of your turnaround. Cindy, I think in an interview this morning, you mentioned that you expect some deflationary impact on pricing from AI. Could you quantify this for us?

And then maybe for Joanne, just conceptually high level, like why would the investments and the restructuring costs around Elevate28 would be second half loaded. I think you spent something like GBP 90 million out of the GBP 250 million restructuring costs.

For example, you've talked about the margins going down quite significantly in the second half. I'm just wondering why on those costs perhaps H1 loaded, why would they be H2 loaded?

Yes. Should I take the first question? Thanks, Adrien. I think it would be hazardous for me to try to quantify the AI -- the deflationary impact of AI. What I said was that I think AI obviously presents both risks and opportunities.

And like every technology platform shift in history, I think we are going to see some short-term deflationary impact on pricing as AI tooling drives productivity gains and reduces our cost to serve, our clients are going to expect us to pass those gains on to them.

But as we help our clients optimize their marketing investments overall, we can also help them reinvest those savings into innovation and transformation. And that represents an expansive opportunity to grow our footprint and to capture more addressable client spend through service integration and cross-sell.

And I think with our new structure and operating model, we're very well positioned to capture that. So on balance, what I said was my view is unequivocally that AI represents a growth opportunity for us to really innovate our proposition and reimagine growth for our clients. Joanne, you want to take the second?

Yes. Thanks for the question, Adrien. I'm going to answer it a little bit more broadly, but I will cover investments and restructuring costs. So in terms of the H1, H2 margin, I just a reminder that we generate 1/3 of our profit in H1 and 2/3 in the second half of the year.

So it's much more skewed to the second half. In the first half of the year, as I shared in my preprepared remarks, we had some benefits from the structural cost actions that we took in media in H2 last year. So obviously, we get the benefit of those in H1, but those won't carry through in H2.

And also related to that, we had severance costs last year, which we took through headline profit, and that drove a 1 percentage point benefit in margin in the first half of this year. In terms of as we go into the second half, we obviously won't have those tailwinds, but we will see the Elevate28 costs in year, the GBP 100 million that I referred to in pre-read, we are on track to deliver those.

And those savings will be largely skewed to the second half of the year. Like in the other mergers, which we have very successfully executed, we've taken our time in the first half to make sure that we have the right operating model design in place, market leads, regional leads are all appointed.

And we are taking those actions now, and we'll start to see really those restructuring costs ramp up related to those actions and also the savings coming through in the second half. In terms of investments, so really, I think of investments in 2 buckets.

First of all, is incentives. We did start to rebuild our incentives in the first half. But again, they're very much skewed to the second half. I'd expect those to continue to rebuild in the second half. And in other investments, Cindy and I have talked about our key priority is to get back to growth, encouraged by the improving trajectory that we've seen, and we will continue to invest in the business, particularly in the areas of commerce, enterprise solutions, media and data to ensure that we are going to be able to drive that sustained growth.

And the guidance for the second half and holding full year margin at 12% to 13% really gives us that flexibility to make sure that we are continuing that investment in the second half. So hopefully, that helps.

It does. And if I can just sneak in one more, perhaps for both of you. I think, Joanne, you talked about the fact that net new business would be less of a drag into the second half versus H1. You talked about the fact that top 25 had returned to growth Q2 versus Q1. I think the comparison base is a bit easier. So just high level, what are we missing to get to your low to mid-single-digit decline that perhaps sounds on the conservative side maybe?

Look, I think on that, Adrien, it's important to note that we talked about the one-offs, which we shared this time last year. And if you strip those out, the Q2 like-for-like was a decline of 3.8%. So that's the starting point as we go into the second half. We had an easier comp in Q2, around 3%.

The comp in Q3 is similar. So we don't have that comp tailwind, albeit in Q4, we get a 1% easier comp. And then as you noted, the net new business will ease. And really, that leaves our clients' existing spend.

The macro environment, geopolitical environment remains very uncertain. We're still continuing to see a high degree of polarization within our clients and across sectors in terms of that spend. And so we've reflected that in our guidance at either end of the range, and we wanted to give a balanced guidance, which really does reflect all of those drivers and considerations.

Our next question comes from the line of Jerome Bodin from ODDO BHF.

It's Jerome Bodin from ODDO BHF. I have a few questions. So the first one would be on the disposal, so the GBP 200 million at least for 2026. So a few questions. Is it the cashing impact or just the announcement? Is it net of tax? And should we expect more in 2027?" and just to understand if the review is now fully finished? And maybe just to conclude on that, is there an asset that you have finally decided to keep that was under review? That's my first question.

The second one is just to come back on what you said on incentive. So the charge increased quite a lot in H1. So I understand that H2 will still be up. But just -- I know it's difficult because it's linked to budget win, but what should we expect roughly in terms of incentive for this year? Should it be flat versus 2025, up or maybe between '24 and '25? That's my second question.

And lastly on just a more general question to get an update on the Enterprise Solution agenda. My understanding is that some capabilities are still spread across the other agencies. So my question is how much of the business has now moved under one leadership and one commercial pipeline? And can you just update on the final organization that you target for that business in terms of independents versus media and creative?

Thanks, Jerome. Let me take the first 2, and Cindy can pick up the question on Enterprise Solutions. So just on disposals. So we had GBP 64 million in the first half cash flow related to disposals, and we expect for the full year that to increase to at least GBP 200 million of cash, and that is net of tax.

And maybe I'll just give a little bit more color on what that is. We really have 2 buckets, I think, if you want to think about our disposals. So we talked in February about the portfolio review that we did as part of Elevate28. And that was where we identified assets in the group were -- which they're great assets, but we felt that they were of more value to WPP outside of the group than inside.

And we have initiated processes on those assets earlier in the year, and those processes are ongoing. So no update on those today, but we will, of course, update the market as appropriate. In terms of the GBP 200 million, this really relates to the long tail of smaller agencies and associates and investments that we have across the group.

And as we got very focused on cash, we have been looking at rationalizing that long tail, simplifying the business and raising cash proceeds. And I'm really pleased with the GBP 200 million that we will generate this year.

There's very small level of income associated with those asset sales. And part of that is the XTEL business that was related historically to Kantar. It will -- we will carry on with that rationalization. So I would expect some more in 2027. And in terms of the review itself, you asked whether or not we've decided to retain any assets.

As part of that portfolio review, we did look at the assets and there are many that we said these are important, and we can build and carry on investing in those areas, commerce being a particular area. but others that we identified as potential sale opportunities, which we're getting on with.

In terms of incentives, look, last year, because of our performance, our incentives were at an unusually low level. And so in '26, as part of our planning assumptions, we are assuming that we will rebuild our incentive pot, and we've done some of that in H1, and we'll carry on with that rebuild in the second half. I think certainly, they will be higher than they were in 2025 is our current expectation and probably closer to levels that you saw in 2024, if that's helpful.

Why don't I come in, Jerome, on Enterprise Solutions. I mean this is a great market for us with a 7% CAGR. So it's an attractive market for us to be in. We already have $1.8 billion of revenue in Enterprise Solutions with around 10,000 specialists. So as you suggested, we're consolidating these assets into one business and really scaling it across the group.

And I think what's differentiated about this business is that we're not sort of selling bolt-on services from a separate company. It really was built from within VML originally and designed to be deeply integrated with creative production and media.

And we are predominantly focused on marketing operations and the CMO, where we have already quite strong historical relationships. So WPP Enterprise Solutions went live on the 1st of July. It already has a number of active client engagements and a healthy pipeline in areas like CRM, customer experience, commerce, content supply chain and AI marketing transformation.

These are probably the fastest-growing parts of the enterprise solutions landscape. So I'm really excited about the future of this business under Jeff Geheb's leadership. And I believe there's an investor webinar coming up soon, and I would encourage you to participate and learn more.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of Steve Liechti from Deutsche Numis.

I've got 3. One, just going back to the kind of run rate on new business, sorry to come back to it. But just can you give us any kind of feel in terms of the first half, what the kind of relative effects were between the gross losses and the wins in the first half? And just give us a bit more help into the second half there.

I'm just finding it -- obviously, you've given us the losses, but I'm just finding it quite difficult on the new stuff. That's the first question. Second question, I thought you might like to give us a rough estimate if you took Enterprise Solutions on a kind of pro forma basis what the like-for-like growth would be either historically or anything you can give us there or help? And then the third is, I know on the exits, you said it's quite small.

Just any actual hard number you can give us for pro forma revenue and profit that's in your consolidated numbers because I'm presuming the Kantar business, XTEL is not in your numbers at all from a revenue and profit perspective. Just any color there.

Yes. Let me start at the bottom and work my way up, Steve. So in terms of the exits, you're right, XTEL isn't in our numbers nor is it in Kantar's numbers. And that's a significant contribution towards that GBP 200 million. The others are really associates and investments. So it's a very, very immaterial number in terms of our overall income and really no impact on revenue.

On Enterprise Solutions, look, we've said that we will report our like-for-like for Enterprise Solutions from the 1st of Jan 2027. This year is really all about building that, building out the 3 sales channels that we've talked about and Enterprise Solutions.

I think it's fair to assume that the like-for-like that we're seeing in ES is approximate what we're seeing more broadly across WPP Creative. And in terms of the run rate, look, I don't really want to get drawn into giving you net new business by quarters and by halves, but to help you a little bit. In the past, I think we've always talked about net new business having a plus or minus 150 basis points impact.

Obviously, '25 was a difficult year for us in terms of client losses, hence, the 600 drag this year. And that drag is pretty steady, as I said through the year, slightly lower in the second half. So we had a significant drag from that in the first half.

The new business really started -- the business wins really started from Q4, and they will obviously take a couple of quarters to ramp up. So as we look through the year, the new business contribution is much more significant in the second half than it is in the first half. And therefore, in the first half, we did see a bigger drag than that 150 basis points that we would have seen historically. But we are expecting that to ease as we go through the second half. And indeed, we saw that starting to ease in Q2. Hopefully, that helps.

[Operator Instructions] Next question comes from the line of Julien Roch from Barclays.

The first one is based on your second half guidance of low to mid-single-digit decline, organic for the full year should be broadly around minus 4%. And you said losses minus 600 basis points and the wins comfortably more than last year, 250, so let's call that 300, which would indicate that your existing clients are declining 1% this year.

Last year, you did minus 5.4%, which was broadly minus 4% existing clients and minus 1.5% account losses, 400 losses, 250 win. Why are existing clients 3 points better outside of net new business? It might not be the exact math, and it might not be 3 points, but it's clearly much better. So why? That's my first question.

The second one is on China, up 16%. You said timing benefits. What do you mean exactly? And what China would have grown without those timing benefits? And if you cannot give us that, when you say stabilization in the second half, does that mean flat or would it be still negative?

And then on portfolio, you said you've decided what you need to sell and it was ongoing. So if you are successful in what you want to do, shall we assume much bigger benefit than GBP 200 million sometimes in the next 12 months?

Okay. Thanks, Julian. I can always rely on you for the detailed question. So just in terms of existing clients, look, if I take you back to this time last year, the tariffs kicked in, in April, and we saw a sharp decline in client spend. We didn't lose clients so much. It was a sharp decline in spend in the back end of that Q2, and that continued through the second half.

So existing clients spend is a real drag for us last year, and it's very encouraging to see that, that has stabilized. It's still a drag in the first half, but we're very, very focused on our client delivery, and we see an opportunity to continue to grow with our existing clients.

We did say that the spend is quite polarized still within sectors and across different clients. And so seeing a bit less polarization, a little bit more growth will be helpful. But it's a big focus for us. So I think it's really that stabilization and really last year, those material cuts that we saw really from June last year that is not happening to the same extent.

In terms of China, the one-offs -- well, it's not one-offs, it's timing effects were really on some of the contracts in our media business. I don't really want to get too drawn into it. But I did say that in the second half, I expect China to continue to stabilize, certainly not at the level that we saw in the second quarter, but a continued stabilization across our media business in particular.

So we've been at high double-digit declines for some time. I'm not expecting that in the second half. And for the full year as a whole, overall, an improvement on China year-on-year. In terms of the portfolio, look, I'd just go back to what I said earlier because it's difficult to say much more than that. We have the portfolio review that we did and the assets where we have processes ongoing on.

And if we are successful in doing what we want, then we will generate more cash proceeds from those, and we'll update on those in due course. And then on the long tail, of course, we've got after those with some pace this year. And there will be more opportunity to continue to rationalize that long tail into 2027. So I'd expect some more cash proceeds from those in 2027, perhaps not to the same extent as in 2026.

Our next question comes from the line of Annick Maas from Bernstein.

My first question is on the Middle East. I think you said you were down 10% in the first half. What is your guidance including for the Middle East for the second half?

The second question is on personnel costs. I think if we take your assumptions of low single-digit to mid-single-digit decline in the second half on the top line, do we expect personnel costs to at least decline mid-single digit, if not more?

And then thirdly, probably more conceptual, but can you tell us, for the accounts that you've won in the first half, respectively, lost what was called out as you'd be doing very well or very badly?

Okay. Why don't I take first and Cindy can take that last one and give some color on winning. So in the Middle East, yes, it was down 10% in the first half, down high single digits in Q2, so slightly better. And I think it's very difficult to give guidance on the Middle East, just given the tragic events that are unfolding over there, and it's incredibly volatile as well.

So in our planning assumptions, we've been very balanced in assuming what happens in that market. We are seeing some markets getting back to growth, others still declining to the same extent as they've done in Q1. So our top priority in that region is our people and making sure that they are safe.

In terms of personnel costs, this just really reflects our incredible discipline around discretionary spend and really focusing the investments that we are making in the areas that will drive the highest return on investment for us. So I'm not going to say anything more than we'll continue to stay focused on those in the balance of the year.

Yes. Thanks for your question. Look, we're -- I'm with clients every single day and frequently leading client pitches as well. And in terms of what's driving our new business momentum, I would say our clients are responding very well to our integration and simplification.

And that's good because all the changes we made were in direct response to client feedback. And now that we've made the changes, clients are responding positively. And I think what's behind that is that we're showing up as one WPP instead of multiple different agencies, so we can really put the right talent in front of the right clients at the right time without all of the friction and constraints of our historical structure.

So that's really unlocking a sort of talent fluidity and cross-sell opportunities that we're seeing show up in a number of our wins. I also think, as I said in my prepared remarks, that our WPP Open platform and our narrative around data is very compelling.

And I think clients are starting to understand that data ownership and control in the era of AI is one of the most important competitive advantages that they have. And I think our narrative and the way our solution is architected is very differentiated. So those are some of the things that are driving our wins. It's always hard to say what's driving our losses.

First of all, I would say we're in a very fiercely competitive market and defensive pitches are just a feature of this landscape. We're not going to win them all. And frankly, we don't need to win them all.

We take every loss as a learning opportunity. And I think that's what growth mindset is all about. It helps us drive a culture of continuous improvement. Sometimes it's just a personal preference. Sometimes it's a pre-existing relationship. It's hard to say, but we take the losses every single time. We take them as learning opportunities, and we go deep to try to understand and improve for the next time. So hopefully, that helps.

[Operator Instructions] There are no questions at this time. Please continue.

Thank you very much. So that represents the end of the telephone question-and-answer session. I do have some questions from the webcast. A lot of them have been already addressed, but maybe going through a couple. A question on India. There was a decline in the second quarter. Are you looking for an improvement in the second half?

Yes. Look, I mean, this is really just the timing of a sporting event in India that can drive a lot of volatility, and we're expecting, yes, to get back to growth in the second half.

A second question on capital allocation for you, Joanne, it's on gross debt. Does -- is reducing gross debt a capital allocation priority? Does that mean we should expect more debt tenders?

So look, we talked in Elevate28 about our capital allocation framework and the importance to us and the priority of maintaining an investment-grade balance sheet, which we're very focused on doing. Our leverage is elevated. It was 2.18x for the 12 months ending June 2026, and we are very focused on bringing down that leverage.

I am encouraged by the fact that our adjusted net debt year-on-year was down from GBP 3.3 billion to GBP 2.9 billion. And indeed, our average adjusted net debt was also down. So that leverage -- that higher leverage is really being driven by the lower level of profits. And so yes, we are expecting to continue to bring down the debt. But the bigger driver for our leverage reduction will be that as well as improving our underlying profits.

And one final one is on the comp profile. I think this was covered in the in the prepared remarks, but just to be complete. You talked about easy comps from Q2 2025. Can you quantify those and remind us what they are?

So the easier comp in Q2 was just under 3%, so it's about 2.9%. And then as we go into the second half, we won't have that tailwind in Q3. So the comp is similar in Q3 as it is in Q2, but then it eases again in Q4 by about 1 percentage point.

And so with that, we've reached the end of the Q&A Session. I will now pass over to Cindy for some concluding remarks.

Thank you, Tom. That's great. Look, as I approach my 1-year anniversary in this role, I am encouraged by our performance in the first half. We're on track, and I continue to be optimistic about WPP's future.

I think with the organizational structure and operating model now in place, the focus for us now is on successfully delivering the stabilized phase over the balance of the year. and we look forward to updating you on progress at our Q3 in October and full year results in February '27.

As a reminder, we'll also host further sessions specifically around our next-gen production model and Enterprise Solutions business during the second half so that you can get a clearer view of the work underway in those 2 critical areas.

Finally, as we continue this journey, I'd just like to say thank you, first and foremost, to our clients and partners. Thank you for your continued partnership and for trusting in us with your extraordinary brands in a market defined by complexity and rapid change, working alongside you to navigate these shifts and put AI to work and unlock new growth is just an incredible privilege for all of us here at WPP.

To our people across the globe, thank you. Transforming a company of our scale is hard work, and it requires a lot of grit and agility and willingness to unlearn and learn and relearn every day. And I'm just so impressed with the resilience of our people, their creativity, passion and how they've embraced our new purpose and mission and are executing on the plan. It's relentless, but it underpins all of the progress you've heard from us today.

And finally, to our shareholders, I'd like to thank you sincerely for your ongoing support, engagement and belief in our strategy. We remain laser-focused on delivering on our commitments, strengthening our financial foundations and building the path back to consistent profitable growth. So with that, thank you again, and I will close the call.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the WPP Q1 Trading Update Call. My name is Claire, and I'll be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand over to Joanne Wilson, Group Chief Executive Officer of WPP, to begin. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter results. I'm joined today by Tom Singlehurst, our Head of Investor Relations. Hopefully, you've had time to read the press release from this morning. There's also a full deck that accompanies this session with our usual disclosures, including our cautionary statement, which you should read carefully and take note of.

Before we dive into the numbers, this is, of course, the first quarter that we are reporting on since we outlined the Elevate28 strategy. As you know, this is a multiyear plan focused on returning WPP to growth. While it is still early days, we are very much on track against our strategic plan and encouraged by the client and employee response to the actions we are taking and the changes we are making. Driving this scale of change takes time and of course, won't be linear, but there are definitely encouraging signals, which I will talk about shortly.

Before that, I'm going to share some detail on our first quarter financial performance, and then I will open the call up for your questions. And starting with our operating performance in the first quarter on Slide 4. Like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs fell 6.7% in the first quarter with organic revenue growth, a key metric disclosed by some of our peers down 4%. Both figures represent a mild sequential improvement from the fourth quarter of last year and were in line with our expectations.

The impact from M&A was negligible and FX represented a headwind of 2.1% in the quarter, resulting in a reported decline in net revenue of 8.9%. You will find further detail on performance by business segment, geography and client industry on Slide 5 of the presentation, but I would call out the following features of performance in the first quarter.

And starting with business segments, WPP Media saw a like-for-like decline of 8.5% in the first quarter. While this was a sequential improvement from a double-digit decline in Q4 '25, we continue to see a significant drag from gross account losses while new business won in the fourth quarter and in the first quarter of this year will take time to ramp up.

Performance across our non-Media businesses showed a slight decline quarter-on-quarter. However, we delivered growth across WPP production and our larger specialist agencies, including Landor, Design Bridge and CMI.

By geography, the shape of performance largely reflects account losses, which weighed most heavily on North America and the U.K. Elsewhere, we see signs of stabilization, including sequential improvement in Asia Pacific and with pockets of growth in markets, including India, Italy and Japan.

I want to also mention performance in the Middle East, which represents just under 2% of our business. The region saw a like-for-like decline of 12.6% in the quarter following low single-digit growth in Q4 2025. With the ongoing conflict, we expect the Q1 trends in the region to continue through the second quarter. By client sector, CPG in particular, reflects the impact from client assignment losses. Meanwhile, we see a high degree of polarization across health care and tech.

Looking at growth through the lens of our largest clients, Q1 like-for-like decline for the top 25 clients was 9.4%, which reflects the impact of specific client losses. This level of performance is not where we wanted to be, but with organic growth, a lagging metric, this outturn is very much in line with our expectations.

And turning to Slide 6. Organic growth is our North Star as a management team and improving this is the primary focus of the Elevate28 strategic plan we announced at the end of February. Organic growth, however, is a lagging metric, and the focus in the first stage of our plan is on stabilizing the business. As we discussed in February, the key leading indicator of success is net new business, both new client wins and critically client retentions.

Alongside this, we are also focused on leveraging strategic partnerships, implementing our operating model changes and delivering the associated cost savings as well as progress on asset disposals to provide a greater degree of financial flexibility. On this front, we are encouraged with progress in the first quarter, and our plans are on track.

Our new business, Q1 was the second consecutive quarter where WPP was ranked #1 in net new business by JPMorgan. We also expect to be ranked #1 by COMvergence, which more narrowly focuses on media. Key wins during the quarter include Estee Lauder, SC Johnson, JLR and Norwegian Cruise Lines. And post the quarter close, we were appointed as Wendy's media buying agency in the U.S., and we won Natura in Brazil.

Just as important as client acquisition is client retention, and we were delighted to be reappointed by Tesco in the U.K. and across Central Europe and to retain mandates for Huawei in China and Red Bull in India. On partnerships, we announced the expanded partnership with Adobe in February. This brings together Adobe's industry-leading AI capabilities, content platforms and data orchestration with WPP's deep strategic insight, creative prowess and end-to-end transformation expertise.

We are very excited about the potential from this partnership, and it is a great example of how we are expanding our go-to-market sales channel for Enterprise Solutions. We also continue to expand our data partnerships in order to build the value of the open intelligence ecosystem, including Trainline in the U.K. and the Salling Group in Denmark.

On the people front, we've continued to fill critical roles in our operational leadership, including Nancy Hall as CEO of WPP Media in the U.S.; Angela Steele as U.S. Chief Client Officer for WPP Media; and Andrea Suarez as CEO of WPP Media in Lat Am. At the group level, Mark Taylor has joined as Chief People Officer and Anne-Isabelle Choueiri as our first Chief Transformation Officer, both of whom will play a critical role in supporting execution of our Elevate28 plan.

Now there remains much to do, and we are laser-focused on the disciplined execution of the strategic initiatives which underpin the stabilization phase of our Elevate28 plan. The early actions we have taken to build a simpler, more integrated WPP, powered by WPP Open, are resonating strongly with clients, giving us the confidence that we are on the right path to return to growth and deliver longer-term sustained returns for our shareholders.

Turning to our balance sheet, and you can see the detail of where net debt stands at the 31st of March on Slide 7. In short, average adjusted net debt at GBP 3.3 billion continues to come down both year-to-date and year-on-year, albeit assisted by a relatively small beneficial impact from IFRS 9 amendments, which were effective from the beginning of 2026.

I'm also pleased with the successful issuance of a $600 million 10-year bond in March, marking our return to the U.S. credit market after more than a decade. This takes our weighted average maturity to almost 6 years and covers all of our debt maturities through to mid-2028. As encouraged as I am by this, I want to reemphasize that creating firm financial foundations is a core tenet of the Elevate28 plan. And at the heart of this is a commitment to maintaining an investment-grade balance sheet.

As we indicated in February, we have initiated processes to assess the potential sale of certain portfolio assets. Those processes are advancing as planned. And while we do not have any additional comments to make on them today, we will update in due course as appropriate.

Looking forward and on Slide 8, while we are encouraged by the first quarter performance, which was in line with our expectations, we still see ongoing volatility in client spending and note uncertainty in the Middle East. Coupled with the phasing of net new business, we continue to expect like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs to decline in the mid- to high single digits in the first half of 2026, consistent with the performance in the first quarter before seeing an improving trajectory in the second half.

On profit, we anticipate headline operating profit margin for the full year to be in the range of 12% to 13% and expect H1 margins to be down, reflecting the impact of net sales performance and investments in our growth drivers. As shared previously, the in-year cost savings benefit from our operating model changes will be skewed to the second half. We also expect to rebuild our incentives, which are also skewed to the second half.

Turning to cash flow. We continue to expect adjusted operating cash flow preworking capital in the range of GBP 800 million to GBP 900 million. And as a reminder, this includes the anticipated restructuring costs associated with the Elevate28 program and historical restructuring programs. Excluding these, we would anticipate adjusted operating cash flow before working capital of GBP 1 billion to GBP 1.1 billion.

The final thing I want to mention before we open up to questions is the evolution of our reporting, both by segment and by geography on Slide 9. As shared in February, we are aiming to align our segmental reporting disclosures from half year 2026 with our new operating model, moving from 3 reporting segments to 1 global integrated agencies. This corresponds to the vision and plans to make WPP a single unified operating company.

In 2026, we will provide additional disclosure on operating performance within the key units, WPP Media, WPP Production and WPP Creative. This will include like-for-like growth and net sales splits, but will not include the profitability metrics consistent with our peers. We will also shift our geographical reporting to 4 recalibrated regions: North America, Latin America, EMEA and Asia Pacific. We anticipate moving to this new reporting at the half year. And from 2027, it is our intent to also provide like-for-like growth and the net sales split for WPP Enterprise Solutions.

So that wraps up my preprepared remarks. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our people for their hard work and their unwavering commitment in the year-to-date. And I would now be delighted to take your questions. So I'll hand back to the operator.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Nicolas Langlet from BNP Paribas.

So I've got 3 questions, please. First of all, what was the net new business effect in Q1 '26? And how do you split it between gross losses and gross win? And based on the recent account moves, what is the net new business effect you expect for the full year?

Second question on China. So the trend remained quite soft despite heavy decline in the past 2 years. What initiatives have you put in place recently? And when do you think the business could stabilize?

And finally, on the H1 margin, so you said you expect it to be down, but do you expect the decline to be in the full year guidance range? So flat to minus 100 basis points or it could be worse than 100 basis points and then improving in H2?

Thanks very much, Nicolas. So let me just start with the net new business impact in Q1 '26. Look, it was broadly similar to Q4 2025. As I talked about in February, we are expecting gross account losses to have an impact of 500 to 600 basis points in the full year. And the gross wins offsetting that, we did say at the end of February that we were already ahead of that level for 2025. And of course, that has improved through Q1 as we continue to build on the momentum on new business that I talked about in my preprepared remarks. So yes, similar -- very similar to Q1.

I also expect that as we go through the year, that drag from net new business will ease, and we have talked about the improving trajectory into the second half. And so I would expect Q1 to be the worst quarter for net new business.

And in terms of the full year, look, it's too early to put a number on net new business impact. I've shared what we are seeing for gross losses and also where we are at this point in the year on gross wins. The pipeline is healthy. We talked last year about particularly Media, there have been a lower volume of pipeline activity. We've been encouraged by the level of activity that we've seen in the last few months and also our improving win rates. And so I think we'll update on that as we go through the course of the year in terms of that net new business impact. But hopefully, that gives you some color.

In terms of China, yes, China was down just over 12% in Q1. I'd say a couple of things on China. First of all, we are seeing a stabilization in our Media business in China. We've done an awful lot of work in the last couple of years around our proposition and our go-to-market, and we're starting to see the benefits from that. I referenced the retention of Huawei in China, who has become an important client for us in that market. I would also say that we're starting to lap through some of those client losses that impacted us last year. Some will continue into the balance of the year, but I would assume that we will see an improving trajectory in China as we go through the balance of 2026.

And thirdly, we've talked about the mix of clients in China. So historically, our portfolio was more skewed to global clients. That's rebalancing towards local clients, and we have improved our proposition to make sure it's competitive and relevant for that market, including introducing WPP Open to that market. And we operate in our market model in China. So that's a much more integrated proposition. And as I said, I would expect to see an improving performance as we go through the year for China.

In terms of your last question, I can't even read my -- margin, yes, in H1. So yes, I would expect margin to be in line with the expectations for the full year in terms of the year-on-year decline. Just a couple of things on margin. In the first half, obviously, we'll have the negative impact from operating leverage. As we've said, we expect to see the top line trajectory improving in the second half versus the first half.

Our investment through the year is fairly balanced between H1 and H2 and the cost-saving initiatives from Elevate28 are very much skewed to the second half. And as I also shared in my remarks, we will be looking to rebuild our incentives in the full year, and that will also be skewed to the second half. So that will give you an indication of some of the drivers between H1 and H2.

Our next question comes from Annick Maas from Bernstein.

My first question is on the Middle East. I have a couple actually for the Middle East. So first of all, is it fair to assume that March was down about 30%?

And my second one on the Middle East, I think you're now forecasting the same trends for the second quarter as well. If these trends were to persist for the full year, are there any other geographies that have been performing slightly better that could offset this Middle East weakness? Or if we would see continuous weak trends there that could impact actually the full year guide? That's the first one.

And the second one is you have some defensive pitches coming up in the second quarter. Do you have already an idea of how those have been going? Respectively, have there been some that you hadn't planned at the start of the year?

Okay. So let me start with the Middle East. Look, as I shared in my preprepared remarks, the Middle East is less than 2% of our net sales. We did see a deteriorating trend as we went through the quarter, but March wasn't as bad as a 30% decline, but March was the worst month in the quarter.

In terms of the Q2 trends and if they persist and in the other geographies to offset that, look, I talked about some markets we are seeing stabilization and getting back to growth. But I would say is when we've seen regional conflicts or challenges in the past, what you tend to find is clients do redirect spend across the region. And of course, it will really depend on how prolonged the conflict is. But as I said, it's very much reflected in our guidance and the Middle East at 2% is a fairly immaterial share of our overall net sales for WPP overall.

In terms of defensive pitches, what I would -- how would I comment on that is we're very much focused on new business, but also client retentions, and I talked to some of the important clients that we've retained in the first quarter. We are very encouraged by our new business performance. There's significant opportunity with our existing clients to continue to grow with them. And I think the Q4 and the Q1 net new business momentum that we're seeing really reflects the improvement in our competitive proposition and how we're showing up to pitches. And so the pipeline, as I said, is active. It's healthy. It's more skewed to opportunities than it is to defensive pitches. But you are right, there are a number of defensive pitches with existing clients, and I won't comment on those. But as I said, encouraged by the momentum that we're seeing and our performance in new business.

Our next question comes from Laura Metayer from Morgan Stanley.

Two questions from me, please. The first one is the growth with existing clients. Could you give us an idea of what the number was in Q1, excluding the losses?

And then second question is on your Enterprise Solutions business. Could you give us a sense of the performance of that business versus the Media and Creative business of WPP? Is it doing better or worse in Q1?

Okay. In terms of our existing clients, if you look at our top 25, we talked about them being down high single digits. If you strip out the losses from that top 25, the decline would drop to low single digits. So we have talked in the past about the relatively better performance we see across our largest clients. And as I said, I think it was in response to Nicolas' question, the net new business impact in Q1 was very similar to Q4. So we're seeing continued similar trends in Q4 across our existing client base.

In terms of Enterprise Solutions, very encouraged by the work that Jeff and the team have been leading on. We shared in February just 2 months ago, how we were going to scale the capabilities across Enterprise Solutions and really build 3 go-to-market channels, the first through our existing agencies; the second, building a direct go-to-market; and then the third through partners and a good example of that is Adobe.

In terms of Enterprise Solutions, it's a very different business to Creative and Media. It's more project-based, but we do have a significant opportunity to cross-sell with our creative clients. We don't report Enterprise Solutions yet. As I said, it is our intention to do that from 2027. But Enterprise Solutions, where we to report it would have done better than Creative and Media in the first quarter. I think the most important thing is we're very focused on growing our share of Enterprise Solutions. The market, as we shared in February, is growing at around 7%, and we see lots of white space to do that. So excited about the opportunity for Enterprise Solutions in the year ahead.

Our next question comes from Ciaran Donnelly from Citi.

A couple just from me left. One, it'd be great to get a sense of in terms of the pitch activity and the wins in Q4 and Q1, I guess, what's changed? What's been the feedback in terms of why you have, I guess, started to turn the tide in terms of those wins?

And two, can you just remind us in terms of expecting these client wins to impact numbers going forward just in terms of those forward-looking indicators and how we should think about that?

Okay. Let me just start with the second one. So in terms of the client wins, I've talked about the gross losses, gross wins, et cetera. I've talked about the fact that we expect that have the biggest drag in Q1 in terms of all the quarters in 2026. So as we go through the year, we'll start to see the benefit from those new business wins ramp up. So it starts to ramp up in Q2. But really, we'll see the biggest impact from those in the second half, and that's really reflected in that guidance of an improving trajectory and like-for-like in the second half.

In terms of what's driving the improvement, look, I talked to a few things, and I'm going to start with the Media team and Brian and the team that he's leading. We've been working on improving the competitiveness and the performance of our Media business since Brian joined around 18 months ago now. And we have made great progress on the competitiveness of that proposition. And that's really resonating both with our existing clients and also with new business. And as I said, you can -- the real lead indicator on that is our new business and also our client retentions.

Brian and the team have also been incredibly focused on building a much more effective and much more agile operating model. And I guess, most critically in that is our global media platform, which means that we have one way of delivering our work now across all of our markets, and that's really important. And a huge lift has gone into that, and that is performing well for us.

The third aspect of what Brian and the team have been doing is really developing a very clear and a very compelling data strategy, and that was supported with the acquisition of InfoSum, which is now fully integrated into Open Intelligence. And again, that's really resonating with clients. We're using it in our pitches and with existing clients. And we do think that, that gives us a differentiated data strategy.

And alongside that, we've been upgrading our talent in Media. So I talked in my remarks about Nancy, Angela and Andrea joining the team in North America and Latin America. So I think that's a key factor in our performance because in the last couple of years, a number of the client losses have really been in Media.

I would also add that Open Intelligence really operates across our business, and that leads me on to the real second driver of our better performance, and that's our integrated capability. We've been very focused with WPP Open on leveraging that to connect our capabilities. Open Intelligence is not just for our Media business, but it serves all parts of our business, creative and production. And we are really showing up much stronger as an integrated proposition for our clients. And that is really resonating. We talked about JLR in February, but I would also call out Wendy's, where we had the Creative business, and we won the Media business earlier this month.

I think the third area I'd call out is really our go-to-market approach. Dev took on an expanded role in Q4 and has really been busy leading one approach to our go-to-market, a strong central team with solution architects really at the core of that. And we have really leveraged more our ability to lead with media and data. And that is really resonating. You can see that in the Q4 and the Q1 new business performance.

And then finally, just to wrap up, Ciaran, the point on this. We talked in February, and I alluded to it today again, our North Star is really organic growth. Elevate28 is really built around getting our business back to growth, and we're making good progress on that and pleased with where we are against our plans, albeit it's still early days.

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

So I've got a few questions, if you don't mind. Just to come back on your guidance for H1 mid- to high single-digit decline. Are you signaling that you think Q2 will be more or less in line with Q1? And if so, apart from the Middle East, why would that be the case given the comparatives seem to be getting easier?

Secondly, I guess, usually agencies tend to grow faster with their top clients. You just mentioned before that your revenue with top 25 clients would be down low single digits, excluding losses. So I'm just curious like what's driving the reduction there? Is that a reduction in scope of work? Is that fee pressure or just broader cuts in their marketing budgets?

And the third topic is in the last couple of weeks, I think we've seen a bit of a spat between the platforms like The Trade Desk and media agencies. You think that reflects a broader encroachment of DSPs on to media agencies and vice versa? Or is it just like an isolated incident with a few clients and just one platform?

Okay. Thanks for the questions, Adrien. In terms of your first question on Q2 being more or less in line. If I come back to Q1 was very much in line with our expectations, and it was consistent with our guidance for H1 to be down mid- to high single digits. Now we expect trends to be broadly similar in Q2. You are right, the comps do ease from Q2. But as we shared in February and as I've talked again today, the trend of net new business through the year, that will ease and improve. And really, most of that easing we'll see in the second half. So we will still see a similar drag from net new business in the second quarter as we've seen in the first quarter.

We've also talked about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East albeit it's a small percentage of net sales, it was a drag in Q1, and it is driving heightened geopolitical uncertainty. But we feel very comfortable with the guidance that we have set, the mid- to high single-digit decline in the first half and then that improving trajectory into the second half.

In terms of the existing clients down low single digit, look I think a couple of things in this. We've talked about a polarization of spend. And as I look at spend within our sectors, that polarization remains with some clients investing with us and increasing their spend and others being a little bit more cautious. And that trend is continuing, particularly in the tech sector and in health care.

I'd also add that we talked last year about the step down we saw in Q2 where in some of our creative agencies, we saw a reduction in client spend. And that's a continuation into Q1. So we really did start to see that step down in Q2. And so that's carrying forward into Q1. I think it's quite important to also note that in Q1 last year, our top 25 clients are growing at 7%. So it is difficult in our business when you focus on 1 quarter and try to interpret a longer-term trend from that quarter. So the comps do have an impact.

In terms of The Trade Desk and other DSPs, look, I shouldn't comment and I can't really comment on what others are doing. But I think what's important for our business is that we work with a number of the DSPs and SSPs. And what's important for us is that we are optimizing our client spend. And sometimes that means a particular DSP will work well, and we will work with them. And in other cases, it won't work so well, and we won't work with them. But we leverage those partnerships well. I'd say some of the DSPs, in particular The Trade Desk that you mentioned, operates in the open Internet. So it tends to be a smaller segment of the overall advertising market. But what's most important for us is effective investment of our clients' media spend and full transparency, and that's transparency for our clients and transparency for our partners. And that's really what we aim to do and what I think we do incredibly well.

Our next question is from Julien Roch from Barclays.

Coming back on net new business, you said Q1 was similar to Q4. Can you remind us what Q4 was? And also at the time of the full year results, you said that the gross wins would be 250. Today, they're better than that. So what have they reached today? Is it 300, 350, 400? That's my first question.

Then previously you said most of their contracts had an element of performance compensation, but that performance net sales was only 10% of total. How much is it for you? And then coming back on DSP and The Trade Desk, what percentage of your client money goes through DSPs?

Okay. Okay, Julien. So you're going to ask me the question every which way. Look, I -- what I'd just reiterate, our gross loss is 500 to 600 basis points. Last year, the numbers that we shared wouldn't fair, but our gross wins were around 250 basis points. We said in February that we were already exceeding 2025, and we've seen an improvement in the balance of the year. So I don't want to give a number now on gross client wins because it's still very early on in the year. As I said, we have a healthy pipeline, which we're very much focused on continuing to improve that win rate. And so as we go through the year and we get closer to the end of the year, we can share a little bit more on that. But I would repeat the comment that I do expect Q1 to be the weakest quarter in terms of our net new business.

And in terms of performance-related spend, in the past, we've talked about performance-related spend being about 20% to 25% of our overall net sales. You tend to see it higher in Media than in other parts of our business. I think that's important because we are used to structuring performance-related pay in a way that works for both our clients and ourselves. And what we are seeing is an evolution away -- a little bit away from purely time and materials to more output-based pricing, more performance-based pricing, and we're seeing that come into pitches and with existing clients more regularly. And we're building up the muscle to be able to do that. But as well as performance and output-based fees, we are introducing more tech fees and just given the offer that we have around WPP Open, WP Open Pro is a good example of that. But really, the way to think about this is an evolution of our tech fees. And in terms of the percentage of our revenues that go through with DSPs...

Typically, I think that is the open Internet, Julien, in the main, i.e., the sort of long tail. And if you look at Kate Scott Dawkins this year, next year, or as [ she ] points out, it's a relatively small proportion of the overall market. And actually, over time, forecast to get relatively smaller. Frankly, we don't have a specific figure for you. The only thing I would say is that the role of WPP Media is to work in the best interest of our clients, to do whatever it takes to deliver best execution. And that's, in some cases, will involve working with third-party DSPs and we'll literally make those decisions project by project, client by client once again in the best interest of the customer.

If I could follow up. I understand you don't want to give us gross wins going forward because it's early days. But if you could come back and tell us what was the net impact in Q4, that's the past. And when you say 20% to 30% of net sales linked to performance, do you mean that 20% to 30% of your contracts have an element of performance or is actually of net sales, i.e., performance is already 20% to 30% of net sales, i.e., 2 to 3x...

Yes. I said 20% to 25%, just to clarify, and it's net sales. Julien, I don't really want to get into giving quarter-by-quarter impacts on net new business because when I come back in August, then you're going to ask me what Q1 was and Q2 was. So I think we've shared enough information that you can probably get a good approximation of it.

[Operator Instructions] We currently have no additional questions, and I'd like to hand back to the management team for any closing remarks.

Okay. So thank you very much for all of your questions. Before we end the call, I would like to give you a small sense of what's next. As discussed in February, we're going to be hosting a series of webinars to double-click on our key operating units, and we'll start with WPP Media, and we will be in touch in due course with some further details on that. And thereafter, we anticipate reporting our H1 results in early August. And at that point, Cindy will give a further update on our strategic progress.

I'd just like to echo my comments from earlier. We remain relentlessly focused on execution of our Elevate28 plan. And while our like-for-like revenue recovery will, of course, take time, we are encouraged by the progress to date against our Elevate28 plans, and we very much look forward to sharing more in due course. In the meantime, I want to say thank you again for your interest and your engagement. And as ever, the Investor Relations team and myself are available if there's anything further we can do. But for now, thank you very much, and have a great remainder of your day.

Thank you. This now concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning, and warm welcome to our 2025 preliminary results and strategy update. By the way, that's our new brand refresh. I hope you like it, created by Landor AMP and Man versus Machine, WPP agencies, all powered by WPP Open. So look, I'm delighted to welcome you all here to One South Work Bridge to our campus here in London, which in many ways is symbolic of the future of WPP. It's modern, it's adaptive, it's collaborative workspace for our talent, our clients and our partners.

So the plan this morning is I'm going to start with some opening remarks, and then I'm going to hand over to Joanne Wilson, our Chief Financial Officer, to share our 2025 preliminary results. Then I'll share our strategy update, and then we'll open up to Q&A.

Before we start, I'd like to recommend that you take a moment to read this cautionary statement while I get out of your way. So Joanne and I will be joined on stage later by Brian Lesser, who's CEO of WPP Media. When we get to the media section of the presentation, and most of my senior management team are here in the audience as well.

Let me start by saying that WPP is an extraordinary company. We are built on agency brands with remarkable histories going all the way back to the 1800s. Some are still well known today. Others have evolved into new parts of WPP. But together, they have roots in creating iconic work that moves people and shapes culture.

We serve some of the biggest, most demanding clients in the world, and we steward and grow some of the most well-known brands on the planet, several of whom you'll hear from and see referenced throughout today's presentation. And our business model is actually very simple. We exist to make our clients successful.

We help our clients build brands that matter, drive meaningful engagement with their consumers and drive outcomes for their business. It drives growth for them and growth for us. However, it's really clear that what has made us successful in the past will not make us successful in the future. And as you can see from the numbers that we released this morning, our performance is not where it needs to be.

Yes, of course, there are externalities we can point to market volatility, economic headwinds. But really, the results point to the need for us to embrace a single unified growth strategy to execute with increased rigor and evolve as the needs of our clients evolve. After several years on the WPP Board of Directors, I took this role with a clear thesis in mind as to what we need to do differently. We've spent the past 6 months as a team validating this thesis through rigorous analysis and by speaking directly to our clients and actively listening to their feedback.

And the good news is we haven't been waiting for today's presentation to take action. We've already made several decisive changes, and you can see the positive results in our recent new business success. In the fourth quarter of 2025, WPP was #1 in JPMorgan's net new business rankings for the first time since 2020 with a series of excellent client wins across media, creative and our integrated offer.

These include being appointed the U.K. government's lead media agency, Reckitt and Henkel Media in Europe, Kenvue and Haleon Creative globally, TruGreen Media in the U.S., Norwegian Cruise Line Global Media, Suncor Media, just to name a few. And I'm delighted to say we've maintained this strong momentum into 2026, winning Jaguar Land Rover, Global Media and Integrated Services. In fact, the impact from new business wins in 2026 already exceeds the impact of new business wins for all of 2025 combined, and it's only February.

So while the turnaround of our business will take time, our momentum is undeniable, and these wins give me huge confidence that we are firmly on the right path. My team is united, committed and hungry to win. Today's session is the culmination of months of detailed work by our team. We have a bold plan to make WPP a simpler, more integrated company, one that's fit for the future, relentlessly focused on growth and brilliant execution.

Personally, I'm very excited to be here at a time of such revolutionary change, and I feel quite privileged to lead WPP as we play a defining role in shaping the future. So I'll come back shortly and talk about our view on the evolving landscape and our growth plan for the new WPMP, which we're calling Elevate28.

But first, I'm going to hand over to Joanne to take you through our 2025 results. Joanne?

So thank you, Cindy, and good morning, everybody. And can I add my warm welcome to you here today. So let me start by taking you through the main financial headlines for 2025. Our like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs fell 5.4% for the full year due to client assignment losses and spending cuts.

Now this is slightly better than our most recent guidance for a decline of 5.5% to 6%, and it reflects a Q4 like-for-like decline of 6.9%, and that's a deterioration from the third quarter decline of 5.9% -- in the context of the weaker top line, we delivered a headline operating margin of 13%, in line with our expectations and down 180 basis points year-on-year on a like-for-like basis.

Our fully diluted EPS was 63.2p, a decrease of 28.4% year-on-year, with the impact of reduced headline operating margin and a higher headline effective tax rate, partially offset by lower net finance costs and noncontrolling interests. Turning to cash flow. Our adjusted operating cash flow before working capital was GBP 1.2 billion, down from GBP 1.3 billion in 2024 and at the top of our most recent guidance range and includes GBP 82 million of cash restructuring charges.

On my next slide, I provided some color on our net sales performance, both for the fourth quarter and across the full year. And please note that we have included more detail in the appendix to this deck. Now you have some of the detail here on trends by business, by region and by client sector, but I thought it would be more useful to unpack some of those trends by theme to help give a sense of what is WPP specific and what is more market driven.

And when we consider what is WPP specific, the major negative impact to call out both for the full year and for the fourth quarter is the impact of gross client losses, which deteriorated through the year. Now this was driven by the impact of incremental losses in year in 2025. And by segment, this particularly weighed on media, by geography on the U.S. and the U.K. and by client sector on CPG and TME.

Now against this, we had the positive impact of new business wins in 2024 and '25, which indeed contributed progressively through the year. The aggregate level of in-year wins, however, was lower than we initially expected and significantly below what we have experienced over the past number of years. This was in part because of a lower win rate, but in EMEA, it was because of a lower level of aggregate new business activity.

Industry estimates are that global pitch activity was down double digit in the year. While we saw an encouraging new business performance in the fourth quarter with the wins of Reckitt, Henkel, the U.K. government, Pizza Hut, NCL and JLR, the impact on our like-for-like performance is expected to take time to ramp up, and we expect the overall net new business headwind to sustain into the first half of 2026.

The final theme to call out is spend by existing clients. We characterize the year as one of more cautious spending from clients with a higher degree of volatility than we would typically expect to see. Now the impact was seen most strongly across the CPG, auto and the tech and digital services sectors.

And while many of our businesses were impacted, it weighed most heavily on Ogilvy. The waterfall chart on this next slide bridges our headline operating margin from 15% in 2024 to 13% in 2025, a 1.8 percentage point deterioration on a like-for-like basis. There are a number of moving parts and starting with staff costs, including our severance and incentives on the left.

Now these reduced by GBP 576 million on the back of lower permanent headcount, which ended the year down 8.7% and reduced use of freelancers, which was down 14% year-on-year. However, due to that lower revenue, this resulted in 180 basis points drag on our margin. This was amplified by the impact of increased severance and other associated costs, which was up GBP 89 million in the year, taking a further 100 basis points of margin.

And we did increase investment levels in WPP Open in AI and data, and this was more than funded by a reduction in back-office costs, leading to a net reduction in tech spend and other costs of GBP 128 million. Again, with the impact from those lower revenues, this translated into a 60 basis point drag on margin. These drags on margin were offset by a 50% reduction in staff incentive payments to GBP 182 million, providing a margin cushion of 140 basis points, which is equivalent to 120 basis points like-for-like if we exclude FGS.

And taken together, this resulted on that net margin move of 200 basis points on a reported basis and 180 basis points on a like-for-like basis, which includes 20% of the impact from the disposal of FGS and from FX. Now moving to my next slide, we show our headline income statement. Overall reported revenue less pass-through costs was GBP 10.2 billion, a decrease of 10.4% year-on-year on a reported basis. Our headline operating profit was GBP 1.3 billion, which was down 22.6% year-on-year on a reported basis and is consistent with that 13% operating profit margin.

Our net finance costs of GBP 274 million were slightly down year-on-year on lower average net debt and lower interest rates. And our effective tax rate increased to 32% given that lower profit base and the impact of nondeductible fixed elements. By contrast, noncontrolling interest of GBP 43 million was down year-on-year, partially driven by disposals.

Our headline diluted EPS, as I said, was 63.2p and down 28.4% on a reported basis. The Board has recommended a final dividend of 7.5p, giving a total dividend of 15p for 2025. Now while this is a reduction year-on-year, it represents a stable dividend from the first half, and it underlines our commitment to maintaining shareholder returns. We include a full reconciliation between our headline and our reported financials in the appendix.

And the main items I would call out are the impact of restructuring programs as well as further goodwill impairments of GBP 641 million, which primarily relate to our integrated creative agencies and property impairments of GBP 114 million, both of which are noncash in nature. Now this next slide bridges the year-on-year movement in net debt, which ended 2025 at GBP 2.2 billion versus GBP 1.7 billion in 2024.

Our adjusted operating cash flow before working capital was GBP 1.2 billion and reflects a lower level of cash profit, partially offset by a lower level of CapEx and a year-on-year decrease in cash restructuring costs, which came in at GBP 82 million.

Our working capital saw an outflow of GBP 334 million, primarily driven by the temporary impact of reduced staff incentives, adverse FX movements and business mix. Within this, our trade working capital, excluding the impact from FX was broadly flat year-on-year. We remain disciplined on our working capital management and saw an improvement in underlying operating metrics year-on-year, including reduced overdues. We saw an outflow of GBP 17 million from earnouts of GBP 65 million and the net impact of dividends to minorities and from associates and earn-outs have decreased year-on-year and are expected to continue to progressively fall in 2026.

Our net interest and tax contributed to a total adjusted free cash flow of GBP 202 million and note that the tax payment includes GBP 43 million of one-off taxes related to the disposal of FGS Global. And turning to the uses of cash, M&A spend was GBP 147 million and largely related to the acquisition of Infrum, while cash dividends amounted to GBP 343 million.

Adding in the impact of buybacks at GBP 97 million to offset the dilution from incentives and other factors, including FX, our spot net debt was GBP 2.2 billion, up GBP 500 million year-on-year. Now my next slide provides more detail on our overall net debt and our leverage profile.

As we've already said, we think it's more prudent to look at average adjusted net debt through the year rather than the year-end level, which typically benefits from a favorable working capital position. Now our average adjusted net debt was slightly down year-on-year at GBP 3.4 billion compared to GBP 3.5 billion in 2024.

However, given that lower headline EBITDA, the average adjusted net debt to headline EBITDA ratio for 2025 was 2.2x, which was up from 1.8x in 2024. While our average leverage ratio has increased, our maturity profile stands at 5.8 years and the average coupon on our net debt is 3.5%. We, of course, also completed a successful GBP 1 billion bond issue in December 2025, which more than covers our GBP 650 million bond maturity in September 2026.

We have no covenants. And as of December 2025, we had GBP 4.4 billion of liquidity, including an undrawn committed RCF of $2.5 billion, which does not mature until 2031. And furthermore, I'm very pleased to share that today, Fitch Ratings has assigned WPP a BBB rating with a stable outlook, reinforcing our investment-grade balance sheet. And on my final slide for now, I have shared guidance for 2026 across key financial metrics.

Now we will talk about the impact of our strategy update later this morning. But for 2026, we're setting the following parameters in terms of our headline guidance. Our like-for-like net revenue growth is the most important metric for judging our business, but it is a lagging indicator with account losses continuing to drag for around 12 months after they first start to impact.

And meanwhile, new account wins take time to bed in and move toward a steady state. For the year as a whole, we estimate that gross client losses will represent a 500 to 600 basis point drag, an increase from the 300 to 400 basis points in 2025. At the same time, the positive impact on like-for-like from gross client wins in 2026 already exceeds that for the full year 2025.

Now while it is still early in the year to indicate the impact of new business in the full year, we do expect it to be a more significant drag in the first half in 2025. We are encouraged by the new business performance in the fourth quarter and the performance year-to-date and the nature of the pipeline. And as a result, we anticipate a progressively improving impact from net new business through the course of the year.

Now reflecting all of this, we are guiding to like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs down mid- to high single digits in the first half of 2026 with an improving trajectory in the second half. And we also anticipate that the first quarter will see the weakest like-for-like for the year.

On profit, there are a number of moving parts that will impact our headline operating margin. On the positive side, we will benefit from the annualized impact of cost actions, which were taken in 2025, alongside a part year benefit from the cost initiatives we are implementing as part of our new strategy. We also expect a lower impact from headline severance costs. Against this, we will continue to invest in WPP Open in AI and in data as well as our growth drivers and also expect to rebuild our incentive pools.

Cindy and I will share greater detail on both the growth drivers and the cost initiatives as part of our strategy update. Taking all of that into account, we anticipate headline operating profit margin in the range of 12% to 13%.

And turning to cash flow, we continue to focus on adjusted operating cash flow before working capital as the most important metric, reflecting the potential for volatility in the year-end working capital position, including both the anticipated costs associated with historical plans as well as the restructuring costs linked to the Elevate28 8 plan, we anticipate adjusted operating cash flow before working capital of GBP 800 million to GBP 900 million.

This includes total anticipated cash restructuring charges of around GBP 250 million, of which around GBP 190 million are associated with the Elevate28 plan. Excluding these charges, we would anticipate adjusted operating cash flow before working capital of GBP 1 billion to GBP 1.1 billion. And finally, in terms of leverage, given the expectation of a further moderation in headline EBITDA, we would anticipate our average leverage metrics to move up further in 2026.

We do, however, expect average net debt to remain broadly stable, and we note that any proceeds from asset disposals during the year will be used to strengthen our balance sheet, providing a greater degree of financial flexibility. Now you will find more detail on other modeling assumptions for 2026 in our preliminary results press release. And that is it for me for now, and I will hand back to Cindy, who I know is very keen to share our strategic update.

Thank you, Joanne. Thank you. Look, the first thing I want to say to you is that I fully recognize that recent years have been disappointing from a shareholder perspective. I acknowledge our performance on core metrics like net sales margin, free cash flow. It's disappointing. No one is more determined to turn that around than I am.

And as I said in my opening remarks, I took this role with a clear thesis as to what we needed to do differently. We've spent the past 6 months as a team really validating that thesis with rigorous analysis and by actively listening to feedback from our clients. There are plenty of reasons for optimism, and I'm going to get to those in a moment. But first, I thought it's just appropriate to share with you some of the feedback that we have received from clients. It's clear and consistent and not only supports my thesis, but provides us with an excellent blueprint for what we need to do differently going forward.

Clients pointed to the fact that our complexity got in the way of true client obsession. We were siloed. We were hard to navigate. We haven't been intentional enough about evolving our integrated proposition to adapt to the changing needs of our clients. It's taken us too long to land our data proposition and our media business has suffered as a result. Now the good news from my perspective is that all of these issues are fixable. And as I said, we've already started to do so.

So while it's true that our performance hasn't been where we want it to be, it's also true that WPP is full of potential and has all the ingredients that we need to win. We have incredibly talented, hard-working people with deep domain expertise who do amazing things for our clients, for some of the most demanding clients in the world, I might add, every single day. We have world-class capabilities that span the entire marketing workflow from media to commerce, creative, PR, production, digital experiences, software engineering, data, AI and more.

We've made really smart investments over the years in technology that have now enabled us to build WPP Open into a powerful future-facing agentic marketing platform, giving us a real competitive advantage. We have a presence in over 100 countries around the world, which means we can serve the most complex multinational, multi-client brands in the world. We have a scaled media offer and partnerships with every relevant player in the ecosystem. But maybe most importantly of all, we have an ambitious, competitive, high-energy team that is ready to embrace change and hungry to win.

So notwithstanding the challenges, which are clear, I stand here with immense optimism because we're at a really pivotal moment in WPP's journey. We're not just adapting to change. We're actively shaping the future. We are building a WPP that is more agile, more connected, more powerful than ever before, a WPP that is simpler to work with, fit for the future and built to win. A WPP that is obsessed with the client -- the success of our clients and as a result, that drives better returns for our shareholders.

So our strategy starts with a new mission, to be the trusted partner for the world's leading brands in the era of AI, valued for combining cutting-edge media intelligence, trusted data solutions, world-class creativity, next-generation production and transformative enterprise solutions to help our clients navigate change, capture growth and capture opportunity.

Now there's 4 key objectives of our strategy, and we're going to unpack these in some detail. But just to summarize, our objectives are to drive superior growth for our clients, to become a simpler, more integrated company, to leverage our agentic marketing platform, WPP Open for competitive advantage and to create firm financial foundations for the future. As I said earlier, this is going to take time, but we've already made a promising start.

And to support our growth strategy, we've built a very detailed execution plan that broadly spans these 3 distinct phases. Our immediate priority is to stabilize the business, make the structural changes needed, strengthen our execution, win and retain clients to sustain our current market momentum. The next phase is about building on these foundations and returning the company to growth sometime during 2027.

And the third phase will be about accelerating our growth so we can capture our fair share of the market from 2028 and beyond. And just to summarize what you can expect from this plan in terms of outcomes, you can expect the stabilization of our performance in the near term, a return to growth sometime in 2027, gross cost savings of GBP 500 million over 3 years, a reallocation of investment against our key growth priorities and a more focused portfolio, an investment-grade balance sheet, as Joanne said, and greater financial flexibility.

So that's the basic framework, the time line of our growth strategy and what you can expect in terms of outcomes. We're going to unpack all of this in more detail. But before we do, I would like to step back, if I may, and just do a bit of scene setting to offer some perspective on how we see the world changing, the needs of our clients evolving and the opportunity of AI.

So for some time now, we've known that our industry is experiencing dramatic transformation. With the rapid diffusion of AI, we're not just seeing incremental shifts in consumer behavior, like this is a complete metamorphosis of the commercial ecosystem. Brands are now discovered in AI-driven conversational search. All the old barriers that protected established brands are gone. creators and influencers have reshaped consumer preference and can launch brands in an instant.

Media is everywhere. It's in everything. It's no longer episodic and campaign-driven. It's continuous, always on, a stream where social, search and physical spaces all blend together. Commerce is the new organizing principle. Every action, every interaction is shoppable, and we're rapidly shifting to agented commerce where AI agents do the shopping on our behalf. Trust is scarce, right?

It must be earned every day in this world of synthetic content and deep fakes. Brands need to balance hyperpersonalization with personal privacy. And as the world is flooded with AI-generated content, the demand for verifiable human creativity, craft, empathy, taste is increasing as key brand differentiators. These changing dynamics are not fleeting trends. The acceleration of AI is unstoppable.

And as I said, it's driving a complete metamorphosis of the commercial ecosystem. And this is the reality our clients are navigating every day. The fragmentation, the complexity, the pace of change is dizzying for our clients and the paths to growth are much harder to find. He's never been more urgent to build compelling trusted brands that endure for generations and provide competitive advantage and long-term enterprise value.

To cut through this noise and find new growth audiences in this environment, brands need to embrace new strategies grounded in deep data insights, real-time signals and AI that acts on these signals at the speed of light. In this perpetually changing environment, clients don't need more traditional marketing agencies. What they need is a new playbook for growth and a trusted partner who can help them build it and operationalize it.

A partner that operates as an intelligent orchestration layer across creativity, media, commerce, data and tech who fuses technical expertise with breakthrough creative thinking into one cohesive approach to modern brand building. At WPP, we work with some of the most consequential brands and clients on the planet, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Nestle, Kenvue, Ford, so many more. We know how to navigate disruption. We know how to find signal in noise and help clients build new paths to growth.

Now for many clients, this new playbook for growth means real transformation at every level. So I spent the last decade delivering large-scale technology transformation to enterprise clients around the world. And I can tell you, it's not easy. Clients need to have AI-ready data foundations and agentic tool and governance in place. They need to be trained and skilled. Processes need to be reimagined. There's really no shortcut when it comes to AI transformation. Every client I meet is going through it, and they all need our help.

So for WPP to seize this opportunity, we need to evolve from being a collection of traditional marketing agencies to being a trusted partner for growth and transformation, helping our clients build modern marketing capabilities and move boldly and confidently into the future. A wonderful example of this kind of partnership in action is the Coca-Cola Company.

Let's hear from Manolo.

[Presentation]

Commerce and Retail media at 23% and high-velocity content production at 38%. These changes that we're making at WPP to integrate our client proposition will enable us to cross-sell more effectively and grow our share in these fast-growing markets. So that's my perspective on how the world is changing, what it means for our clients and the opportunity of AI.

Thanks for indulging me in that. But I'd like to now unpack our growth strategy in a bit more detail. So as I mentioned earlier, we have 4 strategic objectives: to deliver superior growth for our clients by reorienting around an integrated proposition to become a simpler company moving to 4 operating units across 4 regions with common incentives across the company, to leverage the power of our agentic marketing platform, WPP Open for competitive advantage and to create firm financial foundations for the future.

We've built a detailed plan that sets out the actions we're taking to deliver on these objectives, and the entire management team worked together to build this plan. This was the ultimate team collaboration. We're all behind it. We're all aligned and committed to its execution.

There are 8 core pillars to the plan, which you can see on this slide, but I'm going to double click and I'm going to double-click briefly on each of them, but I do want to start with WPP Open, our pioneering agentic marketing platform because it sits at the center of everything we do. It's where all of our capabilities come together into one integrated end-to-end platform. It's the cornerstone of WPP's own transformation, and it's how we deliver services, transformation and growth to our clients. WPP Open is a platform that we've been investing and building for a few years now.

We recognized that we needed an end-to-end orchestration layer to connect workflow inside of WPP. And the platform enables us to scale intelligence and best practice across our group and reimagine business process and client solutions with the agentic capabilities that now live inside Agent Hub, an important recent addition to the platform. But let me show you an example of the power of the platform with a recent example from Google Pixel.

Using WPP Open and AI personas, we analyzed millennial conversations from across social media, uncovering a shift towards romantasizing everyday life and reframing mundane moments as cinematic moments. Guided by this insight, our brand agent recommended focusing on Pixel's camera coach feature to help users take control of their story. Thanks to specialized agents, our workflow moved from social listening to creative concepts in just 1 hour.

With Google's advanced AI models within WPP Open, campaign assets were approved and live within 24 hours. And this delivered a 3% increase in brand uplift, demonstrating a new marketing flywheel where insight, creativity and production really move at the speed of culture. So recognizing the pace of technology change, we knew that the future of marketing would look very different than in the past. And to anticipate these changes, we've significantly enhanced the platform over the past 12 months.

Open Intelligence is our foundational intelligence layer that securely connects trillions of live data points from clients, partners and WPP in a privacy-first way. And it's now integrated and powers the entire WPP platform end-to-end. We consolidated our technology and data solutions into one organization. We have one WPP development team, one integrated product road map and one set of design and portfolio management principles, which dramatically simplifies how we think about evolving this platform in the future.

Our people work on WPP Open every day, and it features in every client pitch as the single unified agentic platform that clients need to deliver integrated marketing workflows and a collaborative workspace where humans and agents can work together to deliver a system of growth that clients can trust. There are many, many point solutions available in the market today that address pieces, fragments of the marketing workflow, and they're often tied to specific platforms, leaving clients to manage costly complex tech stacks with fragmented workflows.

WPP Open solves this problem in a single end-to-end platform. It's an agnostic system built on a common data model. It gives clients one source of truth to integrate operations, optimize investment and drive growth at scale. It's really hard to explain technology, though. So let me show you how this works.

[Presentation]

Great. So I talked about the importance of partnerships because in today's changing world, like no single company can go it alone. WPP Open, as the name indicates, is open by design. We will continue to enhance our own technology with the very best and latest AI models and agentic tool sets through our groundbreaking strategic technology and data partnerships with Google, Microsoft, TikTok, Meta, Amazon, Stability AI and more. These partnerships don't just give us access to new AI models and tools.

They enable us to bring cutting-edge innovation resources to our clients and unlock important new routes to market, particularly important for our Enterprise Solutions business. You might have seen earlier this week, we announced a significantly expanded partnership with Adobe, embedding their industry-leading AI marketing suite directly into WPP Open.

This is a powerful integration that delivers effective streamlined marketing operations for our clients, enabling them to scale personalization, optimize media and create on-brand content efficiently with agentic AI workflows. This build, buy and partner approach that ensures that WPP Open remains at the forefront of cutting-edge technology innovation so that our clients always have state-of-the-art capability at their fingertips.

WPP Open is a significant source of competitive advantage for WPP. This platform puts AI to work to transform our clients' marketing function and enable new outcome-based commercial models, tying our success directly to client growth. So that's WPP Open.

Now let's go back to the strategic plan and briefly step through the actions we're taking to deliver on our growth objectives. Our first key action focuses on media and data and positioning these capabilities at the core of our integrated client proposition. Brian Lesser joined WPP 18 months ago and has done a fantastic job spearheading the transformation of WPP Media. He's implemented structural change and led the acquisition and integration of InfoSum, which now underpins our differentiated data approach.

We know there's more work to do, but recent wins in WPP Media that Brian and his team have secured give us full confidence that we're on the right path.

So I'd like to invite Brian to the stage now to dive a bit deeper on WPP Media's transformation. Brian?

Hi, everybody. Good morning. And thank you, Cindy, for the introduction and for leading the way at WPP. 12 months ago, I promised a transformation, and we delivered. We have united WPP Media, placing our clients at the heart of everything we do, ready to unlock limitless growth in a media everywhere future.

Our foundation is built on our proprietary open intelligence, driving real-time predictive decision-making. Today, I'll detail how we're now perfectly set up for success with the client always at the core of a truly integrated WPP, powered by a differentiated platform that sets us apart. This is our winning recipe, and I'll share tangible case studies proving this model is designed to win. From the outside, it might seem as if all marketers have the same basic needs.

The truth is that every client is unique with vastly different context, growth strategies and audiences. This is why we have restructured the way we work to ensure each client's unique needs sit at the heart of our business. This radical client centrality is allowing us to unlock true integrated marketing across WPP.

We have built a single financial and data ecosystem that eliminates siloed operations to bring the full power of WPP's people and tech to life. This empowers us to deliver seamless connected solutions that cut across the traditional ways of doing business like customer experience, commerce and social and influencer that accelerate client growth. Whether it's a media pitch, a creative pitch or a production pitch, more than ever, clients are looking for a single integrated solution. This is what we're now set up to deliver and why clients are choosing us.

You can see the power of this integrated approach with Mazda. When creative is as intelligent as you're targeting, you don't just reach people, you move them. Mazda's first to the finish was a groundbreaking branded content series. It spotlighted trailblazing female racecar drivers connecting on a human level beyond motorsport. This innovative program became the first branded content designated a prime video original. It showed how media intelligence fuels powerful storytelling.

The series achieved 16 million minutes watched, drove 93% new website visits, increased purchase consideration by 23% and contributed to Mazda's highest sales year ever. This is the type of results the new WPP media generates. Our data approach isn't merely an evolution. It's a fundamental revolution. Traditional marketing with its static definition of identity and commoditized view of audiences is increasingly obsolete and constrained by privacy risks. We ask a different question, what signals truly matter to our audiences.

We unlock intelligence from diverse live signals, context, interests and behaviors to find new patterns in the consumer journey. This identifies new growth audiences and predicts their future actions to accelerate business growth. Central to this is our market-leading solution, enhanced by InfoSum, which establishes private data networks directly within our clients' environments. This enables secure multiparty data collaboration without any data ever moving. This decentralized approach breaks down silos, creating comprehensive AI-ready consumer insights from previously inaccessible sources, far surpassing traditional ID matching alone to deliver truly predictive intelligence.

For the first time, clients can harness the full potential of their first-party data from any cloud or warehouse environment. including Adobe, AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Salesforce, Databricks and Snowflake. This proprietary intelligence can then be connected and enriched with our comprehensive identity data and robust network of over 350 integrated partners, giving us access to quadrillions of real-time signals.

This allows us to produce faster, smarter and more effective marketing across all leading global platforms like Amazon, Google, Meta, LinkedIn, Snapchat and TikTok. By synthesizing this vast data, we build predictive media strategies that deliver deeper engagement and superior client growth, moving beyond just reach and frequency and validating actual outcomes with historical performance data. To bring this to life, consider our work with Heineken. They needed a way to connect their first-party consumer data with ITV's on-demand viewing audience and Tesco shoppers.

Powered by InfoSum, Heineken was able to identify relevant audience segments based on age and real-time drinking preferences. Crucially, Tesco provided closed-loop measurement of sales impact, all without moving or sharing any customer data out of Heineken's environment. In a world where measurable outcomes truly matter, the campaign success wasn't measured in brand uplift or impressions, but in real sales data from Tesco stores, which increased by an impressive 189%. Another real-life example of driving business results through our market-leading data and technology solution.

Powered by Open Intelligence and enhanced by InfoSum's federated learning infrastructure, WPP Open offers a unique agentic marketing platform. This gives our clients speed, simplicity, scale and AI innovation to modernize marketing, optimize media and accelerate their growth. Our differentiated approach to data is helping move marketing beyond legacy static databases by enabling more connected and intelligent ways of working.

For Coca-Cola, this means bringing together creativity, technology and real-time insights to create more integrated marketing experiences. There's no one better than Manolo to share how WPP Open and Open Intelligence are transforming marketing at the Coca-Cola Company.

[Presentation]

Our strong Q4 2025 momentum continued into 2026. with WPP Media achieving its best January in 4 years for net new business wins, leading all media holding companies. We have an inspired, dynamic market-leading team of winners leading this charge. The change in our culture has been palpable. Major integrated wins like JLR and Estee Lauder confirm our strategy works.

Our winning client-centric proposition built on this future-proof integrated foundation rapidly meets evolving client demands and delivers truly predictive intelligence. With media at its core, WPP is now exceptionally positioned to drive continued growth, sustain client relationships and deliver significant value for our investors. Thank you, and now I'll hand it back to Cindy.

Thank you, Brian. Thanks so much. So the next key action we're taking is to establish next-generation production and creative capabilities. And I'm going to start briefly with production. Just last month, we announced the creation of WPP Production, our new production unit led by Richard Glasson. And of course, we marked the occasion with a video.

[Presentation]

So as I think you can see, production is being pretty radically transformed, and we're facing into this head on by fundamentally reimagining how it all works. WPP production, it's a mouthful. It's designed to solve for both volume and performance. We operate an end-to-end content orchestration through WPP Open as one unified content production engine.

We're establishing high -velocity studios deeply integrated into WPP Media for real-time measurement and content optimization. And we're centralizing commissioning and supplier management to in-source more work where appropriate and create a more curated roster of external production partners. We're investing. We're investing in cutting-edge capabilities, high-velocity studios, as I mentioned, Gen AI studios, virtual production, video effect of virtual effects and digital twin pipelines.

With WPP production, we are well positioned to support our clients as they look to transform and often consolidate their content production activities. And we're confident over time, we will take a greater share of this market. So next, I want to talk about creative. Like we know how critically important creativity is to our clients. I talked a bit earlier about the increasing demand for verifiable human creativity and craft in the era of AI. This is an important source of brand differentiation and value creation for our clients.

And while the market for creative service is projecting limited growth over the medium term, creative capabilities are still a vital element of an integrated proposition, and there is significant opportunity for us to unlock white space across our client portfolio through joint propositions and cross-sell. So recognizing these factors, today, we are formally announcing the launch of WPP Creative, led by Jon Cook, and this organization will be home to our most iconic agency brands, VML, Ogilvy, AKQA, Berson, Landor, Design Bridge and Partners.

I want to be very, very clear on this one. We are not merging agency brands. We are not consolidating agency brands. We are not sunsetting agency brands, okay? On the contrary, Jon and our agency leaders will unite them in new ways and empower them like never before. I've spoken to many clients. They all share with me how much they value choice and the unique perspectives and cultures that our agency brands provide. However, they also want to make it easier for those agencies to collaborate and efficiently access the whole breadth of WPP's capabilities.

A simplified structure also removes barriers for our global client leaders, creating a frictionless path to our top talent so we can put the right resource in front of the right client at the right time without the constraints of the past. With WPP Creative, all of our agency brands will have access to the full modern stack of commerce, customer experience, digital platforms, enhancing their client proposition and expanding the go-to-market channel for these services.

Much greater alignment with WPP Media and WPP Production will ensure that creative ideas are instantly adaptable and executable across the whole customer funnel. While agency brands remain, WPP Creative will have a more competitive cost base from a simpler, more unified operating model and greater shared infrastructure. I'm excited that WPP Creative will double down on our agency brands and arm them with the capability they need to make them more modern and more united than ever before.

And we're already seeing the power of bringing together our portfolio in recent successes securing, for example, the creative mandate for Kenvue, the parent company to well-known brands like Listerine LSTERIN, Sudafed, BAN-AD and more, a strength also recognized by our client there.

Next, I'd like to spend a few minutes talking about enterprise solutions. Because today, every global business needs a partner that can help them build, run and evolve their core platforms and systems in a world where AI is part of everyday operations. Businesses are being forced to rethink how they establish competitive advantage and the potential to reinvent workflows has never been greater.

For some of our clients, the need is clear and well articulated. For others, the need is completely unarticulated. They know there's a better way, but they don't know what it looks like. To partner most effectively with our clients on their AI transformation, we are elevating our existing enterprise solutions capability into a new externally facing operated unit called WPP Enterprise Solutions, led by Jeff Geheb.

Enterprise Solutions provides a complete enterprise transformation offer for clients that spans consulting, content, customer experience, commerce, CRM and platforms. We have a unique ability to fuse these capabilities with media intelligence and world-class creativity to build an AI-powered marketing operation end-to-end for our clients. WPP Enterprise Solutions benefits from multiple routes to market, including via our agency brands and both direct and partner-led go-to-markets as well.

These multiple routes to market maximize our coverage and enhance our ability to cross-sell, capture white space, TAM growth opportunity within our installed client base and will drive more direct and partner-influenced revenue. The enterprise transformation market is huge. It's worth $230 billion and projected to grow cumulatively 7% over the next 3 years. Although our share of that market today is small, the opportunity is really significant.

And actually, we already have really solid foundations to build on. Today, our Enterprise Solutions business employs around 10,000 people and generates around $1.8 billion of revenue. It's about 13% of our overall group net revenue. This business has quietly built a book of exceptional clients and has already earned notable industry recognition from Gartner, Forrester and IDC.

In many ways, as I like to say, Enterprise Solutions is the hidden gem within WPP that we will now elevate to become the crown jewel. And if you ask our clients at Ford, it's already the crown jewel. We have a partnership with Ford that started with J. Walter Thompson 80 years ago, and we've continued supporting them with cross-functional teams as their needs have evolved. Let's hear directly from Ford.

[Presentation]

Great. Okay. So we have talked about how we're going to deliver superior growth for our clients by reorienting around an integrated proposition that brings together media creative, production enterprise solutions, all powered by WPP Open. Now I want to talk about the organizational changes that we're going to make to become a simpler, more integrated company because these are key enablers for our strategy.

And as I mentioned earlier, we haven't been waiting for today's update to change how we engage with clients. We know that when we show up as the new WPP, as the best of WPP, we win. But to build on our current momentum and make it sustainable, we need to radically simplify our organization really to unlock true client centricity. So to do that, WPP will no longer be a holding company. We will no longer be a shopping basket full of stand-alone businesses, hundreds of stand-alone businesses.

We're going to move to a single company model. with 4 operating units across 4 regions with incentives that closely align to the overall performance of WPP. Being a single company with a simpler structure and common incentives are critical enablers of our strategy. As part of these structural changes, we'll also further simplify corporate functions, particularly in finance and people to reduce duplication, increase our use of shared services and redesign our processes, leveraging AI and Agenta capabilities.

Alongside these structural changes, we're also focused on significantly strengthening our execution, both in terms of client service delivery and new business growth. At the heart of WPP's relationship with our largest clients are our global client leaders, our GCLs -- and our GCLs are already masters of creating value. But our existing operating model and our incentives and our internal processes have not always afforded them the agility needed to deliver seamless client-centric services that unlock new avenues for growth.

I'm sure my GCLs in the room would agree. But we're transforming our approach. We're going to empower our GCLs with the authority and the resources to function as true leaders for their client portfolios, exercising strategic leadership rather than merely orchestrating a bunch of activities. This is going to include greater control over client P&Ls and the authority to make the best strategic decisions supported by streamlined internal processes designed to eliminate organizational friction and provide access to the right resource at the right time.

We're also establishing a new team of client solution architects. This team will apply deep industry expertise to develop winning growth strategies for clients and then architect tailored solutions to deliver on those strategies, unifying technology, media data, all of our marketing capabilities to really drive successful execution. And finally, we're establishing more integrated growth operations, creating a stronger network of growth talent across WPP with a shared hunger to win. These changes will enable us to build on our current momentum, all of our recent wins as we strengthen our new business engine and champion a stronger winning mindset.

And speaking of winning mindset, the next core priority for us, perhaps the most important of all, is to embed a high-performance culture to attract and retain the world's best talent, grounded in collaboration, client obsession, humility, accountability and a hunger to win. I know from experience that culture can be the biggest differentiator and competitive advantage of them all. Talented people choose to join companies and stay at companies that have strong cultures where they can thrive in their careers and be their authentic selves.

I also know that changing culture takes time and persistence, and it's about both winning hearts and minds. I think winning hearts is about inspiring people with a new mission that feels fresh and relevant and clear. It's also about creating an environment that feels safe and inclusive, where creativity, where intelligent risk-taking are valued, where failure is treated as a path to learning and continuous improvement is celebrated. Now winning minds is about getting the basics right.

So that's about clear communication and active listening to people, investments in learning and development. We've got to ensure that our people are building new capabilities with a focus on AI so they can deliver what our clients need from us. It's about common incentives across the company that just unlock collaboration and frictionless resource sharing. It's about performance management and feedback to allow us to build that culture of accountability and greater talent mobility and career progression opportunities.

But what I really want is for people to have a world-class employee experience and feel proud to be on a winning team and proud to be part of WPP. Now the final pillar of our Elevate28 execution plan is about creating firm financial foundations for the future. And that's about creating capacity to invest in growth and building a WPP that's fully optimized to deliver for our clients. I'm going to hand over to Joanne now to step through the financial aspects of our plan. Joanne?

So thank you, Cindy. And okay, let me share the financial framework, which underpins our Elevate28 8 plan, including our approach to capital allocation. Elevate28 8 is first and foremost about getting WPP back to growth, and our financial priorities underpin that. In the near term, our focus will be on stabilizing the business, and that means improving our net new business performance and our client retention. As I mentioned earlier, net sales like-for-like is a lagging indicator, and that will take time to recover as we cycle through historic client losses.

Now as we progress through the 3 years of our plan and we deliver strongly against the core growth building blocks, which I will talk to in a later slide, we anticipate a return to taking our fair share of the market. And in some areas and over time, we will seek to outperform the market. And to support this, we will unlock GBP 500 million of gross annual cost savings between now and 2028, enabling a reallocation of investment towards our growth drivers. And this will, in turn, support a rebuild of margins.

And finally, we are setting out to make WPP a simpler and more focused business reducing the perimeter of the group and then still doing strengthening the balance sheet and providing a greater degree of financial flexibility. As you've heard today, we are already implementing many parts of our plan. However, it will take time to deliver and to realize the full benefits in our operational and in our financial outcomes.

As Cindy indicated, we see delivery across 3 phases. In 2026, we will stabilize the operational performance of the business, leveraging the improved competitiveness of our media and our data proposition and our production consolidation. We will action our cost saving plans, and we will prioritize investment into the parts of our business, which represent the largest growth opportunities.

In parallel, we will take a more proactive approach to our portfolio, unlocking embedded value and operating with a tighter and a more focused perimeter. This will require focused execution and a rigorous reallocation of resources to support our growth plans. Now as a lagging indicator, we expect organic growth to remain subdued in 2026, and we also anticipate margins to remain below historic levels as we reinvest savings to support growth.

Alongside this, we expect an elevated average leverage ratio. From 2027, we expect to start to see a progressive ramp-up of the benefits from both our operating model changes and the investments we are making to enhance our new go-to-market, our integrated proposition and from scaling capabilities, including our full service enterprise solutions and production. It is our ambition for the group to return to growth during 2027 for margins to start to rebuild and for our leverage to start to come down.

And from 2028, our plan assumes a significantly improved operational performance characterized by accelerating growth and improving margin and strong cash conversion. While we are not providing specific medium-term guidance today, rest assured, we are relentlessly focused on immediate stabilization and disciplined execution of the building blocks to return WPP to growth.

And let me spend some time on those building blocks of growth, which we are, of course, aligning our investment priorities against. And I'll start with media. Now the market for Media Services is around $40 billion and is forecast to grow at a 4% CAGR from '24 to '28. And within this, commerce and retail media is a high-growth market, expected to deliver a CAGR of 23%.

As you heard from Brian, we have been busy transforming our media and our data proposition and improving our execution. And this not only supports our ambition to improve new business and retention across our media business, but it will also enable us to deliver that improved integrated proposition for our clients with media at the heart. And our recent win with JLR is a great example of that.

Now taking back our fair share of the media market is the most significant growth opportunity for WPP at a group level, and it's a core tenet of Elevate28. Now the second area is our next-generation production offer. Now while the overall production market is seeing muted growth, we are seizing the opportunity to take share, internalizing third-party production spend by our agencies, which is estimated at hundreds of millions over the course of Elevate28.

We have also identified significant incremental opportunities from new ways of originating creative work, leveraging GenAI and BFX pipelines, which enable us to build next-generation studio capability and make much more of our client work directly. High-velocity content production is a great example of this, which despite being a relatively small proportion of the overall production market today is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 38% over the next 3 years. As the largest production agency globally and with our investment in dedicated capabilities, including content studios, we are well placed to take more than our fair share of this opportunity.

We are working with a number of our large clients already in these areas, and we've leveraged innovative content opportunities in some of our recent new business wins. And finally, scaling our enterprise solutions proposition. The enterprise solutions market, as we define it, is forecast to deliver a CAGR of 7%. We play in this space already, but as part of a fragmented offering, existing within agency silos and as such, our current share of the market is low single digit.

Now scaling our enterprise solutions across all of our creative brands as well as establishing it as a distinct pillar and investing in direct go-to-market capability, we believe will enable us to significantly grow our market share over the course of Elevate28. The strength of our capability in this area has been recognized by Forrester, amongst others. And with many recent client wins, we are confident we will see an improving growth trajectory.

For 2026, the focus will be on consolidating these capabilities under one leader, establishing a strong direct go-to-market team and leveraging partnership opportunities such as the one announced this week with Adobe. Now cumulatively, these opportunities represent a significant white space gross revenue opportunity estimated at up to $900 million over the term of Elevate28 8. And delivering against our growth priorities will, of course, require investment, which will be self-funded from our cost initiatives. Our shift to a new operating model will yield significant efficiencies, building on what we have already done.

Since 2024, we have removed GBP 300 million of gross cost savings and our Elevate28 operational plan unlocks a further GBP 500 million of gross annualized cost savings by 2028. Now we expect the associated cash restructuring costs to be around GBP 400 million and for those to be incurred across '26 and '27. It's important to emphasize that our cost actions are targeted at improving our execution and supporting our growth priorities as much as they are about simply removing costs from our business, and they will come from 3 key areas.

The first area is that shift to a new operating model. It will drive a more simplified, more integrated way of working. It will enable us to scale our capabilities across the organization and support a stronger and a more effective client proposition. We will consolidate leadership at a global, at regional and at market levels, providing clear roles and responsibilities for our people. We will optimize spans and layers.

We will remove duplication across our creative assets, driving a more aligned model, enabling a more effective cross-selling and providing a more holistic view of client success and outcomes. The second bucket focuses on structural cost savings. And as a result of our new operating model, we will deduplicate corporate functions, particularly across our finance and our people teams.

We'll further leverage our shared service centers and create centers of excellence. This will set us up to unlock more scaled productivity savings from greater automation and the use of AI across our corporate functions. And the third bucket will come from rationalization opportunities. We will deliver savings from our real estate footprint and from across our long tail of markets and agency operations.

In 2026, we expect to realize at least GBP 100 million of in-year P&L savings and GBP 250 million of annualized savings. The estimated restructuring costs associated with these savings in 2026 is around GBP 190 million. Now these targeted actions will improve our execution as well as enable a reallocation of investment into the highest growth opportunities across our business, supporting a rebuild of our margins over time. We will prioritize investment across 3 key areas.

Firstly, we are bolstering the main engines of the Elevate28 plan, which you've heard about today. We are directing investments specifically into media and commerce into high-velocity production and enterprise solutions to ensure we capture demand in those high-growth areas. This will include investment in commerce and influencer and analytics talent and in content studios.

Second, we are investing to upgrade our go-to-market approach with a focus on our client needs and our new business capabilities. Alongside this, we will rebuild our incentive pool, and we have redesigned our incentive model to align it to our new operating model and with the aim of disincentivizing the past siloed way of working. Third, we are sustaining our commitment to WPP open to data and to AI.

To give you a sense of scale, in 2025, we invested more than GBP 300 million in this area, and we will protect this investment to ensure continued enhancements to our technology platform and our AI capability. In 2026, we are expecting to reinvest all of the in-year savings from the cost initiatives into the first 2 priorities, and this is reflected in our margin guidance for the year.

Now these investments will be made in a disciplined manner, and we will fully leverage our more integrated approach to benefit from scaled capabilities and a rigorous prioritization in the areas that will drive the highest growth opportunities and returns for WPP. And let me move on to talk about our portfolio review.

In recent months, we have conducted this review aimed at assessing opportunities to unlock embedded value and refocus our perimeter. Now this review has covered all assets that we own, whether an operating unit or a minority investment. We've evaluated how each strengthen our proposition and fit our future integrated offer.

While we have many great assets within our portfolio, it may not be optimal for us to remain owners either in whole or in part of some of those in the future, and we've applied that best owner assessment to identify the assets where value is potentially maximized outside the group alongside a plan for continuing to rationalize noncore passive investments. Now this has also been an exercise in determining the areas we want to prioritize investment in and being rigorously disciplined in our allocation of capital.

And of course, underpinning this is a disciplined approach to M&A with a focus on organic execution in the near term. With the review now complete, we are moving directly to action. And while we don't have specific transactions to announce today, the work is underway, and we will update you in due course. And that leads me to our approach to capital allocation, which is framed across 3 clear priorities. First, we are committed to our investment-grade balance sheet. This is our foundation.

Our primary focus here is retaining strong liquidity, reducing our gross debt and improving our leverage ratios over time. As shared earlier, Fitch Ratings has assigned WPP, a BBB rating with a stable outlook, further solidifying our investment-grade balance sheet. Our second priority is funding organic growth.

As you heard, we are prioritizing investment in the highest growth and the highest returning areas of the business. And crucially, we are funding this through our cost initiatives I shared today with a strict focus on scaling capabilities that support growth across the entire group rather than in silos. And third, we will share the proceeds of growth. We aim to balance consistent, sustainable shareholder returns over the medium term with inorganic investment. Reflecting this, the Board have proposed a full year dividend of 15p for 2025.

We will apply a focused approach to M&A, deploying capital only when an acquisition is clearly more efficient than building that capability internally. And beyond that and as appropriate, any excess capital will be returned to shareholders. And finally, for me, a brief note on how we -- how our reporting is going to evolve to reflect this new structure.

Now the current structure is shown here, and our ultimate objective is for our financial reporting to map directly onto our new organizational model. For segmental reporting purposes, the 4 operating units, which are the engines of our business will be included in an enlarged global integrated agencies reportable segment, which will now include public relations and our design agencies. For regional reporting, results will be broken down by North America, EMEA, Latin America and APAC.

And over time, we want to give you better visibility into the engines of our business. And therefore, within global integrated agencies, we will provide specific disclosures on net revenue and organic growth for our key capabilities, media, production, creative and enterprise solutions.

So that's all for me, and I will hand you back to Cindy to wrap up.

Amazing. Thank you, Joanne. Home stretch folks. So before we conclude and open up to questions, I just want to spend a minute on how my team and I will hold ourselves accountable and measure success. As Joanne mentioned, our primary focus is to return our business to growth. Organic growth is our most important success metric and getting back to consistent organic growth is our North Star as a management team. But as you know, organic growth is a lag indicator and will take us some time to deliver.

So beyond the lag indicators, you can see on the right-hand side of the slide behind me, we've also included on the left a few leading indicators and success metrics that my team and I have as part of our own scorecard. -- that will provide tangible evidence along the way that the actions we're taking are working. I won't read them to you, but you can see there are things like new business wins, client retention, cost savings, asset disposals. These are the types of lead indicators we'll be rigorously managing, and we're confident that these will drive the outcomes that matter the most over time, consistent organic growth, supported by a solid financial foundation.

I also want to reassure you that we're not going to just simply disappear and report back on KPIs in a year's time. We really want you to see the execution of the strategy in real time. We want to invite more frequent engagement with our investor community. So over the coming months, we'll be hosting a series of deep dive webinars to take you further under the hood of our key growth engines, specifically in the areas of media, next-gen production and enterprise solutions.

So I know we've shared a lot of information with you today, and thank you for listening. But I have to say our mission has never been clearer to be the trusted growth partner to the world's leading brands in the era of AI. Elevate28 is a bold plan for a simpler, more integrated WPP.

We will stabilize the business, return to organic growth, create capacity to invest and deliver attractive returns for our shareholders. And we'll do that by delivering growth for our clients by being a simpler, more integrated company by leveraging our agentic marketing platform, WPP Open for competitive advantage and creating firm financial foundations for the future.

I am very confident that WPP has a bright future ahead. This is a WPP that is fit for the future and built to win. Now we're going to draw this strategy update to a close. We're going to invite questions from the audience for me, Joanne, Brian or any members of the senior leadership team.

And I want to thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Cindy. My name is Tom Singlehurst. I head up Investor Relations for WPP. We're going to go to questions. We'll -- before we dive in, a couple of quick parish notices. For those in the room, we're going to bring a mic to you. So if you can just be patient. If you could state your name and which firm you represent, that would be fantastic.

And to make sure we've got enough time for everyone, it would be hugely appreciated if you could ration yourself to maybe 2 questions and a follow-up. [Operator Instructions] But let's start with questions in the room.

Laura, maybe start with you.

Laura Metayer from Morgan Stanley. Three questions today, please. First question on differentiation and competitive advantage. I'm curious, what do you think is the single differentiation of WPP. Obviously, we've heard from peers need to like have an integrated offering, a focus on data, driving leading with AI.

So I'm just wondering what do you think is the single differentiating factor of WPP. Second question is when you talked about the JLR win, you said you pitched it as an outcome-based revenue model. Do you mind providing a little bit more details here, like any KPIs that -- and if you can also say maybe like telling us a little bit more generally, like how you think the revenue model will evolve and what sort of KPIs will be used to measure performance?

And then lastly, on the Enterprise Solutions business, could you give us an example of a typical project of WPP here and how it differs from leading IT services consultants because obviously, it's part of an agency.

Sure. Thank you for your questions, Laura. They're great. I'll have a go at the first one and then maybe invite Johnny Horny to talk about JLR. He led the pitch and maybe Jeff Geheb to give an example of an enterprise solution engagement, if that's okay. So I think Brian was incredibly articulate on this. I tried to paint a picture of WPP Open as a very different proposition, right?

And it's -- because it's integrated, it's not a point solution. It transforms the entire end-to-end marketing workflow. It's powered by Open Intelligence, which is our foundational data layer. And we've integrated InfoSum's distributed data collaboration capabilities, which means it's built for the future of marketing, not the past. And that is an incredible competitive advantage. Like we have all the ingredients we need to win. And what we really needed to do is pull it all together into an integrated proposition and then power it with this incredible platform that we have.

And frankly, when clients see that, they see the power of it and its ability to drive growth without compromising on data ownership. We win in head-to-head competition. That's what you're seeing happen. But I don't know, Brian, do you -- is there anything you want to add?

I think one of the things I said was that every client is different. And there is no one approach to driving business results for clients. We've built a platform in WPP Open that is flexible that includes our own proprietary technology, but also partners effectively with other companies. So we're always ready for what's next. And we built a data model that similarly doesn't rely on a static data asset that is a legacy CRM solution.

Instead, it relies on the ability to connect any and all data sources so that we can be more intelligent and more dynamic in understanding consumer behavior and driving those business results for our clients. So it's different for every client. But as Cindy said, it's really an integrated approach across all parts of our business grounded in that data and technology strategy.

Thank you. I would just add, we are still contracting with JLR. So there's a limit to what we can share. But Johnny, why don't you say a few words?

Yes, sure. Yes. Thanks for mentioning that. We haven't officially been appointed by JLR. We pitched throughout last year, went into a period of exclusivity with them through January, and we're now contracting and hoping that by March will be live. But at the core of our pitch to your question, I guess, what's our secret sauce? I think our secret sauce is where you put everything you've seen this morning together.

So starting with Open Intelligence to be able to build cohorts and understand audiences in a way that doesn't require us to do simply old-fashioned ID matching, but to keep the data where it is, keep it safe and secure and then put that into a team that we're going to build with JLR, where we and they are all together on the open platform end-to-end. And it's the end-to-end integrated nature of this offer that I think then allows us to make what I think are becoming genuinely competitive offers when it comes to outcomes.

So those outcomes aren't do you like the agency you work with, those outcomes are, are we selling more product? And will we get paid on being able to sell more product by being able to build their brands and measurably show that there's greater levels of desire for their products and the crown jewels of brands that they've got. So we haven't finished contracting, but those are the defining and that pitch was against all the major holding companies. I think those are going to be the integrated propositions that will see us win JLR and hopefully many more JLRs pulling these ingredients together.

Thanks, Johnny.

Can I just build on that because Laura, I think stepping back a little bit, your question is around what happens with a time and materials model with AI. And the story is really moving on. Hopefully, you picked it up today. Our clients are using us and it's for the industry really. They need brand safety. They need to know that they have got cultural nuances. They have the best creative and strategy talent, working with them on their brands to really differentiate.

And also that they've got the access to the best talent. And navigating through what is an incredibly and ever more complex ecosystem is incredibly challenging for CMOs. It's getting tougher and tougher. And that's what they're paying us for. It's no longer they're paying for us to create 5 ads. In fact, we can create 1,000 ads, but it's how do you get those ads into the right audiences.

And that's really what they're paying for, which is really enabling this output-based pricing, it's outcome-based pricing, and it's also shifting more to tech fees and licensing fees as well. So this will be an evolution, but we're making lots of progress in this area.

To answer your question about enterprise solution scaling. So let's just stay with automotive. This could be JLR. It's certainly true with Ford. So when you begin to solve a marketing problem around content transformation or a customer experience challenge for marketing and you start with the CMO, you quickly evolve that conversation and realize that's an enterprise problem you're solving. Content doesn't live in marketing. It lives as an asset of the entire company.

Customer experience lives as an asset of service, brand of product development. And so the nature of our work usually begins with the marketer and then it expands further and further and further. And soon, we're in rooms with IT leaders, procurement leaders, service leaders. And instead of using their silos to define how we work, we're pulling them together. And with AI, that's collapsing at an even more increased rate of change.

So AI platforms right now are -- they're collapsing the buying patterns with IT buyers used to buy a platform, implement it for years and then draw the business in. Nowadays, there's a really fast iteration cycle. So we're finding ourselves in rooms now starting with marketing, but really extends to all the stakeholder groups.

Can we go to Nico.

Nicolas Langlet from BNP Paribas. I've got 3 questions. The first one on the existing business with clients. which was definitely a weak part in the 2025 performance. Can you tell us a bit more about what happened? Is it related to scope reduction, pricing pressure? Or can you give us more detail about that? And what are the concrete actions you have already implemented to stabilize the business with the existing clients? The second question on WPP Open Pro.

Can you give us an update regarding the rollout, the first feedback and what sort of opportunity you see in the mid- to long term? And finally, of the GBP 500 million gross cost reduction, have you included any benefit from generative AI tools in that GBP 500 million? And if you can share that? And of the GBP 500 million, how much do you plan to reinvest in the business?

Yes, why don't you take the first?

Okay. So look, Nico, it's absolutely the right question. If you look at our performance in 2025, we talked about a drag from net new business of about 150 basis points. So that points to just under 400 basis points from the underlying business. And the majority of the cuts that we saw really came from the creative part of our business.

And as I said in my prepared remarks, it was really an overview, and we did see significant spending cuts, particularly from the start of Q2. Look, we can point to different reasons for it, but there was an awful lot of uncertainty, and we saw heightened volatility across clients. We've talked about the polarization. Many clients, we saw very strong growth during the year, but others cut significantly and at very short notice as well.

And effective, we tend to have more project-based spend in our business. And of course, that's often the first places that get cut when we see that volatility. And I would also just add that as you heard from Brian today, Brian and the team have been incredibly busy in the last 18 months really setting up our competitive proposition for the future, redesigning how we deliver for clients. And that undoubtedly has had some disruption in the business and the underlying business.

And we've been very deliberate in Elevate28 that Brian and the team have done a lot of the heavy lift and their focus is now on execution. So it sort of brings you on to the second part, what are we doing about it. So if you think about that for media. And then with the creative part of the business, we are building an incredible powerhouse within WPP Creative.

We did get in our own way a lot of the time in the past with our silos. WPP Creative will enable scaled capabilities across all of our agencies. WPP Open as well will enable our creative teams to work in a standardized way, and that's everything from big large clients to smaller clients. So it will improve what we're delivering, and that will help both with our larger clients and that tail of clients where we've seen more reductions in spend.

And I think that's really important with creative. Sometimes we get very focused on the headline cost saving, but it really is about creating a more agile organization with fewer silos. And just on the GBP 500 million of growth savings and how much we're going to reinvest. I talked about the in-year savings in '26 being GBP 100 million annualized savings will be GBP 250 million.

All of that we're going to reinvest in 2026. I talked about this priority to stabilize and invest in the growth drivers, we will do that. Look, it's too early to say how much of the remainder we will invest, but I would assume that we will invest as much as we need of that to support our growth ambitions.

I'm happy to say a few words about WPP Open Pro. It's early days, right? We only launched a few months ago. But what we did was basically productize or SaaS-ified certain capabilities from within the WPP Open platform. And we did it to target the mid-market SMB kind of end of the client segment. The clients that would largely look to self-service that kind of capability.

I'm very encouraged actually. We've got a number of deals with clients. We've got a very healthy pipeline against this, albeit it's small in absolute terms. I think the interesting learning from my perspective is our top 100 clients, say, are looking at WPP Open Pro as a way to software enable the long tail of markets that they service. So rather than having full teams on the ground, you can start to see a world where they can software enable their long tail. And that's kind of interesting.

Perfect. Maybe we can go to Adrien.

Cindy, this is Adrien from Bank of America. So I've got maybe 2 questions maybe for Brian and maybe one for you, Cindy. Jon, I know we're talking this afternoon. So I'll leave the financial questions maybe for later. But maybe, Brian, on -- you talked about all the business wins in Q4 and Q1 and well done on that.

Can you tell us like what was the factor or what were the factors behind those wins? And how much of a factor price was behind those wins? And then secondly, I know we've talked about this before, but you put data at the core of your strategy. But how do you solve for the fact that you don't really have, as far as I know, at least a proprietary identity graph compared to competitors? And maybe more for Cindy. So today, we heard a lot about the opportunities. Sorry to come back on the risk.

How much like revenue attrition would you expect in maybe in creative because of AI deflation around the revenue per head, for example, how much would you anticipate for the next couple of years?

Adrien, in terms of the new business wins, everything that I showed in terms of our proposition contributed to those wins. And without going client by client, what I said about every client being different applies to how we pitch business and then how we ultimately service business. So whether that was winning JLR or NCL or the various other wins, each one of those solutions was different.

And the great thing about our platform is it allows that and it enables us to go in and do things differently for clients. So selling cars is different than selling cruises is different than various other clients that we have. So I think that contributed to it. The way that we're structured also helps quite a bit. So we're not going into these pitches as Mindshare or Wavemaker or one of our other agencies, we're going to these pitches as WPP media. And increasingly, we're going into these pitches as WPP. So we get a lot of help from our colleagues at VML and Ogilvy and AKQA and from WPP production.

And the clients see that, and they know that while we're pitching one thing, we're going to offer a full breadth of services over time. All these pitches are competitive, so price is always a factor, but that wasn't a defining factor in any of these pitches. We have a proprietary identity asset.

One of the things that you have to understand is that identity is pretty ubiquitous in the market. So there are lots of companies that provide identity solutions. And it's really an old-fashioned notion of what we need to do to join up disparate data points. So we also have an identity asset called MerLink. We see every adult in the United States and we use that. We also use other partners like Experian when we want to augment that. And because we have a solution that allows us to access any identity asset, it's really not a problem for us.

Having identity is such a small part of what you have to do to understand consumer behavior. What we do have is InfoSum, which allows us to connect to hundreds of other data sources. And instead of those being household addresses or e-mail addresses, these are what are people consuming on TikTok? How are they interacting with creators on YouTube. Those signals are much more important than having a traditional identity asset, which again, is a legacy system and fairly ubiquitous and accessible in the market.

Yes. I would just build -- thanks for your question, Adrien. I would just build on what Brian said. I mean, I've never met a client that doesn't want more for less. That's not a new dynamic. We operate in a very highly competitive market and price pressure is a constant feature, right? But I would say that we probably accept on some level some downward pricing pressure from AI productivity, if you will.

But what we're doing here is creating an organization that can cross-sell more effectively to address the white space within our installed client base and be more effective at converting new business. If you take our top 25 clients, for example, we probably capture at best 1/3 of addressable spend. When we unlock this collaboration and cross-sell opportunity for WPP, we have massive opportunity to offset and grow in those areas.

Why don't you pass it on to Steve, given he's right next to you.

Steve Liechti from Deutsche Numis. Just on the -- some numbers, sorry. You said 5% to 6% gross hit from losses. Can you quantify the '25 and '26 to date wins to kind of give us some idea of a net number to work off as we stand today? So that's the first question. Second, Brian, in the new setup and the new kind of pitch that you're doing to clients, where you haven't won, why was that?

I know things is different, but it would just be useful to hear some insights there. And you also said you had some more work to do as well in your comments. I just wonder from my perspective, how much is the pitch that you're going with the clients now absolutely the right pitch? And what more is there that you do have to do?

It's a very dynamic business. So it's very rare that the right pitch today is the right pitch a week from now or a month from now. So when I say we have more work to do, it's that we're on a constant quest to meet the needs of our clients in a rapidly evolving world, and that's never going to change. Structurally, we're set up to win, and we have been winning.

From a data and technology standpoint, I feel great about where we are. We have the building blocks in place to evolve, not just win today, but evolve as the market evolves. So I feel great about that. In terms of why we didn't win, I say all the time to the team, you can be the best in a pitch, you can be the best on the day and you can still lose a pitch. And there are lots of factors that go into it. Sometimes it's price. Sometimes we don't feel comfortable with where a prospect is taking us in terms of commercial negotiations.

Sometimes it's an affinity for one of our competitors between a CMO that knows a certain team. So there are lots of different factors that go into it. And we're not going to win every pitch, but we need to go into every pitch with the right solution for clients. And then I feel great about getting our fair share and actually exceeding our fair share and starting to win back the market share that we've lost.

Thanks for the question, Steve. I'm always hesitant at this time of the year to give a net new business because there's a whole year to play for, there's a pipeline, et cetera. But let me share some of the data that we've already shared and you'll be able to kind of broadly figure it out. And then I'll just give you some context around the pipeline. So last year, we said that our gross wins were 300 to 400 basis points of drag, and then we ended up at the top end of that. And we said that the net new business impact was about 150 basis points for 2025.

Really encouraging, the gross win impact for 2026 exceeds and that gross win impact in 2025, and that really reflects in recent months, the new business, the better business performance that we've seen, and that's really encouraging. 2025 was a much lower activity year for new business. What we have seen in recent months is the pipeline activity building up again, which is also encouraging. And I would also often get asked, what's defensive and what's offensive?

And it's very interesting when you look at the pipeline and the opportunities, it's less black and white than that. It's oftentimes you're defending some scope, but you also have an opportunity to win more. And so it's getting much more nuanced. But as I said, encouraged by the activity, the pickup in the pipeline and of course, the momentum that we've seen in recent months.

Perfect. I'm just going to do a couple of questions from the webcast, and then I will get back to the room. First one is on the broader strategic shift at WPP to become a more holistic partner to solve challenges for clients. Does this increasingly take WPP into competition with different competitors? And how well do you think you are positioned to win against them?

Yes, that's for me, right? Look, I think we have all the ingredients we need to win. Like we have, as I said, amazing talent, incredible capabilities, fantastic technology and technology partnerships. We have scale. We have the trust of our clients, which is super important. What we need to do now is pull it all together into an integrated proposition and lead with our agentic marketing platform. And when we do that, I think what you're seeing is we're pretty hard to beat for clients that are ready for that. Like all of our clients are on a journey.

Some are really at the very beginning, some are way down the line and most are somewhere in between. But when you see the power of that, turn up in your office and the growth that we can deliver, again, without compromising on data ownership, it's a very strong proposition. So I feel very confident that we're going to be in a great position to deliver this on a repeatable sustained basis.

Perfect. And one more from the webcast before coming back to the room. It's on a very important topic, which is leverage. So I presume for Joanne. A question here about clarifying the leverage framework. You previously guided to a net leverage target of 1.5 to 1.75x. Has this target been withdrawn? And how do you manage the process with the rating agencies regarding an investment-grade rating?

Okay. What we've clearly shared today in our capital allocation framework is our commitment to an investment grade balance sheet and that feels more relevant as we progress through Elevate28 plan feels more relevant than the historic range that we had and we are very committed to that investment-grade balance sheet. And I think, as I said in my remarks, and that's reinforced with the Fitch rating.

I want to spend a bit of time on leverage as well. Leverage is really driven by, obviously, EBITDA and net debt. And our net debt -- our average net debt through '25 has actually come down slightly. And so our elevated leverage as a result of that lower EBITDA. And hopefully, as you've heard today, and we presented a plan that is going to get us back to growth. And obviously, with that, we'll follow improved margin, profitability, improved cash generation and we'll help that out.

We also talked about the importance of reducing our gross debt. We talked about the role that the portfolio review will play on that. And over the course of Elevate28 we expect our leverage to come down.

We do have liquidity at the end of the year of GBP 4.4 billion. Our maturity profile is 5.8 years. We recently refinanced our bond, et cetera. So we're in a very strong position. In terms of the rating agencies, I mean, many of them are here today. And we have a very strong relationship with the rating agencies. We engage with the rating agencies, we listen to what's important from their perspective. And like all stakeholders, we take that into consideration as we ensure that we're making the right decisions and taking the right actions to ultimately deliver long-term returns for all of those stakeholders.

Let's come back to the room. Can we go to Julien at the back. Sorry, yes, when you get the microphone back. Sorry.

Julien Roch with Barclays. Looking at Page 41, you have a production CAGR over '24, '28 of minus 1% for the industry. I thought it was a growing part of agency services. So why the decline for the industry? And what can WP production can grow at? That's my first question. Then on organic, accelerate organic growth in 2028, previous CEO had a 3% plus organic guidance. So if everything goes according to plan, what's your cruising altitude? What is your ambition?

And then lastly, moving from holding company to a single company, does that mean one P&L per country? Or will you still have separate P&L for the new 4 entities? Or will you still have separate P&L per agencies?

Sorry, Joanne, I think you're on.

I might need to repeat your second question, but let me answer the first and the third first, and we can come back to that. Yes, look, on production, and I shared this in my remarks -- prepared remarks that there's subdued growth in production overall. That's not the way to look at what production can mean for our business and how that can contribute to our growth.

Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that our clients spend and their production today goes outside of WPP. It goes to a variety of third-party providers. And hopefully, as you saw today as well, production is being completely revolutionized and transformed by AI. We talked about particular parts of production, high-velocity production, which is growing at 38%. That's a very small part of the production market today, but it is a huge opportunity. And as the largest agency globally and with the investment that we're making in content studios and with our team, we're incredibly well placed to take advantage of that.

And also with the WPP production consolidation, we are much fit for purpose to really internalize a lot of that client spend, which we can, in an integrated proposition, make it more efficient for our clients. So it's really, really a win-win and our clients are getting the very best of production capability in the market and that AI investment as well. In terms of the P&Ls, so how we will operate and maybe I'll start with WPP Creative and then look at it overall. So the WPP Creative will run on P&Ls.

The regional and market models will mirror media. And in certain markets as well, actually, those media and creative and production operations and teams will be even more integrated. But we will have one P&L for WPP Creative for the markets. For the agencies, we will still measure them on their revenues and their contributions, but that will not be the lead P&L.

And then across the other 4 areas, of course, they will each have their P&Ls that will roll up to WPP overall. I think the most important thing is as we talk today about the incentives, we have redesigned our incentive model so that it's much more aligned -- everybody is much more aligned on a WPP outcome, and we struck that balance right where it's still incentives that people can really influence as well. So a much simpler P&L structure even if I did.

Just to build on that because I'm trying to see what's behind your question. Please don't underestimate the enormity of the change that we're making. We're moving from hundreds of stand-alone operating companies to 4 operating units across 4 regions.

And this common incentive that is linked to WPP's overall performance is going to change behavior in very dramatic ways. It's going to take all the friction out of the organization. It's going to make us much more client obsessed. It's going to enable us to put the right resource in front of the right client at the right time. So I just wanted to say -- please don't underestimate what's involved in making these changes that we're proposing.

And then, Julien, I think your second question was around our ambition on organic growth, if that's right.

That's right.

And I said we weren't going to give specific medium-term targets, and that was quite intentional. We talked about the 3 phases. The job that we have to do as a management team in '26 is to stabilize the business, continue to build on that new business momentum and improve our client retention. And that will get us back to growth at some point during 2027, and then we will accelerate from there.

So I'm intentionally not putting a number on it, but you can -- that will give you a sense of what we're expecting in terms of the trajectory.

No, I understand that you don't want to give us like a '28 numbers, but it's more -- actually, it's probably more a question for Cindy, right, is what's your ambition in terms of growth rate in 5 years, in 10 years? What would you consider a success for WPP is achieving the previous target of 3% or you actually have more ambition than that? -- without giving us a year or whatever, but what's the...

I'd like to get to the end of Elevate28 capturing our fair share of the market and then go beyond. But look, we're -- in the short term, I'm absolutely focused on delivering growth for clients, building on our market momentum and stabilizing our performance. And that will remain our short-term focus.

Can we go with Annick?

Annick Maas from Bernstein. And first question is, as a company which is employing 100,000 people in a world where change is becoming more and more -- it's accelerating basically, how can you stay nimble and keep up with this pace?

Or what are the challenges here? The second one is on AI, and this is probably for and it's more conceptually. I guess AI is leading to staff efficiencies in terms of absolute numbers of stuff, but you also have an unprecedented industry structure with one less players. So how do you think conceptually about number of staff and absolute and staff cost inflation in the next years? And then you spoke about the rationalization of the portfolio. I suspect you speak with a few players. Who are these potential buyers?

Good. Well, look, I'll say in terms of staying nimble, like that's a continuous process, right? We invest in skilling and building new capabilities in our employees on a continuous basis. We have creative technology apprenticeships. We have all kinds of formal AI coaching and training that we put our people through. But I think it also -- it's about also staying close to our partners. We have what we call forward deployed engineers.

So we take resources from our technology partners. We put them into our organization. We train them on our platform. And then we send them into clients to co-innovate on new solutions. So I think just being in and around this environment creates a very, as I said, very AI native mindset where we can just continuously build these capabilities. These aren't capabilities you build through formal online training. You have to get your hands on it and actually put it to work for clients. And that's -- that's really how we're staying nimble and in front of things. But do you want to take the question on...

Yes. And exactly through the questions, I think. Nico, I think it was you asked me about AI efficiencies and I didn't answer. Look, as we look at the business going forward, undoubtedly, if nothing else changed, we can do more with less. So we can do a lot more with a lot fewer people, but it's never just as simple as that. What we're able to do now for our clients is before we might have created 5 ads and we were managing that.

Now it might be 1,000 ads and they're very different how those ads need to be used to target audiences and drive returns. That's requiring different skills and different talent in the organization. Now some of that, we are upskilling our people, some of that we're bringing new talent into the organization. And if you think about the plan that we shared today, we will be reallocating talent around the business.

So yes, we will be delivering cost savings. And in people -- in a business where most of our cost savings are people, that will mean a reduction of certain heads, but we will be reinvesting back into talent, different types of talent, commerce talent, influencer talent, much more analytics talent. We already have that at scale today, but really, those are the areas that we will be investing in and with that will come a different profile.

In terms of how we measure it, the most important metric will be revenue per head, and that will reflect also our ambition to grow and do more with people, decouple our revenue model from our FTEs. And that's really all around our client delivery. In the back office, there's an opportunity, and we're already doing it in pockets. How do we leverage open, how do we leverage AI to drive productivity savings in our back office. And with the plans over Elevate28, we will do much more of that, much more at scale and on a standardized level. Just in terms of the question, is there AI productivity you asked built into the GBP 500 million.

There is on the back office side. But on the front office, the way we think about it is we are creating productivity efficiencies in how we do things, but we're reinvesting that back into delivering even more value, even more outcomes for our clients. And then that feeds into the evolution of our commercial model as well. So that's all built into our plans. But we don't pull out and say we're going to deliver productivity savings from that delivery. We think about it much more holistic. There was a third...

Portfolio.

The buyers. Well, look, as I -- as we shared and particularly in the people business, incredibly sensitive, and we don't -- we're not at a point where we're ready to share externally. What is important is that we've seen an opportunity where we have embedded value of great assets that we have, and that will give us greater degree of financial flexibility and enable us to target our capital allocation more. And for some of these assets, there are many buyers, some of them are attractive assets.

We go with Ciaran.

A couple left for me. Joanne, maybe just on your comments on 2027. Can you clarify how we should understand the comments of growth during 2027? Should we think about that as implying a positive exit rate on like-for-likes rather than necessarily positive like-for-like growth for FY '27 in total? And then maybe, Cindy, could you just give us a bit more color on the new incentives? I guess, how do you kind of balance it between individual remit and kind of growth targets?

And I guess, just in terms of what they look like versus the legacy incentive structures, how different are they? And then just finally, I mean, on the legacy structures, do they roll off over a period of time? Or what is that phasing period between the new structures and the old structures going at?

Very quick answer to your first, it's the latter. So it's during 2027. So you should think about it as a positive exit rate rather than for 2027 as a whole.

So on the incentives, basically, if you're sitting in an operating unit, your incentives are 50% tied to your operating unit and 50% tied to WPP. If you're in WPP as part of a corporate function, you're 100% WPP. If you're a GCL, you're paid on your client growth. It's that simple. And it's dramatically different from where we are today, where if you're in an agency, you're paid on your agency results primarily.

So that is very, very different. And that's why I think it's going to unlock very different behavior, much different collaboration. In the past, our agencies competed with each other. That was the model. Today, when we go into a pitch, we cast the right resource for the right client at the right time and -- it enables that. It enables a much more client-centric approach to the business. Just to add, we're implementing that in 2026.

I got a couple of people in the wings. I'm going to start with Anna, I think, at the back, and then we'll come to you, sir.

Anna Patrice from Berenberg. A couple of questions from my side. So you were talking about the evolving remuneration part from time and material to project-based. So maybe how it has evolved in the past over the last couple of years? Like what's the share of time and material overall? And where do you see that going into the future? And what could be the impact on your profitability? That's the first question.

The second question on the capital allocation, you were also referring to M&A. So just quickly, maybe what are you looking for? What are the things that are still kind of white spots for you that you would like to enforce within the overall WPP?

Shall I take the first one?

Yes.

So just in terms of that evolution, and it's -- that's the way you should think about it. This will be an evolution in our commercial model. And this is an evolution for the industry and for our clients as well. So there's 3 key areas that we look at.

One is output-based pricing and where we see more and more of that is in our production business today. We then have performance or outcome based pricing. We've talked a little bit about that. I mean we've always had an element of that in our fee structures with clients, but that's becoming increasingly important, particularly as Brian had shared today how we can measure that outcome more. And the third element is just tech and labor fees as well. That can be through licensing fees, through bundles, through subscriptions, et cetera.

And all 3 of those we have in our business today. So with many of our clients for parts of work that we do for them, we're working with our clients to understand what works best, what aligns structures. clients we have going much more major outcome and others, it's more of an evolution of it. So really that's the way to think about it. So -- but very, very much encouraged by the shift that we're seeing. And as we are more and more confident in what we can deliver for our clients, of course, that creates more stickiness with clients.

We see a big opportunity to enlarge the scope of what we do for clients. And you asked specific on margin on a per unit basis, we often say, of course, if you just look at it and everything else is the same, it would be deflationary in revenue because we can produce units at a lower cost. But actually what's more important, what clients are paying a premium for is all of that brand safety, the culture strategic input that we're bringing and how we can drive more growth. We're able to do that in a much more efficient way. And so we're looking at this to be ultimately over time, margin enhancing for us.

Yes. On your question on M&A, again, I would just repeat that Phase 1 of our plan, we are really deeply focused on stabilizing our performance, delivering growth for our clients and building on the current market momentum that we have. As we get into later stage and free up capacity to invest in growth, we certainly will.

And I would -- I stand by the statement we have everything we need to win. But as we create capacity to invest, I'll be looking to enhance in those growth areas that we mentioned, media, data, commerce, social influencer and the growth areas. But that's not the short-term focus. Short-term focus is on stabilizing our performance.

Gentlemen over here has been by patient.

Jerome Bodin from ODDO BHF. Two questions. The first one on the WPP creative. So just to make sure I have properly understood. Will the idea be to pitch from WPP creative or from at the network level? That's my first question. And then also still on WPP Creative. So I have understood that the idea is to improve the mobility in terms of talent between all the networks.

So how do you plan to make the improvements from a pure HR perspective in terms of systems and HR architecture? I think it's not so easy. Second question on disposal. So I fully understood that you can't give any names, but could you maybe explain what could be the idea in terms of disposal? Will it be an asset disposal at 100%? Or could you partner with someone with a minority stake? And then linked to that, could we have an update on Kantar on the stake in Kantar, where you are? And what do you plan?

What was the last question?

Kantar.

Jon? You want to say a word on WPP Creative, our CEO of WPP Creative.

You can see where it came from. Thank you. Yes, first of all, on WPP Trade, it's -- after being at some of these investor meetings in the past, it's nice not to come and talk about a big merger that we're going through in the creative agencies. I've done that before. We all know that game. We've got -- in the analysis we've done in the last 6 months, we've got really powerful agencies. We've done that work in these last 5 years.

And I saw that just this week, the drum creative rankings, #1, Ogilvy, #2 VML. It's not a super power we want to walk away from. So that's thing number one. And so I'm really excited about the strategy of not merging things, but getting behind our agencies. So that's a precursor to your first question, which is -- we're not using WPP Creative as a brand or an agency. It's not an agency. It's an operating system lets those great agencies, those very creative agencies operate together because we have a couple of beliefs, and we heard this from our clients.

Our clients love our agencies. They love the choice. They love the creativity, they love the diversity, but they found it hard to work with them and found that either the clients or our GCLs, our global client leaders had to do the navigation, and that was difficult. So we're doing what we think is the best of both worlds, build around these great agencies, highly recognized, very creative agencies that make it easier to navigate. So WPP Creative is simply a way to navigate. It's an operating system. It's not an agency with a very light layer of infrastructure between them to make that happen.

And if we do that, we will grow better than we ever have before as WPP and as creative agency. So if we unite them in the right way, which we are, -- we have the second part of your question, which is the ability for talent to move around between those agencies or to team up for client assignments. That's something we haven't had as well as we should have in the past. So that mobility, the second part of your question is key, and that's one of the reasons for the group. If we do this, we can also put better capability across all our creative agencies.

Cindy talked about enterprise solutions. Jeff talked about it. This will be different than other holding companies creative agency groups, if you will, because of the embedment of everything Jeff and Cindy talked about with Enterprise Solutions. So to your point, WP Creative is not an agency. It's an operating system lets the great agencies. The creative agencies of WPP be great individually and be great together; and two, it allows for talent mobility.

Jerome, thanks for your question, and I hope you'll forgive me for not answering it. We're not going to name any assets or give any further guidance today. We've carried out a complete strategic review of our group. We've identified assets that we feel we're probably not the best owners for in the long term. We've started a formal process. And as soon as we have anything to report, we will. But thanks for the question.

And I'll just follow up with Kantar, which you asked specifically about. I mean, Kantar, obviously, they sold the media part of the business last year. And they now have 2 divisions, Numerator Worldpanel and Kantar Brands. And those 2 divisions, they've done a big lift in terms of those 2 setting them up to operate independently, and that will be completed in the next few months.

Obviously, that gives more flexibility in terms of realizing value from that business for both ourselves and BN, and we're very aligned with BN on the time lines for that, but nothing really more to add. I mean I think just specifically to your question on could this look like minority sales? Yes, it could. So there may be some assets that we bring majority owners into as well.

And Richard.

I will keep it to 2 questions. Richard Kramer from Arete Research. Cindy, you mentioned productizing WPP Open and Pro and for the mid-market in particular, do you see offerings like Meta, Andromeda and Google Pomelli as fundamentally competing with WPP? Or do you see them as somehow complementary?

And my question for Brian, there's been a lot of recent discussion and disclosure around principal trading and rebates. How are you going to address this question of transparency going forward? And is this an opportunity in the market for you to take some more share?

Thanks for your question, Richard. As I said, there's a lot of point solutions out there. Some are tied to specific platforms. I think when companies start to stack all these up, -- it becomes expensive, complex and you break the workflow. So I don't -- I think what we have is fundamentally different. It's an end-to-end platform. We are agnostic and independent in terms of how we invest our clients' media budgets. And we have relationships with all the major platforms anyway.

So I think what's behind your question is, are we going to be disintermediated by the big tech players? I don't think it's that easy to just turn on a solution in a client environment and watch the magic happen. And this involves real transformation and our clients need help. As I suggested, their data is not always ready. Their people aren't always ready. Their systems aren't always ready. So I see a real opportunity in being that intelligent orchestration layer. I don't see -- we're not seeing a disintermediation dynamic play out in any way.

In terms of principal Trading, building compelling performance-oriented products has always been a part of our business, Richard, as you know. In fact, WPP was really a pioneer in building products that drive value for clients. In many cases, those are part and parcel of the services that we provide our clients. And in other cases, it requires us to invest, invest in technology, invest in our trading partners, invest in sources of data and then pull all of that together on behalf of our clients to drive performance.

In a lot of markets for a lot of different channels that we service, we do sell principal media products to our clients. And those products are actually built with our clients. And they are asking us for more, frankly. Both Cindy and Joanne touched on the fact that our clients, in many cases, are CMOs, CMOs are under tremendous pressure to prove the value of marketing and grow their business. And so in many cases, they come to us and they say, how can you help us navigate addressable television? How can you help us navigate social media or commerce or retail media.

And with our clients, we design products where, in many cases, we have to invest in those products. So it's a part of our business, and it's a growing part of our business, and I continue -- I expect it to continue to grow over time. In terms of us taking share, I do think that we can take share through our investment in those products. Again, if you come back to our strategy with respect to technology, we're not trying to sell assets that we acquired for billions of dollars.

We're trying to work with technology companies, data companies, media companies to connect these things to build products that drive better performance. So in many ways, we are more impartial, more objective in how we construct our principal-based media products, and therefore, they're more compelling to our clients, and I expect they'll buy more of them over time.

Now we promised to get you out by midday. I've got a couple of questions, 3 from the webcast, and then we'll draw a line under it. But first one for Joanne, once again on leverage and the balance sheet. Could you please let us know if you intend to refinance the September '26 bond out of cash or by issuing another bond? That was the first question.

That's easy. We've done that. We refinanced in December, our GBP 1 billion bond, which covers that September maturity and our next maturity after that isn't until May '27.

Perfect. Second question, we've had a couple of these, and so I'm synthesizing them, but it's -- for you, Cindy, it's about the transition from moving from the Board to being a CEO. Can you talk about the challenges and surprises during that process?

Gosh, how long do we have? Well, look, I think on balance, it was a strategic advantage because I knew the team, I knew the business, I knew many of the clients. So I think I avoided the 6-month onboarding experience that perhaps an outsider would. And actually, I had -- as I said, I had a thesis even before I arrived in the role. And so I just think it was a strategic advantage and helped me get to where I wanted to get to faster and actually started making changes relatively quickly. So -- but there's always surprises along the way, right? We'll save that for another day.

Final question. A couple of people have mentioned the Enterprise Solutions capability, the fact that it's 13% of revenue, and that feels high. Where does it come from? Is it -- where are the assets based? And what's their genesis? It might be one for Jon and Jeff.

Jeff, do you want to take it?

Sure.

Okay. Go forward.

Yes. So the nature of where it came from is 10 years of acquiring companies, 10 years of building capability inside of our creative agencies inside of really every company inside of WPP to be relevant was expanding into new asks. So they were expanding into CRM. They were expanding into technology because their value proposition required them to do it. And so what it happened over the years is that we had distributed capability all over the company.

And through the acquisitions, integrations, as Jon mentioned, specifically when VML and Wunderman Thompson came together, we began to pool all of these assets together, and we could bring them to clients in new ways that didn't require them to, I think Cindy said, shop. They could come together in a holistic offering. So where would you have found it? You would have found it in all the different P&Ls, all the different regions, all the different markets.

And so really, what we're doing now is just we're bringing them together, and we're putting under a framework where not every company or a capability is competing on to itself. And so for the first time, you're going to find it seen outside of the context. This isn't a start-up. I mean we've been doing this for a while. We've been competing on this for a while, but you'll just find it under VML. You would find it in Ogilvy, you would find it distributed throughout the network. So that's where it came from.

So we're strapping rocket boosters to...

Yes. That's right.

WPP Enterprise Solutions. Good. Shall I wrap? Okay. Super. Look, I want to thank you all for joining us today. I mean I've met many of our shareholders individually over the past few months, and I'm genuinely always grateful for your insights and for your support. And thank you. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your trust in us. And we really look forward to sharing our journey as we move forward. So thank you all for coming and for listening. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining. For those of you that I have not yet met, I'm Cindy Rose, and I'm delighted to have taken on the role of CEO of WPP 60 days ago.

I want to speak to you candidly today. I acknowledge that many of our investors have been on a challenging journey with WPP, and today's results underline those challenges. I've read the commentary, followed the share price performance. I fully understand your frustration and the need for action. Our recent performance has not been acceptable. I value our shareholders, and I thank you for your support, and I look forward to engaging with you over the coming weeks and months. Please rest assured that a key priority for me and my team is to strengthen our financial performance and in doing so, deliver improved shareholder returns while continuing to deliver great success for our clients.

I'm going to hand over to Joanne to take us through the details of the quarter. And in a few minutes, I'll come back and share with you some perspectives on why I'm here and what I've observed over my first 60 days.

Thank you, Cindy, and good morning, everyone. So let me take you through some more detail on our third quarter 2025 performance. Starting on Slide 5, like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs fell 5.9% in the quarter, which is weaker than expected and leaves our year-to-date like-for-like performance declining at 4.8%. The timing and phasing of new business losses was as anticipated and represented a drag in the quarter, in line with expectations. I will discuss the detail in terms of movement by geography, capability and client sector shortly, but underlying client spend continues to see a high level of polarization and aggregate volatility with a weighting towards caution.

In addition to the organic decline, we continue to see the negative impact of disposals and in particular, FGS Global, which represented a drag on reported sales of 3.2%. This effect will tail off in the fourth quarter when we anniversary the sale of FGS in November.

Finally, FX remains a headwind with the impact in the quarter equivalent to a 1.7% drag on net sales, largely driven by U.S. dollar weakness and mildly offset by a strengthening euro. Overall, revenue less pass-through costs was down 11.1% in the quarter.

Turning to Slide 6 and new business, where overall, we saw a slightly better performance in the third quarter. Within Media, we saw the retention of M&S in the U.K. as well as wins with TruGreen in the U.S., Suncorp in Australia, and Maersk and Mastercard globally. We have to acknowledge, however, that the quarter also saw client losses, including Bayer, and we know that based on convergence data, overall levels of media activity remains subdued relative to historical levels.

Looking beyond Media, Creative new business wins included an expanded global mandate from Haleon, PwC globally and the Financial Times in the U.K. We continue to see robust momentum within PR, design, brand and identity with wins from Stellantis, Lipton Teas and Tourism New Zealand.

Moving to Slide 7 and performance across our businesses. Global Integrated Agencies experienced another challenging quarter, posting a like-for-like decline of 6.2%. Within this, WPP Media saw a like-for-like decline of 5.7% compared to a reported like-for-like decline of 4.7% in the second quarter. This takes the 9-months performance to a like-for-like decline of 3.9%. We expect growth to deteriorate further into the fourth quarter, reflecting the impact from in-year client losses, which start to ramp down from the beginning of this quarter.

There are two factors driving our Media performance. Firstly, the impact of net new business. At a group level, our expectation for the year remains a net impact of new business to be somewhere between 100 and 150 basis points drag on our performance. And we've also indicated that the impact of gross client losses will be between 300 and 400 basis points. These losses have been more skewed to Media than other parts of the business and are therefore having a disproportionate impact on Media's overall performance.

Looking beyond the impact of account wins and losses, we have also seen additional volatility in client budgets. To be clear, there remains a fairly significant degree of polarization. Some markets, some client categories and even some individual clients in more challenged sectors are seeing very robust growth. But on balance, we have seen pressure on spending amplify the impact from assignment losses. Some of those losses begin to ramp down from this month, which will result in a further step down in Media's top line performance in the fourth quarter.

It also seems prudent to mention at this stage that with the profile of net new business performance year-to-date, the headwinds from growth client losses will sustain into 2026 at a broadly similar level as we have seen in 2025. It is too early to talk about the impact of net new business in 2026. We still very much have the opportunity to mitigate the impact of historic losses with new mandates. And in this context, we are encouraged by an increasing level of recent activity in the new business pipeline with that pipeline more tilted to opportunity versus risk than it has been in the past 12 months. Alongside this, there remains a significant opportunity to expand scope with existing clients, which we remain very focused on.

Looking beyond our Media business, like-for-like for our other Global Integrated Creative Agencies fell 6.5% in the third quarter, which compares to a decline of 7.2% in the second quarter. We continue to see signs of stabilization at AKQA, building on sequential improvement in growth through the first half. And a more robust, albeit still negative performance at VML, while Hogarth returned to growth in the quarter. Ogilvy continues to see impacts from a more challenging performance in the U.S. and Germany by geography and CPG and technology by client segment.

Again, it is difficult to completely attribute this to the macro given the polarization of performance across sectors and geographies, but we do believe aggregate market uncertainty is a significant contributing factor.

Turning to Public Relations. Like-for-like declined by 5.9% in the third quarter, following on from a decline of 7.8% in the second quarter. We continue to note a divergence between a more challenging performance in Europe and better new business momentum in North America.

Finally, Specialist Agencies saw like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs declined 2.2% in the third quarter, following a decline of 1.9% in the second quarter. This reflects particularly strong and continued growth from CMI Media Group, our specialist health care media agency and a return to growth for both Landor and Design Bridge and Partners, offset by weaker performance across our other specialist agencies.

Turning to Slide 8 and performance by region. North America declined by 6% in the third quarter, following a decline of 4.6% in the second quarter, lapping another tough comp from 2024. The key drivers of this performance were WPP Media and Ogilvy, reflecting a combination of client losses and client spending cuts. Meanwhile, Hogarth, Landor and spec coms all saw growth in the quarter.

By sector, we have seen continued weakness in CPG and the third quarter saw a step down in tech and digital services. By contrast, healthcare delivered a stronger performance with high single-digit growth.

The United Kingdom declined 8.9% in Q3 compared to a second quarter decline of 6.5%, reflecting a more challenging quarter-on-quarter comp. Performance was impacted by Media client assignment losses with growth in retail offset by pressure on CPG and automotive. Given the impact of account losses, we expect trends in both the U.S. and the U.K. to continue into the fourth quarter.

Western Continental Europe saw an overall like-for-like decline of 4.4% compared to the second quarter decline of 6.5%. We note particular weakness in Germany during the course of the quarter, impacted by client spending pressures across the government and automotive sectors in contrast to a more robust performance in Southern Europe, in particular, in Spain.

The Rest of the World declined 5% in the third quarter compared to a decline of 6.8% in the second quarter. Within the mix, we note declines in China started to moderate with a third quarter decline of 10.6% versus a decline of 16.6% across the first half. We have also seen a return to solid growth in India, which was up 6.7% in the third quarter versus a flat performance across the first half, driven by improved performance from WPP Media. Central and Eastern Europe saw a robust performance, up 1.3% across the third quarter, while the Middle East and Africa was stable.

Looking at Q3 performance across our client sectors on Slide 9, I want to highlight that this reflects growth across our designated clients, which represent 83% of our net sales. CPG continues to be challenging with a decline of 6.7% during the quarter, and this follows from a 4.2% decline in the first half. Automotive too continued to be weak, down 6.8% in the quarter, driven by client losses and cuts to client budgets. The technology client sector showed a slowdown in the third quarter with a decline of 4.5%, impacted by a client resignation earlier in the year and with a fairly high degree of polarization between clients. By contrast, healthcare has returned to good growth with like-for-like of 6.7% in the quarter, reflecting new client wins as well as growth with existing clients.

And moving now to our net debt, slide 10 shows the movement to the end of September with adjusted net debt at GBP 3.6 billion, stable year-on-year, but up from year-end, reflecting our typical cash cycle. Looking towards year-end, as you know, we don't guide on working capital. And as we've always said, the position at the year-end can be volatile. However, a combination of the strong working capital performance in 2024, plus a lower year-on-year volume of fourth quarter billings in our Media business with its negative working capital profile will place additional pressure on our working capital at the end of the year and therefore, on our spot year-end cash position.

In addition, we expect a lower level of incentive expense year-on-year with the cash effect of this felt in 2026, resulting in additional working capital headwind this year. Average adjusted net debt better captures the normal pattern of working capital moves across the year, and this is slightly down through the first 9 months of the year at GBP 3.4 billion, benefiting from the impact of the FGS Global disposal annualizing.

Looking at our leverage metrics, while average net debt has continued to come down, the headline EBITDA implied by our guidance has also come down relative to expectations. At the first half, our average adjusted net debt to headline EBITDA ratio was around 2x, and we expect it to be slightly above 2x at year-end.

While bringing our leverage down is a key priority for us, I would note we have an investment-grade balance sheet, which we are committed to retaining, a strong liquidity position and a broadly distributed debt maturity profile. The weighted average maturity of our GBP 3.8 billion of bond debt is 6.1 years, and this has an average coupon of 3.5%. Meanwhile, our total available liquidity across the group stood at GBP 2.9 billion at the end of September, including a GBP 2.5 billion RCF, which matures in February 2030. Neither our bond debt nor our RCF have any covenants, and our credit remains investment grade.

And finally, turning to our guidance for the full year on Slide 11. Having set our organic growth guidance range of minus 3% to minus 5% in July, based on performance in the third quarter and our expectations running into the fourth quarter, we are revising our like-for-like guidance to minus 5.5% to minus 6%. Although we do benefit from an easier comp in the fourth quarter, the continued volatility in client spending patterns, coupled with the fact we have a limited cushion from net new business to absorb this heightened volatility is leading us to approach our guidance for the full year with a high degree of caution.

In light of our revenue guidance, we anticipate that our headline operating margin performance, which is guided to decline 50 to 175 basis points, will be at the lower end of this range and around 13%. We still expect adjusted operating cash flow before working capital to be in the range of GBP 1.1 billion to GBP 1.2 billion. I've already highlighted some working capital considerations and our other modeling assumptions are unchanged.

So thank you, and I will now hand you back to Cindy.

Thanks so much, Joanne. Let me take a couple of minutes to share with you why I'm here, what I've observed over the last 60 days and some of the core principles that will underpin my approach going forward. But let me start on an optimistic note. This is a great industry with a multiyear track record of delivering growth, expanding margins and realizing significant returns for shareholders.

I took this job because I believe there's an exciting growth opportunity ahead for WPP. I've known this company for 15 years as a client, as a technology partner and most recently as a member of our Board of Directors. I wouldn't be here right now if I didn't believe that we have what it takes to win.

We have strong foundations and the ingredients needed to succeed, amazing clients that represent the largest, most well-known brands in the world, strong capabilities, world-class talent that spans media, production and creative, some of the most consequential agency brands in the market, unrivaled global scale and reach and market-leading technology and technology partnerships that give us a real competitive edge.

This is an exciting platform to build on. But our industry is at a critical inflection point. The era of AI is here, and it's moving faster than any technology we've ever seen before. AI is fundamentally reshaping the industry and transforming how we work, how we serve our clients and how we innovate. AI is reinventing every aspect of the marketing workflow from market research to brief writing to creative ideation, synthetic testing, content production, audience insights, media planning, campaign activation, measurement and real-time optimization, all fueled by advanced AI-powered data models.

I've spent more than 3 decades leading through technology disruption and finding the path to growth, and I've seen firsthand how quickly AI can reshape entire industries and the rewards for those who seize first-mover advantage. WPP has built differentiated data and AI capabilities that we've been investing in for the past several years. We're in a strong position to lead the market and support our clients as they transform their marketing functions for the era of AI.

WPP Open is our agentic marketing platform that enables us to deliver next-generation modern marketing services to our clients, now supercharged by the integration of InfoSum. At the core of this platform is Open Intelligence, our large marketing model, which connects client brand data to data from across our network and from over 350 partners through a privacy-first approach enabled by AI. This approach delivers better business outcomes for our clients with more precision and impact than ever before and frees up humans to spend more time doing what humans do best, building culturally-relevant brands that consumers love.

I personally believe there's never been a better time to be in marketing. You could even say that AI will usher in the golden age of modern marketing. And WPP is uniquely positioned to deliver on this vision and support our clients as the trusted partner of choice as they navigate through an increasingly complex world, rapidly evolving technology landscape, shifting consumer behavior and resource constraints. And all of this gives me great confidence that WPP has an exciting growth opportunity ahead.

That said, we need to face into our relative recent performance, which, as I said earlier, is unacceptable. In my first 60 days, I've been moving at pace to identify and understand the problems. Fundamentally, I believe WPP has been moving in the right direction, but we just haven't gone far enough or fast enough in adapting to the evolving needs of our clients.

I've now met with most of our largest clients, and they were generous with their feedback, most of it incredibly positive. But some of our clients indicated that there was more we could do to generate value and to be a better partner to them. Clients are telling us that they want our offer to be simpler, more integrated, powered by media, data and AI, efficiently priced and designed to deliver growth and business outcomes. This feedback provides an excellent blueprint for what we need to do differently going forward.

In addition, it's clear that we need to significantly improve our execution with singular focus on client acquisition and service delivery excellence, strengthening our go-to-market, dramatically simplifying how we organize ourselves internally as well as systematically building a high-performance culture.

And speaking of high-performance culture, we've already begun to reshape our leadership team with Devika Bulchandani taking on a critical role as Chief Operating Officer with a focus on growth and ensuring world-class client experience; Laurent Ezekiel moving into the role of Global CEO at Ogilvy; and Michael Frohlich rejoining WPP in the role of Global Chief Marketing and Corporate Affairs Officer with many more changes to come.

I also believe we have an opportunity to leverage our data and AI advantage to expand our addressable market by pushing harder into enterprise and technology solutions. Technology partnerships are critical to our future success and a clear source of competitive advantage. I will personally be leaning into these relationships to ensure we're maximizing our opportunity. For example, earlier this month, we announced a new expanded agreement with Google, an incredibly strategic and groundbreaking partnership that provides us with preferred access to Google's advanced AI models and tools, resources to co-innovate customized AI solutions for our clients and enhanced AI skilling for our people.

WPP and Google's shared commitment to innovation means that our new solutions are used and validated first within Google's own marketing operations. Partnerships like this one drive return on our AI investments while supporting client success and new business pursuits. Just last week, we launched WPP Open Pro, a new addition of our WPP Open AI platform that empowers brands to plan, create and publish their marketing campaigns with more control than ever before.

This is a strategic move to expand our addressable market and serve the long tail of smaller companies and emerging brands who may not be in the market for the sort of full service offer that we typically provide to large multinational clients. With WPP Open Pro, clients can choose to self-serve for some aspects of the marketing workflow and then complement this with a range of managed services from WPP. We can tailor a customized approach for these brands and grow as they grow.

In the last 60 days, we've already made a number of bold and decisive moves that hopefully give you a sense of how I will approach this role, and you can expect more of the same in the months ahead. My team and I are hard at work on our road map for the future, and we're planning to give you all the detail of our strategic plan as well as our financial framework early in the new year.

You can expect this road map to reflect the core principles I just articulated: one, simplifying and integrating our client offer and harnessing our data and AI advantage; two, significantly improving our execution and building a high-performance culture; three, expanding our addressable market through enterprise and technology solutions; and fourth and finally, strengthening the financial foundations of the group and improving our performance through operational efficiency and a disciplined approach to capital allocation.

Those are my initial observations in 60 days. I do understand that you will have questions, and I ask for your patience as we work through the detail. I look forward to coming back early in the new year to lay out the full strategic plan and financial framework. But to be clear, this will not be a period of inaction. Between now and then, my management team and I will be working at pace to improve our performance with a real sense of urgency while building a detailed plan for future growth and success.

So let me close by saying that my ambition for WPP is sky high. We are committed to doing the hard work it will take to turn this business around. We know it will take a bit of time to do so. We also know what it takes to win. We're optimistic, we're energized and we're confident that we're building the right plan and the right culture to secure a bright future for WPP, our people, our clients and our investors.

Thank you all so much, and we're now happy to take your questions.

Thank you very much, Cindy. Good morning, everyone. My name is Tom Singlehurst. I'm the Head of Investor Relations for WPP. We'll now begin the Q&A session. In terms of housekeeping as Lucy at the beginning of the call [Operator Instructions]

With that said, it would be great if we can take the first question from Laura Metayer.

Laura Metayer from Morgan Stanley. Cindy, thank you for giving us a first look into your strategic update. I have two questions today, please. The first one is on the lower spend from existing clients that you've been seeing. Just wanted to dig a little bit more into this, if you have a bit more details on what's happening here. Are you seeing lower spend from existing clients in some specific areas of your business? Would you say that AI is having an impact on some of your business? I'm just curious why you're seeing this and some of your competitors are not.

And then the second question is on the recent WPP Open Pro announcement. Can you give us a little bit of a sense of what's the competitive landscape like for the SMB market? And who's competing with your offering? And is there a potential risk that this cannibalizes some of your business with your smaller clients moving to self-serve?

Thanks, Laura. We'll pass the first one over to Joanne to answer and then maybe Cindy will build on that and answer the second question. Joanne?

Thanks for your question. If I just talk about the nature of the spend that we're seeing that is getting cut, it tends to be more the project work or delays to work that the clients have commissioned us for. And across sectors, where we're seeing the biggest step down in Q3 is CPG, auto, and we've seen tech decline as well in the quarter.

Now what I would say is there is a high degree of polarization within each of the sectors. So we are seeing some clients continuing to spend and healthy growth rates with them. But on balance, we're seeing more declines across those three sectors. Those sectors are also impacted by some of the client cuts that we saw earlier in the year.

In terms of markets, we're really seeing the bigger impact in some of our European markets. I would call out the U.K. and Germany. Germany, where we're more exposed to the auto sector, and we've seen cuts in government. And in the U.K., we do tend to have more of our work skewed to that project-based work.

Now what I would call out is we have seen growth in other sectors and particularly in healthcare, where we've seen 6.7% growth, and that is a mixture of client wins and growth with existing clients.

In terms of the question around AI, we don't see this as driven by AI. This work is not going anywhere else. It is -- and I think it reflects just a more volatile environment that we see ourselves in. So I think that covers all aspects of your question, Laura, and I'll pass over to Cindy on WPP Pro.

Thanks, Joanne. Laura, look, it's -- there's a lot of point solutions out there in the marketplace. So I couldn't possibly comment on them all, but I'll talk about WPP Open Pro. It's early days, of course. We only launched a few days ago. So I'm not really in a position to talk about revenue and subscribers at this point. But what I will say is the strategy is about TAM expansion, so expanding our addressable market.

We don't largely address the SMB and mid-market cap segment today. So we expect revenues generated by WPP Open Pro to be incremental and potentially pull through managed services from WPP that are also incremental. That's the expectation. And of course, we'll be in a position to report actual progress in the weeks and months ahead. Thanks for your question.

Thank you, Laura. Our next question is from Julien Roch.

My first question is on the full year guidance. Your minus 5.5% to minus 6% implies minus 7.5% to minus 9.5% in Q4, which is a 3- to 5-point slowdown versus Q3, taking into account the easier comps. Mass and Paramount should be an incremental 1 to 2. So it looks like you have a 1 to 4 underlying slowdown in Q4. Why is that? So that's my first question probably for Joanne.

The second one is, Cindy, you helpfully gave us four pointers of your new strategy that includes a simpler, more integrated, powered by data and AI offering, which imply further investment to go back to growth. So today, do you feel this extra investment can be, one, self-funded, thanks to further efficiencies? Or two, should they come at the expense of margin in short term? Or three, it's too early to tell us?

And then finally, on WP Open Pro, can we get an idea of pricing? I understand you have access fee plus usage-based charge and also it depends on whether it's all self-served or some managed. So the price will be quite viable, but can we have an idea maybe of the minimum monthly or annual price and the maximum. So we have an idea of the pricing on WPP Open Pro?

Thanks, Julien. Yes, Joanne will do the first one on the full year guidance and trends into the fourth quarter, and then we'll pass over to Cindy for questions two and three.

Julien, yes, just in terms of the guidance, you're right, it does assume a like-for-like decline of 7.5% to 9.5% in the final quarter. And there's a few drivers of that. The first one is in Q3, we saw a step down from client losses and particularly in the Media business, and there will be a further ramp down in Q4. And the biggest driver of that is two sizable client losses that we impacted from earlier in the year. They will start to ramp down from the 1st of October. So we'll have the first full quarter impact of those losses.

Net new business has remained slow for us, and that's partly the environment and also our win rate is not where we would expect it to be. And that means that we have a limited cushion to mitigate those losses. And coupled with that, we've talked about the volatility that we're seeing in client spend and delays to work.

Now our fourth quarter is the largest quarter. And just given the nature of spend in the Q4 and the trends that we've seen in Q3, we have taken a high degree of caution to the guidance for the full year and to the expectations for like-for-like in the final quarter of that year.

Great. Thanks, Joanne. Julien, let me take your second question first, if I may, about whether investment -- further investment is required for us to grow. I think I would reiterate what I said in my opening remarks, I'm confident that we have the ingredients needed to succeed. And I talked about fantastic clients, breadth of capability, great talent, our global reach, technology and technology partners that I think give us a competitive edge.

Over time, as we execute on our strategy and create capacity to invest in growth, there are undoubtedly assets I would love to own that will enhance our existing capabilities and accelerate our growth. But I would say our immediate focus is to improve our execution and build from there. In the short term, it really is about bringing together what we own today in the most efficient and effective way, and you'll see much more in terms of how we intend to do this over the coming months.

In terms of pricing for WPP Open Pro, I don't believe we've yet published pricing on the website, but it will be basically priced by user and by usage, and we're clarifying now exactly how this will work by client segment, and you'll see more information on that on the website in due course. It literally launched a few days ago. So I hope that helps.

Thank you, Julien. Our next question comes from Annick Maas. Annick?

The first one is going back on this full year guidance. I suspect when you cut it in July, you -- particularly that -- it was coinciding with your appointment, Cindy, you must have included a buffer in the guidance. So what I would like to understand is really like what went even further wrong, I guess, than what you had suspected already for actually resetting the guidance again today? Or is it really just putting now in an extra buffer for Q4, but actually it's not that bad?

My second question is on staff motivation. I guess this is a people business and the current performance might not be too motivating for the internal staff. So how are you thinking about keeping staff motivated, incentivizing staff going forward?

And then my last question is, you've alluded that you saw all your clients or your main clients. What came out of these conversations for you that was new, better and worse actually?

Thanks, Annick. We'll start with Joanne talking about the full year guide and maybe then talk about staff motivation and maybe then Cindy can pick it up, build on that and answer the third question on clients.

Thanks, Annick, for the question. In short, it's a little bit of both of the factors that you talked about, some of the trends that we have seen in Q3, but also caution and making sure that we are setting the expectations at a level that we can deliver against.

In terms of what's really changed, the new -- the losses -- the client losses are broadly similar to what we shared in the interims. There have been some additional losses since, but they will impact more in 2026. So the biggest step down has really been seen in that volatility of spend that I talked to, further cuts to spend, delays to projects that were expected to take place this year and being pushed out to next year and then that net new business environment. And net new business includes growth from our existing clients and new assignments with existing clients, and that has been slower than what we would have anticipated in the third quarter, which makes us, therefore, cautious on Q4.

And so yes, it's both, some of the trends that we've seen and that caution. I would also just point out that where we've seen the biggest impact on those variables is in our Media business. And that's obviously the largest part of our business. Q4 is the largest quarter, and Media is a big contributor to that. And that has just added to the cautious outlook that we have reflected in the full year guidance.

Staff motivation, you want to mention anything?

Yes. Look, on staff motivation, I often get asked this, and I would say a couple of things on this. If you look at WPP overall, it's absolutely the right question to ask. If you look at how our business operates, it's very much, I belong to an agency in a market. And therefore, the performance is really dependent on how that agency and market is doing. And there are pockets of our business that are performing well.

I would also say that in WPP Media, we've done a lot of work in the last couple of years to set that organization up for success. Brian joined a year ago, set out a new strategy for WPP Media. We acquired InfoSum. We are rolling out Open Media Studio at scale. And that is a huge motivator for our colleagues within WPP Media, and they are very excited about the future and getting that business back to growth and taking its fair share of the market.

And the third thing I would say is we are now deploying WPP Open to everybody in the business. This is not just client-facing colleagues, but it's also colleagues in the back office and my team are using Open. So if you're an employee in WPP, you have access to incredible AI tools. And for any employee, it's important that you're continuing to develop, you're building this critical skills for the future. And so there's a lot of aspects of working in WPP that are incredibly positive as well as the fantastic clients that we work with. I don't know if Cindy wants to build on it...

No, I'm happy to build on the question around employees. So thanks for recognizing we are a people business, and that's something that's very important to me personally.

Look, my job is to ensure that WPP as a company is successful for many years to come. To do that, we need top talent on the team. So one of my core priorities is to make WPP a destination for the world's best talent. And that means retaining the talent we have and attracting new talent. That's a key focus for me. I've already made a number of appointments that I mentioned in my opening remarks, and there's more to come.

But I'm also deeply committed to listening to our employees and providing a world-class employee experience that our people feel invested in from a learning and development perspective and feel they really have a long-term career prospect here at WPP. So those issues -- those matters are very important to us.

But you also asked a question about clients, I believe. I mean, I've spoken to most of our top clients at this point. And what I will say is the vast majority of them have been incredibly positive about the quality of our people, the work that we do, the service that we provide. And actually, our clients want WPP to be successful, right? They feel our success is important to the health of the industry because it gives them more choice. So I would say on the whole, the feedback has been positive.

At the same time, we've had some feedback that, as I mentioned, our offer is very complicated. They'd like us to be simpler to engage with. They'd like a more integrated proposition because when your proposition is integrated across creative, production and media, it's easier to optimize your total investment spend, particularly when it's powered by a common data model and AI across the entire workflow. We're more able that way to deliver growth and business outcomes, and that's where we need to be.

And as I said, we also need to significantly improve our execution. We need to be focused on client acquisition, client retention and service delivery and really strengthening our go-to-market through dramatic simplification. So that's where the focus is in the immediate short term.

Thanks, Annick. Our next question is from Adam Berlin.

A few questions from me. Just following up on -- Cindy, on what you just said about you've spoken to all your top clients. Have you also spoken to clients who chose to kind of stop using WPP over the last couple of years? And I just wondered whether they might give you a different perspective or is there anything they've said differently that obviously, the clients who've chosen to stay with you may have a different view. So just have you done that exercise as well? And what feedback did you get from clients who have actually left?

The second question I wanted to ask was to Jo, just more kind of cash related for this year. Just curious, why is there no downgrade to the cash flow guidance, the operating cash flow guidance given the lower margin and top line guidance? And what's the kind of offset to that?

And secondly, you talked about there being -- I think -- I'm not sure you said this, I just want to clarify, did you say there'll be a negative working capital outflow this year? And if so, are you able to give us a range as to how big that might be?

Thanks, Adam. Why don't we start with Cindy and...

Yes. Thanks for your question, Adam. Actually, the very first clients I spoke to were the ones that we lost. I'm a big believer in growth mindset, and that means every loss is an opportunity to learn. And so that's where I started. And actually, the feedback has been remarkably consistent. A lack of clarity about our end-to-end story and how it lands, how it resonates with clients to deliver growth and business outcomes for them, complexity in our organizational structure. So how do I get the best of WPP with all the constraints of an agency structure. These are the sorts of feedback that -- feedback we're getting from clients that we've lost and clients that we've won equally. So again, as I said in my opening remarks, the feedback provides the clearest blueprint possible for what we need to do better and differently going forward.

Adam, so just on the cash question, yes, I've guided to operating cash flow pre-working capital unchanged at GBP 1.1 billion to GBP 1.2 billion. A couple of things within that. The revised guidance really is an impact of less than GBP 100 million on the cash. So that's one consideration. We've had a bit of an FX tailwind, so that's offset some of that profit impact. And then we've had a -- very disciplined around our cash management. So on CapEx and restructuring, some of the reductions there will help that final outlook in the balance of the year. And we had a little bit of buffer in it when we guided at the half year. So that's really why it's unchanged.

In terms of working capital, look, I talked to two headwinds on working capital. One, just given the step-down in Media, we will have a lower volume of billings in Q4. And we've always said that, that is a big driver for working capital given the negative working capital that sits in our Media business. So that is one headwind that we will see at the year-end. And the second is incentives. So I am expecting a significantly lower level of incentives just given the performance. The cash effect of that will be seen in 2026, but it does have an adverse impact on our working capital at the end of the year.

So those two factors and [indiscernible] that last year, we had an inflow on working capital. This year, working capital will be an outflow in the full year. We don't guide to working capital, but hopefully, that helps you understand some of the drivers of the working capital performance at the year-end.

Thanks, Adam. Our next question is from Adrien de Saint Hilaire. Adrien?

This is Adrien from Bank of America. So I've got a few questions, if that's okay. Cindy, I noticed you talked in your prepared remarks about maintaining a strong balance sheet. What's your sense of where it stands today? Do you consider it to be strong indeed? Or do you think it needs further shoring up?

And maybe following up on what Julien asked, I think you highlighted that you want your offering to be powered by data and AI. Do you believe you've got enough capabilities there? Or might you go down the route of M&A to beef up this part of the businesses?

Thanks, Adrien. Maybe Joanne will start by talking about the balance sheet and will then talk about data and AI.

We have a strong balance sheet. Our balance sheet is investment grade. And as I said in my prepared remarks, we're committed to retaining that investment-grade balance sheet. Our liquidity as well is strong at the end of September, it was just under GBP 3 billion, and we have no covenants on any of our debt. We have broadly distributed maturities across that debt and the coupon is 3.5%.

I would also say that I feel that we have been making investment in the business over the last few years. So we have an investment base as we look at the new strategy review that we can make sure that we're reallocating that investment or prioritizing it into the areas of the business that will deliver the fastest returns and the fastest growth.

So while I expect leverage to remain outside of our target range, I do think that those factors point to the strength of the balance sheet and liquidity. We are -- reducing our leverage is a priority. And we've demonstrated over the last couple of years, we have taken costs out of the business. We have divested of -- businesses, including FGS and used the proceeds to delever and strengthen the balance sheet.

Yes. Thanks, Joanne. Adrien, so look, I'm confident that our data and technology solutions today are robust, future-proofed and competitive. Let me talk for a minute about that.

We have WPP Open, as you know, it is not a point solution. WPP Open is a single end-to-end AI-powered platform that transforms the entire marketing process for our clients. As you noted, it's powered by a common data model that we call Open Intelligence. Because it's a single platform powered by a common data model, we can offer clients an opportunity to really optimize their entire marketing investment across creative production and media.

The acquisition of InfoSum gave us a next-generation data collaboration platform, which means our clients can generate deep insights to smoother marketing and communications without sharing first-party customer data, which gives them the opportunity to protect the privacy of their customers. So that's what we've got today, and I'm confident that it's competitive.

Now have we learned to land it consistently or land the story consistently in a way that resonates with our clients? No, we haven't. And that is fundamentally part of the execution improvement that we're focused on. But by the way, when we get it right, as we are increasingly doing, we start to see the sort of client wins we're seeing in Q3, Marks & Spencer, Maersk, Suncorp, TruGreen, Mastercard with more to come.

Now in terms of investing, as I said earlier, as we create capacity to invest, what I would love to, of course, I would, but the focus in the short term is on improving our execution and then we will build from there.

Perfect. thank you, Adrien. Our next question is from Nico Langlet. Nico?

I've got three questions, first one on net new business. So can you tell us what was the impact for the first 9 months and whether you expect a much higher headwind in Q4 compared to Q3?

Secondly, on the WPP Pro announcement, I know it's still very early, but can you try to quantify the revenue opportunity at least for the next 12, 24 months? And what's the margin profile over time of this type of business?

And finally, on the leverage and capital allocation. So you will end the year at slightly over 2x net debt to EBITDA. Do you feel comfortable with that leverage? And can you clarify in terms of capital allocation priorities between debt reduction and dividend in the...

Thanks, Nico. Maybe Joanne can take questions one and three, and I'm sure will offer some perspective on two as well.

So just on the impact of net new business, we've signaled that at interims will be around 100 to 150 basis points of a headwind this year with gross client losses 300 to 400 basis points. And we are seeing that still be in the range, but we -- probably we're towards the bottom end of that range for this year. I talked about the step down in Q3, and we'll see a further step down in Q4. So Q4 will be a bigger impact on that and will particularly impact our Media business.

And as I also said in my prepared remarks, we're expecting a similar level of growth client losses, i.e., the 300 to 400 basis point range for next year. But it's still too early to comment on net new business. And I touched on the fact that we are seeing more opportunities in the pipeline and our pipeline is more skewed to opportunities and defensive reviews.

In terms of the leverage and the capital allocation, obviously, and as you would expect, this will be a key area of focus for Cindy and I and the wider team as we do the strategy review. We are focused and a big priority is to reduce the leverage in the business, as I commented earlier. We also need to make sure that we have the right investment, organic investment in the business. As I said earlier, we do have a good, invested business. We have been investing in WPP Open and our data offer and our commerce offer over the last couple of years and making sure that we are getting the highest return from that investment will be a critical component of our strategy review.

In terms of the dividend, we talked about the dividend in our half year results and the decision to reduce the dividend to give greater financial flexibility ahead of the strategy review and balance that with the recognition that the dividend is important to shareholders. And that has not changed since the half year.

And the other comment I would make is that we will review the balance sheet as well as part of the strategy review. I touched on the fact that in the past with Kantar and FGS, where we have good businesses, but we have concluded we don't need to own them, and we have taken action. So we will update further on that in the new year with the strategy review.

Joanne, do you want to make a brief comment on revenue opportunity at Open Pro over the next 12 months?

In terms of Open Pro, as Cindy talked to, it's an opportunity for us to target a market that we don't service today, and that's both with existing clients and potentially with smaller businesses that -- where the traditional agency model just hasn't worked for them. It's too early to say what the revenue will be from that, but it's an exciting opportunity for us, and we already have some pilots with our existing clients.

Perfect. Thank you, Nico. our next question comes from Richard Kramer from Arete Research. Richard?

Cindy, I'd like to ask you about the renewed $400 million partnership deal with Google and whether you see WPP's role as implementing Google's AI tools with clients or whether we should expect WPP to go beyond API access and remain very much committed to your own product investment long term as we're seeing with WPP Media and Open Pro?

And then also, I'd love to have your comments or reflections on the position of WPP relative to Meta's promise that clients can just give them their campaign objectives and budget and allow their AI to manage everything. How do you respond to that with clients and especially sort of winning over those SMEs that are -- seem to be very much captured by Meta and Google today?

Thanks for your question, Richard. Appreciate it. Look, I think Google is clearly a key strategic partner, not the only strategic partner. So we integrate multiple large language models and tool sets into our platform, Google being one of them. We also have relationships with Anthropic, with OpenAI and with others, and that will continue to be the case. So yes, we will continue to invest in our own platform in addition to partnering closely and constructively with key partners like Google and with others.

In terms of -- yes, there is a -- there are a lot of solutions out there. There's no doubt about it. The feedback I get from clients, most of my large clients is that they are navigating through a rapidly evolving technology landscape and a lot of complexity.

The reality is you can't just put -- drop AI into your environment to modernize your marketing function and just expect magic to happen, right? And you can't just apply AI to old processes either. You have to reimagine them. You have to train your people. You have to embed new behaviors in your organization in order to realize the benefits of AI.

Large multinationals are going to need the help and support of trusted partners to navigate this environment and learn how to innovate with AI. It's not always obvious. And I think the more fragmented and complex this environment becomes, the greater the opportunity for WPP to act as a trusted partner to our clients as they pursue their transformation journey. And that's actually why we're pushing into enterprise solutions because we think we have an expanded opportunity there to help our clients implement and manage large-scale end-to-end AI marketing transformation program. That's TAM expansion for WPP.

Perfect. Thank you, Richard. We're now going to move to our last question, which is from Steve Liechti of Deutsche Numis.

Can I have three, please? One is just to Cindy, just your view in terms of WPP, do you think it still run as a holding company today? And how much heavy lifting has been done? How much more is there to do to get you into a kind of integrated operating company, which I'm presuming is kind of where you want to get to? So that's the first question.

Second question, just in terms of the U.S. Media business and linking that to the data and Open Intelligence comments that you made. I'm taking from that, that you think all the changes that have been undertaken in the first half in InfoSum and stuff like that, to some extent, gives you the ammunition to kind of claw back business in U.S. Media. I'm just interested in your views there or whether there's more to be done, whether you think that's the right solution compared to some of your competitors who are more ID-based and broader solutions?

And then the third one is, I know it's a bit repetitive, but just going back to the building blocks for fiscal '26 on the like-for-like revenue. I mean obviously, your exit rate in like-for-like is going to look quite poor coming out of the fourth quarter. You mentioned your 100 to 150 basis points at a net level and your gross 300 to 400. Can you just give us a little bit more color in terms of the best way to think about building up that view of '26 at this stage with what we see?

Thanks, Steve. We'll maybe start with the third question from Joanne and then hand it over to Cindy to talk about Holdco and WPP Media.

Thanks for your question. Look, it's too early to really give a definitive outlook on 2026. But just some of the factors that I would highlight. First of all, to your question on the exit of Q4, Q4 is seeing an exaggerated impact from losses. We have 2024 client losses, which are still ramping down in the last quarter of this year. And we also have the incremental losses from 2025. So you have the double impact from those. Q4 is also our biggest quarter. Q1 is our smallest quarter. So the impact on that quarter is disproportionately higher. I wouldn't expect Q1 to be at a similar level. I also alluded to the nature of Q4 typically means that we're being a little bit more cautious in our guidance for the full year.

But that being said, I did talk to the gross client losses, which we have visibility of and those being in a similar range to what we saw in 2025, 300 to 400 basis points and skewed to Media. And so that will be a factor in 2026. It's too early to say on net new business and that 100 -- how it might compare to that 100 to 150 basis point range that we give for this year. But hopefully, that gives you some levers as you think about '26.

Thanks, Steve. I think I understand your question. I mean, look, to improve our execution as we need to, I personally think we need to be a little less holdco and a little more Co. And I do think we were on the path to doing that. We've made over the years, great investments in AI and technology. We've simplified our structure. We've nurtured fantastic talent. We just -- we haven't gone -- or we've missed the opportunity, shall I say, to go as far and as fast as we could have and should have, and that's what we're going to do immediately to improve our execution.

In terms of WPP Media, I mean, look, turning WPP Media around is absolutely critical for us. Fortunately, as a member of the Board, I've had clear line of sight into Brian Lesser's plan, and I was and continue to be extremely supportive. I would be the first to say that GroupM in the past probably lost its way, but I feel very confident that Brian's vision of an open, privacy-first data and AI-powered ecosystem is the way the market is moving. And now that we're putting that plan into action, I am supporting Brian in every way possible in terms of implementation. And we're starting to see the green shoots of success with important retentions and wins this quarter, which we've mentioned earlier and hopefully, many more to come.

Perfect. Thank you, Steve. So we're coming up on 10:30. We're going to draw a line under the call there. Thank you so much for your questions and for your interest in WPP. The Investor Relations team and I are at your disposal if there's anything we can help with. But for now, I will pass over to Cindy for some concluding remarks.

Thank you so much, Tom. Look, as I said earlier, our current performance is a long way from where it should be. But as you can probably tell, I feel quite optimistic about WPP's future. We know what it takes to win. As a team, we are optimistic, energized and confident that we're building the right plan and the right culture to secure a bright future for WPP. So thank you all for dialing in this morning, and I look forward to further engagement.