WPP plc (WPP) Q2 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to WPP 2025 Interim Results Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session, at which time, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Today's conference is being recorded. Now I would like to hand it over to WPP CEO, Mr. Mark Reid. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you very much and good morning everybody and welcome to our 2025 interim results earnings call and thank you for joining us. I'm on today's call with Joanne Wilson, our CFO, Brian Lesser, the CEO of WPP Media and Tom Singlehurst, our Head of Investor Relations. And before we get started, please do look at the cautionary statement which you can see on slide two and read that carefully. So turning to the highlights on page five of the presentation. First in terms of the first half performance for 2025. When we updated you in early July we went through how a more challenging macro environment coupled with a slower net new business environment had weighed in our performance in the second quarter and in particular in June and Joanne will take you through the details shortly but performance in the first half is in line with those revised expectations with H1 organic net sales growth of minus 4.3 is consistent with the second quarter down 5.8%. Now, as you said on July 9th, the second quarter was impacted by several one-off factors that negatively impacted our growth rate, even excluding those H1 growth was minus 3.8% and minus 4.8% in the second quarter, below our expectations at the start of the year. Now, in the face of this, we are maintaining strong financial discipline. Headcount has come down by 3.7% since the start o...