WPP plc (WPP) Q3 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

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 five, like-for-like revenue less past due 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 polarisation and aggregate volatility with a weighting towards caution. In addition to the orga...