WPP CEO Cindy Rose has shown that she’s pretty good at forecasting and managing decline. The UK-based holding company reporting Q3 revenue of £3.2m, like-for-like decline of 2.1% – in line with forecasts – making -2.8% for the year to date. With pass-through costs excluded Q3 revenue rose 0.5%. Q4 is expected to show a further improvement.
All regions were down but, by discipline, WPP Media inched ahead 0.3% in Q3 with production up 2.5%. Creative, still the core of its business, fell 5.1%.
This is the nub of WPP’s problem. Creative agencies are being hammered on all fronts, not least because much of their work, in the AI era, is now bundled into production, as here. So clients are spending less and going straight to production. The new boss of WPP Creative (which includes big agencies VML and Ogilvy) Tyler Turnbull from Omnicom, clearly has work to do.
Another issue for WPP is its client profile: many of the world’s big consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies feature strongly and, as consultant Michael Farmer has shown, they’re struggling too with low or no volume growth, which affects marketing budgets.
CEO Rose strikes an upbeat note: “We are on track to deliver phase one of Elevate28 (her recovery plan): stabilising our business performance and laying the foundations for a simpler, more unified WPP. Our integrated client proposition and modern data solutions are gaining traction with both new and existing clients.
“Client demand remains healthy for our AI-enabled media, creative, production and enterprise solutions, powered by our agentic marketing platform WPP Open. Winning competitive pitches to renew long-standing partnerships with clients like The Coca-Cola Company and DoorDash provides further evidence of commercial momentum and client confidence in WPP’s ability to drive brand differentiation and business growth at a global scale.
“Our third quarter results show further sequential improvement in LFL growth, in line with our expectations. This reinforces my confidence in our strategy and our ability to deliver our plan. We remain focused on disciplined execution as we prepare for the ‘Build’ phase of Elevate28 and position WPP for a return to growth during 2027.”
WPP shares inched up in early trading. If Elevate28 does take hold a more simplified WPP showing a return to modest growth may finally attract a predator or two. 2027 could be another transformative year for what used to be a diversified ad holding company.
