WPP revenues fall in Q3

WPP said that growth in the UK, western Europe and the rest of the world had been offset by declines in North America and weakness from technology clients and in China.

The company’s Global Integrated Agencies department had a 0.1% rise in revenue with integrated creative agencies declining 1.1%, and GroupM growing 1.6% in the third quarter of 2023 with low-single digit growth in the US and UK.

WPP estimated that revenue growth was now expected to be around 0.5% to 1% (previously 1.5% to 3%) with headline operating margin of 14.8% to 15% (previously around 15%).

The results come following the launch of WPP’s creative agency VML and the integration of GroupM further into the company, which WPP estimated would both strengthen revenue growth and save at least £100m by 2025.

Mark Read (pictured), chief executive officer at WPP, said: “Our top-line performance in Q3 was below our expectations and continued to be impacted by the cautious spending trends we saw in Q2, particularly across technology clients with more impact from this felt in GroupM over the summer than the first half.

“We continue to win both creative and media assignments from leading global companies including significant wins in the third quarter with Estée Lauder (media), Hyatt (creative), Lenovo (creative), Nestlé (media) and Verizon (creative).

“Our net new business performance of $1.4bn in the quarter showed sequential improvement after a tougher first half.”