Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us at WPP's 2026 Annual General Meeting. I'm Philip Jansen, Chair of WPP, and I'm pleased to welcome shareholders both virtually and in- person here today. What you just saw was a great piece of work from WPP Open X, our bespoke team for The Coca-Cola Company, in anticipation of this summer's World Cup, which of course, is a massive moment for many of our clients and brands across the world.
The time is just past 10 o'clock in the morning, and I can confirm that a quorum is present, and I declare the AGM open. Let me start by introducing you to my fellow Board members. Turning to my immediate right, we have our CEO, Cindy Rose. Next to her is our CFO, Joanne Wilson, and to her right is Sandrine Dufour, Chair of our Audit Committee. Next to Sandrine Dufour, we have Simon Dingemans, followed by Ya-Qin Zhang . To my immediate left, we have our Company Secretary, Balbir Kelly-Bisla .
Next to her is Angela Ahrendts, our Senior Independent Director. Alongside Angela, we have Jasmine Whitbread, Chair of our Compensation Committee, followed by Tom Ilube. Next to Tom, we have Keith Weed, Chair of our Sustainability Committee. Before we turn to the formal business of the meeting, I would like to say a few words, and then Cindy will present an update on the company's business performance and the strategy. I've been Chair of WPP for over a year now and 2025 was a year of transition for WPP, with change of executive leadership, completion of a strategic review, and the development of a new strategic plan fit for a future that is evolving very, very quickly.
In July 2025, we announced the appointment of Cindy as the company's new Chief Executive Officer, succeeding Mark Read, who stepped down after more than 30 years of service to WPP. Over his seven years as CEO, Mark led the company through a period of significant change and challenge, accelerating WPP's focus on technology and AI and making important progress in streamlining the organization and strengthening core capabilities.
On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank Mark for his contribution and commitment to WPP, as well as for his support in ensuring an orderly transition. I would also like to thank Andrew Scott, who retired as Chief Operating Officer in 2025 and stepped down from the Board at the end of last year. The Board is very grateful for his commitment during his 27 years with the company and his prescience in the acquisitions and investments he has led and for his ongoing support as senior advisor.
I'm also delighted to welcome to the Board, Peter Agnefjäll, who will join the Board as a non-executive director on the 11th of May, as announced last month. Peter's worldwide track record in customer-centric transformation and operational excellence will be a strong asset to WPP as we execute the priorities of the Elevate28 strategy. We look forward to him joining. The Nomination and Governance Committee of the Board will of course continue to assess that the Board's skill set remains appropriate to meet the future needs of the organization.
Now, while Cindy started just eight months ago in her new role of CEO, joining us from Microsoft, she brings with her a strong understanding of WPP from her six years serving on the Board. Combined with her deep background and expertise in enterprise technology, transformation and leadership at scale, she has been able to hit the ground running since arriving.
Since September, she has made key leadership appointments, partnership announcements, and product launches, including WPP Open Pro, and set out her multi-year strategy for the company in February this year, more of which you'll hear shortly from Cindy. The Board of Management team have spent the last 12 months reflecting on conversations with key stakeholders, including our shareholders, clients, and colleagues. The message from you, our shareholders, is clear, that you want and need improved performance, a stronger balance sheet, better returns, and clearer accountability for delivery.
From listening to our clients, my overriding takeaways are this: that our clients place a high value on the work we create for them, and that there is an opportunity to build on WPP's many outstanding strengths with a new strategy to stabilize performance and return this great company to growth. With our two successful and oversubscribed bond issuances, GBP 1 billion in December 2025 and $600 million in March 2026, we are encouraged by the clear vote of confidence from both our investors and clients in WPP's leading market position and credit profile. While significant progress to strip out complexity from the company has been made in recent years, it has remained a barrier.
Cindy's Elevate28 strategy directly addresses this feedback to ensure WPP becomes simpler, more closely integrated, and more consistently excellent at execution in the age of AI. Now, as we all know, there is much to debate about how artificial intelligence is changing the ways that marketing services and content are created, bought, and measured, however, we strongly believe AI creates a wealth of new opportunities and growth pathways for WPP. Those who position themselves correctly to turn their advantage into growth will emerge as the winners, and our continued investment in data, AI, and technology has helped us to further build on and deliver our leading capabilities throughout 2025.
Our pioneering agentic marketing platform, WPP Open, has been central to how our teams across the world work together for the benefit of our clients. It connects our existing capabilities more effectively and simplifies our integrated service for the world's leading brands and it is absolutely central to the wider Elevate28 strategy.
Before I hand over to Cindy, I wanted to close by reiterating that WPP has the right capabilities, the talent, the relationships, the scale, and the strategy to succeed. Cindy and her management team continue to be laser-focused on clients. We have already seen how this is delivering encouraging results with significant wins already under our belt throughout quarter four, 2025 and quarter one, 2026. As we all know, there are wider macroeconomic and geopolitical considerations for our industry, and indeed for every sector, we are committed to ensuring we take advantage of our market-leading capabilities to unlock growth and future success. Now over to Cindy.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Chairman. Welcome to our 2026 Annual General Meeting. What you've just seen is our new branding. I hope you like it. We launched it at our investor update in February. It is the fantastic work of our agencies Landor & ManvsMachine, and our Chief Creative Officer, Rob Reilly. Of course, all powered by WPP Open. Before I start, can I please ask you to take a moment to read this cautionary statement? Okay, I know you're all fast readers.
I wanna start by thanking you all for being here today. I also wanna express my genuine gratitude for your continued support and patience through what we all know has been a challenging period for WPP. As shareholders, you've stood by us during a time of significant transition and I don't take that for granted. Hopefully, most of you saw our strategy update on the 26th of February when we announced the Elevate28 growth strategy, and you recognize the momentum that we're building as reported in our Q1 results just two weeks ago.
Today, I'd like to briefly update you on where we are right now and where we're going in the future as we execute on our plans, simplify our company, build on our market momentum, and return WPP to growth. I'll start with where we are right now and spend a moment just recapping the 2025 financial results, which we announced back in February. In 2025, like-for-like revenue, less pass-through costs fell 5.4% for the full year. This was primarily driven by the impact of client assignment losses and cautious volatile spending from certain clients, which weighed particularly heavily on our creative businesses.
In the context of that weaker top line, we delivered a headline operating margin of 13%, which was down 180 basis points year-on-year on a like-for-like basis. Fully diluted EPS was GBP 0.632, a decrease of 28.4%, and our adjusted operating cash flow before working capital came in at GBP 1.2 billion. Now on the back of these results, we announced a final dividend of GBP 0.075, which took the full-year dividend in 2025 to GBP 0.15, down from GBP 0.394 in 2024.
Now I know this is disappointing for some of our investors, and I am, along with the rest of the Board, firmly convinced that this was the right thing to do in the context of our 2025 financial performance. While the performance, by the way, was in line with guidance that we set out last year, in absolute terms, it is clearly not where we want it or need it to be. As I shared at our strategy update, these results for me underline the fact that what has made us successful in the past will not make us successful in the future. We must embrace bold change at WPP with a real sense of urgency.
Our clients' needs are changing as well, and it's critical for WPP to keep pace with the evolving needs of our clients. We are all facing into a time of intense change, driven by the rapid pace of change in the AI landscape, competitive disruption, shifts in consumer behavior, macroeconomic geopolitical volatility, and so on. Against this backdrop, every client I speak to has their own version of the same question: how do we transform ourselves to grow? We believe that a business's marketing investment can and should be its single most valuable and trusted driver of growth and I believe that we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine growth for our clients.
As every element of the marketing mix becomes better connected, supercharged by data and AI, the possibilities for realizing growth in new ways are seismic. To capture that opportunity, clients need to have a partner they can trust who has the capability to deliver on this new playbook for growth. I've had multiple conversations with clients, and the feedback they give me is very clear. WPP in the past was too complex, too siloed, too hard to navigate, not intentional enough about evolving our integrated client proposition or offering commercial flexibility that was required to adapt to their changing needs.
This, in a nutshell, is the case for change and Elevate 28 positions us to deliver on this growth opportunity while taking direct action to respond to the clear feedback we've had from our clients. We are reshaping WPP to be simpler, more integrated, easier to navigate, more connected in how we work, and better able to bring together creativity, media, data, production, technology, and enterprise solutions in new ways to create more value for our clients. That starts with a new mission to be the trusted growth partner for the world's leading brands in the era of AI.
After several years on the Board, I took this role eight months ago with a clear thesis in mind as to what we needed to do differently. I spent the first few months of my tenure working with my team to validate this thesis before ever presenting it to our investors on the 26th of February. The strategy has four key objectives: 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.
To deliver on these objectives and return to sustainable growth, we need to radically simplify our organization. We are actively moving and quickly moving away from being a holding company with hundreds of standalone businesses to a single company model with four operating units, media led by Brian Lesser, creative led by Jon Cook, enterprise solutions led by Jeff Geheb, and production led by Richard Glasson, across four regions, North America, EMEA, Latin America, and APAC, with one unified agentic marketing platform, WPP Open, and importantly, common incentives closely linked to the overall performance of WPP.
This simplified structure and operating model allows us to stop competing with ourselves and start winning together. I'm pleased to share we're making excellent progress towards this new structure in a relatively short period of time. For our shareholders, Elevate28 provides a clear and disciplined investment proposition. To put it simply, it's a plan designed to return WPP to sustainable, consistent organic growth underpinned by a robust financial framework.
We've committed to delivering GBP 500 million of gross annualized cost savings between now and 2028, and these cost actions will come from three key areas. First, our shift to a new operating model. This will deliver a more simplified and integrated way of working, enable us to scale capabilities across the organization, and support a stronger and more effective client proposition. We've already started the process of consolidating leadership at a global, regional, and market level. We're delayering, we're removing duplication across our creative assets to drive greater alignment and enable more effective cross-selling and a more holistic view of client success.
The second bucket focuses on structural cost savings. Our new operating model will enable us to, again, deduplicate in the corporate functions, particularly across finance and the people teams, further leverage our shared service center, and create global centers of excellence. This will also set us up to unlock more scaled productivity savings from greater automation and the use of AI across our corporate functions.
The third bucket comes from rationalization opportunities across our operations. We'll deliver savings from our real estate footprint and from across our long-tail 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. These targeted actions will improve our execution as well as enable a reallocation of investment into higher growth opportunities across our business, supporting a rebuild and expansion of margins over time.
Furthermore, we've completed a full portfolio review with the aim of making WPP a simpler, more focused business. This includes targeted asset disposals to reduce our perimeter, unlock embedded value, and pay down debt, ensuring we maintain a strong investment-grade balance sheet with greater financial flexibility. Again, we are making good progress on all fronts, and I look forward to updating you all in due course.
Our new capital allocation policy reflects our commitment to maintaining an investment-grade balance sheet while at the same time funding organic growth and sharing the proceeds of that growth with shareholders through sustainable returns. Our Elevate28 growth plan was announced on Feb 26, we didn't wait for that date to start executing on the plan. In fact, we started implementing changes the moment I stepped into this role. We've acted decisively to stabilize the business, rebuild momentum, and our competitive edge. All of that is now starting to bear fruit.
Firstly, we are seeing undeniable progress in terms of both new business wins and client retention. In Q1, for the second quarter in a row, WPP ranked number one for net new business according to both JPMorgan and COMvergence. I think the last time that happened was about 2021, we're feeling pretty good about the momentum that we're seeing. Key new business wins in the past few months alone include Estée Lauder, S.C. Johnson, Norwegian Cruise Line, and Wendy's, just to name a few.
Just in the last two weeks, we won the global creative brief for Diet Coke, the integrated business for Natura, the global creative and production for Henkel, and more to come. Each of these wins were hard-fought and fiercely competitive, and I just couldn't be prouder of my team. Just as important as client acquisition is client retention. In that vein, we're delighted to be reappointed by Tesco in the U.K. and across central Europe. We've retained mandates for Huawei in China and Red Bull in India, and several more.
While organic growth is our North Star, net sales is a lagging indicator, and we still need to cycle through some historical client losses. It will take a bit of time for our organic growth to fully reflect the new business momentum we're seeing and the positive changes we're making to the business today. Even so, I'm encouraged that the - 6.7% like-for-like net sales that we delivered in Q1 exceeded market expectations and showed improvement on our Q4 results.
Our Q1 results are consistent with the full year guidance for organic growth to be down mid to high single digits in the first half of 2026, with an improving trajectory in the second half. Crucially, these wins are proving that when we show up as the new WPP, as the best of WPP, it resonates really strongly with existing and new clients alike. Secondly, we're building a strategic technology partner ecosystem that sets the industry standard, which I'm very excited about. We're six months into our expanded partnership with Google. We're seeing incredible co-innovation results from this collaboration.
For example, we recently announced that we're one of the first media and marketing companies in the world to integrate Google Earth's AI model directly into WPP Open, which means we can now predict consumer demand based on real-time physical factors like traffic and weather to really automate marketing decisions at a hyper-local level. We're also excited about our expanded partnership with Adobe, which enables us to embed advanced AI workflows directly into WPP Open, allowing our clients to accelerate personalized content creation and optimize media performance at an unprecedented scale.
WPP Open is open by design to ensure that our clients always have access to the latest technology and tools easily orchestrated through a single user experience and I'm very confident that WPP Open is and will continue to be a source of unrivaled competitive advantage, both for us and for our clients. Thirdly, on the people front, we are attracting and retaining high caliber talent and appointing the leaders we need to deliver on our plan. Just for example, two recent examples, we've appointed leaders who will be pivotal to the execution of our growth strategy.
Anne-Isabelle Choueiri joins WPP as our Chief Transformation Officer to help manage and operationalize our future vision. Mark Taylor joins as our Global Chief People Officer, underlining the significant talent and cultural evolution we need to pursue throughout this transformation. As I mentioned earlier, it will take some time for our organic growth to fully reflect our new business momentum and the positive changes that we're making to the business today. When I look at these key forward-looking indicators, I'm really encouraged that we're making great progress on all fronts.
My management team and I are laser focused on delivering three distinct phases of our Elevate28 plan. Our immediate priority, Phase 1, is to stabilize the business and make the structural changes needed to strengthen our execution and sustain our current market momentum, which we're already doing at pace. Phase 2 is about building on these foundations and returning the company to growth sometime during 2027 and Phase 3 will accelerate our growth so that we can capture our fair share of the market from 2028 and beyond.
Again, I'm confident that we have the right plan, we're on the right path to return WPP to growth, and we will continue to share with you lead indicators of progress as we execute on our plan. Just to summarize, we have a compelling plan to create sustainable growth. We're already seeing early signs of success and momentum.
I feel confident that I will stand here in front of you in a year, and we'll be in a much stronger place because our strategy is bold and it's thoughtfully designed to make WPP simpler, more integrated, more fit for the future, and relentlessly focused on growth and brilliant execution for our clients. You don't need to just take my word for it. Let's hear from one of my clients, Aude Gandon, who's Chief Digital and Marketing Officer at The Estée Lauder Company, who recently chose us to be their global media partner.
Our decision to appoint WPP as our global agency is about accelerating our transformation, and it is rooted in three distinct strengths WPP brings to the table. First, the sheer power of WPP's open platform. It provides a technological agility and the scale necessary to reach our consumers with unprecedented precision while respecting their privacy.
Second, their advanced data products and forward-thinking data philosophy. They don't just aggregate numbers, they translate them into profound, actionable human insights. Technology and data are only as good as the minds behind them. Ultimately, this partnership was decided by the exceptional quality of WPP's people and the leadership team, and the trust we have in them.
Thank you all for being here today. With that, I'll hand the floor back to our Chairman, Philip.
Thanks, Cindy. Appreciate it. Okay, moving on to the formal business of the AGM. You've all received a copy of the notice of the meeting dated 19th of March, 2026, which fully explains all agenda items for today's meeting. As usual, I will take the notice of meeting as read. Before dealing with the items of business contained in the notice, we would like to address any questions which are relevant to the business of the meeting. For those shareholders joining virtually, if you have not already submitted a question in advance and would like to ask a question, you may submit questions via the live webcast.
To ask a question, you should select the Ask a Question tab from within the navigation bar at the top right corner of the screen to open the message box, and you type your question in there. Once finished, press the Submit button to the right of the message box to submit your question. For those shareholders in the room who would like to ask a question, please raise your hand so that a microphone can be brought to you. Please, if you wouldn't mind, state your name before you proceed with your question.
May I also remind you that only registered shareholders, duly authorized representatives, or registered proxies may ask a question. Every effort will be made to give shareholders the opportunity to ask a question if they wish to do so. Okay, so let's start with questions from shareholders in the room, please. Is there somebody who would like to ask a question? We have mics at the ready. Okay, no questions. Tom, can we look online?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At this stage, there are no questions from the online webcast either.
The presentation from Cindy was so effective, we have no questions. Great. Okay. Let's move on to the business of the meeting. Sir, please. We have a question. Can we wait for the mike, please?
Shouldn't she?
No.
Exactly.
You go there. Front row.
Good morning. First of all, thank you very much for, especially Cindy, and for reorganizing the company onto what you've just been presented. I was wondering, as you said, you are the biggest company in the U.K. Are you having kind of a rival with, like, S4 Capital, or in outside U.K., probably in the worldwide, do you have any very major competitor? Do you want?
Sir, what's your name?
Yeah, sorry. My name is Topo Rusnibiro.
Topo.
I'm a retail shareholder. Yeah.
I mean, I'll do the first one.
Sure.
S4 Capital, and then maybe a wider conversation about.
All yours.
Competitors. I mean, the answer is no. S4, I mean, Not a factor. What about the wider competitive agenda?
Yeah. Well, thank you for your question, Topo, I appreciate it. I would say we have plenty of competitors from lots of different sources. In fact, I would say there's more non-traditional competitors than traditional competitors these days, but it's not a focus. We're focusing on restoring growth to WPP. We're focused on our clients, delivering excellent results for them. We're focused on ourselves and doing the best job that we can for our people and for our clients, and we're not overly obsessed with competition. It is coming from lots of different places these days.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you very much. Is there anybody else who would like to ask a question? Tom, any more from the online?
No, there are no more questions, Mr. Chairman.
Great. Thank you very much, everybody. Let's move on to the voting, please, if that's okay. The resolutions are set out in the notice of the meeting, and I now formally propose that each of the resolutions are put to the vote of the meeting. Resolutions 1 to 17 are proposed as ordinary resolutions and require a simple majority of votes to be passed. On the resolutions numbered 18 to 20, they are proposed as special resolutions and require at least 2/3 of the votes to be cast in favor.
As stated in the notice, all resolutions will be determined by way of a poll rather than a show of hands, and I now direct the company's registrars, Computershare Investor Services, to act as scrutineers in relation to that poll. Only the votes of shareholders present today, or shareholders who have submitted their proxy votes in accordance with the details set out on the proxy form, will be taken into account. When you came into the meeting, you were each given a poll card with all of the resolutions that have been proposed at the Annual General Meeting.
If you are a shareholder or a proxy for shareholders, including a proxy for the U.S. depositary with respect to shares represented by ADRs, please complete that card and sign it where indicated. In the case of a corporate shareholder, the card should be completed by its authorized representative present at this meeting, or by proxy. The number of shares being voted should be entered into the poll card, and all details will be checked against the company's share register.
Finally, I should mention that those shareholders present who have already lodged proxies and do not wish to change their vote need not vote on the poll unless they wish to do so. Please place your completed poll card in the ballot boxes located by the doors as you leave the meeting. I would like to thank all those shareholders who took time to submit their proxy votes in advance of the meeting.
Those proxy votes submitted ahead of today's meeting in respect of which I, as the chair of the meeting, have been appointed as proxy and have completed a poll card in respect of such votes amount to an average of 890 million votes per resolution. That represents over 80% of the company's issued share capital in respect of the majority of resolutions.
Based on the proxy votes received, I can tell you that the provisional results show that all resolutions are carried. The poll will close in 10 minutes, and the results will be released by a stock exchange announcement, and will be available on our website as soon as practically possible. Thank you for your attendance. That now concludes the formal business of the AGM. On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank all shareholders for their participation today, and also all our stakeholders for their continued support. Refreshments will now be served in the lobby area on the ground floor, and I look forward to chatting to all of you later on. Many thanks.