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WPP has said it had a 'remarkably resilient' 2020 as it reports a 9.3% fall in revenue to £12 billion.
The company's full year headline operating margin is 12.9%, down 1.5 points on the year before as cost savings of over £800 million offset the majority of the revenue decline.
The reported loss before tax was impacted by £3.1 billion of impairments (£2.8 billion goodwill, £0.3 billion investment and other write-downs), WPP said in its preliminary results statement.
As of December 31, 2020, net debt was down £0.8 billion year on year, reflecting continued strong working capital and cash management.
Mark Read, chief executive officer at WPP, said: 'While revenue was significantly impacted as clients reduced spending, our performance exceeded our own expectations and those of the market throughout the year. There is no doubt that the actions we took during the previous two years to transform and simplify the business and reduce debt - to a 16-year low at the end of 2020 - played a crucial role in the strength of our response.
'At the height of the pandemic we saw five years' worth of innovation in five weeks, with a dramatic shift to digital media and ecommerce as people's lives went online - trends on which we based our vision for WPP. Having modernised our client offer, refined our structure and strengthened our agency brands, we were well prepared for this shift and saw the benefits of this acceleration in parts of our business. Our strategic progress was also evident in our very strong new business performance, with key wins including Alibaba, HSBC, Intel, Uber and Unilever.'
At 9:32am: (LON:WPP) Wpp PLC share price was 0p at 724.6p