Revenue growth across all disciplines and in major markets is helping WPP join the ranks of holding companies whose recoveries are accelerating.
WPP had a 9.5% growth in revenue less pass through costs (the company’s term for organic revenue) for the three months ended on March 31.
That was driven by growth in ten of the company’s major markets, including Canada at 5.8%.
Looking at disciplines, PR had the biggest boost, with 14.1% organic revenue growth, followed by 13% growth in WPP’s specialist agencies. Growth was also strong in WPP’s biggest sources of revenue: media arm GroupM had growth of 12.8%, while the integrated agencies segment grew by 8.6% (5.6% when excluding GroupM agencies).
WPP is also reporting $1.8 billion net new business won, including global confectionery Mars, JDE Peet’s – the world’s largest pure-play coffee and tea company by revenue – and British broadcaster,Sky.
According to Mark Read, CEO of WPP, 2022 has began very well with continued momentum from 2021 resulting in strong growth across all businesses and regions. Like his peers in the industry, Reed cited strong demand for services in digital media, ecommerce, data and marketing technology.
Read says that WPP continues to invest in the many opportunities for growth driven by the digital transition, including its global data company Choreograph and the recent launch of Everymile, WPP’s ecommerce extension.
Currently based in the U.K., Everymile builds on WPP’s existing global omnichannel commerce capabilities in strategy, customer experience and technology development, adding demand generation, online trading and merchandising, supply chain and logistics.
On Tuesday, WPP announced a major restructuring of GroupM, focused on performance marketing and integrating data across its operations. That includes merging MediaCom with analytics and tech specialists Essence, bringing several agencies into a unified offering based on performance and finalizing the integration of Mindshare and Neo.
As a result of a strong Q1, WPP expects growth to be in the range of 5.5% to 6.5% for the full year, up from around 5% it was predicting at the start of 2022.
