Earnings Labs

WPP plc (WPP)

Q2 2009 Earnings Call· Wed, Aug 26, 2009

$17.62

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+0.62%

1 Week

-3.32%

1 Month

+2.70%

vs S&P

-0.35%

Transcript

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

Good morning everybody. Thank you all for coming, first half 2009. Paul is going to take us through the results and then I'll come in, I think at about slide 34, when we start to talk about TNS, all right?

Paul Richardson

Management

Ok, good morning. I hope you got the hard copy, it will help as we go through this. So, the interim results for 2009, billings were up 11% to 18.72 billion and reported revenues were up 28%, really as results of both currency and acquisitions or revenues were strong. So on a constant currency basis excluding the impact of foreign currency, which is approximately 20%, revenues were up 8.6% and on like-for-like basis revenues fell 8.3% in the half year and gross margins fell by less were down 7.8%. Headline profits before interest and tax were down 24.5% to £342 million from £453 million the year before and headline operating margins were down 4.5 margin points to 8% on a like-for-like basis, and down 3.1 margin points pre-severance and one-off costs. In the text, the press release, we take you through the difference between both reported like-for-like and like-for-like pre-severance and one-off costs, and I'll take you through it again verbally, to see if I can help. So, on a reported basis, our margins were 13.6% last half year. As a result of the acquisition of TNS, which was margin dilutive, some currency impacts of about 0.2 and other minor adjustments, the like-for-like margin equivalent to 13.6 or operating full margin for first half of 2008 was 12.5%, compared to what we achieved at 8% that was a margin decline of 4.5 margin points. The severance in the first half of 2009 was considerably greater. It's actually 1.6 margin points, this half year, so on a perseverance basis our margins on a like-for-like basis were 9.6 which compared to last years perseverance margins of 13.1, so 3.5 margin point decline. Then adjusting for the one-off costs of property move, were we had double rent to the Ogilvy worldwide headquarters, where…

Martin Sorrell

Management

Paul gets the easy part of the presentation. Let me just move on to TNS integration which is an important part. Yes, it's true that revenues are down in the consumer insight business, and consumer insight being hit by the recession pretty much as other parts of the business. Revenue performance does tend to look as though it's in line with fears. I think Ipsos is reporting this morning. I haven’t seen the second quarter number, but you can see in the first quarter and the second quarter the revenue level is pretty similar, and path one is, we'll see how that all pans out. However, if you look at the gross margin level, the position is somewhat different and that’s partly due to the impact of moving the business increasingly online, as we discussed before, but the revenue decline at the gross margin levels is about 7.8%, which compares much more favorably with what's being going on inside WPP itself. In July, like as we've indicated for other parts of the business showed an improvement in the revenue performance and indeed the pipeline. Just on the integration process itself, it's been reorganized; a number of things have been reorganized. First is that the TNS's custom business has been brought together with the RI, Research International throughout the world. Kantar Health, Kantar Media, Kantar Retail and Kantar Worldpanel have been formed out of the TNS businesses in those four areas, and the Kantar businesses have been brought together under the Kantar brand. There has truly been some delay on the severance actions tuning to European regulations, that negotiation with Works Councils and implementation of the regulations themselves, but the synergy program is very much on track. In fact, probably is in advance of where we thought it would be and…