Thank you very much. I'm here with Paul Richardson and Fran Butera. We did our call with the U.K. institutions and analysts this morning, and this is the afternoon call London time, morning call, New York time for U.S. institutions and analysts. So as -- our presentation is on our website. Paul will kick off and take you through the first quarter details, and then I'll come back and talk a little bit about how we see the climate, the general climate and our strategy in that context. So Paul, go ahead.

Thanks, Martin. I know there are slides on the website. So I will turn them. I think I'm in the same order. So I'm starting on Slide 4, which is first quarter highlights. Reported billings were up 9.2% at just over GBP 13 billion for the quarter. The reported revenues were up 16.9% at GBP 3,597,000,000, which was up 3.6% on a constant currency basis and up 0.2% on a like-for-like basis. The net sales growth on a reported basis is up 18.5%, 4.8% on a constant currency basis and 0.8% on a like-for-like basis. On a constant currency, revenues, net sales and operating profits are well ahead of budget and ahead of last year. And share buybacks, which totaled GBP 180 million, represented 0.8% of the share capital we purchased during the quarter, which compared to GBP 62 million in the same period in 2016. That is still in line with our full year target to buy back approximately between 2% and 3% of share capital in any 1 calendar year. The average constant currency net debt was up GBP 453 million to GBP 4.5 billion. And on a point-to-point basis, net debt was up similarly, GBP 474 million on the same basis. This reflected the strong acquisition activity and spend throughout 2016 and early 2017 and did include, with the merger with STW, the debt that they had that we took onto our balance sheet for approximately GBP 150 million in addition to -- obviously, to a high level of buyback spend. On net new business, we had wins of just over GBP 2 billion in the quarter compared to GBP 1.8 billion on a constant currency basis for the same period in 2016 and had the resumption of net new business momentum with either first or second…

Okay. Thank you, Paul. So just on Slide 31, we list in a slightly different way the macro and micro features that we see going on. We've ticked to show positive in green and negative in cross and where there's a mixture of the 2 together. So if I look at worldwide GDP, there is mixed news. There's -- there are some forecasters forecasting an increase in nominal or, indeed, real GDP for '17 over '16, and others saying stable. I think a few of them saying down, but basically, people -- similar to '16 in terms of GDP. Trumponomics, the Trump economics, we see basically as being positive in a U.S. sense but negative probably on a worldwide sense. They -- certainly, as far as the U.S. is concerned, the proposed changes, not obviously now health care, although that might come back, but certainly, the tax changes we saw announced yesterday plus the regulatory changes, plus the trade changes certainly as far as the U.S. is concerned, probably stimulative as long as they can be implemented within a reasonable period of time; already delays. The Secretary of the Treasury indicated August for tax for that, seems to be putting -- be put back. And clearly, the outline arrangements yesterday are in the context of negotiating in agreement with Congress given the budget constraints. IMF forecast for the U.K. slightly up, about, I think, 50 basis points. Elections in Europe are probably a bit of a damper. There was this relief about what happened in the Netherlands and in France in the first round but it has to go through the second round, and it's a question about whether Macron will be able to make change in France, whether he has the lead party apparatus to do that. And there…

[Operator Instructions] We will now take the first question from James Dix from Wedbush Securities.

I guess, 3 questions I had, 2 on growth and then 1 on margins. So the first quarter came in well above budget on net sales. And yet, the outlook for the year is -- oh, sorry, your prior replay is now coming back on. And yet, your full year outlook is similar to budget. So I'm just wondering whether there is any incremental caution which has come in for the final 3 quarters of the year or if I'm reading that wrong? And if there is any incremental caution, where specifically it's coming from? Is it in the timing of new business wins or what have you?

Yes, we'll just do - answer that one first if we can. I don't think so. I think we're just -- once bitten, twice shy. We took down our guidance from 3% to 2%. I think at the time, people were surprised that we were doing it. But I think in the fullness of time, I don't know whether it's because the scale of our business and its diversity gives us more access to what's going on. But if you look at the first quarter results from all, let's say, the big 5 -- but we haven't seen the Dentsu results I think yet, but the other 4, the big 6, they follow a very similar pattern. I mean, there are some idiosyncrasies to -- or differences to each of them. But broadly, they follow a pattern. And if you look at the earnings of the multinationals that are reported or our top 20 as we call it, or those that have reported, they are 20, they follow that pattern remarkably consistently, i.e. low growth, 1%, for the lot of it, price rather than volume; and U.S., the delta being better around -- in international versus U.S. So I think, James, it's just -- it is the first quarter. As others have said, it is the smallest quarter of the year, and it's -- I think given what's happening in the environment, I think we're just being cautious. On the new business front, which you touched on, we have seen a sea change in the first quarter. We're 1 and 2 in the net new business tables. There's a fair amount out there. Sanofi, the results of the Sanofi creative review, which we expect some good news from, is -- will be coming shortly. There's a media review there as well. There's the Sprint media review, and there's Peugeot PSA media review also. And there's a short list that has been developed for that. So I would say there's a fair bit going on in terms of new business which may or may not add. There's a couple of things we -- nobody picked it up in the language, but there are a couple of things that have not been announced where we have won a couple of good pieces of business in the Middle East, being one; and then a nice piece of technology business in the U.S., neither of which have been announced. So I think the new business momentum is certainly better than we saw in Q4 of last year, and we're sort of getting our mojo back a bit in relation to that.

Great. Yes, you touched -- actually touched on my second question. Did you see any more deceleration in your review of your top clients in the fourth versus the first quarter growth in the U.S.? So overall, it went from 2 to 1. Did you see the U.S. growth coming down more as you went from the fourth to the first? Or was it simply that the U.S. growth outlook was lower than the international in the first?

No, I think it has come back. I mean, it's a little bit puzzling, to be honest, because all the qualitative sort of the quasi-focus group chat that you have with clients is they are very much more optimistic about the U.S. And I think it's because of the nature of the relationship between the new administration and business which is much closer, much more open and welcoming, obviously, because of the nature, whether it'd be a Wilbur Ross or a Gary Cohn or Mnuchin, whoever. It happens to be these are all people that are well aware from the opportunities and challenges in business, and they want to change it. And the President himself is -- obviously, with the tax cuts, is trying to address these issues. The issues about implementation. So it's a little bit puzzling as to why. And with the markets sort of clearly signaling that they're anticipating that as well, the question is implementation. On the international side, it's also a bit puzzling because you would think the spinoffs from the administration in relation to the trade issues that those would be unhelpful. Western Europe, you see from our numbers in the U.K., U.K. has not been hit by Brexit as yet. It's slightly slower in Q4 of last year, in Q1 of this year than Q3 of last year. But Q1 of this year to Q4 of last year in the U.K. is pretty good. And the same thing for Western Continental Europe led by Germany. So we are seeing -- it is sort of counterintuitive, maybe the markets front run what's happening. But at the moment, I would say U.S. remains, again, somewhat puzzling. The other thing I would say -- and I -- this is not something that we like to touch on but I mean it is a fact of life, the discounting, the payment term issues and the like, I think probably are the most acute in the U.S. And the competition, given the size of the U.S. market, is probably the fiercest. And that's where people put their efforts, if that's the right word in putting it, in relation to discounting. So I think that's part of it, too.

Great. And then my last one, just on costs. I think, Paul, you mentioned that you had renewed and extended, perhaps, your agreement with IBM. But just more broadly, could you refresh us with where you stand in terms of the timing of the savings you're expecting from the IT and the shared services initiatives? I think I had a general assumption that they would account for roughly half of your margin improvement this year, but I don't know whether that's as fine-tuned as you could give it.

That may be a bit optimistic. I think rather than give you a decision about when the benefits come, let me sort of tell you where I am on the journey to a certain degree. So I think it's been fairly tough, if I'm honest, 2.5 years as we worked in our sort of current mode of operations. It was a very testing 2016, to be honest with you. But we've reconciled and structured a new 7-year deal, with improvements or efficiency gains of up to 25% coming in within 2 years of signing. The scale of the business is probably slightly less than we had originally anticipated, which is the infrastructure costs of our total IT is a bit smaller than we first thought. But we have added a second phase to that which is the maintenance and development of our finance systems. So the good news is I think we've really dealt with all the headwinds. We've made the one-off investments. We dealt with the headwinds. We are sort of set ready to get the benefits coming through. Although I think there is still, if I'm honest -- the low point in terms of as we transition from the old way of doing thing to the new thing, there's a lot of handholding required. It is quite still labor-intensive to get physically the servers move from their current locations to the 4 main data centers, over 16 total data centers from the 2,000 sites we are trying to save. There's quite a bit of labor involved. But I think the journey is well proceeding. The benefits are baked in, but I think I'm not banking on them in great detail or to a great magnum in 2017. I think that the real benefits will come in '18, '19.…

We will now take the next question from Brian Wieser from Pivotal Research.

We describe marketing procurement as often optimizing trees rather than forests, for example, looking to reduce individual costs like agency services, which is still often call nonworking and then, separately, optimizing media costs rather than doing some combination. And it just -- first of all, do you agree that that's occurring in general? It seems that if marketers were optimizing more holistically that, that actually might be more favorable for agencies. So just curious about your thoughts on that. Separately, curious for an update on your feelings on positions in minority interest in comScore, AppNexus and Globant at the present time. Do you feel like your exposures to these companies are at the right levels presently?

Okay. So just on the first, I mean I think the best comment that I've seen is this comment that -- I think it's Michael Farmer who used to be at Bain and then started his own consulting company. We just worked with him in the very early days of his consultancy on production and agency streamlining. And what he said, now if you benchmark costs -- [indiscernible] if you benchmark activities, you become a cost. And I think whether it's trees or forests, Brian, I think that's the key issue. I was looking at something today -- I mean, you know that in -- just actually something before we came on the line, I was inquiring as to what happened in the FITCH situation on media. And one competitor guaranteed a -- it was a 20%-plus. It wasn't -- and this is not VW, but guaranteed 20% sight unseen. In other words, not knowing the pricing improvement. And the client has reduced its budget by almost 25%, and they had to guarantee for 3 years the pricing inflation-proofed. And whether that's forests or trees, I mean, it doesn't make any sense. And it's bound to be showing -- and then I saw your analysis today of U.S. and rest of the world or for all the holding companies. And as I think you quite rightly pointed out, there is some commonality there, whether you're talking about the U.S. and rest of the world or U.S. and international about what's generally going on. The -- on the ZBB specifically, the bad news is that it's probably trees rather than forests as you point out. The good news is that we know -- one client has indicated that they work with 2,400 agencies. I'm aware of another client has 700 agencies…

We will now take the next question from Douglas Arthur from Huber Research.

Two questions. The first, going back to the first quarter. I think when you released your fourth quarter results, you said net sales were up 1.2% in January. So I'm just curious, in terms of February, March, was it -- were there any particular tough comps with '16 that brought things down? And -- I mean we're not trying to analyze it month-to-month but I'm assuming -- and you've talked about easier comps as the year goes on. So I'm wondering if there's anything in the second quarter to think about. And then, secondly, on -- in terms of the heightened sensitivity of clients on ad placement, has that slowed the programmatic train at all?

So let me deal with the second one, and Paul will deal with the first one. No, I don't think it's slowed programmatic. I think programmatic is going faster internationally. And I think you saw that in the Omnicom numbers. Clearly, U.S. was more challenged in the Omnicom numbers with the Q. And then the international -- I think it's one of the explanations as to why international was stronger there. The programmatic -- as they rolled out programmatic around the world, that gained traction, and we've seen the same phenomenon. I would say it's too early to say of what the impact of the ad placement issue is. Certainly, spending in the first quarter of this year, we got the final numbers on Facebook, was up sharply, much more significantly sharper actually than on Google, but that wasn't to do -- some of it's to do with currency translation because of the strength of the dollar where Google is more exposed internationally. But it's not to do with the ad placement because that really won't hit -- if it does hit, it won't hit -- and it's mainly in the U.K. -- until the second quarter. So I think it's too early to tell. I would expect -- we were talking to our colleagues at GroupM about this before we made the first quarter announcement, I think their view is the impact -- there will be minor impact, probably mostly in the U.K., and it will affect second quarter spending or April, May spending. I have to say that Google have been very responsive as they should be, not so much on admitting that they're a media company or Facebook admitting to it but trying to help out clients instead of boycott and deny access to what is the biggest media channel currently because that's where we, and indeed our competition, spend the largest amount of their media budgets with their clients. Not so much from boycotts, but trying to work with Google to get -- to sort the problem out. And Google has been responsive, I think, for whatever reasons. I think the one stage that we're left to get to is to get Google and Facebook to step up to the fact they are media companies or publishers, which they haven't as yet been prepared to do. They do have the resources, they do have the margin, they do have human and machine resources to do it just like any other media owner. So do you want to say anything about Q1?

Yes. So Doug, just to give sort of some color. I mean, the first month that we did report was 1.2%. The comparison in January 2016 was 2.2%. The quarter in '16 was 3.1%. And it was pretty highly correlated to how we performed in February, March. But what I would say, our February number was slightly weaker than we expected, and our March number was slightly stronger. So it kind of came in where we thought it would do. In terms of quarter 2, overall, the quarter last year was slightly stronger at 4.3%. Not desperately strong in April and May, but very strong in June. So our budgets for the second quarter '17 show sort of the toughest challenge against the month of June itself, sort of consistent sort of performance versus where we expect to be in April and May compared to prior year. That gives you some sort of shape and flavor about how we'll go through our first 6 months of this year, so...

And just the comparison last year, it was 4% in the first half and 2% in the second half. So the easiest -- easier compared to some -- as we've indicated, we think 1% in the first half and 3% in the second half is the way that it will pan out, remembering also that we own, what is it, 2/3 of our profit in the second half of the year, 1/3 in the first half, and it's 40%, if I remember rightly.

We will now take the next question from Alexia Quadrani from JPMorgan.

Just to circle back, if I may, on the U.S. organic growth. Martin, I know you've discussed in your opening comments and highlighted the disconnect between the sort of Trump-related optimism and the underlying growth. I guess I'm wondering if you have any more color? I know new business is impacting that a little bit at least right now. I'd love to know if you find it really isolated to one vertical, kind of a universal issue in the U.S. and, specifically, when your new business sort of comp, will cycle through and get easier in the United States?

Well, if you -- I think we said on this morning's call, AT&T started, I think, in November to switch there, and VW from the beginning of this year, so from January 1 because the VW-FITCH process was something like 18 months, started in the middle of '16 -- sorry, middle of '15 and ended at the -- ended about the middle of '16 and was effective the beginning of January. I mean I think a large part of the explanation of what's happened in the U.S. as far as we're concerned is -- we've said to you, Alexia, that as far as we're concerned, the total revenues associated with the 2 accounts that I'd mentioned -- and of course, VW was international whereas AT&T was U.S. only, there was a bit in Mexico, but it basically was U.S. -- it was about $175 million. Now we don't know what that transferred as or be -- or the basis on which it transferred. But the interesting thing is, if you look at where it went, it doesn't seem to compensate it certainly in a U.S. context. So I must say, coming back to the previous comments and your question, I find it a little bit puzzling that given -- I'm going to use the word euphoria, it's not euphoria -- but submarket is being pretty euphoric. But the commentary from the people we talked to, the clients we talk to, is very much more positive. It's changed a bit maybe in the last 30 to 60 days after the health care decision or lack of decision a little bit because people are worried about implementation. But clearly, there is a much greater degree of optimism. And I think that's justified because -- and if half of the stuff that's being floated or being talked about actually happens, it must be stimulative for the U.S. domestic economy. A question mark on what happens abroad, but it must be helpful and, therefore, must help the U.S. base. But the things against it, just to -- and this is tough stuff. I mean the ZBB stuff is -- and again, I don't think you underestimate the impact that the Kraft Heinz bid had psychologically across not just packaged goods but elsewhere because -- if Unilever -- a bid is made for Unilever, people would just say nobody is safe or nobody is immune from anything like that. So there's concerns about that. And I think that feeds through to, obviously, spending, coming back to the procurement question that Brian raised, and how agencies respond because agencies are very competitive with one another and are seeking to gain market share in the best way possible.

I guess one follow-up. I mean, nobody in the industry probably has so much insight as you do in this sector with your perspective. Would it be too simplistic or would it be fair to say that this seems like more of a cyclical issue and eventually will filter through one way or the other or there are some structural concerns you're generally seeing?

Well, I mean if it doesn't, there's going to be some casualties. It goes -- it is -- I think, it is shooting yourself in the foot. You're not going to be -- I'm just giving you an example that I just went through. I mean, if you make a pricing guarantee, saying that -- in the case I was just looking at a few minutes ago, for 3 years, we're going to guarantee you against inflation. And then the premise on which you made the spend, that -- if you didn't know what the pricing was, but you made -- you offered a discount and you price-proofed it, you inflation-proofed it, and then the client, in this particular case, cut their spend, to be precise, by 23%, which is a different volume, then you must -- it must come out in the wash at some point in time. And I think, to some extent, that's what we're seeing. It's not all of what we're seeing in the -- I'm talking about in the industry. It is coming out in the wash. You can see it in the results. I mean it -- the giveaway, Alexia, would be if somebody was -- if everybody was prepared to put the net sales figures out there, then you would see it in spades. But until they do that, there's so much noise in the numbers. And [ Brian ] wrote, I think, a really good note on that either yesterday or today, I saw it, where he explored the differences between revenue and net sales. Now people say they don't act to the principal. We know in certain markets that, that is not true. We know that principal buying goes -- and I'm not talking about online, I'm talking about offline, we know in certain markets this happens. We've seen it direct. So there are -- and there is some -- IPG does talk about, as you know, the variances that it sees occasionally between revenue and net sales, for example, in [indiscernible] business. But we also know that there are a large part of businesses, a very significant size in the U.S., where there must be some difference between revenue and net sales. And you get distorted margins. [ Brian's ] made this point, I think he said 300 basis points potentially, but distorted -- not distorted margin, it's margin delta, if you look at it on a net sales basis. And I don't know why people are not willing to give the net sales figures. It's -- maybe it's fear about being smaller than they indicated they were, I don't know. But it's a strange, strange phenomenon. And you've seen that in the packaged goods sector, we've seen margins on gross sales and net sales. So it's a bit puzzling, a bit puzzling.

We will now take the next question from Dan Salmon from BMO.

Sir Martin, there's lots of crosscurrents it seems in the CPG sector lately. You've discussed many of them already this morning. One thing that I think you've been pointing to are some of the overlooked opportunities here that as large marketers chop down their list of agencies, it's an opportunity for you to consolidate business that many of your digital agencies have expanded e-commerce capabilities to help them make that transition. I was curious about how you feel the opportunity around trade promotion may change over time. And of course, the agencies have always been involved with shopper marketing. But trade promotion, there's a big chunk of money there that is really direct subsidies to retailers in the forms of price reductions, in slotting fees, not so much the end cap and things like that, but those straight subsidies. As that business moves to e-commerce, isn't that budget that you can then be optimizing for them similar that -- as you would their digital ad budget?

Yes, I totally agree. And the interesting thing about that point is that shopper, as we call it, and we've renamed segments of our business digital shopper and e-commerce for exactly the reason that you said. The amounts of money that are invested in embedded commerce, in trade promotion often exceed above the line budget. Certainly that was true historically, and I think it's true now. And of course, when volumes are light, the temptation is to discount -- not just agencies discounting but clients will discount. I mean, part of this maybe -- I remember on CNBC in the U.K., they talked about this, that part of the issue maybe that the clients and retail -- I mean, I've heard that packaged goods clients and retail in Europe, there's been a significant amount of delisting and arguments about listing and positions in stores if clients are not prepared to pay appropriate discounts. I mean that's sort of a pricing war -- a pricing thing. And if that can shift to e-commerce activity or shift to investment in e-commerce activities or shopper activities, that can be very potent. And it plays to the heart of the matter, this contradiction between let's cut costs but drive the top line. So one of the areas where clients can see immediate return is when we -- when they start to shift with us an investment into, let's call it, shopper, for want of a better designation, we do that in North America for a number of clients. Take the Nielsen data that we talked about on this morning's call, where 9.5% of it is Hispanics, 3.5% across all categories, packaged goods categories in January and February, what's the way of dealing with that? Well, part of the reason it showed such a sharp…

And then maybe just 1 quick follow-up. I don't normally ask about some of your smaller acquisitions, but Deeplocal looks like an interesting one. Could you just maybe give us 60 seconds on expanded thoughts on that one in particular?

Yes. I mean, it's interesting because it's not a big company. I think the revenues are around $13 million or $14 million. It's based in Pittsburgh. It's really, I'm going to say a bunch -- inappropriate to call people a bunch of -- it's not -- or a flock or a gaggle or a tribe of engineers, basically out of Carnegie Mellon. And it's really interesting because what they do is devise products. So for example, Netflix have socks that if you wear them and you fall asleep will pause your screen. I think it's Lyft, they devised the thumb that you strap to your hand which will order you a Lyft car. And when the Lyft car is in close proximity, it will signal to you by -- I think the thumb rises as a thumbs-up that the car is there. So what they use is technology in a -- working with companies like Netflix and Lyft, they use technology to devise innovative products. And I think it takes us into an interesting era. It's small. The management is extremely dynamic, very young, very smart based, as I said, in Pittsburgh, and really an excellent group of engineers, software engineers, with some very interesting thinking. And means of differentiator, they would tend to compete with an [indiscernible] or a [ prog ] or whatever more on the product side.

Got it. It sounds fun.

Definitely fun.

Thank you. As there are no further questions in the queue at this time, I would now like to turn the call back to Sir Martin Sorrell for any additional or closing remarks.

Okay, thank you very much, operator. Thank you, everybody, for joining us this morning -- it feels like this afternoon -- and this afternoon in London. And Fran is here, Lisa is in London, and Paul and I are here in New York as well to answer any other questions, you know where to get us. So thank you, and we'll see you in a few months' time. Thank you, operator.