WPP (LON: WPP), the London-listed advertising and marketing-services group behind agencies including Ogilvy and Grey, saw its shares surge as much as 30% intraday today after first-half results beat depressed analyst forecasts on revenue, profit and margin.
The shares soared by 23% by mid-morning at 378.2p, having opened at 344p after closing yesterday at 307.1p. That took the stock to an intraday high of 400p, its highest level since September 2025, after a year in which it had fallen roughly 65% to a 27-year low.
WPP published its interim results earlier today, reporting a like-for-like revenue decline of 4.7%, better than the roughly 6.5% analysts had expected, and headline operating profit of £398m, more than 13% above consensus. Management maintained full-year guidance for an improving second-half trajectory and a 12-13% operating margin. Chief executive Cindy Rose said she was “encouraged by our first-half performance which is in line with our expectations,” adding that “Q2 saw a further sequential improvement in LFL growth, highlighting the momentum we are building across the company.”
Revenue less pass-through costs, WPP’s preferred top-line measure excluding client costs it merely passes through, fell to £4,745m from £5,026m a year earlier, while headline operating margin, which excludes one-off items such as restructuring charges, rose to 8.4% from 8.2%. The results mark the first evidence that Rose’s Elevate28 turnaround plan, targeting £500m of annualised cost savings by 2028, is translating into financial delivery rather than merely slowing the decline. Top 25 clients’ like-for-like revenue fell 6.3% in the half but improved to a 3.2% decline in the second quarter. WPP held its interim dividend at 7.5p, intending to keep the full-year payout at 15p.
Rose said the company had completed the “building blocks” of its new structure, moving from “a complex holding company to a single, integrated company” built around four operating units and its WPP Open platform, adding that “organic growth remains our North Star.”
The scale of the rally reflects how deeply discounted the shares had become, trading near the bottom of a 52-week range of 212.29p to 389.75p going into the results. The underlying business is still shrinking year-on-year, leaving the pace of the second-half recovery as the next test of the turnaround.