WPP chief financial officer Joanne Wilson has said the operating company’s new-business performance should pick up throughout 2026 as she expects Q1 to be the “worst quarter” for net new business this year.
WPP reported a 6.7% decline in revenue less pass-through costs today (April 28), to £2.26 billion for Q1 2026. This was “in line with expectations” for the quarter.
Within that, WPP Media was down 8.5%, whereas Global Integrated Agencies' revenue was down 7.4%.
Account losses were given as one of the factors impacting Q1 revenues, particularly for WPP Media, which, Wilson said, continued to see “significant drag from gross account losses” and was still waiting for new business from Q4 and Q1 to “ramp up performance”.
By region, she said account losses “weighed most heavily” on North America and the UK, which, overall, declined by 6.6% and 7.8% respectively.
On a call with analysts following Q1 results, Wilson said she expected the “drag from net new business” to ease
throughout the year and “improve trajectory into the second half”.
She added, “I would expect Q1 to be
the worst quarter for net new business. In terms of the full year, it's too early to put a number on net new-business
impact.”
WPP was ranked first by JP Morgan for net new business in both Q4 2025 and Q1 2026.
Its new-business wins within Q1 2026 included Estée Lauder’s global media remit; SC Johnson’s media account for North America and media buying for Wendy’s across the US. In the UK, it also renewed its relationship with Tesco and, in China, retained its mandate for Huawei.
Looking ahead, Wilson added, “The pipeline is healthy. We talked last year about, particularly in media, there being a lower volume of pipeline activity, and we've been encouraged by the level of activity that we've seen in the last few months.”
Source: Campaign UK
