Mumbai: London-headquartered global communications company WPP on Thursday announced its 2021 preliminary results with the full year and Q4 financial highlights. The full year continuing operations reported revenue at £12801 million (+6.7 per cent), against 12,003 in 2020. The company posted £1,494 million operating profit for the full year (£1261 million in 2020). Profit before tax stood at £1365 million, against £1,041 million last year.
“It has been an outstanding year for WPP. Our top-line growth, driven by strong demand for our services in digital marketing, media, e-commerce and technology, has resulted in our fastest organic growth for over 20 years. As a result, we are two years ahead of our plan, hitting our 2023 revenue target in 2021,” said WPP CEO Mark Reed.
“Cash generation continues to be very strong, underpinned by efficiencies achieved in our transformation programme, allowing us to make significant investments in our offer and reward our people for their huge contribution, while returning over £1 billion in cash to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks,” he added.
The company is looking forward to 2022 with confidence, guiding to strong top-line growth, improving profitability and continued investment in people and services.
Reed shared that the company has made substantial strategic progress, creating the world’s leading board-level communications firm through the merger of Finsbury Glover Hering and Sard Verbinnen, and acquiring capabilities in AI, commerce and technology services to leverage across all of WPP for future growth.
“As clients seek to accelerate their growth and transform how they reach customers, the depth, breadth and global scale of our offer - which combines creativity with technology and data, through Choreograph, and the largest global media platform in GroupM - is proving its value for existing and new clients. The talent, dynamism and commitment of our people have also shone through. Our extensive partnership with The Coca-Cola Company, the expansion of our work with Google and the continuation of our longstanding relationship with Unilever demonstrate the value that three of the world’s leading marketing organisations place in WPP,” stated Reed.
