Gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the WPP 2021 preliminary results conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. At which time, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to hand the conference over to WPP CEO, Mr. Mark Read. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you very much and welcome everybody. Thank you for joining us. I'm here in Sea Containers with John and with Peregrine. Pleased to say our office is. We're all about 1,200 people in the office today. I think before we start, just a few words. You know, I woke up, or we woke up like everyone else to see the news in Ukraine. It's obviously you know, terrible and of concern. We do have 200 people there in Kiev. We've been in touch with them over the last few weeks to provide you know, whatever support we can. I'm sure we'll get into you know, the economic impact a little bit in the presentation and in the Q&A. It's obviously early days, but I think we should just at least acknowledge that before we start and get into what I think is a strong set of results for us in 2021. On the next slide, we have the cautionary statement, and I'd ask you to read that before we look into. On the contents chart, page 3, I'll briefly go through the highlights. It's really been, as I said, an exceptional year. John will take you through the financial results, capital allocation, and our guidance, and I'll come back to review strategic progress in more detail and how that's linking to the financial performance of the company, and we'll get into the Q&A. On slide 4, you know, we really have seen very strong growth in the year. I think driven by demand for, you know, our digital services, e-commerce, and technology areas where we are strong. You know, top line growth has more than doubled our initial guidance, which I'll remind you we upgraded 3 times during the year and came in slightly ahead of the October raise that we debated at some length on the call. I think growth was consistently strong across the board, all business lines growing double digits in Q4. I think the performance also reflects strongly the changing nature of our business, with our integrated agencies now 38% of the exposure into commerce, experience, and technology, up from 35% in 2019. You know, GroupM is now 43% digital. Of course, it's a little bit below the market mix, but that market mix does reflect the preponderance of digital spend in smaller clients, and our spend reflects the mix of the largest global marketers who tend to be our clients and shows really the scope for further growth and expansion in GroupM's business. In new business, we've shown continued strength and success with three of the world's biggest marketers, Coca-Cola, Google, and Unilever. I think that shows the value of WPP and our integrated offer to the biggest marketing clients generally. However, we're still very much a creative business at heart, so being back on top at Cannes for the first time since 2017 was really a validation of our commitment and the investment in creative talent that we've made consistently over the last three years. On shareholder returns, you know, yes, we have returned GBP 1 billion to shareholders in 2021. I think this is a very strong figure, but if you add together the close to GBP 600 million on incentives as we rebuilt those, GBP 400 million on M&A, and GBP 300 million of CapEx, you can see really we're putting GBP 1.3 billion into our people and into growth and really balancing the cash generation of the business between shareholders and future growth. All of that makes us confident going into 2022 with good momentum on the top line and potential for further strong earnings growth. John, take us through the financial performance. Thank you, Mark. Let me take you through the preliminary results for the year ending December 31, 2021. Turning now to slide 6 and our headline income statement. As Mark has already covered, revenue less pass-through costs of GBP 10.397 billion, up 12.1% on a like-for-like basis, significantly ahead of where we expected at the start of 2021 and also ahead of our Q3 guidance. That delivered an operating profit of GBP 1.494 billion, up 18.5% on the year. Income from associates at GBP 86 million, slightly higher than 2020, given strong Kantar performance and also broader recovery across the rest of the portfolio, delivered a profit before interest and tax of GBP 1.58 billion, up 24.3%. Reflecting finance costs and tax delivered a profit after tax of just over GBP 1.03 billion, 29.5% up year-on-year. Now, I should point out here that the tax rate at 24% is slightly higher than expected, given the profit mix and also, of course, the changing international tax environment. Taking account of non-controlling interests delivers profit attributable to shareholders of GBP 954 million, up 28.6% year-on-year. A diluted EPS of 78.5, up 30.6%, and an operating margin of 14.4%. Up 1.5 points year-on-year and ahead of consensus. Overall, a very strong year out-turning ahead of 2019 on revenue less pass-through costs and a year ahead of our plan. Turning now to slide seven and a reconciliation of our headline operating profit to our reported operating profit. As you can see, the headline operating profit I've just covered at GBP 1.494 billion. We then adjusted for a goodwill impairment, which of course is significantly less than we saw in 2020 when we made substantial impairments as a result of COVID-19. Also adjustments to amortization, impairment of intangibles, a little bit of a write back on investments reflecting a write back of our Imagina investment, allowing for restructuring costs both normal and COVID-19 related. I'll come on to talk about those in a little bit more detail later on in my presentation. Gave overall adjustments against headline items of GBP 265 million, delivering a reported operating profit of GBP 1.229 billion. Coming on now to how we're performing across our different sectors. First, the global integrated agencies, strong growth continuing. Overall like-for-like growth in the year of 11.3%. Actually on a two-year basis, up 2.5%. Good recovery over the year. Headline operating profits up GBP 1.2 billion, up 14.7%, and operating margin of 14.1%, up 1.2 percentage points. It's actually worth looking at the graph at the bottom of the page there, which shows a really strong recovery even on a two-year basis versus 2019 in the second half of 4.4% up on 2019. Good recovery coming through in the second half. Turning to slide 9, we've actually chosen to split out GroupM performance from our global integrated agencies. Again, you see the very strong performance of GroupM, particularly in Q2 and Q3, and also extending into Q4. You see there the performance of our other integrated agencies in the light blue also recovering well through Q2 and the second half. Turning to our public relations business, good recovery, good performance over 2020 and 2021. Like-for-like sales up 11.5%, and on a two-year basis, actually up 7%. Really showing sustained demand for strategic communication services throughout the pandemic. Headline operating profits up 1.3%, albeit margin down slightly, reflecting on a very strong 2020. Worth noting again through the graph in the second half of the year, you know, almost double-digit growth on a two-year basis versus 2019. Really strong performance and strong performance across the board. Hill & Knowlton and our specialist PR agencies growing at strong double-digit like-for-like growth. BCW also performing well and accelerating in the second half. Of course, we completed the Sard Verbinnen transaction before the year-end, combining that with FGH to present a very strong business going forward. Turning now to our specialist agencies. Again, with strong recovery through 2021, with revenue less pass-through cost up 21.8% and up 7.8% on a two-year basis. Really strong headline operating profit recovery up 127.5%, and margin up 7.6 points. Really strong recovery on profit in particular through 2021. If you look at the chart below, you'll see very strong performance in Q2 and Q3, largely benefiting from a COVID-related contract we had in Germany under our GKK business, and we saw that normalize coming through Q4. Brand consulting performing incredibly strongly, with both Superunion and Landor & Fitch performing well, and also again, CMI also maintaining double-digit growth in Q4. Coming on now to our performance across our major markets. A very strong performance and recovery in the U.S. market. You see that consistently through Q2, Q3, and Q4, and also on a two-year basis, up about 5% in the second half of the year, which gives us real confidence going into 2022. UK market also showing strong growth, particularly through Q3. China was also pleasing to see recovery in the second half as we guided to at the interim last year. Good recovery coming through in the second half. Again, on the right-hand side there, you see Germany, particularly strong growth, as I said, in Q3, driven by that COVID contract that I mentioned earlier, albeit normalizing coming through into Q4. Coming on now to our change in our operating margin. We saw salary increases through 2021. Our staff costs overall up 3.2%, reflecting of course those salary increases we put through. Significant savings on our establishment, reflecting the strong performance of our campus program. Overall, we delivered some savings in IT, but they were broadly offset by investment, so relatively neutral year-on-year in terms of our IT costs. On personnel costs, strongly influenced of course by the reduced travel in half one, down slightly year-on-year. Our other operating costs are significantly down on 2020, reflecting lower office costs and also a better bad debt performance. All of which delivered an operating profit pre-incentives of just over GBP 2 billion, which is up 44.3% year-on-year, and delivers actually a margin of 20.1% up 5.3 percentage points. Really strong performance on a pre-incentive basis. Of course, it was great to be able to report very strong incentive payments for the year of GBP 592 million, reflecting frankly a very strong performance of the business and a great opportunity to reward our people for all the hard work during the year. All of which deliver an operating profit of GBP 1.494. Again, as I've already mentioned, a margin of 14.4% up 1.5 points year-on-year. Coming on now to the margin bridge. We showed this slide to you at our interims. This shows the margin bridge between margin in 2020 of 12.9% and the outturn of 14.4% in 2021. Just to take you through the different components there. First and foremost is just on our staff costs. If you remember at the half, we were reporting that as up 4.4% year-over-year. We also guided at the time that we would expect that to reverse in the second half, and that's exactly what we saw. Actually overall in the second half, we were about zero in terms of year-over-year on our staff costs, and therefore for the year overall, a 2% improvement. On establishment costs, we showed a similar benefit in the second half to the first half, up 1.5% overall for the year. In relation to personal costs, we were about flat for the full year, albeit we were up obviously by 0.8% in the first half. Obviously, as people started to return to travel in the second half, that eliminated the first half gain. So it's flat year on year and very much as we guided to at our interims. IT costs in line with the first half and also other G&A in line with the first half. And then of course the big offset in relation to incentives, very similar to the first half at 3.8% to deliver the 14.4% margin for the year. So very, very much in line with, if not slightly better than the guidance that we gave at our interims. Maybe now just coming on to the guidance for 2022, where we're talking about an expected increase in our operating margin of around 50 bps for the full year. Just to give you a little bit of a shape on that. I think we will see a little bit of a drag in relation to our staff costs in 2022, reflecting of course increases in salaries, and it will be somewhat offset by operational leverage. I think the overall drag for the year will be about - 25 bps. I think in relation to establishment costs will be broadly flat year-on-year. We will be delivering savings overall, but they are being offset by return to office costs. I expect our establishment costs to be broadly flat year-on-year. In relation to personnel costs, we expect that to be a drag of about 50 bps in 2022, reflecting a return to travel, particularly in half one from a year-on-year basis, because obviously half one of last year, we were very much still in lockdown with very little travel taking place across the organization. Then looking at IT and other G&A combined, a slight drag of about 25 bps. Then from an incentives perspective, while we still expect to be paying strong incentives for 2022, 2021 was an exceptional year. We think we'll see a tailwind of about 50 bps or so on our incentives in 2022, all of which nets off to that around 50 bps improvement in our margin year-on-year. Now, it's important to note that from a phasing perspective, we expect half one to be more challenging. We actually expect to go backwards slightly on margin in half one, reflecting the annualization of the salary cost increases that we put through in around June of 2021. Of course, the increases in the travel, particularly in the first half year-over-year that I mentioned earlier. We expect to go backwards slightly in the first half of the year, and we expect to recover that, more than recover that, of course, in the second half of the year to deliver an overall improvement of 50 basis points. Coming on now to our transformation program, and I'll talk about the cost savings in a second, but just to sort of bring to life a couple of highlights through the year. In terms of simplifying our business, great progress being made on our campus program, 9 more campuses opened, 12 under construction, 17 more in scope, and GBP 110 million of savings versus 2019 already being seen in 2021. Again we continue to simplify our business. We've taken out 500 or so legal entities, so we're down now to about 2,300 and more to go in the year ahead. Probably another 500 or so we aim to eliminate in the next 12 months. Also significant agency consolidation in some of our smaller markets, which has been really effective at not only saving some costs, but also driving our top line. In terms of building world-class support services, really strong progress here, particularly in relation to hiring the team which is gonna deliver this transformation over the next couple of years. In terms of my direct reports and their teams, around 65% of those people are new into role, and actually over 40% are new to WPP. We're really bringing in a strong team to help us deliver this transformation. We've defined new target operating models across IT, finance, and HR, and indeed are already implementing the new target operating model for IT as we speak. We've delivered GBP 40 million of procurement savings across our business and also set up shared service centers across India, Middle East, Asia, and LATAM. The only slight downside is in relation to our Workday deployment, where we've actually delayed deployment until the middle of 2022, but we're confident in the phased rollout of Workday over time. In relation to accelerating our capabilities, we've got very clear growth plans for some of our key growth platforms in our business, Choreograph, Xaxis, Finecast, et cetera, and have also committed GBP 40 million to their product innovation. We've enhanced our reporting and our enterprise data and our understanding of client profitability and performance. We've created commercial playbooks and asset pricing tools to ensure that we are pricing effectively within our markets. We've created Career Explorer that enables our people to have visibility of all job opportunities right across WPP. We've leveraged our acquisitions internally, particularly, for example, for Satalia, where we're really using that to upskill our AI capabilities, not just within Satalia, of course, but right across the WPP organization. Very pleased with the progress that we've made on transformation. Of course, that has delivered to the bottom line. We set out our targets at our Capital Markets Day in December 2020. We expected to deliver GBP 200 million of savings in 2021. We've actually delivered 245 million split across property at 110 million, procurement at 40 million, travel savings, which we estimated around 80 million or so, business rationalization at around 10 million, and shared services at 5 million, delivering 245 million of overall savings. Really promising performance, and that bodes well for delivery of those savings over time, as you see set out in the graph. As I promised earlier, coming on now to slide 17, I thought I'd set out in a little bit more detail our restructuring costs for 2021. You see overall restructuring costs of 146 million, which when added to the COVID related restructuring cost of 30 million gives a total of 176 million. You'll see there that within the GBP 146 million, we've actually included GBP 63 million of costs for Workday, which is effectively a reclassification away from CapEx into our P&L, taking account of the updated IFRIC guidance for SaaS accounting. We've put the Workday costs into our P&L. As I said, overall, GBP 176 million of restructuring costs, of which around GBP 125 million is cash. Actually, if you strip out the Workday, which we previously had in capital, that gives overall restructuring costs of GBP 113 million. Slightly ahead of the guidance that we gave. We guided to about GBP 70 million-GBP 100 million due to the additional IT restructuring costs you see there at GBP 31 million in the top half of that table. Of course, in relation to Workday, we are expecting circa GBP 350 million of Workday costs coming through between 2022 and 2025, which will now be included in restructuring and transformation and taken out of CapEx. I'll come on to show a CapEx slide later on to make that clear. We anticipate GBP 100 million of Workday costs in 2022. In relation to other restructuring and transformation costs, we foresee that as being between GBP 200 million and GBP 250 million between 2022 and 2025. A slight increase to our previous guidance of GBP 100-200 million or so, albeit in a second you'll see that when we look at the overall CapEx costs, including Workday, you'll see that those are actually coming down slightly. Net-net overall between restructuring costs and CapEx costs, it plays a draw in relation to the previous guidance that we've given. We expect about GBP 120 million of those restructuring costs to come through in 2020. Again, all of those will be cash. As I said earlier, just coming on now to talk about the phasing of our CapEx and Workday. You'll see here that the costs are set out on the left-hand side here as per our Capital Markets Day guidance in December 2020. Then you'll see the numbers, the new guidance on the right-hand side. You'll see an underspend in 2021. You'll see spend in line with the previous guidance in 2022. A slight catch-up coming through in 2023, in line in 2024, and under in 2025. There's been a slight rephasing of the spend. Overall, actually, when you add it all together, it's coming in about GBP 50 million less than that we previously guided to, reflecting, of course, the slight increase in the restructuring guidance. When you add the two together, they broadly play a draw. Coming on now to our strong cash generation. You'll see there on the left-hand side, very strong operating cash generation of just over GBP 1.8 billion. Good performance on our trade net working capital, better than we guided. We expected there to be a GBP 200 million-GBP 300 million outflow at the start of the year. We actually saw a GBP 300+ million inflow. We also saw positive movements on our other working capital, reflecting of course a large accrual for our bonus payments for 2021. Taking out interest, lease payments, tax paid, CapEx, as I've already mentioned. That CapEx is about GBP 190 million of property and GBP 100 on IT. Of course, the strong return to shareholders in dividends, share buybacks, and so forth, saw our overall net debt for the year increase by GBP 205 million from GBP 696 million in 2020 to GBP 901 million in 2021. Again, looking at working capital on slide 20, I think good performance through the year on our overdue debtors. Around 12.5% or so overdue, what was different to 2020 was consistently low through the year. I still think we've got the opportunity to improve this going forward. Overall, given the growth of GroupM in particular, we saw GBP 220 million of inflow from working capital. We expect for this year, for 2022, that our trade working capital will be broadly flat year-on-year. Albeit, we also expect to see a slight outflow in relation to our non-trade working capital as a consequence of the unwind of the bonus accrual. Coming on now to slide 2021, looking at our overall sort of capital allocation. Obviously we've been able to invest significantly in our business in 2020, investing in growth, particularly the growth platforms, Xaxis, Finecast, Choreograph, investing in our talent, investing in our IT, etc. At the same time, we've also been able to return over GBP 1 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks, 30% growth in our dividend year-over-year. Our balance sheet remains strong. Our average net debt to EBITDA for 2021 at 0.9 times, comfortably below our leverage target of 1.5-1.75 times, and hence why we're able to support a GBP 800 million planned share buyback for 2022, of which we've already completed just under GBP 130 million. I've just covered our leverage metrics on the following slide. You see that at 0.9 times at the bottom. Interest cover is very healthy and overall the balance sheet is in very good shape. Coming now to 2023, my last slide and our guidance for the year. Guidance for 2022, we expect like-for-like revenues less pass-through costs at around 5%. A slight headwind from Forex at about 0.5%, and a contribution from M&A of between 50 and 100 basis points. Headline operating margin we expect to be up by around 50 basis points. CapEx at about GBP 350 million-GBP 400 million, roughly half property, half IT, and in addition, GBP 100 million or so of costs on Workday. Again, consistent with the guidance that I gave earlier on. Trade working capital around flat year-over-year. GBP 800 million in share buybacks. A headline tax rate of around 25.5%. A slight uptick on where we've guided to previously. Again, just given the prevailing tax environment that's out there from an international perspective. We're not changing our medium-term guidance. This is guidance we gave at the Capital Markets Day back in 2020. The revenue less pass-through costs of 3%-4% growth, broken down into 2.5%-3% like for like, and 0.5%-1% from M&A. A headline operating margin of 15.5%-16%. Consistent with what we told you back in December of 2020. With that, I'll hand back to Mark to take you through our strategic progress. Thank you. Brilliant. Thanks very much, John. I'll talk to you about our strategic position, which I think really has been significant. If I think back to this call three years ago, you know, where we were facing a situation where, you know, our revenues had been declining for three years, our largest client had been up for review, you know, our debt was approaching levels I think were unsustainable. To today, where we're delivering, you know, above average peer level growth. We've just won, you know, probably the largest new business pitch in our industry's history, and our balance sheet's in a really strong position. We have made tremendous strategic progress. On slide 25, if I think about what's changed and how the industry is changing, you know, three factors really give us strong momentum going into the future. You know, the structural drivers of our industry, our own competitiveness, and really the relevance of our offer to the needs of our clients. You know, on structural drivers, you know, there are several factors at play, and one is obvious, the growth of digital and commerce everywhere to see. It's still sort of early days, and this is a long-term tailwind that all companies are gonna need to invest in. The other is the fact that integrating different parts of the marketing mix and the introduction of new ones. There's lots of talk about fragmentation of scope and complexity, but I think the response from clients increasingly today is to desire simplicity within that. That's at the heart of what The Coca-Cola Company have asked us to do, and media, creative, data, and technology need to come together, and clients are looking for partners that can bring those together. We've positioned WPP in a way central to both of these drivers, and that's leading to our improved performance, particularly as clients continue to, you know, commit and reinvest in marketing for growth. On competitiveness, I think the results, you know, are really very clear. Our investments in our client teams and our marketing efforts, our agency mergers are leading to much improved client satisfaction. Creativity remains a differentiator. You know, the idea is still important regardless of what medium is executed, and we'll continue to lead with ideas. Rob Reilly, who I hope some of you will have a chance to meet, is already making a big impact. We continue to invest in creative talent across WPP. Scale in media remains critical. We haven't stood still. It's really a story of continued investment over the last 15 years. If you think back to the acquisition of 24/7 Real Media, which was, it seems, a long time ago today, in 2007. That led to our leadership in programmatic and connected television, the depth of our relationships with technology partners, and the investment in Choreograph. All of these are keeping us ahead of the market, and that's building on our strong new business performance. That, I think, reflects over the last two years how much more competitive we've become as a company. Then on relevance, I think we have what clients need, and we're increasingly easy to work with. That simply was not the case three or four years ago. If you think about the key issues in the boardroom, digital transformation, reputation, what do I do about privacy? How do I manage my data? How do I think about, you know, Facebook? These are all issues that people at WPP can help their clients navigate. Our agency mergers have clearly delivered, and our creative agencies, we put that deliberately in inverted commas, have transformed a much more relevant offer post that integration. We continue to invest through product innovation under Stephan Pretorius, who is putting significant operational and CapEx behind growth platforms like Commerce as a Service, data, connected television. We're also making acquisitions of companies like Satalia and Cloud Commerce, with capabilities that we can leverage across all of WPP rather than remaining siloed inside one of our operating companies. I think net-net, if you look across sort of the offer to our clients, we're in good shape, and John will talk about the transformation, which we'll touch on at the conclusion. Now, on slide 26, I think we should talk briefly on purpose. It's absolutely the heart of our offer. If I remind you, our purpose is to use the power of creativity to build better futures for our people, our planet, our clients, and communities, and how we do business continues to change and improve. That's increasingly and ever more important to our people. In the fight for talent, I think purpose is critical. You can see from the range and scope of our commitments, it's something that's now deeply embedded across our organization. A few highlights to call out. The Carbon Disclosure Project upgraded our ESG score to an A- in their 2021 ratings, distinguishing WPP as a leader on climate change and reflecting the ambition of our new net zero strategy, our emissions reductions targets, and our stronger governance across our carbon emissions. We're a proud signatory to the UN Global Compact's business ambition for 1.5 degrees, the purpose which is to galvanize business support for strong climate action, and to UNFCCC's Race to Zero campaign, and we're a marketing partner actually to the UNFCCC. Our science-based targets have been approved by the Science Based Targets initiative, which is also an important step. I point out in the FTSE Women Leaders Review that was published this week, we entered the top 10 for gender representation among our executive committee and direct reports, and moved up from 10th to 8th at board level in the FTSE 100, and for the fourth year in a row, we're recognized as a leader in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index. As I mentioned, this is increasingly important to our people on slide 27. If purpose is the heart of our offer, then people, if you like, are at the heart of our purpose. We've done a lot over the last couple of years to really step up our efforts across many fronts. This year, we've been very focused, as have many companies, on looking after our people through COVID. We launched our mental health allies program, provided mental health training to 500 colleagues across the U.S. and the U.K. in 2021, and we're gonna expand that across our business in 2022. As John mentioned, we've invested in a further nine world-class campuses, including Milan, Prague, Singapore, most recently our second London campus in Rose Court, just down the river from here in Sea Containers. Most importantly this year, we've really reinvested in our incentive pool, to thank people for their hard work this year, both in terms of quantum, but also importantly in terms of the number of people across the company that that's reaching. We also continue to invest in the development of our people. Increasingly, our people want greater mobility across the group. That's something that we can offer as a competitive advantage to WPP, and we launched our Career Explorer platform to aggregate all the jobs across WPP available to our people in one place. It's an important sort of cultural change in terms of how we think about our people from a pan-WPP perspective. We launched the second series of our NextGen Leaders program, which is a 10-week virtual learning program with the aim of reaching a much more diverse pool of younger talent. Interesting, another opportunity where being able to be virtual has enabled us to expand the pool of participants and this year, 50% of the participants in the U.S. and the U.K. identified as Black, Asian or Latin, and 60% identified as female. You know, really good progress in expanding the type of talent that we attract into our industry, and we continue to invest in learning and development programs, particularly with our technology partners. Talking about balance and diversity throughout the company. We launched Unite, our first WPP company-wide LGBTQ+ community. It's now live in the UK, North America, India and Hong Kong. For the second year in a row, WPP was named among the best places to work for LGBTQ+ equality by the Human Rights Campaign. We launched a very good campaign for them actually yesterday in the U.S. We're making good progress on gender diversity. As I mentioned, women now represent more than 50% of our senior managers, and 39% of our senior leadership, up from 37% the year before. Finally, we place diversity at the center of our recruitment process, working with Black talent networks such as The LAGRANT Foundation, the Brixton Finishing School, and I'm very keen that we do even more to attract Black talent, particularly into our creative departments, where I think, you know, we can really find some unique opportunities. That's all part of the $30 million anti-racism commitment, which we made after the murder of George Floyd, and we'll cover on the next slide 28. Our DE&I and racial equity program, I think is really a differentiator for WPP. It's one of the most, I think, innovative programs of its type. I don't think I've seen anything like it. It's a fund that we apply and we invite agencies from across WPP to apply for resources and funding to run programs to promote racial justice within and outside WPP, and support black and minority ethnic talent getting into our industry and getting into WPP. We announced nine initiatives to be funded in September last year, and just to sort of highlight a few, you know, one is a research project by WPP groups here in the U.K. looking at the role of data in reaching minority ethnic audiences in the U.K. to build inclusivity into our data and market research efforts. We have a really fantastic project, Detroit Experience Studio, a commitment led by VMLY&R, UniWorld Group, GTB, and our four teams to increase career opportunities for young black and brown talent in Detroit. We have a SOMA Plus platform to expand the professionalism of 1,000 black and indigenous people in Brazil. We have a ten-week training program at WPP to help underrepresented minority veterans in the U.S. become, you know, project managers and client leaders. I think a really innovative set of programs to help advance our position in this area. Turning from, you know, our purpose back a little bit to our offer and our competitiveness. On slide 29, let's start with our integrated agencies. I think there's a tremendous amount of progress being made here in terms of people, technology, and creativity that we're being recognized for. We've done extremely well in creative awards, both at Cannes and from WARC, with all our major agencies and many smaller ones winning awards, and actually each of our major networks winning a Grand Prix at Cannes. I think if you look at the financial performance of the business, it shows how we're really changing the business mix, with nearly 40% of our sales coming from the new growth areas in experience, commerce, and technology, increasingly being rated by industry analysts ahead of consultants and other competitors, not just in marketing, but in areas like commerce and loyalty. You can see that Forrester and Gartner are recognizing our agencies in disciplines like that. It had good, strong recognition in the trade press from Campaign. Wunderman Thompson in the U.K. was named Integrated Marketing Agency of the Year, a new category, and this is translating into better financial performance. I think that's important to think about the strategic objectives that we had, you know, three years ago to return to peer-level growth. You know, the two key topics were really our creative agencies and the United States. In both areas, as we look forward into next year, they're positively contributing to our overall growth, you know, not far off the average for all of WPP. I think that puts us in a good place to meet both our numbers for 2022 and our long-term guidance. On slide 30, I think we need to recognize, you know, the strength of GroupM and its position, you know, in media and data around the world. Our scale across markets and regions increasingly valued by clients. I think one important trend has been, you know, the global consolidation of media and, you know, clients continuing to reduce the number of media partners to enhance their ability, I think, to negotiate with the major media partners, you know, the Googles and Metas and Amazons of this world, but also to simplify their partnership strategy and be able to move much more quickly in a much more agile way. You know, our two-year growth rate of 7.4% across GroupM hardly shows the impact of COVID and reflects the strong performance of media. It's a good reminder that GroupM has compounded, you know, in the long run at 5% or better the growth rate similar to, you know, a number of global data or business services franchises. We're seeing now very strong growth in commerce media, links up 41%, and in our specialty products like Finecast or Xaxis, we're also seeing strong growth. As you know, we launched Choreograph in 2021. It's got to the U.S. business is now present in 10 markets, and that's helping us to differentiate our offer and helping us in our new business performance. On page 31, you know, public relations has been, you know, I'd say, growing, you know, strongly over the last, certainly last year. It was much less impacted at the beginning of the pandemic than perhaps we would have expected, and I think reflects its increasing importance to clients and in the marketing mix. The merger of BCW, the continued development and resurgence of Hill & Knowlton, and the new combination of Finsbury Glover Hering and Sard Verbinnen means we're, you know, have an increasingly strong position in this market, increasingly represented in boardrooms, tackling key issues around reputation and purpose that are important to clients, doing this at scale, with a global footprint, and winning both bigger assignments, but importantly, assignments, integrating those assignments into the rest of WPP. I think our public relations and communications businesses are really a critical strategic capability within WPP. On page 32, our specialist agencies have had a very strong performance, as John mentioned, in 2021, probably after a slightly tougher 2020. I think it reflects, you know, a resurgence in demand for, certainly for brand consulting, but also the importance of purpose and sustainability within those markets. On slide 33, we have been investing more in acquisitions. Net net, we spent around GBP 400 million on acquisitions during the year. While we did acquire, you know, the minorities in our business in Australia and joint funded the acquisition of Numerator within Kantar to hold our equity stake there, we have also directly acquired a number of businesses with very strong capability. DTI in Brazil, around 600 and more software engineers who are focused on application development. Satalia, John mentioned a leader in AI solutions. Made Thought, a very strong design business, and Cloud Commerce, a platform to help us invest more behind our commerce as a service space. Then on Tuesday, we announced the acquisition of Village Marketing, a leader in the area of influencer and creator marketing. They have 150 people specializing in that in the U.S. I think you'll continue to see us make more acquisitions in these areas around sort of digital marketing, technology, data, and e-commerce in 2022. I talked briefly about the highlights of our new business performance on page 34. We had really a very strong competitive performance, and I'd like to see our strength both in creative and in media. You know, highlights to me it would be, you know, really just look at it through the lens of, you know, The Coca-Cola Company, Unilever, and Google, three of the world's, you know, leading marketers who are, you know, strengthening and then building their partnership with WPP. On slide 35, just to talk briefly about our strategic partnership with The Coca-Cola Company. It's really a significant and important partnership to us. I think in many ways, we look at it as, you know, a validation of the strategy of the company to have strong creative capability combined with the ability to use data in our marketing to help our clients navigate with the increasing global technology and media partners, and to invest in technology. It's really a very significant commitment they've made to us as a company. I think if you think about The Coca-Cola Company as a partnership company and think about their relationship with their bottlers, in many ways, that's at the heart of their long-term strategic partnership with WPP. They've entrusted us with a tremendous amount of their marketing, of their creative work, their media, their data, their production, as well as social and PR across 200 markets and 200 brands. We're fortunate to have very strong sponsors on their side, in the CEO, James Quincey, and the CMO, Manuel Arroyo. You can see James' quote from their recent earnings call, which calls out, you know, creativity, data, and technology at the heart of that. You know, work has really started in earnest, and it's a big focus for us as a company over the coming months. Now, on slide 36, no earnings call in 2022 would complete without some reference to the Metaverse, and this is no different. I think everyone has their own definition of what the Metaverse is. I think we think about it as really being the digital equivalent of the sort of analog world, and the way that those two worlds merge together. Think about virtual worlds versus real world, or NFT versus owning the real product, or real money to cryptocurrency. It's really the merging of that digital and analog world. There's no doubt since Facebook's rebranding that this has captured client imagination. More importantly, I think it is a substantial and growing area of our business. Think about where consumers are spending their time, you know, the 55 million daily users of Roblox, or where consumers are spending their money, the $54 billion spent on virtual goods in a recent JP Morgan study. It is an opportunity for us to help our clients find new and creative ways to help them cut through. We launched this week the Metaverse Foundry at Hogarth. It brings together a team of more than 700 people to help our clients execute their ideas in the Metaverse. I thought it was worth sharing two ideas of work from WPP companies in the Metaverse. The first one is for EMI and the band Bastille, and what you'll see is us taking their new album and putting it into a virtual world. It's sort of the band... It's innovative in a sense that it's sort of the band playing a concert that you watch in Fortnite. We had the band play. We filmed it with special 3D cameras to create a world that consumers can inhabit. We did that in partnership with Epic Games and with Microsoft, and this experience will be launching soon, and this film is a sneak preview of that new launch. Would you please play the first film? We at VMLY&R live at the intersection of communications, experiences, and commerce. We're beginning to explore how the Metaverse will apply not just to music, but to other industries and clients as well. As a band, we've always kind of shied away from what's expected as just a band. What we've been able to do with these virtual environments that we created, put them into a virtual reality headset. It's just the next level of interactivity with the music. Create and inhabit an entirely new world that people could potentially come into, be part of, explore. You are inside that environment with the band playing the album. Also being able to explore these landscapes and find other pieces of value within it. The partnerships that WPP maintains and cultivates with groups like Epic, fantastic for us. The Unreal Engine has been incredible for advancing virtual production. It allows us to iterate quicker while we're on set to take an idea and get it on screen. Having, you know, a partner like Hogarth, partners like Subversive that really just integrate across into the team seamlessly. The world, the consumer is constantly changing, and we have to be willing to explore the new patterns that will lead to different successes of tomorrow. That's a sneak preview of what we'll launch soon. The second piece of what I wanted to show is for Under Armour. It really celebrates Steph Curry's three-point records in basketball. I think the film is relatively straightforward even to a British audience. What's important is, I think the customer engagement we had. You know, we launched 2,974 NFT sneakers. They sold out in minutes, but 4.5 million people tried to buy them. I think what's also interesting in this film is you can see how these NFT sneakers, you could wear them in different virtual worlds. We negotiated with four different virtual worlds to have them played, including Decentraland and Sandbox. I think the film is relatively explanatory. Could you please play the second film? 2021 was the year the Metaverse was on everyone's lips. What is the Metaverse? The truth is. The Metaverse does not exist yet. Instead, there were a series of gaming worlds with no connection or interoperability between them. When Under Armour tasked us to celebrate the moment that Steph Curry changed the basketball game for good with his three-point world record, we decided to change the Metaverse for good with the first ever Metaverse wearable. Designed to be used across the worlds of Decentraland, Sandbox, Gala Games and Rumble Kong League, the Genesis Curry Flow was minted in five distinct rarities. With zero media budget, we partnered with the games, driving excitement through Discord and Twitter. The results? One sneaker, four exciting worlds, delivering the first, and to this day, only true Metaverse experience, changing the game and the Metaverse for good. I think, you know, what's insightful about that film is the degree of customer engagement you can get with no paid media. 4.5 million people engaged. I think it demonstrates the potential of the Metaverse, and while, you know, as we meet today, there may be more sort of hype and interest than reality, I think it is gonna grow. It is increasingly important to our clients, and we have at WPP an important role to play and capabilities through companies like The Metaverse Foundry and our investments in businesses like Subversive to help our clients navigate it. On page 37, talking about a little bit about the future and our priorities in accelerating our growth. I think that we've covered a lot of ground. Just a few closing words on our priorities for the year. You know, I think it's a little bit more of the same as 2021, but perhaps pushing harder. You know, for our people, it's about bringing them back into offices, you know, on a flexible way, adapting to the future of work, giving them more opportunities across WPP and driving the DE&I agenda. Innovation is about continuing to invest in creativity, but also investing in new products and services across the company, such as the work that we're doing with Choreograph, but the work we're doing with Xaxis or Finecast. Lastly, transformation, you know, where we're making, you know, very solid progress on a 4- 5 year program, but it's a real major opportunity for us and an area to, you know, free up investment that we can invest back into the business to further accelerate our growth. In summary on page 38, look, I think, you know, 2021 was really a very strong year. We went well beyond a cyclical recovery, that you can see that our strategy, you know, is delivering results for our people, for our clients, and for our shareholders through the numbers. We do enter 2022 well positioned in high-growth markets. I think importantly, you know, we have now the financial firepower to invest in growth through talent, through capabilities organically, and through M&A, while rewarding our shareholders today. Our transformation programs has further significant potential to, you know, enhance that investment and reinvest in growth. So I think a good year behind us. I think notwithstanding, you know, today's events, we have to understand today and in the future, you know, we enter 2022 or look at 2022 with confidence. Now, just one point or one final to say thank you before we move to the Q&A. Just really to thank Fran Butera, who I think all of you know. Fran's retiring next week. He's really been a linchpin of our investor relations efforts in the U.S. for more than 20 years. He knows our industry and our business as well as anyone else. been a great help to me personally and to our team, and, you know, we really valued his calm demeanor through many of the events, his insights into our business and, you know, his collaborative spirit. Fran, thank you very much. I'm sure many of us on the call would like to thank as well. We wish him all the best. Thanks, Fran. Thanks to all the people at WPP and to our clients for their, you know, hard work and competence through 2021. Let's turn to the Q&A. Thank you sir. If you would like to ask a question at this time please press the star button on your keypad followed by 1 please ensure that the mute function on your telephone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. If you're also watching the webcast please make sure to mute the computer's volume to prevent feedback through the phone while asking a question. If you find your question has been asked you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star followed by 2. Again please press star followed by 1 to ask a question. We will pause for a moment to allow us launch signal. We will now take our first question from Tom Singlehurst of Citi. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, Tom. Thank you very much. Morning, morning. It's Tom here from Citi. Thanks for the presentation and just to echo thanks to Fran for all the hard work over the years. A couple of questions if that's okay. Firstly- Yeah On the outlook for revenue. You've got that very strong new business performance from last year, but you've ended up sort of opting for a sort of guidance level, at least initially, that's essentially in line with what the other big agency groups are saying at 5%. I'm just interested in whether you know, whether you are factoring in much of an additional kicker from new business, and just broadly how we should think about the sort of relative outlook for WPP versus the market in 2022. That would be great to get some insights on that to begin with. Then the second question was on headcounts. John has prepared the ground for staff costs to sort of move up as a percentage of sale. Obviously there's a bit of buffer with the incentive cost. I'm interested in the interplay between sort of pure wage inflation and headcounts. How much will headcount go up and whether there are any challenges in hiring. Very finally, on cash usage, I noticed via Numerator, you've effectively been putting some more money into Kantar, which makes sense given the strong progress they're making now. I'm just interested, you know, overall on your strategic view vis-à-vis Kantar and whether once the transformation is completed there, whether you anticipate staying strategically involved for the longer term. Thank you very much. Okay. Right. Why don't I tackle the Kantar question, and then John and I will tackle the outlook together, and then John can continue on in terms of helping on the headcount. You know, on Kantar, we're partners with Bain Capital, and you know, we'll see where that ends up. You say the business is doing well, and you know, we and they are aligned in supporting the company for the moment. It's too early to talk about what the next exit would be. I think in terms of the outlook and guidance of 2022 and the sort of relative performance competitively, you know, we obviously do our budgets and our forecasts, you know, independently of our competition. You know, the industry consensus of 3.3%, I think coming out at around 5%, reflects a strong competitive performance and, you know, the new business that were there. I don't know, John, want to add to that, and then. Yeah, no, I think it's, I think in a way, I look at it in terms of the new business, sort of really underpins the 5% growth. We've got obviously much better visibility on that new business as a result of the Coca-Cola win. I think we can, you know, notwithstanding the situation of course that we've seen today, we can go into 2022 with strong confidence and strong visibility of that 5% growth. I think in relation to your question on the headcount, we started 2021 with about 1,000 people. We finished 2021 with 109,000 people. We added a lot of headcounts through 2021 reflecting the high net sales growth, of course. Actually the average across 2021 was about 102,000, so we added quite a lot of people towards the back end of last year. Again, very much in anticipation of that strong growth coming through in 2022. I do think clearly we will add more headcount as we go through 2022 reflecting that 5% growth. I wouldn't like to sort of forecast at this stage how much, but you know, it might be of the order of 5,000 or 6,000 people or so. We will probably also see about 4%-5% inflation come through in relation to salary. Now, all of that sort of obviously goes straight to the bottom line. At the same time, given the growth levels and the operational gearing that the business will deliver, we only expect staff costs to be a 25 basis points drag on our margin through 2022. We do expect those costs to increase, but equally, we expect to see some operational gearing come through net/net a 25 basis points drag for the year. Hope that makes sense. Very clear. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you, Tom. Our next question is from Lisa Yang of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions and just saying I'm wishing all my best to Fran as well. Three questions if I may. First, a follow-up on the outlook guidance. I'm just wondering if you could maybe share any color in terms of the latest client sentiment and whether you've seen any impact at all at this point from, you know, the inflationary pressure or obviously the recent geopolitical tensions, or it might still be a little bit early. If you could just help us understand really how you know, constructed that sort of flat and guidance and how much is factoring from, let's say, the group trends, the contribution from new growth areas, contribution from new business, that would be very helpful. Second question is on the buyback, the use of cash. Clearly the buyback's been running well ahead of expectations. Your balance sheet is very strong, doing GBP 800 million both 2021, 2022. How should we think about the level of buyback, you know, beyond 2023? I think previously, John, you said 300-400 million. Given the pace of the buyback so far, I'm just wondering if we can, you know, could be expecting more. The third question is on the tax rate. I saw it was, you know, going up a bit more than what we had expected to 25.5% in 2022. Of course, you have the U.K. tax rate increase in 2023. Yeah, just wondering, like, what's really driving that, and how should we think about the tax rate, you know, from 2023 as well, because I don't think I have heard any other companies talking about that yet for 2022. Thank you. Okay. Why don't I talk a little bit about what I'm hearing from clients, and then John can sort of underpin that with how he thinks about building out the forecast and then continue. Look, I think as I talk to clients, look, and notwithstanding the events today, and I think you're right, Lisa, it's too early really. It's not the right time to really try and understand you know the impact of what's happening in Ukraine on the year. There's obviously a concern. Look, I think clients, if you think about our business, there's three sectors, technology, consumer packaged goods, and healthcare that have been you know really pretty strong over the last two years on a two-year basis. You have sectors like retail, travel and tourism that have come back more strongly and probably have some way to go, and the same is true a little bit geographically. You know, people focus a lot on consumer packaged goods because, you know, it is a big part of our business and maybe the most visible. I'd say there that, you know, clients are challenged by input costs. At the same time, when I talk to them, there's a desire to maintain their spend. Now, they have to make, you know, commercial decisions. I think that, you know, inflation has historically been, you know, not a negative for our industry. It's more, you know, what central banks do to try and rein inflation in that's a negative. Per se, you know, clients are looking to increase their pricing to premiumize their product, to innovate, need to support that with marketing investments. I think that's what they're trying to do where they can. I think that's the way I think about sort of what I'm hearing from clients. John, what do you think about how we sort of help Lisa on the, how we sort of build up the budget? I mean, the other thing I would say to build on your comments, Mark, you know, there are significant markets, particularly in APAC and some parts of Europe, about 9 of our top 20, and also sectors, you know, to Mark's comment about sectors such as leisure and transport, that still haven't returned to 2019 levels given the COVID impact. We would, all else being equal, notwithstanding the impact of the results of today, we would expect those to recover in 2022. That gives us, I think, some confidence and some visibility in that 5% growth. As I said earlier in response to Tom's question as well, you know, I think the new business and the visibility that we have, obviously, particularly around Coca-Cola, also gives us confidence in that 5%. I'd say we've probably got more visibility and more confidence in that 5% growth than we would ordinarily have at this point in time in the year. Hopefully that gives you a little bit of a flavor as to how we're feeling about the twelve months ahead. Coming now to your questions on the buyback and the GBP 800 million we've got planned for 2022. I mean, I think the simple way to look at the buyback again is just to refer you back to our capital allocation strategy, which we outlined at the Capital Markets Day in December 2022, where we clearly said, you know, first and foremost, it's our intention to invest in our growth. I think you've seen that reflected in 2021. You made significant investments in our people, in our, you know, incentive schemes, in our salary increases. We've made significant investments in parts of our business like Choreograph and Xaxis and so forth. That's our first and number one priority is to grow organically. Our second is to pay a dividend, and you've seen the increase, the 30% increase in our dividend year-on-year, and that's also important to us and of course our shareholders as a business. Our third priority is to focus on M&A, particularly M&A that drives future growth in our business and where there are synergies between the businesses that we acquire in WPP, where we can leverage our scale and help support the growth. The fourth is to return any excess to shareholders in the form of share buyback, particularly against the parameters of a net debt to EBITDA of 1.5-1.75 times as a target. We exited the year at 0.9 times, significantly below our guided range. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, therefore, that we're announcing a GBP 800 million share buyback for this year. I think what does that mean going forward? Well, you know, if you assumed that our acquisitions remained at GBP 400 million or so, if you reflected the guidance we've given today on CapEx and restructuring and also performance, then all else being equal, you could expect, you know, a buyback program of $200 million a year thereafter. But it's a big assumption to make that all else remains equal. Look, obviously, you know, we have a strong balance sheet. We're very much focused, as Mark said, on looking at how we can grow the business going forward, and we have lots of flexibility. I think, you know, projecting buybacks beyond 2022 is a little bit challenging because there are so many things that could change between now and the end of 2022. I just refer you back to the capital allocation policy. It's very clearly set out, and anything that allows us to, within our balance sheet constraints, to return cash, then we will do so. In relation to the tax rate, you're absolutely right. It is slightly higher than we were previously guiding to. I just think it's simply a reflection of the current tax environment. Obviously, we have the impact of the increase coming through in the U.K. in 2023. We also have the impact of sort of U.S. tax reform, which is yet to be clear, but it's certainly moving in one direction. We have the OECD BEPS program as well, which is likely to impact the future tax rate. You know, what's clear, I think, to all corporates, that tax rates are gonna go up, not least of which out of the need, of course, to fund the deficits created through the impact of COVID on our global economies. We think tax is moving in one direction. We're giving guidance for 2022 at 25.5%. I think it will go up in 2023. At this stage, I wouldn't like to say by how much, but clearly it's a result of the international tax environment within which we operate. Fantastic. Very clear. Thanks very much. Thank you, Lisa. We now have a question from Lina Ghaiour of BNP Paribas Exane. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Lina here. Thanks for taking my questions. I have three, if that's okay. The first one is on GroupM. You mentioned digital billings were 43% of total billings. I was hoping you could help us think about the transition towards more and more digital billings. At what pace should we expect this 43% to increase? The second question is on your M&A ambition. You did not change your M&A envelope for 2022, while some of your peers are accelerating or doubling down on both an acquisition. Any specific reason for that, or are you just happy with this envelope, and you don't see the need to increase it? Finally, on third-party cookies, it's been a while since you last updated us on where your clients stand in terms of preparing for a cookieless world and how you can help them navigate that. Any comment on that would be great as well. Thank you. Look, I think on GroupM, you know, the 43% digital I think is a reflection of the clients that GroupM work with and the pattern of geographic mix. You know, China is a sort of 90% digital market, and that 43% would be a much higher number if you were in China. I think that, you know, witness the Super Bowl and the growth, you know, of traditional. You know, both, you know, digital media has grown strongly in 2020 and 2021. Traditional media declined in 2020, has bounced back strongly in 2021. I think clients need to reach consumers where they are, and consumers do spend a lot of time in traditional as well as in digital media. Our, I think our business reflects that. Now, there's no doubt that clients are shifting more and more of their media dollars into digital media, both because that's where consumers are going and because clients are looking for the data and targeting that they need. That was at the heart of our proposition to The Coca-Cola Company. I would expect our business to transition, you know, in line with the market, from 43% over the next few years. If anything, maybe somewhat faster as larger companies catch up with smaller companies in terms of where they want to shift their spend. In terms of M&A, you know, I think we gave sort of, I wouldn't want to call it guidance. It's really how we think about it, and the amount that we spend will be determined by the opportunities that we see. I think what's important as we come into the year in a strong position from a balance sheet and finance perspective with good opportunities ahead of us, and it may well be that hopefully we find opportunities that cause us to spend, you know, a little bit more than that. I think it depends on events, and we wouldn't want to change what was sort of guidance we gave 15 months ago for that. On the cookieless world, you know, I think we talked about this at length. I think from a WPP or marketing service industry, it's a neutral to net positive impact for us as our clients. Seek to use data in their marketing in a world that's more data-driven. There's no doubt, I think, that as we've seen in the financial results and evaluations of the major technology companies, that it has an impact on their business. I think from our perspective, it's much more about shifting budgets between the major players than it is reducing the absolute level of spend that clients place on media. You know, the cookie-less world sort of disadvantages those players that have less data, and those media players that have fewer opted-in consumers, and also those companies that have to some extent relied on, you know, the Wild West of the cookie to collect data from, you know, across the internet, something that I don't think is possible or even probably the right thing to do in a, you know, more privacy compliant world. From our perspective, you know, data continues to be a hard offer to our clients. You know, their real role is to drive both targeting and measurement of performance through the use of data. There's many interesting ways that we can do that, you know, without cookies. You know, we can look at targeting people based on context and content, on weather. Our investments in AI are designed to replace a lot of the signal strength that we've lost from the cookie in other things that we can infer from marketing for our clients. I think there's a tremendous amount of opportunity. What's interesting is what the team, you know, at Satalia are trying to think about doing in terms of how we use AI to replace as some of that sort of signal lost from the cookie. Okay? Very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Operator. Apologies. Our next line is Dan Salmon of BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hi, Dan. Okay, great. Hi. Hey, Mark. Morning. Good morning. Taking the early shift. Mark, I had two questions. The first for you is a bit more of a big picture one. You know, we touched on it once again today, you know, how much has changed through the pandemic. There was already a lot changing before the pandemic. I was just curious to ask you your big picture views on the role of the holding company generally. Your competitive set continues to change and evolve. Can you talk maybe a little bit about what you see as the key strengths and weaknesses of the holding company structure today, and how you might see it evolving over the next few years? A second one, either for you or for John, WPP, like all of their peers now, are forecasting around 5% organic revenue growth for the year. Do you think mid-single-digit organic revenue growth is the new normal for the industry, or is there still a little bit of COVID follow-through impact in that? Thank you. Okay. Well, why don't I do the first and John can do the second, as you suggest. Look, I think increasingly we think about WPP as a company and not a holding company, and that's something that we've said actually for the last three and a half to four years. I think as you say, rightly, the pandemic has, you know, changed a lot. You know, there's very few periods where we've seen such significant consumer changes that we've seen. It's largely been an acceleration of trends that, you know, we knew before, the growth of digital media, you know, the growth of e-commerce, the shift to video, the explosion of mobile. I mean, the only thing that's probably a surprise has been the sort of resurrection of the QR code that we thought had died. In many other ways, you know, the pandemic really sort of accelerated all the trends we thought we saw. I think what clients need is simplicity and integration. You know, what that means is that WPP need to come closer together, be more of a company. You know, that is the type of company and the culture that we've been focused on building, you know, for the last three years. They also, I think, need strong creative ideas and creativity, you know, is at the heart of our offer and our culture. Again, I think that's something that they need to combine that with an understanding and an in-depth and detailed understanding of the way the world is changing, of technology, of data, and the ability to execute and operate that around the world. You know, as I said, I think, in the presentation, if you look at the relationship that we're building with The Coca-Cola Company, it's in many ways, I think, the type of relationship of the future and the type of relationship that we want to have with our clients. I mean, it's amazing the number of clients that have asked to talk to us since that about, you know, what it means and what they're trying to achieve. What I think that. What they're saying is that creativity and ideas remain critical, but they also need to have global partners with reach and breadth and scale to be able to execute those around the world, as well as an understanding of how to use data in their marketing and how technology is changing the way they reach consumers. I think if you look at WPP in a pretty unique set of capabilities. I think that we're in an excellent position to deliver that. I'll make one comment on your second question, which doesn't answer it directly, but I think addresses the first, which is, it's not the end of the world if everyone is guiding to 5%, because actually it implies the strong demand for the services that our industry provides. I think that's a positive thing, not a negative thing. Now I leave John to tell you what we're gonna do, why we're gonna continue to perform competitively strongly. Thanks Mark. Yeah. Look, I mean, Dan, as I said earlier on in my presentation, you know, we're not changing our previous guidance for 2023 today. Obviously we said revenue +3% costs of 3%-4% and like-for-like of 2.5%-3%, and we're reiterating that guidance again today for 2023 and beyond. You know, that said, of course, you know, we are very consciously investing in those high-growth areas of our business. You know, as I said earlier on in data, within Choreograph, in commerce, particularly within Wunderman Thompson, but in other parts of our business as well. We're very consciously investing in those high-growth areas. You'll see in the announcement that we talked about our mix is definitely changing. Within our global integrated agency, stripping out GroupM, which is largely communications driven, 38% of the work that we are doing is in the areas of commerce, experience and technology, and these are very high growth areas. A couple years ago, that 38% was 36%. We are definitively changing the mix of our business into those parts of the market that are growing at double-digit. At some point, that will translate into our long term growth potential. We're excited about the performance in 2021. We're confident about our performance going into 2022 at 5%, and we're doing all the right things to lay the groundwork for future growth in 2023 and beyond. We're not updating our guidance in that respect today. Okay, great. Thank you both. Thank you, Dan. Our next question is from Matti Littunen of Bernstein. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hello, good morning. Morning. The first question relating to that, the reiteration of the 2023 guidance. You know, I also recall in the Capital Markets Day in 2020, you gave sort of a target for the revenue mix in 2025, a sort of 40-60 mix at group level, with 40% coming from commerce, technology and experience. Would you sort of still retain that target? Are you sort of tracking towards that sort of number or is it a bit too early to say? Related to that revenue mix, could you sort of... Would love to hear your thoughts on how do you think that would potentially impact the cyclicality of your sort of overall net revenues. Then final question on China, some you know sequential improvement on the two-year stack growth there. Could you give us a bit of color on what was driving that and how you expect that to continue as far as you can tell into early 2022. Thank you. Maybe I'll pick up the first one, and then maybe Mark may comment on some of the others. Look, I think in a way, in the in terms of that 40-60 split that we gauged at the Capital Markets Day, we're in some ways victims of our own success because, you know, our GroupM business, which is primarily a communications business, has grown so well, and we anticipate to grow further over the years ahead. The consequence of that is it's somewhat distorting the great underlying success that we're seeing in our creative global integrated agencies in relation to the move towards those high growth areas of commerce, experience and technology. I think we're not coming off that 40%-60% target per se, but I think what we are saying is that given the growth of GroupM, we are focusing more on the mix in the creative agencies, and the great progress that we've seen over the last couple of years. I think we'll be reporting on that number more regularly because we think it's a better reflection of what's happening in the underlying business rather than an aggregated number across the business. In terms of cyclicality, you know, again, I mean, I think the business is incredibly robust. You know, we're investing in these areas, technology, experience, commerce. You know, we're seeing huge growth in commerce at the moment, advising many of our clients. I think about 75% of our top clients we're doing some form of commerce related work for. We do see these as being very strong revenue streams going forward. You know, I think if that gives us a degree of robustness in our business model, then, you know, I think that is the case. I don't expect us to be particularly cyclical over the years ahead. We can divert and are increasingly diverting a lot of our work into these high growth areas. In relation to China and the two-year recovery, I mean, I think we signaled this at the interims where I said we expected to see recovery come through in the second half, and we did see that come through very clearly. We're still, that said, below where we were in 2019, which is disappointing. We still think that's true of not just China, but that's true of quite a few of our Asian markets, reflecting perhaps if you like the more intense lockdown that we've seen in that part of the globe. We do expect to see some recovery come back in 2022. I mean, you put a sort of mid-single-digit type growth in 2022 on China, I think that would be consistent with our forecast. I think we will expect to see some further recovery, particularly in the luxury and travel areas where we over-index, and also automotive where we over-index in China. We're confident of seeing that growth come through mid-single digits for 2022. I mean, what I might add, I don't know if it addresses your question directly. I think if I was sort of thinking about an investment in WPP, I was looking at, you know, what is the strategic progress the company's making? What is our competitive performance, and what is the relevance of our offer? Which I think are all questions that people had about the group three years ago. I'd look at 2022 as very positive. Now, we don't break down our 5% guidance by sector or country, even though you might like us to. What I would say is, if you look at the 5%, you know, the U.S. is around the 5%, and our creative agencies are around the 5% level. Those are two important strategic questions that I think investors had about WPP three years ago, indeed over the last three years. Coming off the back of a strong 2021 into 2022, delivering, you know, growth of around the average for the group in those two areas, I think is a very strong indication of, first, our strategic progress, secondly, of our competitive performance, and thirdly, the relevance of our offer to clients. You know, I'm sort of keen that we put these sort of strategic questions to bed. I know we probably never will. I think that, you know, those are the things I think that you need to think about in terms of, you know, what is gonna be the long-term performance of the company, you know, as an investment for our shareholders. I think just to build a little bit on Mark's comments there as well, just, you know, we do obviously have forecasts for our business cut by country, cut by agency, you know, cut by sector. What's really interesting actually, if I look at the 2022 budget numbers, whichever dimension you want to look at it, you know, geographically or by agency, it's really consistent. You know, it's about 5%. There aren't any massive overperformers or any massive underperformers. That actually gives me a lot of confidence going into the year. You know, we've got a very robust business across the board. You know, we're not just relying on one particular geography or one particular agency to drive our growth. We're seeing it very consistent. Given that budget, by the way, is built up from the bottom up by the businesses, it's in some ways coincidental that 5%, or broadly 5% growth across all these different areas, is consistent across the business. Plenty more answers than I had questions, so thank you very much for that. That's all right. We thought we'd pre-empt both of you. Above and beyond. Thank you, Matthew. Our next question is from Matthew Walker of Credit Suisse. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Thanks a lot. Good morning, everyone. Hope you can hear me okay. Yep. Very clear. The first question was on the topical thing Metaverse. So you've got a new company foundry dealing with the Metaverse. What kind of scale of revenue do you expect to get from Metaverse, and how do you sort of define it in 2022? And do you think that, you know, advertising in the Metaverse from clients, do you think it's basically just spend which is shifting from other things, from other media, or is it sort of truly incremental to the client budget? The second question is just interested in your thoughts on, you know, what's happened with Google and Meta. Do you think that clients are just pulling away from Meta because of, you know, privacy issues, and putting the money with Google? I'd be interested in your thoughts on that. Finally, probably a less popular question, I mean, obviously you said that purpose is at the heart of WPP and the offer. You know, some of your rankings have improved. I was just wondering, like, you do have quite a lot of fossil fuel companies, and you know, some people, maybe unkindly, have pointed out that you know, with fossil fuel companies, like, a small change in their output, you know, pretty much wipes out all of what WPP is trying to achieve, you know, by themselves. How do you feel about continuing to work with fossil fuel companies? Because, you know, they often talk about how they're going to improve themselves, but the vast majority of what they do is still in fossil fuels. Okay. Well, why don't we start there, Matthew, and answer that directly? You know, I prefer to call them energy companies, but we still do work with a number of energy companies. I think it's fair to say that, you know, we want to work with companies that share our values and share our commitment to move to a low carbon future. Energy companies are in the process of doing that. They may not be doing that at the speed and pace which would please all commentators, but they are shifting their investments. I do think that those companies have and should communicate what they're doing to consumers and to other stakeholders, that that's the right thing for them to do. They have to do that in a way that is fair and accurate, and that does not involve greenwashing. Something, by the way, that's increasingly difficult to do if you want to do it in a much more sort of transparent and social media-led world. I think for us at WPP, you know, we do look at the clients we work with, and there are clients that we have declined in that sector. Secondly, we have to make sure that all of the work that we do for them conforms to the highest standards of fairness and accuracy. We provide training, and we do have discussions with those clients on what they're doing. I think that as we continue to work on this transition, we should be there to support them on that transition. Turning to the Metaverse. Look, you know, clearly, Facebook's rebranding captured the world's imagination, if you like. We do talk about 700 people in our Metaverse Foundry. Which isn't a new company, it's really part of Hogarth, our production. We're not launching more companies, we're trying to simplify the offer. It's part of Hogarth, but really it's designed to highlight their expertise in that area. I think. Look, it's an interesting point. Is it additive or not? I mean, if you look at GroupM's forecast, you know, 20% growth last year, 10% growth this year, you know, 5%-6% next year in advertising spend, it's clear that the advertising paid media industry is in a healthy place. If you look at that work we did with Under Armour, there was no paid media involved in it. We earned a fee for our involvement in it. They raised, I think, $2 or $3 million for charity, and had 4.5 million consumers engaging it. I think it's to some extent. I wouldn't necessarily call it additive, but I would certainly call it incremental, and reflects you know the growth in sort of fee in relation to paid media that we see in our business. We'll have to see how big. You know, I saw some very large JP Morgan numbers that people were a little bit skeptical about for the Metaverse. If you think about where the trends are growing, where the innovation is going, I think people are spending more time in these virtual environments, and it's easy to be cynical about it. Just as people were cynical about people watching, you know, video on mobile phones 10 or 15 years ago. It's very hard to judge, I think, exactly what the impact will be. On Google and Meta, I think what you're seeing really is a shift in spend driven by the ROI of those investments. You know, logic would tell you that if, you know, Facebook has access to less data, and is therefore... That data was driving higher ROI. Loss of access to that data would drive a lower ROI and would cause clients to shift budget towards those platforms that can drive a higher ROI, i.e., Google, who through their search data have probably a bigger sense of what intent is. I think that it's not necessarily in relation to privacy issues. It's more really in relation to where clients seek the highest ROI. We are seeing tremendous growth in our spend. Actually on TikTok, we saw our spend on TikTok grow five times in 2021. I think again, if you look at the ROI on TikTok, it's really pretty high because the consumer audience has grown faster than marketers' ability to shift their budgets there. Our job is to search out, you know, the highest ROI for our clients' media spend, and find those media properties where they can get that. Actually platforms like TikTok, which are probably slightly under-leveraged relative to their consumer audience, should be attractive. You know, that's what we do for our clients, and I think that's the impact that you see in their financial results, and hence valuation. Great. Thank you very much for the answers. Thank you. Thank you, Matthew. Our next question is from Sarah Simon of Berenberg. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Yes, morning. Sorry, most of the interesting questions have been answered. I just had a couple. John, you gave us some new phasing of the restructuring. Can you just remind us, or just point us to the page where the cash restructuring or the new phasing of cash restructuring is laid out? Secondly, on Russia, just to tick the box, can you remind us what the exposure is to kind of Russia, Ukraine, broader Eastern Europe? Then the sort of vaguely interesting one. Obviously, Mark, you were just talking about the shift in terms of people and having searches and so on. Just on the changes they've announced to Android, do you think that... I mean, do you think overall this is gonna result in more spend going to walled gardens, and that's Facebook included, or do you think this will result in a more even playing field? Thanks. Well, I think naturally it will involve more spend going to walled gardens than people that have, you know, logged in users. Now, I think they've sort of given a fair amount of time to phase it out, so it's not gonna have an immediate impact. I think that, you know, clients seek out, you know. The value of data is the ab ility for it to improve your ROI, and clients will seek out those companies that have that, and that will tend to be the walled garden. Facebook will benefit on one side by being a walled garden, and will have a disbenefit on the other by not having access to the Android data, and we'll have to see where those two things net out. Sarah, just on your other two questions, on restructuring and the cash component, we don't actually set that out to be honest, but it's quite a simple response because the vast majority of our restructuring costs going forward will be cash. Hopefully that's clear. All that we've guided to in relation to Workday costs, GBP 350 million, and also the GBP 200-250 million on other restructuring over 2022-2025, the vast majority of that is cash. I think that's the simple way to look at it. In relation to your question on exposure to Russia, you know, less than 1% of our revenue sits within Russia. I don't have the numbers direct to hand in relation to Eastern Europe. Obviously depends how you define that as well, but it's a relatively small percentage. It won't be much above sort of, you know, low single-digit percentage-wise. We don't have a high exposure to those geographies. You know, as we said at the very beginning of the call, the issue here is much more about the potential broader macroeconomic impact of what's going on in Ukraine today, and that could clearly have global implications, not just local ones. Okay. That's helpful. Thanks. Thank you, Sarah. There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call over to Mr. Mark Read for further closing remarks. All right. Well, thank you everyone for your questions. Thank you, in particular to our clients for their confidence in us, our people for their hard work in 2021. I think it's a very strong set of results, and we face 2022 with confidence. Our thoughts, like yours, are with the news in Ukraine, which I'm sure we'll continue to follow throughout the day. Thank you everyone for your questions, your attendance, and I look forward to speaking with you soon.