Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Sea Containers, and welcome to WPP's 2019 Premium Results. So I'm going to give you an overview. And then, Paul take you through the numbers, introduce John Rogers, our new CFO, who is with us today. And then I'll come back into a strategy overview, and then we'll take questions. So we have to go through the obligatory safe harbor statement, which is up. So what I thought I'd do is we start by looking at how we think about the year in the context of what WPP needs to do in a 3-year turnaround plan. I think it's important for all of us to focus on those 3 years in stages. And we really see 2019 as a sort of foundational year. And I say, if we look back and tried objectively as we can, look at what we've done, we say that solid foundation is built on track to deliver our 2021 targets. But obviously, there's more work to do. And we've sort of split out what we've done during this year in terms of strategic goals and financial goals. And strategically, I'd say we've made significant progress on simplifying WPP on creating fewer, stronger agency brands. We've gone from 9 -- effectively 9 creative networks to 5. We brought together VML Y&R and Wunderman Thompson. I remind you, as said in the statement, the VML Y&R grew in second half of the year, Wunderman Thompson had much better second half than they did in the first half. So I think that those process simplification and bringing the company together worked. We've made investments in technology, in our people, in clients and new business teams. Jackie Kenny joined us from Walmart as our Chief People Officer; Leron joined us from Publicis as…

Thank you, Mark. Okay. So I'll take you through the detail. It is a little more complicated than usual, these numbers, really because of the Kantar disposal. So we'll spend a bit of time trying to explain it. So the word on the continuing basis means really WPP on its own. So the full year highlights are: On a full year basis, our like-for-like revenues less pass-through costs were down 1.6%. If you were to include Kantar for the year, our revenue less pass-through costs would have been down 1.2%. In the fourth quarter, we were down 1.9% on a continued basis. And Including Kantar, we would have been down 1.6%. On a full-year operating margin, on a continued basis, we were 14.4%, down 1.2 margin points on a like-for-like basis. It reflects the challenges faced by the specialist agencies as well as investing for future growth with increased investments in technology, HR, client and new business teams. We did have a stronger balance sheet, and we've commenced our share buyback program. Our first completion of the sale of 90% of Kantar was in December 2019, with net cash proceeds to date of $2.8 billion out of a total of $3.1 billion. With debt to be reduced by approximately 60% of proceeds, i.e. $2.1 billion and a share buyback of around 40% of proceeds, i.e., around $1.2 billion, of which about an quarter has been completed already so far. So turning now to the statutory income statement. This includes all the sort of statutory items. And in terms of the difference of the continuing operations, £707 million, reported for this year compared to the £1.02 billion last year, there were differences in '18 such as pretty significant exceptional gain of around £73 million in 2018 and a significant gain on…

Thank you, Paul. Good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be here for my first set of results for WPP. I thought I'd just, I've been in the business now for 4 weeks. So it's still relatively early days. But I thought I'd share with you a little bit of my background, my CV the and how that's relevant, I think, for what we have going forward is in WPP. So in reverse chronological order, before I joined WPP, I was actually the CEO of Argos and also looked after Sainsbury's General Merchandise and Clothing business. We bought the Argos business back in 2016. And actually, I led, as part of the management team, a major digital transformation of that business. And for those of you that don't know today, it's 1 of the most digital retailers in the UK, with about 65% of sales coming online. So I do know a little bit about digital marketing. Not only that, but we also took the business through a major transformation. So we actually integrated it with the Sainsbury's business, delivering £260 million of cost savings through doing so. And actually, we did that 10 months ahead of our 3-year plan. So again, I've got some experience in understanding how we can transform businesses, which I think will be relevant to WPP going forward. Prior to being CEO, I was the CFO of Sainsbury's, as I call it broad remit as CFO, looking after not only the core finance functions, but I looked after our online food business, procurement, property, also responsible for Sainsbury's bank as well as our operational efficiency areas. So quite a broad remit as CFO and then had a number of roles in the finance team prior to that. For those of you that don't know actually started…

All right. Thank you, John, and it's great to have you on board. So I think we'll take just a few minutes really to go through the strategy and the process the progress that we've made in the last year and how we see it really 1 year in. And I think and to start with the market overall. I'd say that the structural changes that we talked about 15 months ago, really have developed, I'd say, pretty much as we expected, they continue. It's important to state that creativity, innovation, growth, the things that WPP do best, remain critical to our clients. Our conversations I have with the Chief Executives and Chief market office of our clients say that, that is critical to their business. And I think you see with the results from some companies and emphasis shifting from sort of cost reduction to growth. it so little or no doubt about it technology disruption in our business continues unabated, not only to analog media channels continue to decline, but there's continued innovation in the digital media challenge, the growth of SVOD and AVOD, so subscribing advertiser funded channels and the launch of Netflix, Disney+, PeaCock, et cetera, are changing the media landscape. I think it's interesting, particularly in the case of Peacock, you'll see a more advertiser funded channels, and I think we would actually see a balance between advertiser funded and subscriber funded media channels. And then if you look to the retail sector, all of the growth is in e-commerce. Direct-to-consumer brands are growing, and our clients are concerned about the growth of Amazon and Alibaba and what it means for how they can reach the consumers, both in terms of threat, but also in terms of opportunity, and all these areas are areas where…

All right. So you can see that what you can bring together and we'll report back at the end of the year how the AI did producing in the season. Second piece of works for the Super Bowl. It's for Budweiser, was done by David, an agency in the U.S. And I think that whilst creativity is changing. It's clearly still a role in our business as sort of big for creative idea, particularly at sort of events like the Super Bowl, which is as much a television advertising event or marketing event as is a sporting event these days. Can we run the Bedweiser spot, please? [Audio-Video presentation]

And so the last 1 I talked to you about is for Burger King, and this is a piece of work, actually, it's been 3 years in the making came out of Ingo in Sweden, which is a joint venture between Gray and Ogilvy, David, in the U.S., and actually interestingly, as a purpose agency involved in its creation as well in the idea. So hopefully, it put you all off your breakfast, but we'll run the Burger King spot, please. [Audio-Video presentation]

All right. So he mentioned there's a lot of people talking for some media budget. And also you see across that work, one, how Creative is changing, that some media event is still important. And also how long and tortuous sometimes the Creative process could be. But I think it really is that what we do is important for our clients. Ultimately, people succeed as they engage with other people creatively. Now, the prices is changing because of technology. And 1 thing we've been trying to do is really put technology much more at the heart of our business. And I think we like to think of sort of three phases of technology at and I think that if you look at where we are, objectively, we made the acquisition of 24/7 Real Media in 2007. So we have been investing in technology for a long time within our company. And I think, particularly in sort of Martech and AdTech area, we started around 10 years ago to acquire companies. Then we started in the last sort of three years to integrate them into our businesses what we need to do really now is transform WPP by making -- having a much more coordinated approach to technology and scaled global programs. And I touched really on 2 of the things that we're doing, we've made progress on this year. The first rule is driving growth with our strategic technology partners who really sit in the area of sort of media and commerce partners like the sort of Google or Twitter or Snap. Marketing and ad tech partners and then software and cloud vendor partners. And with each of them, we have a sort of holistic partner strategy, developing joint products and solutions, getting access on a preferential basis to their…

It's Adrien from Bank of America. So I've got a few questions, please. Start off with your 2020 guidance, I think you're calling for an improvement throughout the year. So second half being better than the first half. Why would that be the case given that the comparatives are quite significantly easier in the first half than the second half?

Well, yes, I think it's the case because that's what -- when we look at the businesses and look at what the business are saying, that's what our budget call for. I think comparators are only 1 of the things that matter. And 2019 was impacted by a number of client losses. One, the forward impact rolls over a little bit into 2020, not very much but a little bit in the first quarter. So I think overall, that's what -- when we look at the businesses and how the revenues fall through the year, what they say.

Second question. There was an interview of Brian Whipple from Accenture into the FTE, two days ago, doesn't want to enter traditional media buying, but he says is quite keen to go into Programmatic advertising. Can you remind us maybe what your exposure to programmatic advertising is at the group level or may be at the GroupM level? How much did it grow at for you in 2018 2019?

So I think the first thing to say is that our media businesses are fantastic businesses. All of the evidence to date suggests that clients want to buy media on an integrated and not disintegrated business. And actually, if you look at the creative business, there's been a lot of digital, creative agencies and traditional creative agencies. The same is not true on the media side of the business. I mean, I challenge you to name very manly digital-only media businesses of any size. I mean, there are none, none within, let's say, 5% the size of GroupM. So I don't think that clients, yet, I would say, never, I don't think clients yet want to buy media on a digital-only basis, and then we see that media -- their media integrated. I think the second thing to say is that if you look at GroupM, $50 billion of media around, let's say, $20 million of that is digital, and the bulk of which is search and social and sort of the display bit will be probably about four, of which half would be perhaps half would be programmatic. I think in a world without cookies, programmatic becomes a little bit more difficult than a world with cookies. And so you don't have to think about what you do in that area. And I think that actually, in some respects, the shifts that are taking place in media give incremental value to scale to relationships with premium publishers to the ability to take data and integrate it into those media channels. And I think that it's not quite so straightforward. The other observation I make is that GroupM, with Christian Juhl, joining as CEO, who ran Essence, and Essence, I mind you, buy Google's media for Google. I think Christian has set out in his strategy for GroupM. And it's very clearly positioned sort of collective intelligence at the heart of GroupM's strength. I think the benefit of our media business is not just scale in terms of buying power, it's scale in terms of data and insights into the performance of media across different channels. And I don't think those are easily replicated either by in-house media capability or, to be honest, people going into it on a sort of single outsourced only basis. GroupM is not immediate outsourcer. They run a media business that buys media on behalf of clients. It's a very different thing from for taking individual client only media approach. So I'm not in any way complacent. Accenture is an excellent company, with very strong technology capability. But I do think that our media business has a number of advantages. And not least of which is that it buys media across all of the channels, not just the so-called digital ones.

One last financial action maybe for John and Paul. What would be the sensitivity of your 2020 operating margin to organic sales growth, i.e., if we start pricing in maybe slightly weaker organic sales growth then flat, would you be able to hold the margin? Is there any flex in the P&L?

Well, it's really about anticipating the trends in revenue. I mean, our business is not that complicated once you understand where the revenue is going. And so the worst scenario is if you get, a very late in the year, dramatic reduction in revenues, and you've really had your cost build up for the first 9 months, I mean, the one beauty of what's going on right now is we, everyone is very nervous about what will happen. And so actions will be taken pretty early. I think if you can see even where we've had difficult territories before, we've actually been pretty good at maintaining our margin across the board. So I think it's more about the surprise element. And we've always said we have strong margin countries across the world. There's no regions where it is money, there's actually no countries where there is money. So it's all relative to how we perform and the speed of action. That's really the key to this in my view.

Alright, go ahead, Patrick.

Patrick Wellington Morgan Stanley. You've reiterated your guidance for 2021. But you have had 60 basis points benefit from IFRS 16 in that time. You probably had a bit offset from Kantar. In fact, it's not really a reiteration on the same basis. Is that right?

Well, I think we had half to 0.6% of a margin point on IFRS 16 and 0.3% on Kantar. And Kantar had a little bit,had a slightly higher margin in the rest of WPP. So we could have made it 15.2%. I think we felt that 15% was a good approximation of 15.2%. I don't think we feel like we're changing it.

And the second one is, what gives you what are the levers, if you like, for an organic revenue growth upturn in 2021? We can see that, obviously, the GTV effect drops out a bit in 2020. But if I look at the wins on Page 36, there's nothing in the top 10 from VML Y&R, and there's one from Wunderman Thompson. So what gives you confidence in the acceleration in '21?

Yes, I think,look. There's 2 ways to think about it. One is the wins that you've outlined are what we're able to either reported in the press or that we're allowed to say. And there are other wins, many wins that we're not allowed to talk about. Increasingly, as you get out of the sort of traditional advertising, things aren't as well talked about which is why a number of commentated that the wins that we reported in the press, don't always translate into net sales growth. I think that's one thing. And there are some things in the pipeline that hopefully should be quite positive for WPP. I think the other way to look at it is, if you look at our performance, we have a sales decline in the U.S. and we had growth outside the U.S. and if we could get, if in 2019, the U.S. were flat and not where it was, we would have had an incremental 2.4 percentage points of growth. We'll be growing at 0.8% for that. So we have issues that we're aware of that we need to fix. And if you look internationally, we were plus 0.5% in the first half, plus 1.3% in the second half. So I think we just take, we look at that. There's things that are going better. There's things that we need to fix that we are fixing. And net-net, that gives us the momentum going into 2020 and 2021 to get back to where we need to get to in 2021. And then you've got to remember that '20, 2019, we were impacted by a large number of losses from 2018. So I think that that would be the way I think about what we need to get, what we need to get done.

And just quickly, I know obviously you don't want to talk about coronavirus, but you normally give us a geographic sort of run-through of your territories. China is your fourth largest market. I think it was doing quite well in the fourth quarter because you said in the technology Investor Day that China had grown for the year. So can you give us some parameters of the potential?

Well, China was 5.1% of our net sales. It's a very seasonal market. So the second half of the year or it starts off very slow, and gets bigger as the year goes on. And as you know, February is a Chinese New Year. So you can do sort of the mathematics, if you like, on that. And I think, really, at this time, given that we haven't seen February's numbers, we felt it was premature to try to quantify things. And particularly, the current environment is going beyond China, I think it's hard to exact to say we're not hiding anything in saying that, we're just telling you in a straightforward way as we like to do normally, how we see things. There's no, there's sort of no mystery behind it, if you know what I mean. I mean, over the last month, I have been extremely impressed by the work that our people have been doing in China, with helping a number of our clients, manage their own situations, communicate with their people, with their clients, with regulators, with government, all of the activities that they've been doing, they've done quite a lot of that from home. And they're starting to come back to work in China itself. And depending on what happens, we'll see how the rest of the year balances in China, how quickly things sort themselves out there and what the government would do to the economy. So I think the reason we were not specific was just because I think at the moment, it's really just unknowable. It's more unknowable today than probably it was Friday, if we had this meeting Friday of last week, we may give you a different answer than we give you today. So there's nothing, there's no, there's nothing mysterious behind what we're saying. I think we just want to be straightforward to say that we'll quantify it as soon as we can. That, in our view, is with the first quarter trading update. If it's something that we can say earlier, obviously, we will. I don't think, John, you like to add to that? No?

Nothing to add.

Yes, let me go to Julien.

Julien Roch with Barclays. Coming back on media, you already gave a bit of an insight. And I know you have limited disclosure on divisional basis. But what can you tell us about media performance in 2019? I think GroupM at the best performance ever. You said that Xaxis grew in line with the first high 17%. IPG said it was the best-performing assets, well above the 3% organic or probably 5% plus. So what can you tell us? Did you do the same? How strong was media in 2019, is my first question.

Yes, I think the media business performed as well, maybe slightly better than 2018. And I'd say, had a slightly a slightly better year in the U.S. than before. So I think it's pretty much consistent with the performance. So I think we've always said, contrary to the expectations in some parts that the media business is being disintermediated, it remains a strong business for us on a global basis, both in terms of sort of performance and client retention and quality of management and leadership.

Second question is, do think you Wunderman Thompson will grow in 2020?

So we're not going to make projections on a company-by-company basis. I think that it was a significantly -- it's a significantly bigger business than VML Y&R and significantly more complex. And really 2019, the team there have done a lot of heavy lifting. It is they've merged around 90 offices around the world, co-located people. Most of that actually call it 90% percent of that is now completed. I would say that the issues there are primarily, again, in the U.S. and not in the rest of the world. And if we look at the performance, it continues to improve during the year. And at the right time, we'll tell you when it does return to growth.

Next question is, what are the bottom three assets that caused Q4 to be worse than Q3? I know it's twist and turn, but who are the three biggest coverage?

Well, look, I think we talk about Q4 now, and my colleagues can elaborate. When we gave you when we released our numbers for Q3, we didn't change our guidance for the year. And I think we were explicit that we expected Q4 to be to be negative. And really, the pattern is partly driven by the -- something by the comparisons. But also, by the way that the business ran during the year, I think if you look at it by region, and -- by region, there were some sort of more weakness in Asia and some more weakness in the UK, potentially that was economic. But UK was a little bit softer in Q4 than the rest of the year? And Paul, what would you add to that?

Yes, I think that we went through it sort of region by region, and it was different businesses in different regions. And partly, it was their performance versus prior year comparatives. So GroupM, which I sort of singled out for having a weaker fourth quarter than Q3 in the UK, had a very strong year-to-date and an exceptionally tough quarter 4 to compete against. So that, really to me, explains why in the UK, we were softer. In the U.S., as I mentioned, the global integrated agencies actually were better in Q4 than Q3, but our specialists and other agencies had a more challenging time. Likewise, as Mark said, in Asia, we had some softness in some of our bigger markets in the fourth quarter. Much of it wasn't anticipated, to be quite frank with you. And so it's -- there's no one or two single issues, that said, my god, this is a tremendous miss. We didn't anticipate. This is very much in line with what our businesses were telling us they would deliver. And really, they actually kept to what they said they would do.

I mean, we may have hoped that they have done better, but I think that pretty much as we expected. Now in terms of the budgets, we sat down with the companies before Christmas. And we sat down with them and reviewed the numbers again about 2 to 3 weeks ago. And the guidance is based on pretty detailed reviews company-by-company and market-by-market over the last month.

And last one, if you succeed admirably in tackling duplication and inefficiency, which is our last priority, what is kind of the impact on margin? Can we see 100 basis points grow as high as Publicis, which on their accounting model, claims it's 200 basis points? And then how much of that will you let go back through the P&L? Are we stuck at 15% forever? Or can we go back to the margin we used to, which were '17?

I think that in the short term, the priority is growth. I think when we laid out the plan, you or 1 of your colleagues or colleagues asked the same question. I think when we get to 15%, we'll see whether we can go further. But in our view, at this time, 15% is the number that we can get to that enables us to invest in things we need to invest in and have, have the, and deliver the revenue growth that we need to. I mean, you know the competitive margins, some are lower than WPP. So we're lower than WPP's today, not just lower than 15% and some are higher. And I think there are some structural reasons why they're higher. And I think that, that's something that we should emulate and get to, and I think we can get to that. Then we'll tell you whether they'll be hardly 15% by the time we see that. But I think for now, 15% is the number that we're aiming for and the savings and structural savings. They're not quick. So I don't want to promise something that we can't deliver in a realistic timetable. Let me go to Lisa and then Richard and then Tom.

My first question is on your margin guide. So clearly, for this year, you're going to flat margin, but then you expect at least 60 basis points of margin improvement for 2021. So I'm just wondering if you could give us more color in terms of the moving parts there. How much of those due by operational leverage as opposed to savings and maybe timing of your investments?

Paul?

I think we have done the heavy lifting in a number of areas on bringing the businesses together, which can be slight distracting from operational performance. But that really is now behind us. And so I think this year, it is about the focus on the revenue growth. We don't, when we grow revenues, we get good conversion. I think this,'19 has been a struggle because we've had a number of businesses, they're quite significant reductions in revenue, and we've had to keep pace with that decline, while still aiming to keep margins broadly the same. The vast majority of our business is now vertical well set for growth and that operating leverage will come through. You then add to that. I said the initiatives on collaboration through the co-locations, through the rollout of the programs that we are doing, we are running as a financial tool, an ERP system for the U.S.A. It's a trial by one of our major networks as soon as it's been adopted by that network. It's been adopted by the rest of our group in the U.S.A., we're looking at the shared financial service center onshore in the U.S.A. right now to develop it at the same time as rolling out the system. We've got various shared service hubs up and running now in India. We're just coming live this year on China. We've been successful in Spain. We're going great guns to Australia with a new management team. And that's a big turnaround there aiming for. So when you look at the individual components, you can see the seeds of the work that we've done and the efficiencies at the moment haven't been fully materialized, partly because the operating companies haven't let go at some of those functions themselves. As these become stronger…

And my second question is on, I mean, you talked a lot about your partnership with the tech companies, and you're pretty well placed there, et cetera. But I'm just curious why the U.S. agencies continue to perform better, especially in the U.S.? And what would cause that performance to ever reverse?

So why will, what the ...

U.S. agencies just continue to do better, especially in the U.S.. I mean, why we caused that?

I think in many ways, WPP's challenges are more in the sort of traditional part of the business frankly, than they are in the new part of the business. I think that's something that's important to understand. We said from the beginning that the problems were in the creative agencies in the U.S. And I think that remains the case. 2019, because of the specific losses we had in 2018, it was particularly challenging in the U.S. and that will stop. Those losses will cycle out at the end of this year into the first quarter of 2020, which will lead to a step-up in improvement in the U.S. I think together with the other actions we're taking, we'll get the business back to, we'll get the business back to growth. I think there's no one single thing that we can do. And I think we told you in 2018, I think that 9 of our top 10 business units in the U.S. were declining. So I think it is it is a big business for us. I think the return to growth of our packaged goods clients is beneficial. And I think it gives us sort of a better backdrop overall to those companies. But it isn't anyone doing it. It's about leadership, about structure, about creative talent, about investing in new business. And those are all things that people are working on. And I think we see some of that benefit coming through. I think we'll continue to see that in 2020, and in our budgets in 2020 are for a better performance in the U.S. in 2020 than 2019. I'm not going to give you a sort of specific date for when the -- everything crosses the x-axis, if you would like. But we do expect continued improvement.

And you alluded earlier about the cookie change. Could you be more specific about the impact, I guess, on the overall advertising ecosystem, and more specific on WPP?

I think as far as cookie is concerned, I think first thing is important to understand the background. There's increasing concerns from consumers and regulators about data and about data leverage. And a feeling that a third-party cookies were way for people to hover up data, if you like, across the Internet in a way that wasn't compliant with what people expected. And I think it's right that we're controlling this, and consumers need to consent to what's going on with their data. And I think what's happened with cookies is symptomatic of a larger trend within society, the people to have greater control over their data and how that's being used. And this is just one example of it. Secondly, we have to understand what's happening. So Google announced that they'll stop supporting third-party cookies inside Chrome. That's a position that's already even taken by Safari. And if you look at prices in programmatic auctions on Safari, they're lower than they are on Chrome, already, because there's less data, there's less value in those impressions. So I think programmatic media will be negatively impacted by this change. And that will make life harder for intermediaries, ad networks, affiliate networks, particularly people that rely on conversion tracking and cost per attribution, or cost per click pricing. Now at the same time, Google has said that they're going to build functionality into the browser that will allow the basic premises of what we need in terms of ad tracking so. Ad tracking, frequency capping, much of what we need to run a media campaign will be part of the browser, whether that will be an industry standard, a Google standard, we don't know yet. Probably, I think it's most likely to be a Google standard. Though, we'd like it to be…

Just 2 questions from me, please. The first is on the specialist agencies. As you noted, most of the decline came from those agencies, about £1.8 billion. Can you just give us a little bit of a breakdown of what actually is in the specialist agencies? What sort of companies are in there and how they're performing within that £1.8 billion? And then the second question is on might sound like a strange question, but now the balance sheet is more in shape, what sort of acquisitions, what scale of acquisitions and what type of acquisitions should we be expecting?

When I tackle the acquisition question, while Paul gives you some context on specialist, from an acquisition perspective, I think we're very much, we don't need to make WPP bigger, if you like. So we don't need a fourth public relations business in Guatemala where we might have 3 already. I think we're focused on differentiating the company. And what will most differentiate us are, I'd say, primarily technology-related acquisitions that sort of enhance our development skills and understanding of partners. I think there may be some things we could do creatively, do it enhance what we can do in an interesting way, but in the primary focus will be on sort of the faster-growing parts of our business. Particularly in the technology area, there are a number of small things that we're looking at at the moment that we can talk to about the right time. Paul?

So let me go through the component parts. I haven't got something in front of me that I particularly want to look at. But the elements of the specialist agency is that, better well-known as AKQA is part of the Specialist Agency group, which obviously is a global network in its own right, Geometry, sort of our direct and digital marketing company, is also a part of that group, again, with a worldwide presence. GTB, the Ford agency, is part of that group, again, with presence principally in the U.S.A., but also, in Europe and Asia as well, lesser in Latin America. The Brand Consultancies businesses are also nested within there as are some specialists, sort of in-country agencies, 1 in particular that's quite sizable at Camarco in Germany, which, actually this year, is now being merged into VML Y&R. So that's the sort of the group of agencies that are in there. They've all have their different challenges in different marketplaces, to be quite frank with you. And finally, so the health and wellness business internationally is in that group of companies. And their performances have been either very strong or a little bit mixed. And that applies to both the revenue line, sometimes the revenue line can be challenging and the profit line is very good or the revenue line is good and the profit line is a little bit disappointing. But that is the mix of businesses in that Specialty Agency group. As I said, the main, it is, GTB is very U.S. weighted. It's had the most impact in the U.S.A. That's what's really affected the margins overall for the group.

Yes, Tom.

Tom from Citi. I had a couple of questions. Firstly, I'm obviously encouraging to see FMCG begin to stabilize within your larger clients? I know you're going to be very reluctant to blame your clients for the growth profile, but it does feel like exposure by client segment is still a big factor explaining that differential in growth, in particular, the U.S. agencies. Is there anything you can do about that other than just sit and wait? There is a scope to win more accounts in areas like health care, which we're clearly doing very well for some of your U.S.

Yes. Look, I think the health care area is an area, I'd say, sort of largely self-inflicted damage. Bringing our health care businesses together in the U.S. did not improve that performance. That's substantially weakened their performance. And we have not done as well as we should do in health care in 2018 and 2019. And I think can't explain quite a lot of the variance in our performance versus some of our peers. And that's something that we've addressed in part by premiums agencies back into their constituent where they some extent where they came from. And that's starting to have an impact. But again, it will take time. So I think that's the primary sector in health care, I'd say, in automotive because of one client, in particular, where sectorally, we've had challenges. It's in finance we're underweight. And that's a growth opportunity for us in the future. But I think, really investing more and fixing our healthcare business is something that's on, very much on our agenda.

Second question is on the coronavirus effect. I know you haven't seen the numbers. So it's impossible to comment. But just in terms of how you're thinking about it internally, conversations with big advertisers. Do you think this will be a V-shaped factor or is there danger will be L-shaped?

Yes. Look, I think we just can't answer that. I just, we just can't answer that question, unfortunately. I mean, your estimate is as good as mine into what happens. I think we have to think about what happens to the economy overall. WPP, no doubt, is impacted by developments in the global economy and our ability to control our cost, which I think has been in the past, relatively good in that environment. As Paul mentioned, if we can get ahead of what's happening, we can move relatively quickly. And we do have quite high staff turnover, which naturally takes some cost out of the business on a month-by-month basis. That helps us, that helps us manage it. But I think that we, we'll see how we have to see how it develops.

And final question, maybe for Paul and/or John. The buyback, the current £300 million plus program January to March, can we just expect another 1 to be sort of roll forward when that expires?

Yes.

Right. Richard?

I think Tom and Matthew stole some of my questions. Anyway. But ...

I'm sorry.

Just to get back to the Specialist Agencies side. I mean, if we look through 2020, I presume that we've still got a headwind in GTB rolling out first quarter. Are there any other things that within the specialist agencies, we should really think about, because I would have thought that AKQA is growing positively, Geometry being repositioned the health care businesses have been sort of broken up and put back in. So is it really just GTB headwinds in the first quarter? And then the next 3 quarters, specialist agencies get back to flattish growth and with the trajectory to grow beyond that. Is that how we think about it?

I mean, I wouldn't think about it quite that literally because these things take more time. And Beth Ann started as CEO of Geometry, I think, in April of 2019, so take -- it will take her some time to to work. Now they did actually win, I think, 12 of their 15 pitches in the U.S. in the back half of last year. So she's done a really fantastic job of from a new business performance basis, but she did inherit quite a complicated, quite a complicated situation as well. The company was sort of a merger of two businesses. They've made a number of acquisitions. And there's just been a lot of moving parts for her to get head around. So -- but I think that that we expect or hope should sort itself out during the year. We then had Superunion, which is another previous combination and has this challenge -- that has had a better 2019 and goes into 2020 in a better place. So I think in general, during the course of the year, and that's why when you -- when someone says, is it a sort of second half weighted year, we prefer to say the business performance is improving during the year than thinking about sort of headwinds or tailwinds as things sort themselves out and people get to grips with the management challenges that they have.

But reading between that, so GIA continues where we had left off in the second half, which was slightly positive. And then specialist agencies start to turn around in second half year, and that's how we get a better performance in the second half?

In the May.

Right. The second question I had was just looking at the specialist agencies. I mean, it looks that there was like a £80 million, £90 million drop-through negative impact on revenues, but there was the same impact on operating profit.

Yes.

So why do we not get any benefit when you were talking earlier about, I think, 1 of the earlier questions about do you wouldn't have that leverage. So what was the issue in Specialist Agencies about operating leverage in '19 and why won't that repeat?

It will. One of the challenges at an agency with 1 client is that it's harder to reduce the cost in that agency when there's a revenue decline, if that answers part of the question.

So that £100 million drop-through from GTB went straight through the bottom?

No, Not it's in entirety, obviously, and there are mix issues with some things doing best with some things worse. But Comarco lost a significant client and the forward loss picks us the way the agency is structured makes it harder to make adjustments that he would do at an agency that has a larger number of clients.

And just lastly, on healthcare. I mean, healthcare has been an issue this year, it's been repositioned, put back into the original agencies. I mean, if you look at the healthcare, as you mentioned, big outperformance by IPG and Omnicom, big drive of their outperformance. How do you think about WPP's healthcare assets going forward? And there is obviously a big comp we've got to get through in the first quarter. So do we see health back to growth in '20 or is this a '21, '22 story? And what were the major differences as well between the assets?

Yes, I think that, yes, I don't know, there are major sort of strategic differences between the assets. But clearly, I think that bringing of the businesses together letter sort of number of senior executives leaving the company that were not replaced over the last 2 years. And we need to bring, and we have bought, new leadship into those businesses as part of the realignment, that takes some time to take some time to bed down. So I think the answer to your question is know, we know where we're going in terms of looking for new talent. And that's something in our agenda to bring into the business.

So another tough year this year, up '21 ...

No, we're not seeing another tough year this year. I think I wouldn't see it as a source of growth in this year. But I see things sort of stabilizing this year. I mean, if you think about the example of VML Y&R, 1 of the things that we did with protect Sudler & Hennessey and bring it that into VML Y&R health. So 1 of the things that John Cook and his team have had to address is bringing Sudler in 2019. They did have a really tough first half in 2019. Things are less tough in overall. Within that context, the business is growing. The same, to a lesser degree, and the same is true to a less degree, Wunderman Thompson that took GHG. So I wouldn't see it as a source of growth. I wouldn't see it as a major negative source. I think I'd see it as a source of stability in 2020. And I think overall, we are seeing 2020 as a year of stability, notwithstanding the broader economic environment. Anymore?

Just the last question. And [indiscernible], BNP Paribas. We've seen in 2018 and back again in 2019, North America not performing so well. I would like just if you could give some more color around what is being done, what is going to be done moving forward to bring that to or is that flat?

In North America?

North America.

So I think that if I take it in order of what we need to do, sorry, I said in 2018, 9 of our 10 businesses were declining in North America for the year overall. So we brought new leadership into those businesses. So Mel Edwards is now running Wunderman Thompson, Shane Atchison came back to run the business in North America and Jon Cook is now running VML Y&R. Within, over there have been some changes in North America, and we're looking for a new CEO for North America. And Gray, might we use some step much more back into the business in North America. And in GroupM, similarly there have been management change. So we're interesting sort of the leadership issues inside the business. We've been recruiting new creative talent inside the company. So Taras Wayner joined us from RGA to be the Creative Director at Wunderman Thompson. And that's a pattern that we repeated across the business. Then there's the sort of the structural change we've made in 2 of our key agencies where we've had problems. And then the repositioning of the health care businesses. Geometry, they also had a tough year, and they have new leadership. As we talked about, GTB in the Ford business, accounts for a significant proportion of the underperformance in the U.S. in 2019, and that will start to roll away after the first quarter of 2020. So I think we're doing all the steps that we need to take as quickly as we can both to fix the issues and then to capture the opportunities. And I agree with people that asked about health care. That is an opportunity for us. And I think against what has until now made a good economic environment in the U.S. and we can…