WPP PLC (LSE:WPP)<\/a> despite Tuesday’s\u00a0better-than-expected first-quarter update, with the Swiss bank arguing that the advertising group\u2019s near-term recovery story still lacks a catalyst.<\/p>\nThe broker left its 12-month price target unchanged at 210p, versus a share price of 259p in the note, implying 18.8% forecast price downside before dividends. Including a projected 5.9% dividend yield, UBS sees a forecast stock return of -12.9%.<\/p>\n
WPP\u2019s first quarter was better than feared. Organic growth came in at -6.7%, ahead of consensus expectations for -7.8%, while management pointed to early progress under the Elevate28 plan and reaffirmed guidance for H1 like-for-like net revenue to fall by a mid-to-high single-digit percentage.\u00a0Still, UBS said the improvement is unlikely to carry into the second quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cQ2 trends are expected to be broadly similar to Q1, with a continued drag from net new business,\u201d the broker said.<\/p>\n
The broker said WPP\u2019s valuation \u201cdoes not look demanding\u201d at 5.1 times revised 2026 earnings and a 5.9% dividend yield. But that was not enough to shift the investment case.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we see limited near-term catalysts,\u201d UBS said.<\/p>\n
Sentiment could improve at the half-year results, where the chief executive is expected to give more detail on Elevate28 progress, particularly if WPP can show positive developments around asset disposals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WPP is still a ‘sell’ says Swiss bank Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock UBS is sticking with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[32115,41,1085,17,32114],"class_list":["post-57753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-advertising-group","tag-swiss","tag-swiss-bank","tag-switzerland","tag-wpp-plc"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116488742148084878","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"WPP](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/a3a69b11d89acc5123a1fd22978a0682.jpeg\")
WPP is still a ‘sell’ says Swiss bank Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock <\/p>\n