WPP PLC - WPP

[saf]

City AM - WPP shares slide as fourth quarter revenue stalls.

• Like-for-like revenue less pass through costs fell 1.6 per cent to £10.8bn for the full year.
• Profit before tax dropped 21.9 per cent to £982m.
• Net debt was slimmed down from £4bn to 1.5bn.
• Dividends per share was unchanged at 60p.

[Connor]

WPP share price hasn’t been this low since 2012.

It’s not really due to the virus, but because of missing profit targets.

On the other hand, massive dividend, FTSE 100 company, growing industry.

I saw some people checking the fundamentals on the HL website and SimplyWallStreet, so here we go.

Dividend yield: 8.10% (source)

(source)

It deserves a better analysis than this, but it’s a pretty interesting picture.

I considered WPP for my “Spotting low quality companies” analysis I’m writing for this forum, but decided not to include it.

Anyone considering investing?

[Connor]

I ended up taking a small punt. Wish me luck.

[Connor]

Made a loss. The share price hasn’t been this low since 2009.

WPP AUNZ (Australia / New Zealand) cut dividends, but no word from the mothership yet. The yield works out to 12.24% now.

Any fellow investors out there?

[piyushsg]

I’d pay attention to what simply wall st said above about high dividends but also high level of debt and dividend is not covered by earnings. To me that’s key.

Similar to genuine imapct analysis below: medium profitability and weak financial strength despite sound capital allocation.

In hindsight, that may have explained why the subsidiary company cut its dividend