The patient, it seems, is responding to treatment — though the vital signs remain, as they say in the trade, mixed.

WPP, the British holding company that has spent the better part of two years restructuring itself into something leaner and presumably faster, reported first-half results on Thursday that sent its stock up more than 26 percent in early trading. Revenue fell 5.6 percent, but analysts had apparently been braced for worse.

"We're on track with where we said we would be," Yannick Rose, the chief executive, told journalists on a conference call. The company cited progress on four strategic objectives, including what it described as becoming "a simpler and more integrated company" — a phrase that has appeared in holding company earnings materials with some regularity since approximately 1987.

Earlier this year, WPP reorganized itself into four business units — WPP Media, WPP Creative, WPP Production, and WPP Enterprise Solutions — spread across four regions. For the first time, the company reported results along those lines, in what has become a familiar ritual whenever a holding company adopts a new org chart.

On the new-business front, Ms. Rose pointed to what she called "landmark wins," including Estée Lauder, Jaguar Land Rover, Airbnb, Wendy's, and Heineken. WPP topped J.P. Morgan's net new business rankings for both the first half and the nine months through the second quarter.

The company also completed more than 15 disposals of what it termed "non-core assets," expected to generate about $269 million in proceeds this year.

As for job cuts — which are reportedly planned in the hundreds globally by year's end — Ms. Rose declined to provide specifics. "Some jobs will be impacted," she said. (What, you were expecting her to say otherwise?)

She was more expansive on the subject of artificial intelligence, describing WPP Open, the company's "agentic marketing platform," as a system that connects client data to "trillions of real-time signals" from some 5 billion consumers across 100 markets.

"What excites me the most," Ms. Rose said, "is to see how AI is fundamentally changing how we deliver growth for our clients."

In an industry where excitement tends to run ahead of evidence, that may yet prove to be true.

Original story published in adweek.com: "WPP Is 'On Track' With Turnaround Plan, as Revenue Drops 5.6% in First Half of 2026"