AGM Statement

WPP Group PLC
26 June 2007



For Immediate Release                                               26 June 2007


                                      WPP
                                        
                                        
                      ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING TRADING UPDATE
                          FOR FIRST FIVE MONTHS OF 2007
                                        
                            REPORTED REVENUES UP 1%

                     CONSTANT CURRENCY REVENUES UP OVER 7%

                       LIKE-FOR-LIKE REVENUES UP OVER 5%

              FIRST FIVE MONTHS' OPERATING MARGIN AHEAD OF BUDGET

               AND FORECASTS IN LINE WITH FULL YEAR MARGIN TARGET


The following statement was made by the Chairman at the Company's 35th Annual
General Meeting held in London at noon today:


"First, a few comments on current trading over the first five months of this
year. 2007 has seen further continued growth in revenue, profit and margins,
following the record performance in 2006.


On a reportable basis, worldwide revenues were up 1%, low reported growth
principally reflecting the 9.5% depreciation in the US dollar against sterling.
In constant currencies, however revenues were up over 7%. On a like-for-like
basis, excluding acquisitions and currency, revenues were up a healthy 5.2%,
with growth in the first two months of the second quarter accelerating to over
6%. This maintains the improvement in the organic growth rate of 5.5% seen in
2005 and 5.4% seen in 2006 and an improvement on the 4.3% growth in the first
quarter of 2007.


Geographically, on a constant currency basis, all regions, with the exception of
the United Kingdom, showed strong revenue growth. In the United States, revenues
were up almost 8%. In Europe, the United Kingdom was up almost 3% and
Continental Europe up almost 6%. Central and Eastern Europe was up over 12%.
Asia Pacific, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East were up over 11%.


By communications services sector, advertising and media investment management
revenue was up almost 6%, information, insight & consultancy up almost 3% (with
gross margin up over 5%), public relations and public affairs up over 14% and
branding and identity, healthcare and specialist communications up over 9%.


The United States continues to grow well with like-for-like revenues up almost
5%, and stronger than the first quarter. Asia Pacific, one of our strongest
growing regions, showed continued strength, with like-for-like revenues up over
9%. The Middle East continued the strong growth seen in the first quarter and
remains our fastest growing area. Western Continental Europe, continued the
improvement seen in the second half of 2006 and the first quarter of 2007. The
United Kingdom, although improving over first quarter growth, remains the
slowest growing region in the Group.


Media investment management, as in 2006 and the first quarter of 2007 continues
to show the strongest growth of all our communications services functions, along
with direct, internet and interactive. Direct, internet and interactive related
activities now account for over 23% of the Group's revenues, up from 21% last
year. Public relations and public affairs also continue to show improvement over
last year and the first quarter, following a strong year in 2006, reflecting the
positive impact of the web, particularly social networking.


The Group's operating companies continued to improve productivity in 2007,
despite the increased investment in people in the first quarter of 2007, with
average headcount, on a like-for-like basis, up 4.7% compared with revenue
growth of 5.2% and a consequent increase in revenue per head in the first five
months. Operating margins in the first five months were ahead of budget, with
full year forecasts in line with the Group's full year margin objective of
15.0%, compared with 14.5% in 2006. The Company continues to make significant
progress in winning major new business assignments.


The Group's professional and financial strategy continues to be focused on five
objectives: increasing operating profit by 10% to 15% per annum; increasing
operating margins by half to one margin point per annum; reducing staff cost to
revenue ratios by up to 0.6 margin points per annum; growing revenue faster than
industry averages; and improving our creative reputation and stimulating
co-operation among Group companies.


Average net debt for the first five months of this year increased £80 million to
£1,186 million, compared to £1,106 million in 2006, at 2007 average exchange
rates. Currently free cash flow amounts to approximately £800 million, or $1.5
billion per annum. Alternatives for the use of this cash flow are capital
expenditure, acquisitions, dividends and share buy-backs. Capital expenditure,
mainly on information technology and property, is expected to remain equal to or
less than the depreciation charge in the long-term.


In the first five months of this year, the Group made acquisitions or increased
equity stakes in advertising & media investment management in the United States,
the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Russia, Brazil,
Colombia, Australia, China, India, Japan and Pakistan; in information, insight &
consultancy in the United States and the United Kingdom; in direct, internet and
interactive in the United States, Belgium, Germany, South Africa, Chile, Mexico,
China and Korea; in healthcare in the United Kingdom and Spain.


Today we announced that the necessary clearances from regulatory authorities in
the United States and Germany, relating to the offer for 24/7 Real Media Inc
("24/7 Real Media"), have been received. Our wholly-owned subsidiary, TS
Transaction, Inc., intends to purchase all shares of common stock in 24/7 Real
Media, that are validly tendered and not withdrawn at the close of the tender
offer period, which is scheduled to expire at midnight New York City time on
Wednesday, 27 June 2007.


Your Board also continues to focus on examining the alternative between
increasing dividends and accelerating share buy-backs, and as mentioned in the
Group's 2006 Preliminary Announcement, your Board decided to further increase
the target percentage for rolling share buy-backs on the open market, from 2-3%
of its share capital each year, or approximately £200-300 million, to 4-5%, or
approximately £400-500 million in each of 2007 and 2008. In the first five
months of 2007, 23.256 million ordinary shares, or over 2% of the Group's share
capital, were purchased at an average price of £7.54 per share and total cost of
£175.4 million, an annual rate of over 4%. All of these shares were purchased in
the market and subsequently cancelled.

The parent company's objectives continue to be to encourage greater
co-ordination and co-operation among Group companies, where this will benefit
our clients and our people, and to improve our creative product. As both
multi-national and national clients seek to expand geographically, while at the
same time seeking greater efficiencies, the Group is uniquely placed to deliver
added value to clients with its coherent spread of functional and geographic
activities.


To these ends we continue to develop our parent company talents in five areas:
in human resources, with innovative recruitment programmes, training and career
development, and incentive planning; in property, which includes radical
re-design of the space we use to improve communication as well as the
utilisation of surplus property; in procurement, to ensure we are using the
Group's considerable buying power to the benefit of our companies and our
clients; in information technology, to ensure that the rapid improvements in
technology and capacity are deployed as quickly and effectively as possible; and
finally in practice development where cross-brand or cross-tribe approaches are
being developed in a number of product or service areas: media investment
management, healthcare, privatisation, new technologies, new faster growing
markets, internal communications, retail, entertainment and media, financial
services, and hi-tech and telecommunications.


In addition, we continue to seek to improve our creative product as broadly as
possible, by recruiting, developing and retaining excellent talent, acquiring
outstanding creative businesses, recognising and celebrating creative success.
Significant progress was evident at the Advertising Festival in Cannes last
week, for example.


We are today publishing our fifth Corporate Responsibility Report ("CRR").
During the last year, public and political attention to the issue of climate
change has greatly intensified, confirming our conviction of the importance of
the CRR.


In this year's CRR, we have calculated our global carbon footprint from energy
use and business travel to be approximately 260,000 tonnes of CO2. This is not,
relatively, a huge amount but we believe that all corporations now need to take
steps to help address this global issue. It's a startling fact that, of the
world's 100 most powerful economies, 52 are corporations.


Climate change is increasingly important to WPP's clients and our work is
already helping them develop and communicate their climate strategies. As their
advisors, we should meet the standards of behaviour we recommend to our clients.

Our new CR strategy has two key elements :


The first and most significant is to target a reduction in our carbon footprint
of 20% by the end of 2010. We have already established regional Energy Action
Teams to devise and implement the changes necessary to our office portfolio, IT,
energy sourcing and travel requirements. You can find more detail on our
website.


The second is we have decided to purchase carbon offsets through the Carbon
Neutral Company equal to our total CO2 emissions. This is often described as
'carbon neutrality'. We have taken great care to source all offsets only from
renewable energy generation schemes which will be independently verified. In the
longer term, however, we recognise that simply buying offsets is no substitute
for a well thought through and executed plan to reduce corporate carbon
emissions in the first place.


And finally, a reminder: 2006 was a very good year, our best yet. 2007 promises
to be even better.


My report to you today has contained a lot of good news. It was an excellent
year - and our management deserves great credit. But they would wish me to
remind you that - probably more than any other company of its size in the world
- WPP's performance is reliant on the performance of its 100,000 people.


Little we do is automated; there are few economies of scale. The tens of
thousands of projects we undertake every year on behalf of our clients are by
definition all different, all made-to-measure, all the product of individual
human brains.


And these brains, these talents, can be found in over 100 countries around the
world ... in over 100 different companies ... working in every one of the many,
many different and highly competitive disciplines that make up the marketing
communications market.


So when we look back on another extremely satisfactory year, it's important to
us that our share owners should recognise as fully as our management the debt we
owe to our people.


It's my great pleasure to close this statement by honouring them for the quality
of their contribution and thanking them for their continued commitment.



For further information, please contact:

Sir Martin Sorrell   )
Paul Richardson      )               [phone]
Feona McEwan         )
Fran Butera                          (1) 212 632 2235

www.wpp.com


Important Information

This statement is for informational purposes only and is not an offer to buy or
the solicitation of an offer to sell any of 24/7 Real Media's common shares.


The tender offer for 24/7 Real Media is being made pursuant to a Tender Offer
Statement on Schedule TO (including the Offer to Purchase, the related Letter of
Transmittal and other tender offer materials) filed by WPP and TS Transaction
with the SEC on May 31, 2007, as amended. These documents contain important
information about the tender offer and stockholders of 24/7 Real Media are urged
to read them carefully before making any decision regarding tendering their
shares.


The Offer to Purchase, the related Letter of Transmittal and certain other offer
documents as well as the Solicitation/Recommendation Statement, are available
free of charge on the SEC's website (www.sec.gov) or from D.F. King & Co., Inc.,
the information agent for the tender offer at [phone] (toll free).
Citibank N.A. is acting as depositary for the tender offer.


Forward-looking Statement

This statement includes statements that are, or may be deemed to be,
"forward-looking" statements. These forward-looking statements can be identified
by the use of forward-looking terminology, including inter alia the terms
"believes", "plans", "expects", "may", "will" or "should" or, in each case,
their negative or other variations or comparable terminology.


These forward-looking statements include matters that are not historical facts
and include statements regarding WPP's intentions, beliefs or current
expectations concerning, among other things, WPP's results of operations,
financial condition, liquidity, prospects, growth, strategies, the outlook for
relevant markets and the proposed acquisition of 24/7 Real Media. By their
nature, forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainty because they
relate to future events and circumstances. A number of factors could cause
actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed or
implied by the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements may and
often do differ materially from actual results. Any forward-looking statements
in this statement reflect WPP's view with respect to future events as of the
date of this release and are subject to risks relating to future events and
other risks, uncertainties and assumptions relating to WPP's operations, results
of operations, growth strategy and liquidity.


Save as required by relevant law or regulation, WPP undertakes no obligation
publicly to release the results of any revisions to any forward-looking
statements in this statement that may occur due to any change in its
expectations or to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this
release. Information in this statement should not be relied upon as a guide to
future performance.




                      This information is provided by RNS
            The company news service from the London Stock Exchange