By Adria Calatayud 



  WPP PLC said Thursday that like-for-like net sales fell 15% in the second quarter as cost-conscious clients tightened their advertising budgets, and swung to a first-half pretax loss on coronavirus-related charges. 


  The world's largest advertising group said like-for-like net sales fell 9.2% on year. 


  Full-year like-for-like net sales and headline operating margin are expected to be within the range of analysts' expectations, the company said. Analysts currently expect WPP's like-for-like net sales to fall between 10% and 11.5% in and its headline operating margin to be between 10.4% and 12.5%, according to figures provided by the company. 


  London-based WPP said the coronavirus pandemic triggered a reassessment of the value of acquisitions. As a result, it booked impairment charges of 2.7 billion pounds ($3.57 billion). 


  For the first half as a whole, the company reported a pretax loss of GBP2.58 billion compared with a profit of GBP409.0 million in the year-earlier period. 


  Revenue for the half year fell 12% to GBP5.58 billion, WPP said. 


  WPP declared an interim dividend of 10 pence a share, down from 22.7 pence a share last year, and said its share buyback is still under review. The company said it intends to restart share repurchases when the environment stabilizes. 


  Write to Adria Calatayud at adria.calatayud@dowjones.com