Digitalbox plc (DBOX.L) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Digitalbox plc investor presentation. [Operator Instructions] I'd now like to hand you over to James Carter, CEO. Good morning, sir.

Good morning. Lilly. Thank you very much for the introduction. Welcome, everybody, to the Digitalbox 2025 Interim Results. I'm joined by Jim Douglas, our COO; and Richard Spilsbury, our CFO. And we have a presentation that should take about 45 minutes for us to run through, followed by questions. We're going to take our cameras off, I think, initially, so we can focus on the slides. That should be clear. Okay. Firstly, let's take a quick look at the leadership team. We've established the Board over the time that we've been listed that is exceptional in its experience. Our nonexecutive directors have experience within the major PLCs across the U.K., including EMAP, Reach plc, Guardian Group, Future plc and Bauer Media. So we're very well equipped in terms of advice. The executive directors are well invested with approaching 20% of the business between them. And again, fairly significant plc media experience, really across EMAP again and Future in particular. So let's have a look at the results highlights for H1 '25. Revenues managed to grow 12% year-on-year. Our total page views, which reflects audience engagement, were up 15%. So that's fairly significant. TV Guide session volumes were up 25%, which is a great result. Media Chain acquisitions that were made about 1.5 years ago returned to fully repay the cost of acquisition. Daily Mash has grown its sub space, so it's direct relationship with consumers paying to consume that content has grown to record levels. And The Tab page views for the period were up 38%, which is a fantastic result. And in addition, diversification was pretty key to our growth over the period where we grew our on-platform revenues by 2.5x compared to the same period last year. And underpinning all of that was really social audience growth that reached over 700 million, or audience reach was over 700 million for the H1 period. Just to explain very briefly what our business does for anyone not initiated with what we do. Digitalbox is a pure-play digital media company with a pedigree in publishing technologies. We're 100% digital, very much focused in the entertainment sector, and we have a strategy to create, grow and acquire properties that will transform our business as we move forward. In very simple terms, we operate 9 media brands: Entertainment Daily, which is in the TV showbiz, celebrity news space. The Daily Mash, the U.K.'s biggest news satire site. The Poke, which is a humor aggregator, the best of the stuff on the Internet. And TV Guide, pretty self-explanatory. Emmerdale Insider for those fans of the soap that can get everything that they need for that particular show. The Tab, which is the U.K.'s biggest student-focused youth news website. And Royal Insider, which is a new site that we've introduced this year, in the H1 period, which is the very latest news on the U.K. Royal Family. And Reality Shrine, the reality TV-based sites that came together through some assets that we bought from GRV Media and some pretty significant focus from The Tab or Youth team as we're labeling it. And then [ EastEnders Insider ] that actually emerged outside of the period and pretty clear what that's about, but the EastEnders soap. So 9 websites, publishing content that really is driving audiences through push media tactics primarily to consume these pieces of content, which we then serve advertising through that engagement, which is our primary operating model. Although we have moved beyond this, this represents the majority of our income for the business. The content of today's presentation breaks down into 5 or 4 key areas really. I'll run through the market backdrop. Richard will run through the financial results. I will then kick off the strategy and business headlines, and Jim will introduce areas around AI there and also cover the portfolio developments whilst I will wrap up. First of all, the market backdrop. This may be a chart that you haven't seen before, but it's attempting to represent total internet consumption. And these are quite sort of general rules, they're not absolute. But this ellipsoid shape frames users and their behavior as they may access and use the Internet. So users typically used to access the Internet through the central zone, which we've labeled the discovery zone. And they'll come into contact with content through news feeds, things like Google Discover, Facebook News Feed or Search if they're going in with intent. And then end up really having a deeper experience with consuming video or greater depth of content on the platforms to the right of the chart or digging deeper on publisher-owned websites for further content. So discovery zone has really changed since the introduction of AI, and we can see that really has changed the dynamics of Internet consumption over the last couple of years. So AI has grown. Everyone will be familiar with the Gemini overviews being delivered on Google and increasingly on other platforms as well. And that really has changed the amount of traffic that is moving through to publisher websites and increasingly is leading to the platforms taking a greater share of user time. And really what that triggers is a need for different behaviors from publishers. As a publisher, we need to now recognize that consumers are increasingly splitting their times between -- or their time between the key platforms and visits to destination websites. And as a publisher, being agile and able to diversify its offering in order to cater for this has been important in how we've developed over the past year. So let's just take a look at audience. Just to explain this chart at the bottom of the screen is actually -- and it appears that the labeling has dropped off here, it's actually a mainstream tabloid news publishing brand in the U.K. I won't say which one it is, but it shows how their audience volumes, as measured by Ahrefs have declined over 2024. And this isn't the same for every mainstream news tabloid brand, but it is a bit of a theme that is out there in the market, and it tells you that audience volumes are pretty tough for most publishers. There's been many reports suggesting that audience volumes have declined by 30% across news media over the past year. And this is really just an illustration of how that's come about. However, if you look to the top of the screen, this is how Digitalbox has grown its audience over the period of H1 '24 compared to H1 '25. And you can see, these represent page impressions for Digitalbox, and you can see that we're up 15% over the same period. And page impressions really represent the level of engagement that we have with consumers, and this demonstrates how we've managed to grow that engagement time over the period. Looking at the advertising market as a backdrop. The 2 charts at the bottom are sourced from something called the Ezoic Advertising Index, and it measures how much people really are bidding for advertising units within the market. So it measures competition. And you can see pretty much throughout the whole of H1 '24 compared to '25, the market was ahead by about 5% or 10% compared to this year. So it's been a challenging audience market. It's been a challenging advertising market, although it has seen a fairly reasonable return in the back end of H1 '25. However, having looked at that, then reflecting on how Digitalbox has done, and you can see that revenues have grown 12%. To the left of the chart, '24 -- H1 '24 are the revenues for that period compared to the light blue being 12% up for H1 '25. So a performance really that has bucked the market trend of decline. And we shouldn't be afraid of saying we operate in a positive ad market. Ad spend per capita in the U.K. is second only to the U.S. So a large percentage of advertising spend on consumers in the U.K. is sent towards digital advertising at $537 per head. And you can see that the U.K. market, which is where most of our traffic comes from, and the U.S. market equally is a traffic -- is a sector that we are really positive in terms of the amount of money that is chasing consumers in those markets. So delivery across the half year, our core focus has really remained in the entertainment sector. We continue to pursue a buy-and-build strategy, and we now have a portfolio of 9 brands and plan to move to 10 brands as we get into H2. We acquired 3 assets in H1 '25. One called the Life Network from Media Chain, which was formerly known as Social Chain. And we've attached that to Royal Insider to help with our growth plans there, and acquired 2 other smaller assets that we attached to The Daily Mash and The Poke. Diversity of our operation has really helped deliver greater stability to the business. Sources of income from on-platform activity as well as the more diverse portfolio of sites has really helped deliver a more stable business as we've moved through H1 '25. So in summary, 15% traffic growth has really helped us buck the market trends. We've deployed cash to buy assets and launch. And we finished H1 with a little over GBP 1.7 million of gross cash in the bank. So passing over to Richard. Richard will take us through the financial results.

Thank you, James, and good morning, everyone, who's joined us today. As you are aware, the trading environment for many digital publishers has remained very tough, with many seeing significant declines in engagement due to algorithm changes and an uncertain macroeconomic environment. Despite this, I'm pleased to be able to report that Digitalbox has had a very good first half, what is normally our quieter trading period, which will explain -- I will explain further over the next few slides. Here is our income statement, and I'm pleased to report that turnover is up 12%, which reflects organic growth reported on a like-for-like basis. We are also able to report that gross profit has increased 45% as our gross profit margins increased from 16% to 20%. As you may recall, we announced our verticals growth strategy when we announced our full year results in 2024. And this has led this year, this first half to GBP 160,000 worth of new product development being spent in H1, which we have provided details about in our interim report. Here, I present information about our underlying performance, which excludes the new product development costs and one-off costs we incurred relating to the strategy review and a restructure of our IT department. On this adjusted EBITDA basis, our performance was up 30% compared to H1 2024 with an increased EBITDA margin of 16%, up from 14% in H1 2024. As a recap, adjusted EBITDA encapsulates the underlying profitability of the group, giving you greater visibility of trading once we have taken the following into account. Firstly, value measurement changes such as depreciation, amortization and impairment, although there were no impairment charges this year and share-based payments. Secondly, investments in new product development being the vertical strategy and platform improvements on TV Guide. And thirdly, one-off projects not related to trading, such as costs of the strategic review, which was undertaken in accordance with the Takeover Code after clear representations from a key shareholder, and restructuring of our IT department for the first time, I'll add. Here is our segmental revenue analysis. We have changed the presentation of our segmental analysis as the growth of the portfolio has meant it is unwieldy to report all individual brands, which could detract from gaining an overall understanding of the results. We're reporting analysis, which we use in the business with 3 segments, namely Entertainment, Humor and Youth. Entertainment includes Entertainment Daily and TV Guide and the new soap insider launches. Humor includes The Poke and The Tab. And Youth includes The Tab and Reality Shrine. You can see that Entertainment is our largest segment. The segmental analysis demonstrates revenue growth in all our segments compared to H1 2024. I've also included the quarterly revenue changes to demonstrate that the trading environment is variable and our agility and ability to adapt to changes in the publishing landscape has enabled us to stay ahead. Here, we present information about the operating cash flows and cash generation of the group. Cash generation remains strong, and we see net operating inflows in H1 2025. As we have done in previous years, we report the adequate cash flows over the last 2 years to better understand the underlying cash conversion, and I've done this again to be consistent. This shows that an aggregated cash conversion of 62% was achieved, reflecting our continued strong track record in cash collections in the context of continued investment in growth and other costs to underpin shareholder value. This slide summarizes how we have managed our cash reserves, which were GBP 1.9 million at the start of the year and GBP 1.7 million at the 30th of June 2025. We have used cash generation to, one, repay loans, and we will fully repay our existing COVID-19 bounce back loan in 2025. Secondly, to invest in growth acquisitions from Media Chain, including the Life Network. And thirdly, develop the platform our websites operate on. We hold significant cash reserves at year-end and are mindful of the need for robust working capital management so that we continue to invest in growth, both acquisitively and organically. We continue to review receivable interest rates regularly to obtain competitive rates. While a significant proportion of our revenues is earned in U.S. dollars, we convert U.S. dollar funds into sterling every quarter to manage our foreign currency risk, and we also use forward exchange contracts to reduce the impact of any foreign exchange rate volatility on the business. Our financial position continues to be strong as a result of this, which puts us in a good position to exploit market opportunities for growth. Our largest asset category are the intangible assets, mainly arising from consolidation accounting of acquisitions. We are not a capital-intensive business, and this is seen in our low -- the low value of our fixed assets. Our deferred tax asset represents the highly likely recovery of tax losses in future trading periods from 2025 onwards, which will benefit our effective rate of tax. Our current assets have decreased slightly and remain healthy, and the bank loan is due to be repaid this year. Compared to H1 2025, share premium has been reduced following a shareholder approval and court confirmation and credited to distributable reserves. The strong financial position has given us the opportunity to continue to invest in shareholder value organically and acquisitively. Your Board will continue to focus on maximizing value through the expansion of its current model. We will continue to develop the business through launching new products, remain alive to acquisition and merger opportunities that can maximize shareholder value.

Thank you very much, Richard. Thank you. I will now take you through strategic development. So let's have a look at some strengths from Digitalbox. We're very good -- not everything here, but a lot of these things, we're very strong at. So adapting to platform changes as a business is part of our DNA. So navigating algorithm changes, et cetera, has really become sort of a common part of our operation moving forward. So that equips us pretty well. We're very good at creating engaging content, content that readers really want to dig deeper into, and that's led to us having pretty exceptional audience volumes over the years coming to our websites. And that reflects in our push media skill base really and how we manage our social presence. And we have a very efficient revenue generation model, where currently, we're obviously running 9 websites at the moment, but we only have one person really man-marking that revenue coming into the business. So it's very efficient compared to more traditional direct sales-led business. And again, we're very good at generating a faster return on acquisitions, The Tab, Social Chain, The Poke, TV Guide, et cetera, have all repaid in a very short period of time, which helps our ability to generate cash. So digging a bit deeper on the Social Chain acquisition that was the most recent, more significant acquisition that we made in H2 '23, where we paid GBP 480,000 for a number of assets from Media Chain. To date or to the end of H1, that acquisition has generated GBP 114,000 of additional income that we wouldn't have otherwise had. And that's come through a combination of driving traffic to our established sites, including Entertainment Daily and The Tab, and also coming through the creator engagement programs that we're getting greater reward for as we move forward. So really positive returns on acquisitions and a similar position, as we said, on TV Guide, The Poke and The Tab over the years. We've grown our social presence and our social presence is become increasingly important for us. So when we established the business in 2019 and floated it, we had about 3.5 million followers. And you can see the growth there and the total number of followers that we have within Digitalbox. And we're now at a point where we got to around 27 million in total. And the significant thing about that is it's really helping establish our brands within the social platforms, and it's really helping drive audience to our open web experiences on our websites. And it's really helping with diversification and monetization on platform within the walled gardens. So the bit that we delivered over the first half of 2025 was 718 million, which is about 30% up on the previous period. So this is really helping establish Digitalbox and bring it some greater strength as we continue to build our social presence. Diversification, again, a similar kind of radical change in what has been going on within the business. So the chart to the left of the black line, Entertainment Daily and The Daily Mash, these businesses were solely driven by programmatic advertising in 2019. To the right, when we look at the first 6 months of this year, you can see the profile of income has changed dramatically. The red segments represent platform revenues, so revenues driven by our engagement from multiple formats, whether they be memes, video, pictures or more traditional posting within the social networks. So that's become increasingly important as has the direct consumer revenues, where we're managing to build a fairly significant operation now around The Daily Mash, and [ subscribers ] paying to consume the core content on that site. The on-platform revenues have grown fairly significantly. In January 2024 last year, they were almost nonexistent. I think we had about GBP 600 of on-platform revenue in January '24. And you can now see that, that's approaching GBP 80,000 in June '25. So significant scaling through the pivot to generating more income from our on-platform existence from our brands. We've continued to pursue a launch and acquisition policy. So to the right, you can see the launches that we've established in the first 6 months of this year. And to the left, you can see a basket of assets that have been used. So our approach really here was in the absence of very clear obvious targets, then we could pick up some cheaper assets that could contribute to the value being created within the launch. So people may recall, Reality Tidbit came from GRV, and that was used to help [ adapt ] Reality Shrine. The other 2 assets within there, Cards Against Humanity and British Banter have been used to underpin future growth on The Poke and The Daily Mash. So our approach really has been looking for more significant acquisitions as well as looking for lower-hanging fruits, where we can add greater value through grouping a number of assets that can contribute to a single outcome. Over to you, Jim. You're going to explain the AI testing that we've been doing over the first half of this year.

Yes, sure. Thanks, James. So at the start of the year, we set aside some budget for testing to see how AI could help smooth our workflows and also explore some of those options for diversification that James has mentioned. And so this on-screen shows an extract, not the complete workflow, but an extract of one of the workflows on Royal Insider, and I'll just explain what we've been doing. So at the start, we have an automated editorial planner e-mail, which goes into the editorial team to give them a head start in terms of trending stories and key events. So that's really additional pointers for stories that they may have not already had in the planning mix. And once those stories are written by the team, using the platform, we can then pass those through a largely automated process to create and send an e-mail to newsletter subscribers. At the same time as that e-mail is being automatically generated, we can also generate a video script based on the lead story. So that script then goes to our video presenter, who you can -- you should be able to see on the right and some of the videos that we've created. And then once the video is made and edited, either using a presenter or using just an AI voiced version, we can then distribute those videos. So we can distribute those finished videos to YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok with a minimum amount of intervention. So that's a good example of how we're sort of smoothing out the process and creating different assets, different types of assets from the same core. So the whole point of this work is that we learn along the way. And even though we've achieved more than 1 million video views by just doing this piece of work, we still think there's more that we can do. So we're looking at how we can optimize the performance of each platform and which content type gives us the best place to start from. We're already using the editorial planning tool across Royal Insider and the soaps every day, and the newsletter creation is ready to roll out across more brands. So the plan is, we continue to refine these propositions. We potentially, in the new year, do a big push on acquisition when newsletter acquisition costs will come down, and we'll also deliver a further refined video operation. So as you can see, AI is already in the business and helping us deliver. And then on the next slide, we have some more work that we've been doing. So under our new CTO, we've been working to simplify our tech operations by moving towards a single site template. So that gives a better user experience and a harmonized ad stack. It also gives us better control. It makes the sites easier to manage and allows us to make changes across multiple sites more easily. So as you can see, we've got the site template up and running on our 2 soap sites, EastEnders Insider on the left and Emmerdale Insider on the right. And now those sites are now live on the new template. We're continuing to refine those, see how they perform from a user perspective, see how they perform from a monetization point of view, and we'll make further refinements as we roll those out. So then just a quick look at the portfolios across the business in their publishing groups. So the largest group that we'll start with is Entertainment, as Richard mentioned earlier on. The group as a whole, we've seen 7% traffic growth year-on-year, which is quite a result. That's been largely driven by TV Guide. Those of you who listened to the full year results in March for 2024, remember, we were saying that we've seen some good growth on TV Guide as a result of work done on the platform, and we wanted to grow further. That has now come through. We've seen a 25% uplift in traffic, as James mentioned, and we're continuing to build the site. So you can see on screen here that this is shortly to go live. This is a new look for the article pages as opposed to the listings pages, which is cleaner, better user experience and based on the template that I showed you on the previous slide. Elsewhere in the group, we've been focusing on ways that we can apply our editorial expertise to deliver more value. So Entertainment Daily, which is on the slide just to the right of TV Guide, our longest-standing brand, is currently our star performer in terms of on-platform revenues, and that's thanks to fantastically loyal and engaged readers and our Facebook follower base. So we're focusing more in that area and looking to build further on Entertainment Daily's on-platform revenues. We're also leveraging our soaps experts, as you can see on the right. So previously, this team was just part of Entertainment Daily. We've now spun off the Emmerdale and EastEnders launch. And these sites really are delivering, in my opinion, some of the best coverage for soap fans. So we're looking for more ways that we can drive value from this expertise that we've got in our teams. And the way we're doing that is we're introducing a smoother rewriting process, so we can publish across multiple brands more efficiently. And then last in this group, Royal Insider, we mentioned, so the newsletter that we've set up through the AI process on Royal Insider, we've already got more than 15,000 subscribers receiving that content. So that looks like potentially something that we can really build on moving forward. The next group is Youth. We've really been expanding here in 3 main areas. So there's a continued focus on entertainment content with big shows that The Tab will cover like Married at First Sight. Those programs have continued to deliver really strong traffic. But also, we've seen wider entertainment-orientated stories like the J.K. Rowling piece, you can see on the screen here, that resonate with the audience. We've also been expanding out into more mainstream news, where we think there's a reader appetite. So we saw some really strong traffic around major news events like the helicopter crash -- the tragic helicopter crash in the Hudson a few months ago. That really engaged with our audience and the team's news delivery was very, very strong around stories like that. So we've got entertainment content, mainstream news and then the local university teams, which are a real key part of The Tab brand as well as delivering some of the best TikTok content that The Tab publishes. We've also seen a spike in local page views up 72% year-on-year. So the mix of content and the social profile of The Tab and new launch Reality Shrine here also means that we can tap into U.S. audiences. So about 63%, as you can see here, are the Reality Shrine audiences coming from the States and some of those sessions monetize disproportionately well for us. And then finally, on The Tab -- sorry, on the Youth group, the team has been working hard to develop Reddit as a traffic source. Around 10% of the page views over the sessions over the period are now coming from Reddit. And lastly, in the group, we're investing in new talent. So we've got a grad scheme, which has just launched. We've brought on a content apprentice, and we think that that's a really good way of forming a bridge from the university teams and then junior writers coming into this brand to make sure we continue to keep the editorial team fresh and delivering content that's relevant for the audience. And then last but not least, we have our Humor brands. The Daily Mash's subscription base now passed 4,600, which along with a price rise that we put in, in early '24, I believe, has helped deliver that 60% growth in consumer revenues. We've also got the newsletter acting as a wider funnel to lead people towards subscribing. We think that there's more that we can do there. So we're optimistic about a further subs push in 2026. And The Poke, as James mentioned, has seen really strong session values, 25% session value growth year-on-year. And we're continuing to look at new ways that we can develop the audience and improve content efficiency. So we've recruited into the team to help build the social profile of these brands and increase our on-platform revenues in the same way as we've seen on the Entertainment and Youth groups. We've got a U.S. contributing editor delivering stories like this where some characters like Pete Hegseth, who may be not that well known in the U.K. but resonates with the U.S. audience. Our U.S. editor is drilling into those kinds of stories to try and expand our U.S. reach. And we've been working with AI workflows as well. So in the same way as Royal Insider is benefiting from the automated creation of newsletters, we're also doing a similar piece of work with The Daily Mash to enable the editorial team to focus on really what they need to focus on, which is creating great engaging content rather than some of the more manual tasks of newsletter assembly. So there's plenty of work going on in this group as the others. That's it from me.

Thank you very much, Jim. So looking to the future, our mission that we and the Board have signed up to is to become an entertainment powerhouse through diversification and expansion of our current model. And really, what we'd like to do is double the size of the business in the next 2 years. We've established already that we're up to 9 brands. This is the journey over the years in terms of how many brands that we're operating, and we'll hit 10 brands in 2025. So portfolio, operational diversity is going to be key to our growth position. So more brands, as I've already said, increased revenue diversity, so on-platform revenues will really help us deliver much greater stability and opportunity for growth within the business. Looking at the advertising market. There's a lot of commentary around the advertising market, but U.K. adults spend 4x as much time online on smartphones than they do on computers. So our focus on mobile delivery within the advertising market makes sense. And we shouldn't be shying away from the fact that the advertising market will grow significantly over the next few years. We're in the sort of choppy period at the moment, but it's forecast to grow by 2028 by $251 billion. So there will be growth over time. So in summary, reflecting on the H1 interim results, audience and revenue growth has been delivered. The fundamentals of our model and our agility are serving us well to deliver this. We're delivering profitable diversification. The strong on-platform revenues that have emerged over the last 1.5 years and strong subscription growth is coming through The Daily Mash direct-to-consumer initiative. Acquisition performance has continued to deliver well. We've had leading success rates across almost every asset that we bought repaying within an 18-month [ time frame ]. Product development and AI testing continue. Investment in new launches in workflow improvement, et cetera, are creating efficiencies that we will take into the following years. And we've deployed cash well, but retained a healthy balance sheet. So we're well placed to handle opportunities and challenges as we move into the future periods. So momentum continues towards 2026 as we continue to build the business. That's it on the formal presentation, 1 minute short of the 45 minutes that I suggested at the beginning. But we would now like to open up to the questions that have been delivered through the feed.

James, Richard, Jim, thank you very much for the presentation. [Operator Instructions] I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Guys as you could see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. Can I please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.

Okay. Question from, I think, George S. What sets Digitalbox apart from other digital media groups or other media groups in today's competitive market? I can answer that. And Jim, you may want to contribute to that as well. I'll put my camera on. And Richard, maybe if you put your camera on as well for future -- for these questions. What sets us apart is, the efficiency of our business really is the primary driver for a point of difference. So comparing ourselves to companies that have a more traditional sort of profile attached is quite positive. We're very, very, very good at delivering very efficient engagement with consumers. We have a team of about 40 people across the business. And our social reach and audience volumes are significant compared to any other media company and our ability to convert that efficiency to profit and cash are significant compared to more traditional operations. Do you want to add anything to that, Jim?

Yes. I suppose the only thing that I'd add is, I think we've touched on it previously is we've mentioned this idea of agility. And I think we've tried to ensure that the way the business is run enables us to react quickly when we find change and be able to explore new opportunities and deal with challenges swiftly. As James said, the teams that we've got, the editorial teams, know their audiences very, very well. And so a combination of that audience knowledge and our inclination to try new things and figure out what's maybe challenging us has enabled us to move possibly more quickly than other organizations.

Okay. Another question that I might send [ partly back to ] Jim, but can you give some more detail on what your verticals strategy is and why this requires accelerated investment in new product development?

Yes. So the -- it's one way of describing the verticals strategy is around the principle of specialism. So when we say a vertical, we tend to mean a soap like EastEnders or Emmerdale or a slightly wider but nonetheless focused area like Reality TV. And the belief is that if you can deliver credible expert content that is very, very focused, you'll win in terms of engaging with the audience because the audience will recognize your expertise. They'll be in -- when they're on site, they're in an editorial environment that they recognize as being all about their interest or their passion areas and that can increase engagement, increase repeat visits. So that's really the heart of the vertical strategy. And the way we wanted to try and take that forward was partly by developing a new site template that would enable us to bring these focused products to market more quickly without needing to start from scratch every time once we've got the fundamentals of the template in place. And so you'll start to see, as James showed on that chart, new products coming to market more quickly as we've got the template in place, and that will enable us to move more quickly into new verticals.

Okay. Thanks, Jim. The question about TV Guide. It says, I've been a regular user of TV Guide since you acquired it. This has become increasingly unusable on mobile due to multiple pop-up and streaming adverts. Are you not making the mistake that Reach plc is making by prioritizing short-term advertising income at the expense of long-term user experience? It's a good question. We are very aware of the challenges in policing the advertising market at the moment. And it's become increasingly untrusted partners within the advertising industry, increasingly sort of breaking the rules, and we're having to spend more time to adapt to ensuring that formats do not break out sort of regulations and agreements with those partners. We spend -- we have a session every week that reviews this process. And we clearly don't want to allow advertising to break the user experience. But we're aware of it and attempting to deal with it. But I guess the point is we haven't changed the advertising mix on TV Guide since we've acquired it, but the behavior of some of the advertisers, perhaps through a tighter and tighter ad market, leading to them sort of breaking outside of agreements has pressured them into it. But absolutely, we're looking at that particular issue. A question from Sally H. If you zoom out and look at the business from a high-level economic point of view, ultimately, Digitalbox uses lots of people and resources to optimize [ distribution on ] platforms like Google, Facebook to get page views only to compete with these larger platforms in selling ads. How can this be sustainable, or have I got this wrong? So well, you're correct that the major platforms take the larger chunk of advertising spend within the market. But there [ is reason to be ] had through operating in the space that we operate in through having increased levels of engagement and increased loyalty from consumers. So viewability stats on our advertising within something like Emmerdale Insider are strong. And that's down to the kind of core interests of that audience, the environment they're in, the fact engagement levels are strong, the fact they're consuming more page impressions, the fact they're not bouncing on to the next subject area is giving us higher advertising reward perhaps than you might get for an Emmerdale-related ad in Facebook. So I think our verticals strategy sort of competes against the broad positioning of the major platforms. I think that's the majority of the questions really. There's one about what's your long-term growth ambitions of the business are, but I think we answered that unless, Richard, would you like to add to the growth ambition?

Yes. As you mentioned earlier, James, we're looking to double the size of the portfolio and looking to do that over the next 3 years, which is the strategy that we announced at the end of -- when we announced our full year results for 2024. And that follows the strategic review that was done at the end of 2024 and concluded at the beginning of 2025. So we've had a really good look as a Board at all of the options and considered them and believe that based on our analysis that there is a significant opportunity for the group to grow and realize shareholder value, and that being the best option for us.

Thank you, Richard. There's one question that's just dropped in. I noticed that you have introduced an ad-free subscription option on TV Guide. Given that TV Guide completes with the Radio Times site, can this achieve reasonable revenues? If you take a look at nearly all of our sites now, we have introduced an ad-free subscription option across all of the sites. So for anyone that feels the advertising impact is something they'd rather avoid, they can consume all of our websites by paying. So similar perhaps to The Daily Mash, where you get an ad-free experience and access to premium content is available, you can access an ad-free experience across the majority of our sites now, and it will be all of them by the end of this year, I would suggest. So it's a new service that we've just introduced. So it's beyond TV Guide. And I think that really gets us to the end of the questions on the list.

James, Richard, Jim, thank you for answering all those questions you can from investors. And of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to the company, James, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?

Yes. Thank you for everyone attending today's presentation. It's much appreciated. The results in the first half of this year were broadly positive. We shouldn't shy away from the fact that it's a challenging market for sure. It's difficult for publishers to generate audiences. It's difficult in terms of advertising at the moment. However, we should reflect on the fact that we've outperformed both of those key challenges with our audience growth and our advertising growth over the first half. So we're in a strong position to deal [ with what's coming up ], and we feel we've got real momentum to build the business into 2026 and beyond. Thank you very much.

James, Richard, Jim, thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team could better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Digitalbox plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.

Thank you.