Digitalbox plc (DBOX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
September 24, 2024
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Operator
operatorGood 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.
James Carter
executiveGood morning. Thank you, Mark. And again, welcome to the Digitalbox 2024 Interim Results Presentation. We're glad you're able to join us. I'm joined by Jim Douglas, our COO; and David Joseph, our CFO, to go through this presentation this morning. First slide, you may or may not be familiar, but the Board brings significant experience to the business through the success really that it's delivered within major institutions across the U.K., EMAP, Future plc, Unilever, Reach, Daily Mail, all covered by the individuals on the Board. In addition, the executive has experience of driving editorial strategy at the highest level and delivering VC-backed roll-ups to exit, and we're well invested with a stake of over 20% of the business. In order to continue to deliver the perfect governance, we're in the process of recruiting a further independent NED to ensure that the best balance to represent the interests of all shareholders exists. So firstly, some highlights from what we hope you will view as a positive set of results. H1 performance was ahead of the budget and market guidance. Revenues were up 32% year-on-year. The Tab and The Poke delivered session volume growth. Entertainment Daily and The Poke delivered significant uplifts in session values with over 29% growth across the 2 brands there. And TVGuide repaid around 1/3 of the acquisition cost. If you may recall, it was acquired last October. But during the period, H1 repaid at least 1/3 of the acquisition cost. The Poke fully repaid itself over the period, leading us to an 18-month time line between acquisition and repayment. And we developed a further site as part of something called our vertical strategy, which we'll go into more detail later called Emmerdale Insider. And overall, adjusted EBITDA for the period was up 260%. For those not familiar with Digitalbox, Digitalbox is a pure-play digital media company with a pedigree in emerging publishing technologies. We're 100% digital and mobile focused. We've grown through a buy-and-build strategy and transforming the acquisitions that we've made. Our historical model is simple. We publish great content that drives audiences to our websites, which we then monetize through the serving of advertising solutions across all categories, branding advertising, video advertising, e-commerce solutions. The brands we operate are Entertainment Daily, which is an entertainment and TV celebrity news site; The Daily Mash, which is the U.K.'s leading news satire site; The Tab, which is the U.K.'s leading student stroke youth culture site, driven by an army of student journalists across more than 30 campus-based sites around the U.K. The Poke is best described as a humor aggregator, bringing together some of the funniest moments to hit the web and distilling them for an easily consumed article for Poke followers. TVGuide is exactly what it says, but it's more than a linear TV guide now. We've broadened the proposition to include all TV, and it now covers streaming content as well. Emmerdale Insider is for those unfamiliar with Emmerdale, Emmerdale's a soap opera, and it's specifically about that show and part of the vertical strategy that we will go into later. So the presentation breaks down into four key areas. I will cover the market backdrop and some key changes that have been taking place over the past 6 months or more, so we can all understand the environment that we're operating in. David Joseph will take you through the financial results. I'll then highlight some key strategic areas we've delivered around and business headlines, and Jim Douglas will take you through the brands and drill down into a lot more detail there prior to me summing up. So the market backdrop. Firstly, looking at the U.K. digital advertising market. H1 2024 to the right is the index. This is an advertising index of prices paid for ad units across the U.K. digital ad market. And you can see the two blue charts left and right. The right-hand chart is a relatively stable representation and comparison, compared to 2023, compared to what we've seen over previous years. So there's much more stability in the ad market that we've seen for some time. Obviously, over COVID years, we had dramatic roller coasters of spend, but it appears to be in a much more stable shape than we've ever been -- we've been in for the last 3 or 4 years. AI, we flagged up as something that could disrupt the market, and it's pretty clear that Microsoft and ChatGPT being thrown into the market just over a year or so ago has disrupted and instituted quite a lot of change. Google is responding. Google being obviously a search dominant business has had to pivot towards AI-generated solutions. And here is an example of me searching for the answer to what font was the Beatles logo created in. Instead of it presenting a graphic design website with the answer that may have monetized my visit to that website to read about the answer, Google Gemini is serving up the solution there in front of you. So Google is having to change. It's caught between the AI emergence from ChatGPT and other players and is diluting what it used to be good at, which is search. And in fact, to the point where even our very own news satellite site, The Daily Mash is ridiculing Google with the article it recently published, and I must add, completely unprompted by management, but a reflection of consumer experience. "Did you mean something completely different that's more profitable for me to find" asks Google. And I think we're all beginning to see that disruption in a similar way. Because of the emergence of significantly greater volumes of content on the web, AI tools are creating websites and generating a huge increase in websites for Google to crawl. It's had to try to police against what is classified as low-quality websites. It delivered two algorithm updates over the past 6 to -- 6 months. First on March 5, Google Core update; second, an update of that update on August 15. And the algorithm is really to target a reduction of 40% in what Google will classify as unhelpful, low-quality and unoriginal content sites. So they're trying to reduce the ranking of a lot of sites that are considered to be low value by the Google algorithm. The graph that you have in front of you here is what I would call a very popular, very useful and arguably original computer gaming site that was delivering around 20 million sessions a month. It will have to go unnamed because we have been in dialogue with the owners, and it would be unfair. It was delivering 20 million sessions a month at the beginning of this period, and it's been reduced to 500,000 sessions a month. So there are examples here of the Google algorithm change just delivering significant damage to the market, and it's something we've had to contend with, within our business, and it's something that we have successfully countered previously with Entertainment Daily. In addition to this, even when you look at the Google publisher dashboard, which is supposed to be a guide on how to produce great content that will rise to the surface of Google -- the top of Google rankings. The 10 examples they give of great high-quality original helpful content, somebody has gone to the trouble of analyzing those websites. 7 out of 10 of those websites have seen a significant reduction in traffic despite following Google headlines. So there's definite turbulence here. In addition, Google is in court with three U.S. Department of Justice antitrust cases around its monopolistic behavior taking place. The first of those has played out around its dominance for search and users not being given a choice. For example, it's the default search engine on Apple through a pre-agreement with no user choice at all. The courts ruled that Google was deemed to be an illegal monopoly. And clearly, Google are appealing this ruling. But it's all questioning their existence as we move into the future as a single entity. And The Guardian, as you can see in the article at the bottom of the screen, speculating about the potential breakup of Google and what does the -- it's not just the media landscape, but what does the Internet landscape look like in the next 2 to 3 years. One thing is for certain, it will deliver change. There's a movement already in place towards what has been labeled the E-A-T algorithm within the Google system. So the E-A-T algorithm really measures experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of a particular website. And to give you an example of this, then generally, the platforms are beginning to favor -- if we take football as an example, but if there's a journalist that has 30 years' experience in following Manchester City, knows about the history of the club, is on the ground in Manchester, living and breathing day-to-day what Man City are up to, it should be ranked higher than some journalist who's writing about all football clubs in a more general way for a search term around Man City. And it's a trend that's really being labeled as a by fans for fans approach, which is how to really optimize engagement from those fans against that content and through those platforms. So there's a definite movement away from generalists towards specialists that's taking place. We've experienced it ourselves with our launch of Love Island around the Love Island TV show, which I'm sure everyone is very familiar with. We launched a Facebook page called the Holy Church of Love Island around a year ago. And here, you can see whilst the TV show is on air, the chart to the right demonstrates that we're delivering around 16 million reach and engagement across the period that it was live. So really amazing, fantastic interaction with that fan base around that particular show, which is a great demonstration to us of our plans for the vertical strategy that we plan to develop. In addition, publishers are increasingly looking away from the major platforms. It's been highly documented that Facebook has reduced traffic that it's sending off platform to publisher destination websites. Reach has reported it. All news operations have reported it over the last 3 or 4 years. Google, the same thing is happening with the AI solutions being delivered within their search results. It is meaning less clicks to publisher websites. So publishers increasingly forced to look at a direct consumer dialogue, looking in the direction of data and direct subscriptions for their content. And our example of that, I guess, is The Daily Mash that we'll go into more detail later. So those are the headlines really from a market perspective. I'd now like to pass over to David Joseph to go through the financial performance.
David Joseph
executiveThank you, James, and good morning, everybody. I've got four simple slides for you today, Slide 1 being the income statement. This slide shows extracts from the income statements for the first half of '24 and '23 as per the published interims. '24 includes the results of all five products, so including TVGuide, but '23 does not. Like much of the world, we've been very busy navigating our way through a perfect storm. And in our case, the combination of depressed global advertising spend, together with the restricted supply of traffic due to the algo and policy changes of Facebook and Google. Despite all this, the business performed well and ahead of management's expectation, delivering revenues of GBP 1.6 million, which is 32% up period-on-period and delivering an adjusted EBITDA of GBP 0.2 million, which is a significant change on the prior period loss of GBP 100,000. With a business that has high operational gearing, this significant increase in revenue translates to a significant increase in the gross profit margin percentage, an increase of 7 percentage points to 84%. This is an ultra-high gross margin and results from the market continuing to value our audience highly, keeping our yields or rate per 1,000 ahead of the market. As we move through the second half of the year, though, the market continues to be challenging. Hence, we are not changing our overall market guidance despite the strong performance in the first half. The second slide, segmental. So the headline here is a revenue increase of 32%, but this is skewed by the addition of a new product for '24, which wasn't there in '23. The underlying or like-for-like, excluding TVGuide, is a healthy increase of 14% with strong performances from both Entertainment Daily and The Poke. However, a glance to the right shows the first half split into Q1 and Q2. And this serves to inform as to why we are flagging the need to be cautious for the full year. The stellar 44% increase in Q1 is tempered by the 10% decline in Q2. The third slide, cash generation. Cash performed well as usual. I've restated the statement of cash flows in order to highlight the cash generated from operations because this is what's really going on in the business, the conversion of adjusted EBITDA into cash in the bank. You'll see the first half of '24 cash generated from operations totaled GBP 0.3 million, which is 146% of adjusted EBITDA. Now this isn't the norm, however, and I would expect this conversion rate to average around 95%. Let's remember that the only other cash outgoings essentially are tax, bank debt repayment and CapEx or platform investment. My final slide, statement of financial position. There are six points of note here. Regular listeners to our results presentations will know that we took a GBP 6.3 million write-down in the carrying value of our intangible assets at the recent year-end. This being as a result of us taking a much more prudent view on future earnings, increasing weighted average cost of capital to 20% and reducing the DCF time horizon to 10 years only. No further write-downs are anticipated. The second item, deferred tax assets as per point one, this will be reviewed carefully at the year-end as this relates to utilization or anticipated utilization of our corporation tax losses against future profits. The third item, trade debtor reduction follows strong debtor management, especially in the light of higher revenues period-on-period. The fourth item, gross cash at the bank, GBP 2 million, performing well as described already. More impressively, net cash of GBP 1.8 million is only GBP 0.5 million lower than last June despite investing over GBP 1 million in intangible assets since that date. The fifth item, the business is highly liquid, having GBP 2.4 million of net current assets, which for a business of this size is obviously very substantial, and this is down from GBP 3.1 million in the prior year. And finally, the capital and reserves, you will note a large negative P&L reserve due to the GBP 6.3 million intangible write-down at the recent year-end. You will also notice, however, the GBP 11.2 million share premium balance, which allows us the option to transfer to reserves in order to create a large surplus, subject, of course, to Board, shareholder and court approval, but this would allow us to utilize surplus cash for a share buyback or to pay dividends should this be desired or required. Back to you, James.
James Carter
executiveThank you very much, DJ. I will now run through some key areas of business that we want to flag up from a macro perspective before passing over to Jim. The first slide here is -- our intention is to deliver on the mission to become an entertainment powerhouse through the pursuit of our highly efficient publishing model and the deployment of cash to secure bolt-on acquisitions and deliver new site launches. The highlights really from the first half of the year, really the traffic growth on the tab and the Poke that we delivered, so organic growth, the turnaround of TV Guide, the acquisition we made at the back end of '23 and the work done to deliver the new site, Emmerdale Insider, which is part of, as I said before, part of the vertical strategy. We continue to throw the market for acquisitions. And these opportunities have changed significantly. And someone quite wise said to me yesterday, it's not just about acquiring really great assets, it's about dodging the bullets that are flying your way as well. And there's a good example of that really. There's a business that we have been eyeing up and we couldn't reach an agreement on price a couple of years ago. And I think we were in at about GBP 2 million. There was a rejection of that. I would say now that business is not worth $0.01. So in some ways, we've been right to avoid high-risk acquisition targets. But now there's a preponderance of smaller or lower cost acquisitions that are available. And we are picking through those opportunities all of the time, and we hope to release more news in the short to near term around further acquisitions. But we continue to be focused on this area alongside the organic delivery of new sites. There continues to be a strong example of our tech delivering well. So G.A.S., the Graphene Ad Stack continues to drive the value on The Poke. You can see from the chart that our January, February performance was massively up from the previous year, which was the early days of its introduction to the Graphene Ad Stack. But 39% session value growth over the period really demonstrates our ability to monetize a poorly performing site on our platform and continues to be a strength. Challenges. This chart demonstrates the kind of challenges that we're faced with, and this very specifically is Google search traffic. So our ability to navigate the platforms has improved greatly over the past year and again, significantly during this period. You can see from this chart that runs from 1st of Jan to the 30th of June that Google traffic was switched off on March 5 by the algorithm update, but we managed to reengage and build the traffic volumes back to similar kind of levels by the end of the period. But ultimately, the amount of traffic that didn't come our way from Google is part of the reason why we are cautious about H2 because Google remains very uncertain at this stage. We've continued to focus on the daily Mash paid subscription model with our users now being over 4,200 in total. And it's now getting to a point of breakeven, which is a real achievement over a 2-year period. I think the telegraph or New York Times both took 10 years to get to breakeven with their paid subs model. So we really think there's a significant opportunity here to build the volume of subscribers as we move forward. And the launch of Emmerdale Insider, Jim will talk about it in more detail, but the launch really aims to tick every box, experience, expertise, authority and trust. If you go into the site, you'll see author profiles, you'll see their experience of working for soap magazines over the years, national news providers over the years and having a focus in the soap market will really help with the measurements to the right of the screen. So a key part of our plan going forwards is to deliver more sites like this that are very specific in their appeal to audiences and very specific in the content that they deliver in order that we maximize engagement on the platforms and on the website. Over to you, Jim. I think.
Jim Douglas
executiveThank you, James. Yes. So as a recap of the portfolio, I'll concentrate on just a couple of operational highlights that we've seen along with progress on each of the brands during the first half. So our acquisition of TVGuide, as you might remember, completed in October last year. Since then, we've been evolving the platform and setting up the brand for the future. So as well as introducing a light mode option, which makes the site feel much more welcoming and accessible, we've also unified the apps, which are available in iOS and Android stores to deliver a lighter and cleaner view of the mobile web experience rather than them being separate products. So this change gives the users a more consistent experience. It gives us more to control and has also reduced the operating complexity of running this brand. And from a content perspective, we've increased value to users, as James mentioned, by introducing streaming listings. So prior to our ownership, the brand was landlocked somewhat in a linear TV world. But now we provide listings and editorial features and best of lists across all major streaming platforms. And finally, on TV Guide, we've begun to introduce cross-promotional content boxes, like you can maybe just make out here, which links the TVGuide entertainment section. We're automatically presenting a widget, which will surface content from sister Site Entertainment Daily. So we think there's an opportunity here for TV Guide to also promote other brands in the group or potentially further acquisitions when there's the right amount of content crossover. So quite a lot going on, on TV Guide. Moving on to The Poke. So The Poke is our daily digest of the funniest stuff on the Internet. James has already mentioned this brand had a really strong H1. When we last updated the market, we felt that the brand had more potential to grow, and we said that we were looking to increase editorial output. We've done just that. And as a result, we've seen a 21% increase in traffic this period versus 2023. And remember that this is against the backdrop of many publishers in the wider market seeing really significant traffic decline. And also encouragingly, we are not experiencing the fade that you sometimes get when you begin producing more content. So sometimes you start to see a bit of fade and each individual article ends up seeing a performance dip. We're not seeing that at all. So we're going to continue on this path of expansion as we go into Q4. And as James mentioned, so this acquisition is now fully repaid in far shorter order than I think people would accept as the market norms. Moving on to Entertainment Daily. So this is our TV and showbiz news site. And as we've spoken about, it really had a fantastic early Q1. So the driver here was good work done by the editorial and tech team at the back end of last year in their response to the Google algorithm change and the recovery in traffic we saw from those sources. But as James has pointed out, Google has since then delivered 2 more big shocks to the Internet ecosystem with further algorithm changes, one in March this year and another outside this period in August. We're becoming quite familiar at dealing with these issues as the Q1 numbers reflect, but there's still some work to do to fully recover our position, especially in the Google Discover feed. That said, the strong social following of entertainment daily mitigates this to a certain extent. It gives us a direct route to almost 4 million highly engaged followers while we navigate the Google issue. And we're entering a strong period for TV content with the new season that strictly come dancing in its first few weeks, and I'm a Celebrity is due back in November. And also the referrals linking the widget on TV guide that I mentioned a couple of slides previously is another opportunity for us to introduce new readers to the brand. The Daily Mash is the U.K.'s favorite satirical news site. And the story here really is Daily Mash is continuing its revenue diversification journey. During the period, we increased the price of subscriptions, and we also tightened the payroll to encourage sign-ups. So as a result of those changes, we've now got more than 4,200 subscribers paying between GBP 3 a month, GBP 30 a year or GBP 200 for a lifetime subscription. And so that delivers comfortably in excess of GBP 100,000 of net revenue on an annualized basis, which, as James says, essentially moves the brand into profitable operation. Also, we've just received our copies of the Daily Mash book. So a field guide to being British Class Wars is a licensing deal with Michael O'Mara, which is a respected book publisher and comprising about 70% brand-new content and about 30% archive match content. Goes on sale 10th of October at $14.99, making it a perfect Christmas gift. We're also bundling copies of the book for added value to new or upgrading subscribers as a means of further encouraging sign-ups. And depending on how sales go for the book and also for the subs offer, we'll look to revisit this revenue stream with more books next year. Moving on to The Tab. A couple of key points here. So The Tabs first half, where we saw 3% growth, again, against a hugely turbulent wider market, was delivered, thanks largely to the agile approach of the editorial and social team, some of whom you can see on the slide here during one of their morning editorial meetings. So this really is about the team finding new editorial spins on the big entertainment stories like Netflix's, Baby Reindeer, which was big for us during this period. But everybody else is also covering this story. So this is about finding new ways to deliver cut-through despite all the other coverage from media outlets. So as well as this editorial innovation and fresh thinking. We've also seen the team building brand-new dedicated Facebook pages for another big show for the audience Married at First Sight Australia. So that new Facebook page helps us deliver almost 15% of the traffic for the site for the entire period from a single TV series as a result of having a really focused dedicated page. Or similarly, the Love Island page that James mentioned, this content mix that the team have been able to deliver is regularly reaching 16 million people. And it's just worth pointing out that as well as this approach driving traffic to the website itself and giving the brand great reach, it's also turning into directly attributable revenue. So this approach and content engages on Facebook and as such, has delivered in excess of GBP 30,000 in on-platform revenues just on this brand during the period. And as well as the main editorial team, I should also mention our student teams. So all around the U.K., we have student teams creating highly focused local content. They've been delivering more, and we've seen a 16% traffic increase as a result of local content, particularly through strong Google Discover performance. And then finally, rounding out the portfolio, we have Emmerdale Insider, our launch, which we delivered in August, so outside the period, but development work was going on during the first half. This, as James has mentioned, is our first in a series of new products. which we are focusing on dedicated specific areas and what we're calling our vertical strategy. In part, this is about just giving readers more of what they want. Sometimes it suits a media owner to just lump together certain subjects because it's convenient. So soaps would be a good example of that. But actually, from a reader's perspective, just because I like Emmerdale, it isn't necessarily the case that I also want to read about Eastenders and Coronation Street. So we think that this focus works well from a reader's perspective. And also, we think it helps Google better understand the purpose of the site. And we know the algorithm values subject matter expertise and authority. We've got really experienced journalists and contributors. So we wanted to create a platform to deliver that content. And also as part of this project, we've shaped a new streamlined site template, which gives makes it easier and quicker for us to launch more sites more quickly. So we are in the process of refining that and sharpening that template, but that now will enable us to deliver more launches like this in the coming months. That's it from me.
James Carter
executiveThank you, Jim. So to summarize, the ad market has been stable for once, which is a real positive to take away from this. And it's destined to grow as we move forward as it's still the case that the dollars are having to catch up with the eyeballs on mobile devices. There's still a lag there to really drive through the market. AI stimulated change is taking place. Tools providing greater publisher efficiency in a changing landscape are arising. There's little question that we are utilizing AI in our work processes, not in an absolute sense by getting AI models to produce straight content, but we are using them to make our processes more efficient. We're utilizing our cash. So the cash generation is funding growth and the ability to make further bolt-on acquisitions will progress as we move forward and the ability to equally seize the moment through the launch of our own sites is important. So the growing portfolio, we're now up to six brands that we're operating is strengthening our position to become an entertainment powerhouse. And the industry optimism as we look forward towards 2025 is underpinned by the advertising market from a digital perspective forecast to grow 7.9% next year. So in a time of change, we think there's plenty of opportunity and plenty of routes for us to pursue for growth. Thank you.
Operator
operator[Operator Instructions] I'd like to remind you the recording of the presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via your investor dashboard. James and David, as you can see, we've had a number of questions submitted throughout today's presentation. So can I please just ask you to click on that Q&A tab where appropriate to do so, just read out the question and give a response and I'll pick up from you at the end.
James Carter
executiveOkay. Thank you, Mark. Right. First question, beyond traditional ad revenue and subscriptions, are you looking at new revenue streams to diversify income going forwards? Jim, do you want to cover that off regarding diversification on The Mash perhaps?
Jim Douglas
executiveYes, sure. So yes, I think the question landed probably just before we got into The Mash slide. So there's The Mash book, which is interesting for us. I mean we are not a print publisher. We're a pure digital publisher. But when there's a licensing opportunity, we're keen to explore that. I think there's still more work to be done on the subscriptions side. I think that The Mash is a great example of the kind of product where you can make subscriptions work. I think there were question marks about whether that model translates across the wider portfolio, but it's something -- now we're into the flow of being able to make that revenue line stand up on The Mach is something that we'll be we'll be looking at. And I think the other point around on-platform revenues, I mean, when we previously updated the market, we were experimenting with those on-platform revenues. And as I mentioned on the tab, those performance revenues as a result of delivering user engagement have started to become really meaningful. So I think as we move into Q4 and then into next year, we'll increasingly be trying to expand on those as well as looking at other opportunities that make sense to us.
James Carter
executiveOkay. Thanks, Jim. There's a question for you here, DJ. I think the company's largest shareholder is a fund that is in wind down and has sold off almost all of its holdings. I had expected either Digitalbox management or the company would buy this stake to clear the overhang. Has the company considered this? And if not, why not?
David Joseph
executiveWell, thanks, James. That feels like a hospital pass. And I think we're obviously aligned to this. It's something we're aware of and something that we're all giving great consideration to. And that's the end of my answer.
James Carter
executiveThank you, DJ.
Operator
operatorAll right.
James Carter
executiveRegarding TV guide, has it been a conscious decision to adopt mobile optimized format only and therefore, drive desktop users away to competitors who still use wide screen. Presumably, this still leads to a net gain in customers? I'll pick that up actually. When we bought TVGuide, it purely had a desktop experience that was being squeezed onto a mobile. So, dreadful, dreadful user experience on mobile. we've now delivered a solution that is optimized for any device. So it is match fit for desktop delivery as well as mobile delivery, tablet delivery, and it's dynamic dependent upon what device you're viewing on. So it's not a case of looking away from desktop. It's a case of us still serving that very much, but equally serving much better the mobile user experience. Another question here. How quickly is the company able to identify that a site has been blocked or throttled by Google, Facebook, identify the root cause and correct it? Maybe that's one for you, Jim.
Jim Douglas
executiveYes, sure. Sometimes it's very easy to tell because you can see it in the traffic almost instantly. I mean, I suppose there are some situations where you get what's called a manual action in Google. I mean just to be clear, that's never happened to any of our sites because those typically tend to be around site security issues or what Google perceives to be serious bad conduct. So those issues haven't affected us in any way. Sometimes, it's a little bit frustrating when you don't have a clear indicator of what the cause of the problem is because it means you need to do some detective work. We've got some very experienced people that help us try and diagnose those issues. And really on Entertainment Daily, we've had a number of issues where we've had a setback, made some editorial changes, made some technical changes and then seen a recovery. So I think, as James mentioned, I think we're becoming more skilled. That never guarantees that you will be able to make a recovery happen because sometimes the effects are instant and the recovery takes time as lots of publishers are discovering. So I suppose it's very difficult to be definitive and put a definitive time line on how quickly things can recover when we have a setback other than to say that I think we're more in the rhythm of recovering from these issues going forward.
James Carter
executiveThank you, Jim. DJ, I think this is a question for you. In the results, the company notes that cash at bank 20th of September 2024 was GBP 2.2 million. Has the additional GBP 0.2 million generated since 30th of June come from trading profits or working capital improvements?
David Joseph
executiveThanks, James. I can't answer this directly, and the reason for that is because it would be commenting on H2 performance. So I'll answer it in a different way. So we are very clear we feel the performance as per current market guidance is correct. And we're very clear that this business is cash generative. That's about all I can say on the H2 performance.
James Carter
executiveOkay. Thank you, DJ. And I think there's another one here for you, DJ, which is related to our listing costs. What are the company's annual listing costs? And how do they compare to the GBP 0.5 million EBITDA forecast for the full year?
David Joseph
executiveSo with that comes things like directors, enhanced audit fee, all of those things that go into being a plc. And that's arguably around GBP 300,000 more than it would be if it was a private company.
James Carter
executiveOkay. I think we're about there in terms of questions really.
Operator
operatorFantastic, thank you very much for taking those. [Operator Instructions]. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to you and the team, if I may just ask you for -- sorry, James, may I ask you for a few closing comments?
James Carter
executiveYes. Well, thank you all for attending what we hope you view as a positive set of results. Clearly, there is plenty of change afoot in not just the media market, but across the Internet. And through that change will emerge significant opportunity, and we think we're really well placed in order to deliver around any opportunity that arises that suits our business model. So we're ready to move, ready to pounce on the right opportunities, but it's important they are the right opportunities. So we will continue to make measured judgments around those and continue the really positive progress we've delivered around bolt-on acquisitions over the past few years. Thank you.
Operator
operatorFantastic. Thank you all for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close the session should be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that management team can better understand your views and expectations. It will only take a few moments to complete and 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. That concludes today's session, and good morning to you all.
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