Digitalbox plc ($DBOX)

Good morning, and welcome to the Digitalbox plc Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions later today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Chair, Marcus Rich. Good morning, sir.

Good morning. Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Digitalbox 2025 Annual Results Presentation. I am Marcus Rich, the Non-Executive Chairman. I will be joined by James Carter, CEO; Jim Douglas, COO; and Richard Spilsbury, CFO, who will take you through the 2025 results in detail. This was a year of momentum and strategic progression for Digitalbox plc, building on the positive results of 2024, the group has moved decisively into its next phase of development, scaling its operations, strengthening its monetization capabilities and further validating its buy-and-build strategy. Adjusted EBITDA was up year-on-year from GBP 624,000 to GBP 679,000, and EBITDA of GBP 324,000, this after investing GBP 700,000, 10x more than last year in new product development and acquisitions to grow the business. Revenue was up to GBP 3.9 million, up 7% year-on-year and the cash in the bank of GBP 1.8 million. The digital media environment continues to evolve at pace. AI-driven content discovery, platform algorithm adjustments and competitive shifts in advertising allocation have reshaped audience flows and monetization dynamics. Against this backdrop, Digitalbox has again demonstrated both resilience and adaptability. While online sessions moderated to 256 million, unique users increased by 3%, and both page views and revenue grew year-on-year. Notably, social followers increased by 31%, materially strengthening the group's owned and distributed reach. A notable strength of the group is that all acquisitions to date have delivered profitable outcomes and a cumulative payback within 24 months or less. The focus in '25 has been organic vertical launches, including Royal Insider and Reality Shrine. These have further deepened the group's authority in specialist entertainment segments, and support its scalable platform strategy. Capital allocation discipline remains central to our governance framework. The group maintains a strong balance sheet and robust cash generation profile, providing both resilience and strategic flexibility. We will continue to deploy capital selectively, where acquisitions or organic investments meet our return thresholds and align with our entertainment focused strategy. We remain active on both fronts in 2026. The Board believes the group is well positioned to capitalize on structural consolidation within Digital Publishing and to continue delivering sustainable long-term shareholder returns. I will now pass you over to James Carter, CEO, to go through the 2025 results in more detail. James?

Thank you, Marcus. And again, welcome to everyone to the Digitalbox 2025 results presentation. We're glad you're able to join us. The first few slides really are to give anyone unfamiliar with the Digitalbox business and insight. So Digitalbox is a pure-play digital media company with a pedigree in emerging technologies. We're 100% digital and mobile focused with our core editorial delivery in the entertainment sector. We've grown through a buy-and-build strategy and transforming the acquisitions we've made delivering fast returns on investments over the period, we've been undertaking this activity. We operate 10 brands. And just to run through those, The Poke as shown to the left of the screen in the mobile handset is best described as a humour aggregator, serving out some of the funniest moments to hit the web. Entertainment Daily to your right is an entertainment and TV celebrity news site, one of the biggest in the U.K. Royal Insider, new to the portfolio in the past year, a really -- it's quite a simple proposition for those that want to keep abreast of the latest news on the U.K. Royal family. The Daily Mash, the U.K.'s leading news satire site. The Tab, the U.K.'s leading student youth culture site, driven by an army of student journalists across more than 30 campus-based subsites around the U.K. Reality Shrine, again, we launched last year, which documents the latest twists and turns from the world's biggest reality TV shows and operates quite in a U.S.-centric mode really getting a lot of U.S. audience. TV Guide, a linear TV guide, which was established over 20 years ago, is one of the big players in that sector alongside Radio Times, and we've done quite a lot to develop that in the past year as well as part of our NPD process over the past 12 months. And we then have the Insider -- Emmerdale Insider sites in the soap sector, Coronation Street. And EastEnders, which are all fairly self-explanatory, but for those that want to keep abreast of the latest news on those big U.K. soaps. We have a Board made up of some fairly significant plc experience. So we have EMAP plc experience. We have Future plc experience, Reach plc and Bauer Media as well. So there's a real breadth of knowledge across the board and really well equipped to drive the business forward, and the executive team are well invested with approaching 20% of the business. The presentation, before I get into that, just to run through the highlights. Marcus has covered some of these, but revenues were driven up 7% year-on-year, with some on the back of an ad market, a digital ad market that was most certainly behind that figure. Total page views were up 7%, social followers, again, strategically, we grew because the increased importance of playing within the walled gardens of major platforms, they were up 31%, and our adjusted EBITDA figure was up 10%. So this expansion helped us grow on-platform revenue by over 100% and overachieve the EBITDA figure that was put into the market with approaching GBP 330,000 EBITDA. So presentation breaks down into 5 sections. I'll take you through some highlights within the media landscape, the kind of conditions that we're faced with as a digital media business. Richard will take you through the financial performance of the business in detail. I'll talk about some strategic developments that we've made over the past year. Jim will take you through the portfolio developments in detail, and I'll sum up really with a view of the future. So let's take a look at the media landscape. So looking at the last 10 years, we're always in the process of experiencing change. And the team, the executive team have been through this change from running very successful magazine businesses in 2000s, having to pivot to desktop oriented businesses to creating mobile-led businesses in 2016, and really moving with the times throughout that time line between 2006 and today. And the next few years really are no different. We have AI coming into play as a major factor to inform how we best publish, and it's a factor that will embrace and a factor that will lead to a different future for sure than the historic 20 years, but we're ready to take on that challenge and move with the times. We put this chart together some time ago. This is a couple of years old, actually, but this graphic tries to illustrate how users access the Internet through the central zone of this ellipsoid shape in what we label the discovery mode, so looking for content or looking for information about certain topics. And this discovery zone really typically led people to a deeper dive to the left of the screen into a website experience or to a deeper dive to the right of the screen to an on-platform experience, perhaps consuming greater volumes of video about a particular topic. That historically really for about 10 years has been the shape of consumer behavior within the media market. But with AI's introduction, a couple of years ago or it being unleashed by OpenAI and impacting the market, we, at the time, took a view that this would significantly change consumer behavior. And not just consumer behavior, but platform behavior as well. And this is beginning to play out or has played out to an extent as we envisage through this chart. So users are coming into the market and coming into consuming the Internet through the discovery zone and increasingly being served via AI discovery. So obviously, Google has shortened the amount of volume of clicks going out to websites through the introduction of Gemini results within its search feed, and this whole central zone of discovery has expanded with AI increasingly being used as a default solution by consumers. So as we move forward, we're seeing people take 2 very distinct directions, one either through on-platform experiences and the other through pure website experiences. And looking towards the platforms and the competition that's in play in terms of how they will bring consumers away from other platforms, we can see battles taking place. You can see TikTok had a major impact. TikTok obviously triggered YouTube into producing its Shorts channel. There's a big battle there in terms of how to compensate creators on the platforms. And that is without question playing out in real time as we speak. Facebook a few years ago had no creator program or monetization opportunities that were of any significance to those putting content on to its platform, and it's now a major source of income for creators and publishers alike. In addition, the platforms are moving away from what historically used to be dependent upon the number of subscribers or followers that you had on a particular platform. And this is an illustration really of the reach that is being delivered from one of our websites, this particular one, I think, is Royal Insider. But it gives you an idea over a period of time of how much reach is coming from those that follow your page for your publication, and those that the content is pushed out to. So the dark blue line is followers and the light blue line are those that the platform deems fit to put your content in front of. So you can see there, there's significant amplification beyond follower bases and subscriber bases taking place. And that is beginning to take place across all major platforms. So the key benchmark really for getting any reach at all on YouTube used to be, whether or not you had sufficient subscribers, but the algorithm is moving to a point where they're optimizing content that has the most value for the platform and for consumers, which opens up further opportunities. There are challenges that the platforms face without question. There's been a tsunami of content that has been put into these walled gardens as a result of AI, limitless content being produced, some fake, some just low-quality AI orientated productions. But there's a challenge to both the platforms and publishers really to differentiate between false or fake content that is being channeled through these walled gardens and also ensuring that what you produce stands out and is verified and rises to the top because it is genuine content. And as a result of that, we see media brands having a positive future as recognized ambassadors within those walled gardens. So verification, we see is becoming increasingly important in order to ensure that content is distributed widely enough, and we see the policing of unverified content become increasingly important for the platforms in order to maintain a level of trust from consumers. Let's take a quick look at the advertising market. Well, the advertising market, digital advertising market in 2025 grew to approaching $800 billion. And over the next couple of years, the global advertising market is forecast to hit $1 trillion. So this really is where we operate, and it's where the major platforms operate with Meta and Alphabet taking 86% of their revenues from the ad market. So it's going to grow. We're confident it's going to grow over the next couple of years in this kind of shape. And I think obviously, $1 trillion is a pretty significant market to be part of. This snapshot just illustrates really how we've performed Digitalbox within the U.K. market. The bar charts at the top compare 2024 with 2025, where you can see we've grown 7%. Whilst the index at the bottom of the graphic compares '24 with '25, and it looks to be a 5% or 10% reduction in absolute terms for prices paid across the U.K. market for digital programmatic advertising. So the 7% increase in performance is a pretty good position for us to be in. And we operate in addition in a pretty positive ad market. Really, the majority of our audience is U.K. and U.S., where we have a fairly significant chunk of U.S. audience on The Tab and Reality Shrine. And as you can see there, the ad spend per head in the U.S. on digital advertising is $860 and the U.K., GBP 565. So much, much better markets than Japan or France or China, as an example. So hopefully, that gives you a bit of a backdrop to what's going on in the media landscape in the U.K. But we thought this quote from Charles Darwin, was particularly relevant to our position as a relatively agile business that it came from the origin of the species and published in 1859. But it is not the strongest or most vigorous species that survive but the ones which are most able to adapt and adjust to the changing environment. And we see ourselves as a very adaptable business able to deal with change and able to embrace change as we move forward. Over to you, Richard.

Thank you, James, and good morning, everyone. As you are aware, many comparable digital publishers have shown lower growth or declining revenues in the last year due to changes in the digital media landscape and an uncertain macroeconomic environment. Last year, we reported the conclusion of the strategic review with a renewed commitment to growth. I'm pleased to be able to report that Digitalbox has demonstrated it has a growing and resilient business model with the agility and ambition to find growth. And therefore, I will be able to report that the group has, first, driven revenue growth from organic growth and bolt-on acquisitions; two, diversify the portfolio to take advantage of market trends; three, maintained historically high profit margins before planned new product development investment in a challenging market context; and finally, invested GBP 700,000 in the business and yet maintained a highly resilient balance sheet to support future acquisitive and organic growth. I'll explain those points further over the next 5 slides. Before you, you see our income statement. The income statement represents the trading performance of the enlarged group, includes assets we acquired towards the end of 2024 and during 2025 and launched in 2025. In overall terms, revenue increased by 7%, building on the 31% growth achieved in 2024. We've invested GBP 355,000 organically in the portfolio by launching 5 new websites in 2025. It is normal for trading losses to be incurred before websites become profitable, and we have defined the net loss after the revenue earned for those websites before a website becomes profitable from those launches as new product development also known as NPD. We have disclosed NPD separately to provide information about the levels of investment and to report on the underlying performance of the rest of the portfolio. Consistent with prior year and our half year reporting, we have reported adjusted EBITDA, which is the operating profit after adding back noncash items such as amortization, depreciation, share-based payments and nonrecurring items such as the cost of one-off projects and NPD. Additionally, we have reported EBITDA as a measure of profitability, which is post NPD to align with analyst commentaries and avoid readers of the accounts having to perform their own reconciliations. Excluding NPD investment, gross profit margins fell only slightly from 84.9% to 81%. Administrative costs in total were up 9%, reflecting our investment program. Excluding nonrecurring and noncash items, administrative costs were only up 1% year-on-year. Our head office costs excluding add-backs for nonrecurring and noncash items were down 29%, reflecting a reduction in our operating leverage. Head office costs include governance costs associated with our listing on AIM. As a result, adjusted EBITDA increased to GBP 679,000 with a respectable margin of 17%, which is slightly up on the previous year driven by central cost savings. We believe adjusted EBITDA encapsulates the underlying profitability of the group, giving you greater visibility of trading once we take into account value measurement changes such as depreciation, amortization and impairments, although there were no impairment charges this year and share-based payments. And also adding back investments in new product development, being the vertical strategy we announced last year and platform improvements to TV Guide and finally, one-off projects relating -- not relating to trading. Our segmental revenue is in front of you now. At the half year, we changed the presentation of segmental analysis to show 3 segments, namely Entertainment, Youth and Humour, which is set out in further detail in these results. This grouping is consistent with Board level analysis of performance. The segmental analysis of revenue showed growth in all 3 segments with 8% in Entertainment, 15% in Humour and 3% in Youth. Entertainment is the largest segment, nearly double the size of Youth and 4x the size of Humour. We continue to develop our more established brands as appropriate in the current market, and this has led to adjusted EBITDA margin falling in Entertainment from 54% to 42%, and in Youth from 54% to 38%. And we have towards the end of 2025 introduced productivity improvements, particularly around content production and distribution. Margin in Humour has improved from 25% to 31%. Quarterly year-on-year changes in revenue show a variable market environment, which underlines the need for diligent, data-driven decision-making and agility, which continues to be a core part of our DNA. Operating cash flows and cash generation. Despite the significant organic investments made in the year, the group was cash generative. Good working capital management is evident the year-on-year increase in cash inflows from trade and other receivables, offset by the release of accruals from 2024. Last year, we reported aggregate cash flows over the last 2 years to better understand underlying cash conversion, and they have done so again to be consistent. This shows average cash conversion of 45%, despite significant organic investment to increase shareholder value. Cash utilization, this slide summarizes how we have managed our cash reserves, which were GBP 2.1 million at the start of the year and GBP 1.8 million at the end of the year. We have used cash generation to, one, repay loans, which were -- and we have fully repaid our COVID bounce back loan in 2025; and secondly, to purchase intangible assets, which are providing an excellent cash payback. We continue to hold significant cash reserves at year-end and are mindful of the need for robust working capital management so that we are in a position to invest in growth both acquisitively and organically. While a significant proportion of our revenues are earned in U.S. dollars, we use forward exchange contracts and convert U.S. dollar funds into sterling every quarter to manage foreign currency risk. We continue to review receivable interest rates regularly to obtain competitive rates, balancing working capital management and opportunities for more significant acquisitions. Finally, our financial position, which continues to be strong and puts us in a good position to exploit opportunities for growth in the digital media market. Our largest asset category are the intangible assets, mainly arising from consolidation accounting of acquisitions. Along with all our intangible assets, we have performed a sensitized impairment review and no additional impairments are required. We are not a capital-intensive business, and that is seen in the low value of our fixed assets. Our deferred tax asset represents the highly likely recovery of tax losses in future trading periods, which has already started and will benefit our future effective rate of tax. Net current assets have increased, and we repaid the bank loan in full this year. Our strong financial position gave us the opportunity to undertake a number of acquisitions in the last year as well as invest in new launches. Your Board will continue to focus on maximizing value through the expansion of the group's current model. We will continue to develop its business through launching new products and remain alive to acquisition and merger opportunities, both bolt-on and more transformative that can maximize shareholder value.

Okay. Thank you, Richard. Okay, so when looking forward, it's always important to reflect on your strengths and here are a few that we've surfaced on this chart. We're very good at creating engaging content. We're great at getting people to visit our websites from various channels in which we push our content through. We're very efficient at revenue generation and really delivering a programmatic model that really works for our business through the Graphene Ad Stack. We're good at adapting to changes, as I've already said. So we're an agile business that moves with the times, and we've got push media skills that are pretty much second to none. And return on acquisitions has been pretty strong as well. We're running at an average, probably of about 18 months on most things that we bought, give or take possibly a few weeks. But that's been a consistent result of our fairly stringent process of screening acquisitions along the way. And we're very good at cash generation. So that informs what we've done over the past year. So first of all, looking at how we're harnessing AI. We're very mindful of the impact of AI within the industry for sure. But it's not really a case of us looking to default to the algorithms to produce our content. We're very much putting humans and the human brain at the center of our creation process. And this graphic provides an example of how we do that. This is Royal Insider, where we have a content creator on one of our brands, who produces an editorial proposition. It gets turned into an article on the open web at the top, which you can see published via a mobile device. It also gets scripted into a video format that can be presented by the person that you see in the video screen to the right. And it also gets produced in an e-mail format, so it can be consumed by one of our 40,000 newsletter subscribers on Royal Insider. So that's really a way in which AI has helped drive efficiency and drive really an improved results from the creation of a single piece of content. So getting 3 outcomes from 1 creative initiative, that's been key to how we've developed in the past year. In addition to this, we're also using AI to help us accelerate distribution of content across more than one brand as well as more than one channel within a particular brand. I mentioned the disciplined M&A process, and this points towards the assets that we bought from Social Chain a couple of years ago. But we paid GBP 480,000 back in H2 '23. And by December 2025, those assets have generated over GBP 730,000 of net income, extra income for the business as a result of having acquired them. So very successful, and we're continuing to screen assets moving forward this year. And in fact, Jim will cover off something that we bought recently, which is in the smaller end of the social products that we bought in the past couple of years, but nonetheless important to our strategic development in the youth market. Our pick and mix approach to M&A has worked well. So some of you may recall, we bought some assets, Reality Tidbit, Celebrity Tidbit from a company called JLD Media, a couple of -- or a year or so ago, and use some of these assets to create Reality Shrine and also Royal Insider. And increasingly, we're looking towards this method of launching new products, where we can strap together some disparate opportunities to create a single proposition and success within the business. Social and operating within the walled gardens, again, already mentioned increasingly important. But you can see here how we've developed from just over 1.5 million to 2 million followers since we listed in 2019 to over 27 million at the end of the period in 2025. The key thing here is it's not just having followers, it's having reach that goes with those followers. And over a 6-month period, we measured reach within Meta, specifically at 718 million. So significant opportunity really for engaging audiences created by this increased volume of followers that we've developed and engagement with those followers that we have developed. Diversification is also key. If you look to the left in 2019, you can see the blue segments represent 2 brands, Entertainment Daily and The Daily Mash, but really solely around programmatic advertising revenues coming into the business. And as you can see to the right in 2025, it's a much more colorful mix with the green being direct consumer revenues and the red being on-platform revenues. It's a much, much greater mix than we had when we set about building the business. And that's really important as we move forward because it will give us a much more robust model as we develop. In addition, the 100% consumer -- or sorry, on-platform revenues that we've developed in '25. They have, as you can see, grown in this shape. So the dark blue line being monthly revenue performance over the past year. And you can see how it compares with the on-platform revenues developed in the previous year. So 100% growth in total there. This area of the business is becoming increasingly important to us. And we'll develop that and invest in that area moving into the coming years. Now over to you, Jim, for the portfolio.

Thank you, James. So I'll just run us through our 3 publishing groups, which Richard and James have already mentioned. Entertainment, is the home of Entertainment Daily, obviously, but also Royal Insider and our 3 soap sites. In terms of development across this part of the portfolio, our ongoing investment in TV Guide continues to deliver. We've been building on the core TV listings functionality and adding editorial features and explainer articles over the year. We're also testing some AI-led enhancements to add value around that content, particularly our best ofs. So our aim is always to start with strong editorial recommendation like best dramas on BBC iPlayer, but then be able to slice and dice that content and create multiple additional lists without needing to start from scratch. So users who want to go on more of a discovery journey can more easily get more content about the actors or the directors they like or other shows or films to watch. So basically, what we're trying to do here is generate higher-margin additional page views through better recirculation and increasing dwell time. So at the moment, we're working on that project, working out the most effective way to take that forward. Also on TV Guide, we are adding in -- we've recently, not in the period, but more recently added in some enhanced football TV discovery, which enables users to instantly find any match, which is available to watch in the coming days, whether it's by searching on their favorite team or a particular league or channels that they have access to. So that's an additional functionality that we've recently added. And beyond TV Guide, in terms of product development, as I mentioned, we're leveraging the skills and expertise of the team to diversify beyond the websites themselves. So James showed this on the Royal Insider site, where AI has taken an enhanced editorial output, and we've grown that base. In the period, I think, as you can see on the slide here, we closed 2025 with 15,000 e-mail subscribers on Royal Insider. As James mentioned, that's now grown to 40,000. And we're also monetizing the Royal Insider e-mail with in e-mail advertising. As part of our vertical strategy, we also launched Coronation Street Insider, which you can see alongside its Stable Mates, Emmerdale Insider and EastEnders Insider. And as well as giving people great content to read on the website, on-platform engagement is becoming increasingly important for the entertainment group, where we've got real scale. So we got 10 million social followers, as you can see on the slide here. And we think that, that combination of scale plus laser-focused output from the expert team will really enable the on-platform component to continue to grow. Moving on to Humour, which comprises The Daily Mash and The Poke. Here, we see an uptick of paying subscribers on one hand and ad yield on the other combining to give us 15% revenue growth that Richard mentioned. The Mash subscriber number at the end of the year was 4,800 paying subscribers. During the period, we tested some paid marketing to look at the ROI on accelerating that. But the acquisition costs were not really making sense. So for now, we're going to maintain this level and maintain organic management of The Mash subscriber base while we recalibrate our pay-for approach. On the commercial revenue side, we saw The Poke grow very strongly with its outperformance, largely being driven by further optimization of the Graphene Ad Stack. And in terms of product development, we have AI workflows generating newsletters on The Mash and we're increasing our on-platform presence by aligning 2 of the media chain assets that we bought back in June to this group. So one asset has been aligned with The Daily Mash and one for The Poke. And lastly, as you can imagine, given the global news flow at the moment, there's plenty of rich editorial opportunities coming out of the U.S. So this year, we're investing further by appointing some U.S.-based social experts to support that area, starting with The Poke and depending on how well that goes, we may look to expand across the group. And then the final group is our youth group, currently consisting of Tab and Reality Shrine. One of the factors contributing to the growth here is the combination of editorial personality and immediately engaging with the audience. The team being able to latch on to a viral new story and give a fresh distinctive take within minutes. You often see quite a lot of quite utilitarian explainer articles around big breaking news stories. But whether it's in a search environment or a social environment, we think audiences are gravitating towards and will gravitate even more towards stories from brands with a real voice and an editorial tone that they can relate to, and you particularly see this in the editorial output of these sites as well as the general audience growth that we've seen. One of the most encouraging things is how Reality Shrine has managed to develop within the U.S. So 60% of the traffic on Reality Shrine is U.S.-based. And that's encouraging for us because, obviously, you've got the enormous potential scale in that market to try and grow further, but also U.S. traffic tends to monetize at a premium for us. Part of the team's ability to keep their output fresh comes from this constant flow of raw talent coming through the brands. So we've got a national network of student writers that James mentioned, and we're also running a grant program. So that gives us a great way of keeping the content and the tone, fresh and relevant for the audience. So it's been a really good year for the Youth group. And we want to continue in 2026 with our new launch, which is on the next slide, Film Shrine. It's a new launch we're working on at the moment, it's moving beyond the realm of reality TV as the name suggests, but it's going to take a similar editorial approach that we've been talking about to deliver sharp takes on essential cinematic entertainment, whether it's mainstream blockbusters or independent gems. The team is being assembled now and getting the site ready. And earlier this month, we acquired social assets with more than 1 million followers that we're going to leverage to support the launch of this site, which will be delivered by the group's expanded social team. And we are aiming to get this site up and live before the end of April. That's it for me.

Thank you very much, Jim. So that's the first public unveiling of the Film Shrine, soon to be something much more real than a slide. But let's look to the future. Our mission is very much to become an entertainment powerhouse through the diversification and expansion of our current model. So increasingly, we're looking beyond owned operated assets or traditionally owned operated assets like websites. And we're looking to on-platform plays to complement our position as being an entertainment powerhouse. We've grown the number of assets, as I've already said, to 10 in 2025. And we aim to continue to grow our operating assets into 2026. These won't all necessarily be websites like Film Shrine, the one you just looked at, but we'll continue to put the right mix together to strengthen the business to achieve its objectives. And moving forward, it's probably worth adding this in because it is becoming increasingly important that we start to measure the business around a different set of KPIs. Traditionally, we look to web traffic and session volumes and session values that we got for each of those visits. So it was quite a simple model. You could calculate that around [ GBP 10,000 ] for the 200-something million visits each year and calculate where we're going to go. But increasingly, it's becoming more diverse than that and moving forward. We're looking to measure reach and social interactions by volume as a key component of our performance metrics going into this year and next year. More brands, increased revenue in audience diversity will give us more stability than we previously had. So a big hit to Entertainment Daily in one of our previous years caused a significant shift in our EBITDA delivery for that year. This more diverse model will avoid those kind of issues as we build the business. We're operating in a strong ad market. I think we've covered this many times, but the U.K. is particularly strong alongside the U.S. But in U.K., adults spend nearly 4x as much time online on smartphones than on computers. So we're operating through the right channels with the most efficient monetization plans in place. And we're looking to the U.K. or the -- sorry, the global ad market to be up to $200 billion bigger by 2028. So a positive place to play in. So in summary, we're in a fast evolving media landscape. We have a proven ability to adapt within these moving media landscapes. AI is being leveraged on our terms to increase our efficiency as a business. We've grown the portfolio, so the increased diversity of our content areas and also our operating assets, a mix of assets will strengthen the business as we move forward. Our increased on-platform presence has really been beneficial this year with 27 million followers helping us grow towards GBP 1 million worth of on-platform revenue. And our EBITDA is ahead of expectations for 2025, and growth this year into the first quarter has been in line with those plans that have been laid out to the market. And the first quarter has traded pretty well. So momentum continues towards 2027 and we're increasingly looking to build the business through a more diversified model. So thank you. I think we are now going to move on to questions.

[Operator Instructions] Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed by your investor dashboard. As you can see, we have received a number of questions at today's presentation. So 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. Thank you. The first couple, Richard, I'm afraid I'm going to pass to you. Well, I'm not afraid, you'll be pleased, I'm going to pass to you. Adjusted EBITDA before head office costs was more than double the reported adjusted EBITDA. I'm not sure if it's -- can you see the question? I'm not sure if it's a confused question, actually. Surely, it would be a no-brainer for an acquirer to make an offer for the company, eliminate head office costs and immediately double the value of the cash-generating assets.

Thank you, James. That would definitely be an option for an acquirer. We've always set out our results very clearly. So people are able to see the overhead costs and the contribution that the business makes. And as per the strategic review we had last year and we're listed on AIM, that's an option available to anyone at any one time to take advantage of that very smart opportunity.

Okay. There's another question about -- you say gross cash is GBP 1.82 million, but this does not seem to be any interest-bearing debt is, therefore, net cash GBP 1.82 million.

Because we repaid the bank loan during the year at the end of 2025, gross cash is the same as net cash.

Okay. We have another question. Maybe this is one for you, Jim. Could you talk us through the demand for non-AI content from both consumers and advertisers.

Yes, sure. I think that we -- as James mentioned, we're looking to try and enhance our human originated content via AI. There's no question on that, particularly in terms of rewriting and repurposing. That works well for us in terms of being able to drive more value out of the content that we're creating and avoiding some of the problems to do with hallucinations. So I think there have been a number of different studies done asking people's attitudes to whether they like -- they want more content or they want less content that's got an AI component. I think what people -- I think it's very difficult for people to answer that question sensibly because there's a bit of a knee-jerk response, which is I don't want it. I think what people really want is good content. And I think our approach is to try and start with some content that has some value often created by an expert in the first case and then iterate from that. So good example is something like Emmerdale Insider where we've got very, very strong writers, who know that soap inside out and back to front. And so they'll write for that particular audience, but then we can then repurpose that content in a slightly broader way for the Entertainment Daily audience who may not necessarily need that kind of depth. So I think it's -- I think it's difficult in all honesty to put a figure on how much appetite there is for AI-generated content in particular. And some content in some spaces, that's just pure entertainment for the sake of entertainment. AI does a perfectly good job, but that's not particularly where we are.

Okay. Thanks, Jim. A question here, with a good record of payback returns on acquisitions, are you looking at anything to log greater scale? And if you do so, do you think you can generate the same profile, same returns profile, I think they're talking about? Well, we're definitely looking at bigger acquisition opportunities than we've currently transacted and opportunities that will give us greater strength in our sector as declared as the objective. I think the same returns profile seems possible. But it depends on the -- obviously, very much depends on the situation that the vendor is in. And we won't choose to overpay, let's put it that way. So we'll try and keep as close to our existing profile as possible. There's a question here about new product development. With the new product development spend, when do you expect to start to see returns. Richard, is that one for you?

Yes. We're already seeing returns. So what we've disclosed is net position, and we'll continue to see returns going forward. And as a result of that, we're expecting new product development to decline in 2026 and going forward. So we'll be reporting on that and expect that to help trading.

Okay. Thanks, Richard. There is another question, I think, for either Richard or Marcus here. But the market clearly doesn't believe your forecast numbers, perhaps due to recent statutory losses. What action can the company take to build market confidence that has a much brighter future ahead? Should I point that to you, Marcus. Is that...

Yes, yes. I think the primary action is to continue to hit our numbers, to overperform, to hit the guidance notes. I think we will communicate more in 2025, particularly around acquisitions and updates. And I think that will continue to build confidence, allowing people to continue to communicate with the Board on future prospects will also help. But the most important thing is to hit the numbers and beat the forecast and beat the guidance numbers.

Okay. Thank you, Marcus. A question about social followers. So social followers grew very well. How are you converting the audience into greater revenue? And what's the opportunity from here? Well, in simple terms, if you publish content within certain walled gardens, whether this is TikTok or Facebook or Instagram, various channels, including YouTube, then you get rewarded for the value of your content and the level of engagement that your content generates. So it could be that a picture post from Entertainment Daily generates a huge amount of interactions and sharing and stickiness for consumers to stay within the walled gardens on that particular platform. You may get rewarded for that. But I think what's worth noting is we've been quite heavily orientated towards what we would label, perhaps more traditional content being the source of our revenue within the walled gardens on-platform through pictures and standard editorial posts and means, et cetera. And so there is an opportunity equally for video, although video has been down ranked in value within these platforms, but there's definitely an opportunity for us to increase the output that we have to increasingly get rewarded for other content formats, which is where the revenue will come from. Next question at the top of the page. Panmure Liberum are forecasting the company to deliver 1.2p EPS in financial year 2027 with net cash to build towards GBP 3.9 million. This compares very favorably to the current GBP 5 million market cap. How confident are you that you can deliver on financial year '27 forecast? We remain confident that our plans are developing effectively and in line with the guidance that's in place in the market. There's no question the business could look very different in the next year and particularly looking towards acquisitions. We may have a differently shaped business to that envisaged at the beginning of our development process 1.5 years ago. So I don't think you can sit here and say, the business will be, without question, a particular shape by the end of 2027 because the media market is much faster moving than that at present. One question about revenue. What is your degree of satisfaction with 7% revenue growth. Is this representative for aims and expectations looking forward if M&A is excluded? Yes, we're trading -- I mean the 7% revenue growth year-on-year should be taken in context perhaps with the chart that I tried to draw a comparison with. But the digital market in the U.K. actually declined last year. So compared to the market, I think we grew probably about 15% in absolute terms. But looking at this year, the market looks like it's returned to a more positive position. And I would expect us to keep that advantage ahead of the market. Our monetization practices are delivering a premium ahead of how the market is traveling. So we'd expect to see that as we move forward into this year. I'm not sure there's any further questions that we've -- one last, I think one last question here. Has the market for acquisitions seen from the view of potential acquirer improved in the last 3 months, i.e., have prices come down? Yes. Prices to acquire certain assets have come down equally because the prices are low, it has taken some assets out of the mix where vendors have decided it's not actually worth selling at this point in time with valuations being too low. So there's a kind of mixed result of that scenario. But some organizations will be compelled to remove a headache, some will be compelled to carry on trading because it's quite simply their bank account that benefits more by continued trading. So it's a mixed bag, really, of opportunity. So I think that's it on questions, yes.

That's great. Thank you for answering all those questions you care 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 is particularly important to the company, James, can I please just ask you for a few closing comments?

Yes. Really, it's to reflect, I suppose, on where we've been over the past year. But we've developed the business. We've now got 10 assets. So we're an increasingly diverse business, which is great for our future. We've had a good start to 2026, and we're about to launch another product. We remain agile as a business, are ready to move on fresh opportunity in both cash terms and in both areas in which we're operating. And we're growing in a pretty tough market. So for me, that bodes pretty well for the future. Without question, we're focused on being where the consumers are existing. So increasingly looking towards on-platform monetization strategies is the right thing for us to do. and it bodes well for a pretty exciting future as we move into 2027. Thank you.

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