Future plc (FUTR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. I'm absolutely delighted to be here today to give you an update on the performance of the business. Once again, we have delivered a strong set of results with Future delivering growth organically and absolutely and a modest upgrade to our full year numbers despite the wider macro environment and unusual comps. We've already in H1 delivered more than 50% of the AOP consensus in the full year. Anyhow, before I steal all of Penny's lines, let me hand over to her to take you through these results in detail.

Thank you, Zillah. So good morning. It's really pleasing to be here to present another strong set of results for the group. We've performed really well despite a challenging market backdrop. And we believe it's a testament to the resilience of our business model and our focus on continued execution of the strategy. So just move on to Slide 6 to give you the highlights of the number. You can see here, there's a really strong set of results across all of the metrics. So revenue, GBP 400 million, up 48% on a reported basis which includes the benefit of the acquisitions, the 2 big ones were GoCo, which completed in February last year and then Dennis, which we acquired on the 1st of October of this financial year. Adjusted operating profit margin increased from the full year of FY '21 by 1 percentage points to 33%. And so -- and it's testament to the operating leverage in the business. That's enabled adjusted operating profit to increase 51% to GBP 134.5 million. Adjusted diluted EPS is up 24% to 81p. One of the features of the group is the strong fundamentals. And this paved to continue that trend with adjusted free cash flow of GBP 137.8 million and conversion rate of 102% of adjusted operating profit. As a result, we continue to delever quickly with leverage of just below 1.5x with net debt of GBP 389 million. We acquired the Dennis assets on the 1st of October, after which point, our leverage was 1.9x at around GBP 476 million. So we continue to deliver by around 1 turn per year. So just moving on to Slide 7. You can see how this strong set of results adds to our track record and how the strong fundamentals of the business combined with a diversified strategy continues to deliver fantastic results. The revenue growth drives profitable growth in operating profit, expanding the operating margin and converting to cash. So -- and let's just look at the results in a bit more detail. So I thought it might be helpful just to walk through the overall P&L before we drill into the drivers of performance. There's quite a lot on this slide as ever. So just to walk through it, we've got the P&L numbers and then the cost or margin as a percentage of revenue, and then the year-on-year variances over on the right -- far right-hand side. And so one of the benefits of the business model means that profit growth continues to expand at a faster rate than the revenue growth as we benefit from the platform effect and the growth and the scale of the acquisitions. So whilst revenue has increased by 48% year-on-year, operating profit has increased 51%. The acquisitions had operating margins of around 20% of adjusted operating profit prior to acquisition. And therefore, whilst the margin is flat year-on-year, that means that the underlying margin has continued to increase. A couple of other key points just to flag on these slides. The increase in the finance costs it relates to the increase in interest rates and also the borrowings to fund the acquisitions and tax loss increase is broadly flat as a percentage of revenue. Also just included here the statutory results because there are a couple of adjusted items relating to exceptions for amortization of the acquired intangibles and the integration costs. And I've just got a slide in the appendix, if anyone wants to drill into that in a bit more detail with some more detail there. But statutory operating profit also grew 48% and diluted EPS on a stat basis 27%. So just moving on to revenue on Slide 9. Total revenue of GBP 404 million is a combination of organic growth and the contribution of acquisitions. As the pandemic has played havoc with the comps, we've included the 2-year average rate as well as the in-period results. Just as a reminder, in terms of organic, we define that as any business which is included for 1 full financial year in a comparative period to create a like-for-like portfolio. Organic revenue grew 4% in the period and 13% on average over the past 2 years. Media revenue grew organically by 5% averaging 18% over the past few years, and that's driven notably by the continued strong performance in digital advertising. Excluding the impact of the COVID one-off benefit of GBP 5 million, which we called out in last year's results. Media revenue growth would be around 8%. And the gross contribution of 81% reflects the change in the revenue mix. Magazines grew 3% due to the impact of shop closures in the previous year creating an average decline of 6% over the past 2 years and now with the inclusion of Dennis magazines which represents 36% of the group's revenue. Very small contribution margin with 65% up, 4 percentage points year on year, which reflects the change in the revenue mix with a high proportion of subscriptions which are high margin on a gross contribution basis. And then finally, just to touch on here in the U.S., which continues to be a significant opportunity for us and now it's 38% of the revenue. Back in FY '19, over half of the group's revenue was from the U.S. and the recent U.K. acquisitions provide us with the potential to grow U.S. revenues to that level again, but across a greater number of verticals and now at a larger scale. We saw stronger performance in the U.S. with organic growth performance, double those of the U.K. in both digital advertising and affiliates and major revenue streams, which just helps to reaffirm for us the opportunity here. So just moving into the drivers of those revenue streams. I've touched on the diversified business model, which is diversification from geography, vertical and auto business line. So we now have 3 major revenue streams here, advertising, affiliates and consumer direct revenues through magazines. Digital advertising has seen really strong growth. This performance is half with the favorable dynamics of endemic audiences, the strength of our data and the growth in video all driving yield to facilitate the 10% organic growth in digital advertising. This is a really amazing result because our organic audience declined 10%, but the yield performance has helped drive that organic growth rate. Digital ads is now around 25% of our revenue. Affiliate commissions, which were around 34% of revenue encompass both the marketing income to sales of both products, but also services such as insurance. On a total basis, this grew 63% due to the acquisition of GoCompare. And on an organic basis, affiliates declined 10% due to the softer performance in the U.K. with only a 4% decline rate in the U.S. where there was greater resilience. We're really pleased with this performance, not pleased because of the significant increase in conversion rate and commission rate, which we've seen, which is standard in good stead as the audience normalizes. In particular, we set out our strategy of diversifying our verticals from our heartland in Tech and Gaming into Women's Lifestyle, Homes and Wealth and Savings. And we're seeing this strategy begin to pay off with Women's Lifestyle revenue doubling year-on-year. And then finally, magazines, which I've touched on benefiting from the reopening of shops versus comparative period last year. But now we have almost half of our magazine revenue coming from subs, which was the strategic goal to add more recurring revenues to our mix. Subs grew organically by 5% year-on-year, the Dennis magazines portfolio growing double digit on a pro forma basis, a strong performance, and we're really delighted to add this portfolio to our mix. So I touched on the margin expansion earlier. And so I just wanted to just draw out the 3 pillars, which drive that margin. So the first one is the revenue mix as the business grows, we see the higher organic revenue growth from our Media segment, which drops through at a higher gross contribution margin with around 15 to 20 percentage points differential in the gross contribution. The platform effect means that sales, marketing and editorial costs don't need to increase proportionately to sales. But we continue to invest in these areas in order to continue to drive the Future organic growth. And then finally, we don't need to scale our overheads to the same extent as revenues, so overheads as a percentage decline. And we focus on efficiency to drive further operating leverage through the use of technology and also our location strategy. So I thought it might be helpful. Just on Slide 12 just to look in terms of the margin bridge, because you can see here, whilst the margin was flat year-on-year in the period. There's quite a lot of things going on. So Dennis and GoCo both diluted the margin by combined 3 percentage points. And then I touched on the COVID impact, the non-repeat with the GBP 5 million of e-com revenue, and that also reduced the margin by 1 percentage points. And then like all companies, we're not immune to inflationary pressures. We've seen some increases in costs in salaries and also our magazine cost of sales, which again has reduced the margin by 1 percentage point. However, Media, our largest segment grows faster than mags and has a greater gross contribution driving the margin improvement. And then finally, the benefit of the platform drove an outstanding 4 percentage points margin improvement and the focus on efficiency of our cost base using our center of excellence model. So a couple of examples to draw out here is, for example, in the period, we opened our new Atlanta Hub, which provides a really great affordable location into which to hire talent -- and so this is now our new U.S. low-cost video hub. We're also increasingly focusing on efficiency by leveraging technology, where possible. So for example, we deployed a new financial reporting system in the course of the period. And we also have a focus on continuous innovation, such as reengineering our content teams to be digital first. So just looking at the operating profit growth here, we can see that whilst it grew by 51% year-on-year, and breaking that down into the constituent parts means that we've delivered double-digit organic growth on the organic portfolio, 9% from synergies and then 29% contribution from the acquisitions. Given the tough macroeconomic backdrop is a tremendous result. Just moving on to Slide 13 and cash. We generated GBP 138 million of adjusted free cash flow, which, as I mentioned, is a conversion of 102% of adjusted operating profit. We continue to remain capital light with CapEx at less than 2% of our revenue. And then exceptional items which relate predominantly to acquisitions, and M&A-related onerous properties. Interest, I think we touched on is higher year-on-year, reflecting the cost of debt to fund acquisitions. And although market interest rates have increased, our low leverage has helped to mitigate this and our average interest rates remain competitive. And then the tax paid year-on-year was higher partly due to timing differences. So by design, we're a highly cash generative capital-light business, and there's a great focus of ours to ensure that profits convert to cash that can be reinvested into growth. And so you can see that play out just moving on to Slide 14 in our net debt bridge. As you can see whilst last year, we closed the year at 0.8x leverage. We then acquired Dennis on the first of October in cash funded from our debt facilities. But our cash generation means that we were already below 1.5x by the end of March. And then we've just recently announced the acquisition of WhoWhatWear for $120 million. So on a pro forma basis, if we add that to our net debt, as -- if we've completed on the -- at the end of March, leverage would be around 1.8x, although by the time we actually complete, obviously, it will be lower as we continue to generate strong cash in that interviewing period. So we expect to be comfortably well below our 1.5x leverage target by the end of the year. We're also pleased to have been able to increase our revolving cash facility by GBP 100 million just this week to give us further balance sheet strength providing with debt facilities of GBP 690 million. This provides us with the opportunity to continue to deliver on value-accretive acquisitions whilst remaining -- retaining our prudent leverage target. So just before I close out, I just wanted to just round out on the business model, which is we believe is really working well to deliver these strong results with revenue growth converting well to operating profit, facilitating margin expansion and strong free cash flows in our asset-light model. In terms of use of the cash, we use it firstly to fund organic growth, but we remain CapEx light. And then secondly, M&A, we remain very disciplined on M&A and look to add acquisitions with the combination of the assets acquired and Future create a unique value opportunity and help to accelerate our strategy and then we use our free cash flow to repay our debt with our leverage target around 1.5x that can spike on an acquisition up to 2x, but we quickly delever. So we've seen that we can deliver 10% organic growth and then more than double that through acquisitions, and we expect to be able to continue to deliver this through our strong cash generation. So finally, just before I hand over to Zillah, I just wanted to touch on our current trading and outlook. So current trading is in -- continues to be in line with expectations with audience returning to growth on the start of Q3, which helps to underpin our confidence for the full year. As confidence is also boosted by the fact that we've delivered half of our 50% company-compiled consensus of AOP in the first half. Then looking at the full year number. We expect to continue to be able to deliver on our margin expectation of 1 percentage point increase year-on-year despite the absorption of GBP 15 million incremental cost due to inflation across the course of the year. And as a result, we expect the contribution from the acquisition of WhoWhatWear to provide modest upside. And so on that note, I'll hand back to Zillah.

Thank you. Thank you, Penny, and a really great start to our year with lots more to come. So moving then on to Slide 18. And of course, the reason why we've had such a strong first half is a consequence of our proven strategy. It wouldn't be a Future presentation without the Future wheel which depicts how we monetize our audience and how content and data enable this. We have 3 primary monetization routes across the business, advertising, affiliate performance Marketing and premium content monetization. And this portfolio of diversified revenues, customers and geographies, which underpins our continued growth over a sustained period of time. Our global first mindset means that we have a material opportunity to grow our audience in the U.S. And as we convert those audiences into market-leading positions, we realize premium revenues from the premium leadership. While targeted M&A helps us accelerate both the U.S. opportunity and our leadership positions. Now on Slide 19. Penny had just mentioned, when she was discussing our approach to capital allocation to 3 pillars which support the execution of our strategy, and I thought it might be helpful to talk about how we think about growth in the context of the pillars. Firstly, driving organic growth. We've talked before about a minimum expected 10% growth in profits organically. And then the platform effect, the unique combination of scale, our operating model and synergies means that we expect to achieve around 5% profit growth. While our third pillar is M&A. Historically, we've acquired businesses for around 11x earnings, and therefore, should deliver in the region of 10x operating profit -- 10% operating profit based on the cash generation of the business. Now as you can see in the table, we've achieved far greater returns than this in the last 2 years and also over the last 6 years with an AOP CAGR on a 2-year basis of 84% or 135% on a 6-year basis. As a consequence of the opportunities we see from our organic verticals, continued expansion in the U.S. and value-adding M&A funded from our cash flows, we are confident that we continue the track record of doubling the size of our business every few years. Now it's really easy for me to say these words, it's an awful lot harder to deliver them. And so the question is how do we achieve this? And why have we got such confidence in our continued success. So let's drill into these areas in a little bit more detail. Driving our organic growth is critical to our success, and we believe that we have the levers and addressable market to continue to deliver in the region of 10% profit growth from organic activity sustainably. On Slide 21, we just look at our ability to deliver over a sustained period of time in the region of that 10% growth. And it's a consequence of 2 things: the quality of our audience and the premium revenues that underpin it. Having the best quality content in the market means we're able to realize a premium for access to our audiences. Our audience grew 5% this year, with online users organically at 306 million, a 10% decline on H1 last year, which reflects the unusual nature of the online audiences as opposed to the engagement with our content. This is evidenced by the -fact that we've grown our audience share in the U.S. In November, you remember, we set a long-term goal of reaching 1 in 2 Americans online. And during the last 6 months, we've increased our share of the online audiences now reaching 35% of users online. Our expert content continues to meet the needs of these audiences, and therefore, it's no surprise that we've exited this strange comparator period having seen organic audience return to the growth levels we would expect. Now the quality of our audience is the wheel that drives our revenue. And today's Future portfolio is exceptionally well balanced. We really do have the media homogeneity of premium advertising clients, premium retail clients and consumers who will pay direct for access to our content. Now moving on to Slide 22. Our strategy is focused on creating the best content across leading brands to meet people's needs. And as we invest in content to grow our audiences, that translates into market leadership positions. Our content is largely endemic in nature and at its core, helps people make buying decisions. As we increase our market share, we're able to unlock premium endemic advertisers, which coupled with our growth in affiliate performance marketing revenues, results in growth in revenue per user. This is the revenue platform effect. Leadership drives premiumization, which drives yield, which drives RPU, a virtuous circle. We have a clear track record of executing on this, and our growth in Consumer Tech saw us increase our leadership position from the 15th largest operator to #1 in the U.S. over 4 years. During that time, our audience grew fourfold. And crucially, so did our revenue per user as we delivered economies of scale. At the full year results, we talked about the opportunity in our newer verticals, including Homes, Women's Lifestyle and Wealth through the creation of expert content on brand safe sites. We can grow our audiences absolutely, which enables us take leadership positions in our market. Four years ago, the Home vertical of the Future was the 11th largest audience in the U.K. As we invested organically and through targeted M&A, we've moved to #1. And the Homes category today is now frequently as large an advertising revenue contributor as tech. We're investing in our strategy to grow that audience in the U.S. And as we deliver, we will underpin that with a local endemic sales team. Today, we monetize our audiences in Homes, largely through the use of aperture. We know that leadership drives premiumization. And so tomorrow, we have the opportunity in the U.S. to monetize this audience through endemic direct sales, which will lead to a material opportunity in the U.S. to grow revenue per user as well as our audiences. This is the revenue platform effect, and we have the opportunity to drive -- deliver this, not just in Homes, but across Women's Lifestyle and Wealth. Now on Slide 23, one of the differentiators for Future compared to other media companies is the value of our premium content and market leadership position. Advertising revenues are simply an equation of volume and price. And as I've just explained, where and how we can continue to grow our audiences across our existing new verticals with the U.S. and market 4x the size of the U.K. Now the unique differentiator with Future it's not just the size of our audience and the ongoing growth there, but crucially, the quality of awe and insight we have about our audiences. The yield achieved per user is driven by multiple factors. First of all, is the ad viewable, -- is the site safe and fast to load through Hybrid and Vanilla, our tech platforms, we can achieve this. Secondly, specialist audiences, who come to our sites with intent and their passions are endemic and advertisers know that the audience from PC gamer are interested in buying a gaming PC. We call this endemic advertisers who are native to that audience. Three, brand and vertical leadership positions mean we become a must buy for our native advertisers. And the high-quality intent nature of our audience is a key differentiator for us. We have audiences with intent, and we saw that play out at the start of the pandemic, as advertisers cut spend across the board, we continue to deliver our advertising growth because we had the audiences that would perform. And so in a time of force rationalization of budget -- there was a flight to quality. Four, using our Aperture platform, we can access proprietary data to create super segments that can be sold at a premium. This is a competitive advantage for Future as the industry responds to the rise of consumer privacy. And then finally, we continue to ensure we create content and more engaging formats for our audiences and the mix shift to video has an attractive yield of 4x the average. We recently invested in a new production studio in Atlanta and the acquisition of WhatCulture creates a new video base in the North of England. Now as I mentioned, we don't have an endemic sales team in the U.S. for Homes. And up until last week, we had very minimal presence in relation to our women's portfolio. However, following the acquisition of WhoWhatWear, we've acquired a leading endemic sales team there, which will enable us to unlock the premium opportunity in our newer vertical in the U.S. Moving on to Slide 24. We've continued throughout this year to invest in affiliate performance marketing with new verticals being introduced to the group category expansion and ongoing investment in product development. This diversification enables us to continue to grow revenue sustainably across our business, minimizing our exposure to any 1 vertical or geography. Since 2018, we've evolved our content mix such that today, only 32% of the revenue is generated from Tech and Gaming compared to 87% 4 years ago. More importantly, we've grown revenues absolutely in this period. And in the newer content verticals, this has been a 20-fold increase over the 4 years, representing now 15% of the total mix today. This points to the ongoing opportunity from growing our audience in the newer verticals in the coming years. When we acquired GoCompare, part of our strategy was to embed the Future philosophy of diversification, growing absolute revenues through growing non-car verticals. We're therefore really delighted that in this half, we grew revenues in GoCompare by 3% against a quite unusual market backdrop. However, even more pleasing is that we grew market share in the Home vertical by 4 percentage points, with revenue growth underpinning that increased share. And as we've seen very fast growth in the other focus areas, consequently leading to an increase in the overall mix of non-car insurance products by 3 percentage points to now 1/3 of the revenue. And this is despite the impact of the loss of the energy revenues in the period. Now moving on to Slide 25. As part of our strategy to deliver long-term sustainable revenue growth, we've identified the need to increase the contribution of revenue in the business from Consumer Direct, specifically to cultivate a direct relationship with our most loyal and engaged customers. One of the parts of Future that I'm most proud of is that we do not treat all of our audiences equally. Some users come to us with a specific question in mind. Looking for an expert, they can trust to help them. Others users have a deep engagement with our content and for many that manifest in signing up to our curated newsletters where we provide the very best of the news that week to engage audiences and topics ranging from golf to tech to what to wear. Other users want to have a deeper connection in many ways, most loyal audiences who prepared to pay directly for our expert content and provide excellent revenue visibility in the medium term. Following the acquisition of Dennis almost half of all magazine revenue is now subscribers, where we have an average retention rate north of 70% and with key titles exceeding 85% retention levels. These really are our most loyal audiences. And as we face an uncertain macro backdrop, the decision to increase our exposure to small consumer direct purchases, which people see as an affordable luxury is timely. And the fact that around half of this revenue long-term recurring in nature is a great position to be in. Now the second core pillar that underpins our success is what we call the platform effect. We believe that over the long term, this can contribute in the region of 5% sustainable profit growth. Moving then on to Slide 27. I think the platform effect is often seen as our ability to increase our margins, but it's much more than this. The platform effect is about the multiplier effect of the organic and inorganic capabilities that deliver unique value creation, both top and bottom line. The platform effect is 3 enablers. -- proprietary tech stack, our approach to content and our organizational structure. Slide 28. The Future technology stack is a key enabler of the platform, a true source of our competitive advantage and the acquisition of CinemaBlend is a really great example of this in action. By migrating to our website technology, Vanilla, we were able to increase viewability, page load speeds and the user experience. And as a result, audience has increased 40% since the acquisition. This benefit was then compounded when deployed our advertising platform, Hybrid, we introduced premium advertisers and new ad formats, which resulted in an increase in advertising yields of also 40%. We continue to invest in our one technology platform strategy, reducing inefficiency and redundancy while our location strategy ensures that our investment in growth is both cost effective and sustainable. On Slide 29. At the heart of what Future does is creating leading expert specialist content that helps people do what truly matters most of them. Now the nature of this content is evergreen in part with over 55% of revenue generating content online originated in prior years. And while we're always relevant in our content coverage, our core DNA is helping people with the things that matter most of them right now, ranging from a review of elderly to how to cut your bills around the Homes. Part of what we do in the Future is not just obsessed about providing the content audiences want to read, but also about how can we innovate and deliver scale in the creation of that content, while retaining the expertise and unique tone of voice. This can range from pivoting to a digital first approach for our magazine content to using expertise in one part of the business to deliver audiences in another. An example in this slide, you'll see we've innovated around the closure of the energy switching business to create a useful money saving newsletter, which is very timely right now, which has driven organic traffic to our newly launched site, The Money Edit. The final pillar that underpins our success is M&A, and we look to acquire businesses with the combination of Future and the target allows us to create unique value. We believe, based on the utilization of cash resources and historical multiples achieved that we can sustainably acquire businesses that will add around 10% of AOP annually. Moving then on to Slide 31. The pipeline for acquisitions that enable us to deliver on our strategy remains excellent, and we remain as selective as ever. Over the last 12 months, our deal funnel has been 25 deals for each one we completed. And so this year, so far, we've transacted on 4 businesses, which means that we've considered over 100 potential opportunities to get to here. Critical for us when we consider an acquisition is the strategic fit. Does that bring a unique capability or enhance a center of excellence? Does it help us accelerate our market leadership opportunities in your verticals? And just important as fit is price -- can we confidently deliver superior returns. Our average multiples paid, as I said, is around 11 times and all deals we do are additive to the financial returns before the impact of revenue synergies. We believe that the current macro backdrop will continue to present opportunities for ongoing M&A activity that will accelerate our strategy. And we will also continue to execute that strategy with discipline and judgment around the value creation as we consider options. On Slide 32, Future approaches our acquisitions in 2 phases: post acquisition success, focused on integrating the core business and processes into Future to ensure controls are in place. and then revenue realization where we look to create unique value through the combination of both businesses. I'm delighted to say that we are largely complete for Phase I for Dennis with all the integration, heavy lifting completed, and all sites now benefiting from the Future ad technology, Hybrid. While Kiplinger is expected to migrate to Vanilla platform in the early summer and The Money Week shortly after. Now part of our investment case, in Dennis was to grow new audiences across Future who could benefit from the editor expertise. This was the original strategy we deployed in Homes in the U.K. with one acquired brand becoming the hub for our future growth. We've begun the execution of this same strategy with Wealth, creating a new bureau of expert writers that are enabling us to create expert brand-safe content in this high-value category. I've already spoken about the opportunity to increase monetization through the utilization of Future technology, and we're well progressed and our strategy to repeat that success here. Moving then on to Slide 33. We are really excited to have announced our newest transaction last year, the purchase of WhoWhatWear. This is a leading beauty and fashion brand in the U.S. that creates content that leads to purchase exactly in line with our stated strategy. Through the combination of this acquisition and Future's existing brands in beauty and fashion, we expect to propel our audience reach to just outside the top 5 of ComScore in the U.S. Critically, with this acquisition, we also acquired an industry-leading native endemic sales organization, who already have many leading and established relationships with key advertisers and retailers in the U.S. We expect this deal to be much like the acquisition of Purch in 2018, which propelled Future's tech portfolio to just outside the top 5 and went on to ultimately deliver a doubling in profits in 2 years, and we now today hold the #1 position in tech. WhoWhatWear accelerates the virtuous circle I described earlier with larger audiences, leading to leadership positions, which in turn drive premium advertisers leading to increased revenue per user and overall increased revenues. We're excited to close this deal next month and talk to you more about the opportunity in due course. So moving then on to Slide 34. In December 21, we launched at Future, our Responsibility. At Future, we like to think that we have always acted as a responsible business, and we felt that an ESG strategy needed to talk about what uniquely our business was doing that represented who we are, in addition to how we behave responsibly. And as a result, we split our approach into 2 pillars: The Future Foundations and Future Differentiation. So on Slide 35, Future Foundation is about how we behave within our organizations and the roles we take within the communities and environment we live within. We made the decision earlier this month to pay over GBP 4 million to our 3,000 staff as an early payment of some of the 2022 staff bonus. We're confident in our performance for the full year, and we realized that many colleagues may be suffering some short-term hardship due to inflationary pressures. And so in May, all Future colleagues will receive a minimum of GBP 900 of a profit pool payment to reflect the performance to date, with the balance paid in full over the financial year. And it's gestures like this, which underpin the culture behind our company. On Slide 36, we look at future differentiators, where we believe future can make a unique difference. We have 2 pillars that resonate with our culture and values, shaping the future, where we're focused on leading a conversation around the Future of the Internet and expanding horizons, which addresses the way to connect people to their passions and to facilitate lifelong learning. This can range from ensuring we're able -- we're available in audio as well as visual format. But it's also about creating the content that helps people talk to the children about the things that matter most in a safe and appropriate manner. And more recently, we've been across our various brands, helping people save money and their tone of voice that is relevant to them. So moving on to Slide 38. I'm absolutely delighted with the performance of the business in the first half of the year. We've exited the pandemic, returned to hybrid office working, delivered 4 acquisitions and continued to take market share across our business, ranging from the U.S. where we've now reached 35% of the users online or in our PCW business where we now have 1/3 of our revenues from non-car verticals. Our strategy of diversified revenues has meant that we've been able to continue to grow pre the pandemic, during the pandemic and post the pandemic, delivering top line organic revenue growth throughout and much more importantly, thanks to the unique Future platforms, we've delivered material growth and profits and continued to deliver strong cash generation. We believe our combination of content that meets our users' needs the operating model and value-adding acquisitions create superior returns, and we expect to deliver ongoing profit growth of around 10% from the organic business around 10% from value-adding M&A and in the region of 5% from the operating model, which is why we're so confident around the ongoing sustainable growth opportunities in our business. We've delivered over the half -- over half of this year's AOP consensus in H1. And as we execute on our goal to reach 1 in 2 in the U.S., we look forward to the balance of the year with confidence. Happy to now take any questions. Mike, sorry, for the recording.

Gareth Davies from Numis. I'll kick off with a couple. The first one on affiliate revenue, you called out sort of differential performance between the U.S. and the U.K. I wonder if you can expand on that a little bit in terms of what categories in particular, sort of were doing better or worse in each market? And then in terms of the way that's evolved, how much of that is still a supply issue? And how much of that has shifted to be a kind of demand issue and sort of what are your assumptions looking into H2 around that? And then the second one, just going back to the Wealth vertical, you've kind of clearly highlighted a few initiatives, Money Edit, Wealth bureau. Can you sort of tie that back to GoCo? And I mean, should we, over time, think that, that is the audience driver for the GoCo business or how integrated will that become over time?

Great. Nice warm up there. So in terms of the geographical split, I don't actually think it's product-driven as so much as what was going on this time last year in the H1. So -- the U.K. had a really severe lockdown during the H1 of last year, and we did call that out at the time. And so when we look at the performance of the U.S. versus the U.K., we see a worse set of comparators in the U.K. and a much stronger performance in the U.S. And so we think that's what underpins the H1 performance. In terms of what we look to in H2 and what we think about the majority of issues that are going on. I think the first thing I'm going to say is I think it's quite a hard market to read right now. And honestly, it's been quite a hard market for 24 months. The trends you normally rely on are not necessarily reliable from that perspective. We acknowledge that there are some supply issues in certain categories. So for example, there are some chip reductions, which means that we continue to see shortages of laptop in some parts of technology. The narrative we get from our advertising partners, which is an important source of Intel is that they expect that to ease up towards the summer period. But we continue to watch and see what happens there. But I think the really important point here is that the diversified strategy means that we're not reliant on any one vertical. And so the Women's Lifestyle e-commerce portfolio doubled in size over the last half versus the previous period. And so we continue to expect to see growth in those categories, and that's where we're focusing our effort just now and where we are in typical Future, parlance remain cautious. And we think that we've got the right lever to lean into the market as those dynamics change. In terms of the second question, which is The Money Edit and our strategy around Wealth, I think you're absolutely right, we would definitely expect the Wealth vertical and the Savings vertical. Savings being the PCW to begin to converge over time. And that distinction is very subtle in the eyes of the consumer from that perspective. And we really see the audiences going in both directions. I think the reason we used The Money Edit as an example is that we built that audience of 400,000 users for no cost because we're able to take the asset that was in the [ Lam ] newsletter and create a new newsletter for that audience, which was valuable and helpful in terms of money saving tips, which then drove traffic to The Money Edit site, which then has some links on it, which then takes you back to GoCo. So we see that being quite symbiotic by its nature. And we -- I didn't mention it because we said we wouldn't talk at length about GoCo these results going forward. But we're really pleased with the progress we're making on the technology platform and expect to be able to see those widgets modularization start to appear during the second half of next year -- of this year.

It's Nick Dempsey from Barclays. I've got 3, please. So the first one, just on e-commerce or affiliates organic growth in the second half. I mean, the comp gets an awful lot easier for 56% in the first half and then just under 20% in the second half. So should we expect you to get positive growth in organic growth in that line in the second half? Or if not, does that not point to a kind of 2-year weakening quite sharp one? Second question, as we seeing the consumer increasingly squeezed certainly in the U.K. already, but potentially in the U.S. Should we worry that you're quite exposed to high-ticket items in consumer electronics, cycling, photography, golf, et cetera. Does that make you more exposed to economic weakness, which is about the consumer being squeezed by inflation? And the third question -- just on GoCo, you're diversifying away from car insurance pretty impressively, you showed on that slide. If I look at MoneySuperMarket back in 2009, car insurance was fine. Everything else wasn't fine. So are you diversifying to make yourself more cyclical?

Penny, do you want me to take this, or you want to take any of them.

Should I take the first one around affiliates. So I think as Zillah mentioned, unusual market and lots going on. We're certainly seeing an acceleration in growth or an acceleration of performance into the second half. So we do expect a return to growth. The question really is about how quickly we get there. So we're seeing improving performance. We would expect the diversification into the new verticals to deliver. And so over the medium term, we definitely see the return to growth.

So if I pick up the -- and just, by the way, I don't think 20% comps are easy. I think in lots of normal businesses that would be an exceptionally high comp. But just moving on to the consumer squeeze. I'm really pleased you asked this question because I actually think the complete opposite, which is we are in a great position for consumer squeeze because what we do is we do 2 things. We create content and we write about the things that people are really passionate about. These are the things that they identify with, whether it's going out on your bike, or buying the latest video game or deciding what to wear. And therefore, in a squeezed environment, you hang on to the things that are really important to you and where you see the prioritization and spend is away from those. The other thing is I'm sure we're all familiar with the concept of the lipstick index in which when times are tougher, we move to buying small luxury items -- and our categories cover as many small luxury items as they do big ticket items, and one could argue -- if you're going to have a consumer squeeze, it's good that everyone brought forward our laptop purchases last year. Because now they can spend their money on new headphones instead or new chips, et cetera. And I think the third element of that is the magazine portfolio where it really is an everyday luxury to buy yourself a magazine. And so when you're really feeling that you're a bit tight and money is a bit short -- we still need to have nice things in our life. And so we think that, that's a really good opportunity for us. And certainly, as I said, from a wider macro backdrop, when we look back to the beginning of the pandemic and most media companies were telling everyone that advertising revenues had hemorrhage. Ours remain really strong, as you'll recall, because of the endemic nature of our advertising portfolio and that was a real flight-to-quality. So we we're feeling quite confident, and also feel the geographic diversification, really benefits as well in terms of the different cycles in each of the geographies, macro. And then your third question, our strategy at Future, which has been working for us for the last while is to diversify our portfolio and have a number of different verticals. And so one of the opportunities to solve with car insurance was to not have it as 80% of the mix. And so we're really pleased now that it's not. I don't think we're diversifying into more cyclicality. I think we're doing the opposite. I think we're diversifying to create a portfolio, which lets us manage the cyclicality to give you consistent returns. And I think that one of the really important points of that strategy was that matching GoCompare to our consumer brands. So homes, car energy-saving tips, et cetera, alongside the car insurance side of that. So broadband, for example, sorry I couldn't think of the word I was looking for there. So [ comms ] being broadband and mobile phones being a big part of our business model. So I think I would be counterfactual to that point, but I appreciate the question.

Bridie from Stifel. Two questions, if I may. Just Firstly, on inflation, and you called out EUR 15 million of cost increase as a result of inflation in salaries and in cost of sales. Can you talk a little bit about how permanent do you think some of those inflationary pressures are? I think you mentioned some of them maybe I read it as potentially being transitory. And then the second question I have is really about, I suppose, the Amazon effect and the strong growth that they're seeing in their retail media strategy and indeed many retailers are? And how you think that sort of shifting landscape might impact your affiliate business?

Yes. So in terms of inflationary pressures, so there's a couple of different factors. So firstly, there's some wage pressure, staff cost inflation. And then the second part is on magazine physical costs. On the magazine physical costs, whilst everything would say that it's more temporary in that there have been some paper shortages because of a strike in a mill in Finland. And then in printing, it's really -- is the spike in energy cost, which is driving those inflation. So theoretically, there should be -- pressure should be more temporary. However, we will remain if ever, paranoid. And so we're working on the basis that those are permanent for now, but let's hope that they get better. And then in terms of wage cost inflation, people never take a pay rise Paycard. And so we are working on that basis, although we continue to look at the efficiency of our model in order to rephrase some of those costs.

And so the second question, which I think was about the Amazon effect, which I think if I understand it correctly, is around Amazon media activity within that, yes. So look, I think Amazon is a great business that we work with a really good partner to us, and we have a great relationship with them, and they continue to talk to us about our performance in the context of us being a leading partner to them versus the other operators they work with. But they are only part of our mix. And one of the unique things about the Hybrid model that the -- Hawk model that we have is that it takes stock from many, many, many different retailers. And so therefore, we don't feel that we're overly dependent on Amazon should they decide at any point in time to change their approach from that perspective. And again, we saw that proven out at the start of the pandemic when Amazon actually closed in the U.S., you'll remember, to anything apart from vital purchases, they basically took all affiliate links off because -- so the distribution center problems and our e-commerce performance continues to be very strong. So we feel that model has been tested. From a media perspective, I think there's a big difference between advertising on Amazon and advertising in an endemic premium publisher around your audience, you know who is your audience and being associated with that from a brand safe perspective and the brand halo effect that goes being around our content. So again, I don't see any threat from a media advertising perspective. And I feel, in fact, quite the reverse, which is we continue to have really strong advertising relationship partnerships.

It's Johnathan Barrett from Panmure Gordon. I've got a little bit more to ask on the e-commerce and maybe have some questions on that already. So I'll just kick off if that's okay. You've talked about some of the factors there, which will get you back to like-for-like growth. Just wondered if you could just walk us through the price and yield components for H2, just so we better understand your perspective on that and how that might then drive the end result. And because obviously, you're getting some uplift. So just keen to understand to an extent, and then how that will flow into FY '23 as a sort of base, that's not too difficult. And then what's on top of that for the vertical expansions and the acquisition. And at the same time, could you just talk about the linkage between some of your digital advertising and the e-commerce as well. So is there any codependency there? Is there any significant linkage that you see in your client activity there? And then just to ask about the e-commerce product types, essentially, I guess, is what I'm getting to. I mean, obviously, they're essentially durable and higher ticket items as they point out. Is it not really more a case of a lot of the products being sold to people with money than those without, I mean, just could you confer in terms of your audience profiling, just so we understand because it's point that's looking at average, if your average client -- if your average audience is different to the average of the population more generally. So, yes, sorry if I've touched on the e-commerce stuff.

Sure, I'll start with the last question first, if that's all right. So you're absolutely right. The profile of our leadership is a slightly more affluent profile we tend to skew ABC1. Average incomes tend to be over $100,000 in the U.S. I want to say GBP 100,000 in the U.K., but it might be more like 80,000, but it definitely skews to the higher spectrum. And so you're definitely correct in that regard, which there is more affluents there. However, I think it's an important point. In a tightening of consumer payrolls people really want to know how to find the cheapest thing or get the deals. And one of the things we've been exceptionally good out of Future is a comparing prices. We know today that we'll get you the best pricing thing you want to buy because of Hawk because we've got a range of suppliers and because we are always price competitive in terms of we'll always bring back the cheapest price. And then we have like deal blocks and daily round ups and so for example, at Amazon Prime in July in one of the features we'll do during Amazon Prime is surfacing live deal blogs and e-mail push notifications about the things that we're seeing come up in a curated way. So in terms of what you're interested in. So if you're interested in buying a camera. -- you'll get that content from DCW. So I actually think that we have an opportunity here to play into a tightening of spend people want to see value for money. On your second question, linked to digital advertising and e-commerce. The honest answer is there's not a lot. I think it's an opportunity for us. And actually, in WhoWhatWear their whole business more or less predicated on helping people make fashion purchasing decisions. And it's actually a really integrated model that they have. And so while they make money from affiliate commission revenues, then you say what we do, the much bigger part of it is the embedding of advertising and helping advertise just find content with intent. So a lot of kind of creative solution and brand-led advertising around those intent purchases. And so we think there's an opportunity for us to actually learn a little bit from them to potentially open up a bigger opportunity across the Future portfolio. So we're quite excited to learn more about that. In terms of the third one, and I'm kind of left it to last because that's kind of laughing. If you can tell me what's going to happen in FY '23, good lucky, right, because so far this year, and so far for the last 2 years, I don't -- every time I think I know what's going on, it changes a bit. I think the important point is that we take a really cautious view. And we're really pleased the audience has come back, and it's been really reassuring that what we expect it to happen as we exited the difficult comps in terms of audience was to come back, and that's what it has. There is definitely some softness in tech consumer just now because of the chip shortages and you'll see that across the board in terms of audience numbers. But we are market leading in the audience, and we're taking share. So what we're reassured by is that as that starts to come back in terms of demand, and we're in the best position to benefit from that. Now organic audience were down 10%. It's exactly what we had expected and I said we're back in growth now. I think our performance is really strong and underpins the fact that both from digital advertising and from e-commerce that we've got an ability to manage numerous levers not just audience, but also yield and mix. And one of the reasons why Women's as a category or Homes is attractive as it has a higher yield because the product has got more -- is less commoditized. There's more discretion in the margin. So, we -- as you'll know from how we talk about it, we always say, let the yield be what the yield is and let the revenue follow the audience. But I do think we've got some ability to play with some of those levers actually into the second half.

With potentially lower volumes for your customers available and the audience movements. Do you think you'll see yields really fly because of that just -- they paid a lot more for access. Is it going to be a smaller...

We certainly, if I look at peak trading, which is a very competitive time of the year, November and December last year. I mean, we were -- we had some excellent yield opportunities there, and we were reassured by our partners that we were definitely performing top of the pack. And so I felt like that truck go by. And so as we think about our position, I think what's really important is that we continue to be the best partner to the retailers, which allows us then to drive the yields and also is they need to perform, and therefore, they need partners like us who can help them perform.

And just one small question just on accounting. The early payment of the bonus if you recruit that in H1.

Yes. And we just recruit the bonus throughout the year. So there's no...

Simon Davies from Deutsche Bank. Just a couple from me. Your share price is now in valuation terms, a bit cheaper than some of the deals you've been doing. First point is, would you still be prepared to issue equity to fund M&A? And the second point is at what level does the shares become sufficiently attractive that you pursue share buybacks rather than acquisitions?

Great question. And I think our shares represent excellent value just now. I mean our free cash flow yield alone is really top quartile performance given the valuations where we are just now. Look, I think the important point is when you look at the historical average of the deals we've done, we've been able to buy businesses all the way through from less than 1x earnings all the way up to, I think the peak was a pro forma 18x. And so there's lots of opportunities. We looked at our 100 deals in the first 6 months of this year. And so where we are deciding to buy something, it's because we genuinely believe it's going to add value to the organization. And so I don't think that the multiple point becomes a key factor for us in deciding that because we've never been financial engineers in terms of trying to buy multiple arbitrage. What we're doing is trying to buy businesses which fit with our strategy, and allow us to create value through the long term. In terms of issuing equity, I think what we've been really trying to make sure that was clear in the presentation today in the RNS is that we're really happy to use our balance sheet. We're quite disciplined around our approach to leverage. We delever really quickly and so the ability to do acquisitions like what -- we are very accessible to us within the current balance sheet that we have, and we delever very quickly. So it doesn't create a constraint. I think if we came across a deal, which we thought was absolutely bang on strategy and a must do for us, which would involve having to issue equity. Then I think it's my job to talk to shareholders about it. I don't think it's for me to decide the shareholders want to invest. I think it's for shareholders to decide that. But we would only have that conversation if something we felt was an absolute one-in-a-lifetime opportunity because I think at this point in time, this -- we would really like to see the share price come back in the way that we expect that it will and from that perspective. With regard to the second question, I think what we're trying to get across here was that when we think about growth in our business and we've got a really good track record over the last 6, 7, 8 years. We see continued long-term growth. And I think that doing share buybacks just now, which would take out cash from the organization, which would remove our ability to potentially do further acquisitions, which we believe contribute to the ability to deliver in the region of 25% profit growth through the medium term. I think it's probably not in line with where our strategy is just now, but you also know is I will never say never because life taught me to there are no absolutes. But right now, we're just focused on executing the strategy that we've been working for us over the last few years.

And would you raise the -- your leverage appetite to fund deals at?

So why don't I start this and Penny can finish it, right? Because the CEO has got a different view on this for in the CFO. I think that what we're demonstrating is they continue to really strongly delever. And so if we felt it was the right deal and we said this before, we would spike for it but we obviously do not want to put ourselves under pressure, right? One of the lovely things about this business is that we don't feel the pressure to pay interest or on covenants, and we make the right decisions and we've got the ability and the freedom to do that. But I don't know, Penny, if you want to add anything.

I think I agree broadly yes.

It's good to were...

Strict historically but never say no.

Before -- we got time for one more question. If there is anymore.

All right. Thank you No, all right. Well, very much for your time.

There's one online.

There's one online sure.

Sorry, we have a question from Caspar Erskine with Singer Capital Markets.

Sorry about this. Last question for me. I've just got a couple of quick ones. One is regarding commentary out of Google and specifically YouTube pointing to yield deterioration around video pricing, they're talking about sort of early stage experimentation. And I was just wondering what you guys are doing differently and how evolved your video pricing strategy as a Future. It seems to me that you're doing particularly well on that side of things. And the other bit is just pressure on consumer discretionary spend again, sorry to bring that up. Does this, in your view, consolidate budgets towards the lower end of the funnel? Or do you think there is a risk of pricing pressure to come across the board?

So I take the first question in terms of video. I think the whole part of the Future strategy is to not rely on any one platform, but also to be a premium provider in all platforms that we operate across. And so I think we're quite comfortable that we have a strategy through Future studios, which allows us to monetize on Snap, but allows us to monetize on YouTube, allows us to monetize on Facebook, but we also monetize on our owned and operated properties, and we also produce content for third parties as required. And so we think we've got the ability to manage mix and manage volume and to create content, which we can then repurpose across that. So we are -- if you're asking what we're doing different, that's what we're doing different is we're not relying on our platform and we're looking across optimizing our yields and optimizing that content creation strategy. In terms of the consolidation of budgets to lower in the funnel, I'm not completely sure if I completely understood this, so let me answer it as I understand, and apologies if it's wrong. But I think that what we think this consumer spending is twofold, is one advertiser certainly will want to be around in 10. They want to make sure that they're spending advertising dollars. It's around where there's intent going to happen and transactions going to happen, and so therefore, we definitely think we're well placed to benefit from that. You'll certainly see -- and I'm sure everyone's heard the noise about media inflation and the inflation that's going through on Facebook and Google, for example, I think it's a testament to the strength of the Future businesses that we've not mentioned that once, despite having within our portfolio, a number of large media spenders, particularly on the GoCo and then some of our acquisitions for subs because actually, we're able to manage across our own portfolio and use the economies of scales we have to offset the external inflation we see. But if that's what's going on for other businesses then I think we look exceptionally good value from a marketing spend perspective because you -- you know that you're advertising around the audience that wants to buy your product and they're there because they got intent in mind. Right? I think I should.

That's absolutely perfect.

Okay. Great. Thank you so much. Everyone, thank you very much for your time today, and I appreciate your attention.