LBG Media plc (LBG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to LBG Media's half year set of results for 2025. I'm Solly, CEO and Founder of LBG Media, and I'm joined by Dave who is Exec Chairman and has been working in the role since January, filling in on the finance side of the business. So I'm going to talk you through some highlights. Then I'm going to hand you over to Dave, who's going to take you through the financials, and then back over to me to talk you through some of the strategic progress that we've made. So we've had a strong start to 2025, with double-digit growth across both revenue and profit. The revenue growth, up 13% year-on-year and the profit growth, up 18% year-on-year. We've continued to see some exciting developments across the U.S., the U.S. being the largest advertisement market in the world. And 2 years ago, we acquired a business called Betches, which has really kickstarted our organic growth and growth that, that business was already driving over the years since we bought them, and we've had some brilliant 7-figure wins that have been driving that. We've also been diversifying the business and continuing down that track, with a strong split in revenue across Direct and Indirect, roughly around 50-50, with the new addition of the U.S. market into the mix adding an additional lever into our business. We've got a strong pipeline forming. And with the rise in our audience in Gen Z, which we now reach over 2/3 of all U.K. Gen Z here in the U.K. and nearly 90 million in -- across the world, we have a strong cohort that's building well. We've got interesting developments happening across AI and, of course, the up-and-coming World Cup next year, which will be interesting. So we've got a strong pipeline forming across clients that we've been developing across both the U.K. and the U.S. We've been adding to our leadership team. So a couple of names to call out, in particular, a new addition to the PLC Board, Harry Stebbings, Founder of Twenty VC, very interesting and talented person and already shown his value. And the other one being Neil Greenhalgh, previously CFO over at JD Sports, being part of that business through a high-growth period over his years. A number of other additions we've just been building for the future and the growth that we intend to drive into. Across the audience base, which is obviously at the heart of what we do, our audiences have been going from strength to strength. We now have well over 0.5 billion audience members, and that is growing quickly. We are a social entertainment powerhouse. And we have over 0.5 billion engaged audience members, reaching 2/3 of all young adults across the U.K. and the U.S. And we give access to some of the biggest brands in the world, access to the audience that we understand, that trust us but engage with us on a monthly basis, driving real tangible business results for those businesses. We have unrivaled engagement, generating nearly 3,000 views every single second. And we've built household brands. If you ask someone from that cohort that I mentioned before on the street, if they've heard LADbible, Betches, I think you'd be surprised to hear and know. And I certainly would. I'll be disappointed with it. Another figure, I'm not really one for shouting about anything other than being first. However, I think this one jumped out. There's only 4 businesses that have more reach than us in the U.K., and those businesses are Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon, putting us up with some fantastic names, and that is nearly 50 million of reach that we have across our different brands. So in true LADbible Group fashion, we're going to show a video just to demonstrate some of the things that we've been up to. [Presentation]

I can confirm, by the way, the meerkat and the dog, they were AI generated, just to be clear. There's no animal cruelty involved. So I guess, I'd just like to take you through a bit of a snapshot of our business model. So we have household brands that people know and love. We have unrivaled scale, and that translates into influence. And there's two ways that brands connect with that audience, that influence that we've built. The first is Direct, and that is our sales team working with some of the largest blue-chip brands in the world. Whether it's the likes of Google, Sky, Netflix, Uber Eats, Pepsi, you name it, we've either worked with them, or we are working with them. The other element of our monetization and the way in which brands connect is via Indirect. So that is our brands, our content living on the likes of YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook and our websites, and dependent on which platform it is, we'll have a rev share. So for many years now, we've been riding a wave that has only been growing. As we all know, we spend a lot of time on our mobile phones. And often, when you look at the top 3 apps that you'll be using on your mobile phones, it will be social media or a messaging platform. And we have and do sit at the heart of that, with over 0.5 billion audience members and a big chunk of those interact and engaging with us through social. So we are absolutely in the right place. In terms of the market size, we have a market of over $8.25 billion. We have a Gen Z audience base, which is growing phenomenally quick, and that is expected to be the wealthiest cohort by 2030. So 5 years ago, digital transactions were about 50% of the market. Now it's up to 70% of all advertisement spend is done digitally. So for us, we're in the largest and fastest-growing segments of that market. There's five key areas that we double down on as a business. The first is our audience and scale, and we have unrivaled scale with 2/3 of all U.K., U.S. young adults and 0.5 billion audience. We have loved household brands, brands that people know, trust, that show up in their feed regularly, show up in their phones regularly and people visit a huge amount. We attract some of the biggest brands and celebrities. So I know the team were filming with Brad Pitt the weekend. They were showing me videos. That's just one of a few names over the past couple of weeks that we filmed with and a huge amount of A-list celebrities that we've also filmed with. And someone was explaining to me that the Cannes Lion Festival last week, I think Kevin Hart was paid GBP 1 million to come and make an appearance. I can confirm we've never paid him anything. So they want to show up with our brands and gain the credibility for themselves and build that profile through that. We've built relationships with some of the largest blue-chip brands who want to tap into our vast scale, reach, trust, knowledge and influence that we have across those young adults. And we've built technology and tools that underpin that. So one of the things I want to call out is Mission Control. Mission Control is an in-house technology that we built that is effectively a dashboard built on the tens of millions of different data points that we receive across APIs, across social media, our websites and other the touch points our audiences interact with. And some of the most amazing nuggets can come from this. So we spotted a statistic that if you move it very, very slightly, could generate 10x the engagement of views, and we're constantly picking up these different nuggets, which ultimately leads to the 10 billion views a month that we generate in the huge engaged audience, and that stems from technology that we have in-house that we built, such as Mission Control. We're also very excited about the future of AI. You saw some of the AI-generated content that we created there. We've done that for one of the largest players in the AI space. And across the business, we're embracing AI in a big way, whether that's across streamlining video production, processes or, indeed, helping our clients tap into audiences in a better manner. So we're super excited about the future there. So I'm going to hand over to Dave, who will talk you through the finances. Then I'll see on the other side.

Thank you. Thank you, Solly. Good morning, everyone. I'm joined by Kev Foster over and Lianna. Kev has been with the Director of Finance, Operations, been with the business over a year and played a massive part in our cash generation, which, as I'll show you later on, is exceptional. And thanks for your help over the past -- while I've been on board as Exec Chair, Kev. So as Solly said, our reported revenue grew by 13% to GBP 43.9 million. Summarizing that, it's down to our reputation with blue-chip clients, attractive market dynamics and the rise of the purchasing power of young adults in the digital advertising space as well as a great team in an enviable market position. Adjusting for the change in business model that we had in APAC last year, the growth is 15%. And then if you do the constant currency adjustment in the first half, that's 16%. So a really good first half of the year. Moving on to the Direct revenue. This grew by 8% to GBP 19.3 million, 44% of our group total. The performance is driven by building on our existing clients with some new clients. The deepening of the relationships evidenced by a 78% repeat revenue, and the brief conversion that we have is -- was 27%, and it normally ranges from high 20s to low 30%. Importantly, the value of our clients over $1 million more than doubled. So from a client perspective, we've become increasingly important to their corporate marketing strategies. And a big focus continues to be capitalizing on our leadership position across millennials and Gen Zs or young adults as we refer to them. In the U.S., we now have 5 clients with annual revenues of over $1 million. This takes our group a number of clients with $1 million -- over $1 million to 17. And they include U.S. brands like Netflix, Peacock and Boston Beer. And as Solly said and can reiterate, we have a very, very strong pipeline moving into the second half of the calendar year. In summary, a good performance, and moving forward with this strengthening pipeline, we're excited about the rest of the year. Indirect revenue, this grew by 18% to GBP 24 million. As a reminder, the Indirect is split between social, our revenue from share from social platforms and income from web advertising, which is our owned and operating websites. Social was up 12%, following changes to Facebook business model last year as we previously disclosed. The growth in the period driven by web reflected growth in web sessions and user engagement. The web growth finished at 27% in the period. Turning to costs. Cost ended GBP 35.6 million, a 2% increase. Payroll and general OpEx grew by 6% and 7%, respectively. A drop in adjusting items offset the increase in content costs. As you know, we have an active approach to OpEx management, which we call gateposting for every investment, and we've been making incremental investments on being very cautious about what's happening in the macro environments. We've still invested $0.5 million in the U.S. sales team and in C-level hire there and a significant increase in senior hires in the U.K., as Solly talked about, with an annualized cost of about GBP 1 million. But they joined in the right at the end of the second half. So minimal impact in the reporting period we're talking about. Adjusted EBITDA achieved GBP 12.2 million, 18% increase. The increase was driven by a couple of key factors: higher growth in our Indirect revenue and also the lower cost growth. On to our cash position. As you know, we're highly cash generative, and we have a robust cash position at the year-end with GBP 32.9 million in the bank. And another key point, which I really have to congratulate Kevin and team on, is 110% EBITDA cash conversion. Key performance indicators. I'll cover the ones that I've not already spoken about. The third KPI are those customers that generate annual revenues of over $1 million in our U.K. business. And at the 12 months at the end of March, we had 12 clients, up from 7 last year. For the U.S., it was 5 clients, up from 0 last year. So I can see the growth is starting to happen in the U.S. And when we speak again in January, you'll see even more coming through into that category. I'd also like to speak a little bit about the diversity of our Direct revenue. 23% of the Direct revenue is from clients between $0.5 million and $1 million, 46% over $1 million, and the balance is under $0.5 million. We want to move more of our clients to our higher-revenue levels for obvious reasons. And also, we can focus our attention there. In addition, it means that we're not over-reliant on the number of limited clients and any limited sectors. So we've also seen the U.S. audience has increased 145 million. And we look forward to sharing these metrics with you on an ongoing basis. In the appendix, you'll find a half-by-half split going back to our IPO. And corporate tax and FX -- sorry, foreign exchange guidance as well as EPS and the free cash flow per share are all in the appendix there. As you know, we'll always be transparent as we can be. If you need any additional help or information, just let me know. And finally, if my voice holds up, on to capital allocation. As you see, we've had GBP 32.9 million of net cash. So I'll summarize our capital allocation moving forward. Post the year-end, we made our second Betches earnout payment, the GBP 5.5 million in May, and we're very happy to have made that payment because we achieved the targets. Moving forward into the next year, it's GBP 6 million. We're committed to our employee benefit trust, and we paid GBP 2.8 million in the half just gone into that. And the balance will hold back for our targeted M&A pipeline, with the obvious goal of accelerating our strategy, producing strong internal rates of return and sustainable value for stakeholders. So we have a strong net cash position, excellent cash generation, and we'll look to reinvest for organic growth and fund appropriate M&A opportunities. With that, I'll draw the financial review to a close and hand you back to Solly.

Thanks, Dave. So Kevin doesn't have much of his voice left either. They've just been shouting out at our customers to pay quicker. So that's what's driven the result. So yes, so just to take you through some of the strategic progress that we've been making across the board. The U.S. market, largest advertisement market in the world, we have a number of 7-figure wins. Dave called out before 5 of those 17 7-figure relationships that we have in place being a key part of that. So we continue to go from strength to strength. We're very excited about the business out in the States and the progress that it's making along with the future opportunity ahead. We've been building larger and deeper relationships with our clients here in the U.K. So some of the names that you're hearing consistently are clients that are very quickly becoming long-term partners and key relationships for us when it comes to partners and helping them drive business results as well as working in other fashions and means. We are rapidly scaling our Gen Z audience. I referred to some of the numbers before, but just to recap on that, over 2/3 of all U.K. Gen Z population consume our content every single month. And then more widely, 90 million of that audience base is also Gen Z globally. We're super excited about AI and the opportunity that, that will bring along with some of the content that we've demonstrated, some of the different means in which we're already using it. And we're also very excited about what that may hold for the future. A lot of clients are asking the question about what AI may mean for them. And I believe we're well positioned to help them connect with that and drive results. From an IP development perspective, we've continued to invest in our brands, and we continue to invest in our unique IP across the business, whether that's our technology, the content in which our audience consume with the likes of Snack Wars, Agree to Disagree, some of the famous formats that we have. And of course, with new additions coming into the mix, we can see some exciting developments in that space. When it comes to the platform for scaling, we look at it in a number of different ways. We have our scale, IP and brands where we have household brands that people love, unrivaled scale and unique IP. We've got a purpose-led culture. So at the heart of what we do, we want to make people smile, we want to make people laugh, and we want to make a difference to society in a meaningful way, and that enables us to attract and retain some of the best talent. We've strengthened our management team. Whether that's the likes of a new HR Director, Trudi, who joins from Auction Technology Group; or Harry, who's joined us on the nonexec Board; or Neil, who I mentioned before, we have a number of strong hires that we bring into the business to bolster us for future growth. And we're making ongoing investments into all of those elements that I mentioned before. When it comes to purpose-driven work, I'm extremely proud of the work that the team and we have done across a number of different topics, whether that's mental health, the environment, protecting women and girls and a number of other areas, which we are working on an ongoing basis. More recently, we were raising awareness around a very serious topic, working with Women's Aid to drive more awareness around domestic violence. And I'm pleased to say that we reached millions of people with that message. And even if we just stop one incident or raise awareness around it, we've made a difference, and it's very important to us. So just to finish off, we are confident of delivering our 10% revenue growth at constant currency. We have strong U.S. momentum with the acquisition that we made and organic growth within. We've continued to diversify our revenue streams with our Direct and Indirect splits across the business but also adding another major lever in place with the U.S. business that we have. And we are strengthening the leadership and culture to support the next phase of growth for the business. So that's all for me. And we'll now move over to Q&A, or you can ask me questions five questions at once.

It's Jessica Pok from Peel Hunt. I've got three, Solly. You've talked about Direct having a good pipeline for the second half. Can you just talk a little bit about client sentiment especially the U.S. versus the U.K.? You've innovated across the board. You've talked about Mission Control, but can you give some color on EMMA and what EMMA does? And then the final one is, can you talk about some of the launches for the second half? I think you've got Betches launching in the U.K. So just what does that entail?

Yes, absolutely. So I guess starting with the Direct sentiment. In terms of the general direction of travel, we're seeing obviously more and more clients understand the power of digital. I don't think that's anything new. And in terms of our position in that, we're very well placed to help businesses navigate. A recent example of a major client kind of ours, they wanted to create some content from an AI perspective. The team worked tirelessly over the weekend to produce that piece of content so that they could demonstrate the power of AI with their technology, and we are being seen as a key partner when it comes to digital advertisement and helping brands connect with those audiences. And that's just one example. So there's the long tail of the growing reputation that we have in the market here in the U.K. and growing very quickly in the U.S., which we feel very confident about. In terms of, obviously, Gen Z, I think a lot of minds are also turning to how can we tap into this difficult generation that's coming up, how do we ensure that our brands and businesses are staying relevant to those younger generations, and we feel good about that. And then I guess, moving through to next year, we've got a major event that spans both the U.K. and the U.S. in the World Cup, which, obviously, two key markets for us, so we're going to be interested to see how some of the work that we're looking at proactively across there may affect us in the coming year. U.S. market, a very different place to the U.K. So their commercial offering is developing really quick. And it feels as though it's in the early stages, and we can see a real opportunity to grow within that, and they're working with some fantastic clients. And we mentioned about the number of 7-figure clients that we've locked in on. So we're seeing bigger, longer-term relationships over there. And alongside the LADbible Group audience base, we have -- Betches alone has 250 million engaged audience members that they reach every single month. And you head over to the U.S. -- and I know Betches is well known here in the U.K., too. But you head over to the U.S., and again, it's a very similar picture, which is there's not many women in the millennial or Gen Z age bracket who wouldn't know what Betches is or who they are. And for us, that puts us in a fantastic position to work with clients and advertisers and evolve our commercial setup to build on that. In terms of EMMA, which is a technology that we have in-house, it's not a person, I can confirm. So although she may become a person in time, who knows where this is going to go. But EMMA effectively streamlines our video production, project management. So that's a tool which our video editors use to communicate, to streamline what we do from a video production perspective. So that's just 1 of 4, 5 different uses that we have across the business where we're seeing a real benefit from AI, whether that's efficiency, driving growth or other means. Betches in the U.K. So I've shouted about the product, obviously, a fantastic product. And we've got a huge amount of client appetite over here. Every time we meet a client, it's kind of like, when does Betches come into the U.K.? Sort of when can we work with them? So we are underway with the launch of Betches here in the U.K. and for our clients to be able to offer and work with them. So in the back end of this year is when we're looking at in terms of that launch of Betches in the U.K.

And the launches in the U.S., Betches Sports and...

Yes, yes. So yes, go ahead.

So we launched Betches Sports in the -- and we created a partnership with the NFL. The NFL came to us. That's one of them. And there are further launches of IP later on in the year to come from Betches.

Alastair from Investec. Not quite for me. Firstly, just on AI, do you think that AI sort of generated content potentially lowers the barrier to entry for competitors at all? And related to that, if you use it, does it then sort of change the pricing power you had with advertisers in terms of your lower cost being -- having to be sort of passed on in terms of lower prices? And secondly, on the sort of M&A front, how are you sort of thinking about the assets that you're targeting at the moment? How much is it about covering sort of different demographics in terms of either gender or maybe political persuasion? How much is about just driving audience versus you're trying to provide more marketing services to advertisers? And then lastly, you sort of touched on sort of what Kevin Hart might charge or not to you. But can you perhaps just talk a little bit more about the mechanics of your content costs, particularly on the Direct side as that gets bigger in terms of operational gearing and the like?

Yes. So in terms of the first question, the AI-generated content, I think you're absolutely spot on. It is going to change the industry, full stop, and you can't get away from that fact. I look at it on the opposite side of that, which is as an entertainment business, what are the opportunities that we can now tap into that we never could? So if you look at a Disney where you're talking having to spend hundreds of millions to produce an animated film or in terms of the technologies that they have around that, that is now becoming accessible to a business like us. You're seeing films be made for $1,000 across multiple different technologies and use cases of it, and we're already at the forefront of that. So the way that I see it is we're an entertainment business. There is no leader in entertainment that is really embracing AI in a big way. How can we be one of those people that redefines what entertainment is in this new world? So I see it as a real opportunity for us to tap into new areas that we haven't been able to access before. And we've proven ourselves as disruptors in a pretty major space, which is only going to evolve and grow. We intend to do it again in this new world that's starting to come about. In terms of the M&A question that you had, so the key areas that we're looking at and populating our M&A pipeline is across new audiences as you mentioned. So Betches was a perfect example of that. We have an audience in that space. However, they have a deep engaged connection that we didn't have and, obviously, a big presence out in the States, which made a lot of sense for us. We're looking at IP. So what new IP can we bring into the building, whether that's new content IP, whether that's new brand IP, whatever that may be to help us strengthen our unique position in the market. Tech and data. So I mentioned Mission Control before. If we could find the right opportunities to further enhance what we're doing across there, we're looking at that, whether that's a business that taps into multiple. And then, of course, U.K. and U.S. markets are our key market when it comes to geo. So how can we, as with Betches, look at accelerating that, or in the past, UNILAD here in the U.K., how can we grow our market share through acquisition in those means? So those are the lenses that we're looking at. And we've got a few that we're looking at closely. But again, our position on this is find the right ones, high quality, additive, not going to come in and dilute the business or take a step back on the quality that we brought in previously. I'll hand over to Dave on the costs.

Yes. On the production costs, as I said, the time that we'll use, we call them internally freelance people to help us above our full-time employees, are times where there's a real tight demand from a large client to have work done really quickly. So a great example of that is Solly talked about largest IT players in the world asked us to do work for them in a really condensed time line. So we pull in our access to freelancers to service that requirement. As we see more and more of that happen, we'll build our own expertise in-house. The other thing that sits in the production cost is the revenue share we've got with the NFL. So -- but the variable one in that is freelancers to support quick demands from clients, and we've got a big access pool of freelancers we can get to.

It's Fiona Orford-Williams from Edison. My question is really around the move to the larger clients. The balance of power in that relationship is going to be different than it has been as you've been developing the business. So what are the margin implications of shifting greater proportions of revenues up the scale? And the second question, and I'm going to do too, is on the pipeline. What are you finding in terms of the resistance points for converting that pipeline? And what are the time scales like? And have they shifted?

We do the first?

Yes, I'll kick off the first and hand over to you for margin specifics. But I think in terms of the shift towards larger client relationships, I think the key thing for us is having more strategic relationships with them so -- at the top of organizations so we can really tap into what their business objectives are. So I had a really senior client in this week from a major brand. And their objective is to grow market share. And that's the kind of strategic goal that we want to be working on. With having over 2/3 of all young adults coming through every single month, we have the ability to move market share and other metrics for big brands and what their business objectives are. So for us on that basis, we -- that's where we want to be. Obviously, we want to do more of them as well as go deeper, but that's the reason why. I don't know if you want to answer that specifically.

Yes, I think the business obvious points will come through there is that winning a new bigger client and growing the client to a bigger one is quite expensive in terms of go-to-market costs. However, when we've got one of those larger clients and build the relationships, the costs even out. So as we're building more, that puts a strain on the go-to-market cost that we've got. The Direct business generally has a lower EBITDA margin, which we don't disclose, but it is lower because they draw in more of our central resources. So we're in over -- however many years when we've got hundreds of millions of dollars of clients, we will be drawing on those resources. When we have a large client and proven through good work, then the margins enhance. Yes, so as we're in the growth period for however many years, it is 5, 10 years, there will always be drawing on go-to-market and internal resources.

And sorry, the follow-up to that is, does that then involve having a full client account management teams dedicated to those clients?

Yes. So having key accounts on -- key account management, for sure.

And the second question was about the pipeline and conversion and sentiment.

Resistance, wasn't it?

Resistance to...

Quicker conversion on pipeline, I think it was.

Okay. Okay, with you. Yes, I think in terms of some of the conversations that we're having sort of for up and coming calendar Q4 and sort of future quarters, we're seeing a real positive lean in from clients that we're working with in regards to that. And as I say, for us, it's quite a key period when it comes up to people's financial year-end and rebudgeting and those kind of areas. So that will be a key period for us to engage with clients in the right way. But so far, so good in terms of that and in terms of what we've seen coming through.

It's Johnathan Barrett from Panmure. One bigger question and two smaller ones, if that helps. Just, first of all, on the CMA announcement this morning, I know it's only just come out, so it takes some time to digest. But it does look like you're going to be taking some actions, fairly firm ones on Google later this year. The two perhaps key things for you that come out of that, improved search positions and better terms if you're doing any monetization through Google. I mean do you think you could see some benefits from that? Or would that not really affect your business? And then the two smaller questions. Just an update on how much of Direct is via agencies now. So business has moved on a bit. Just wondering what that is. And then just on that margin point you made about Direct being lower margin than Indirect, is that, on a comparable basis, looking at the gross media value? Or is that taking into account that you get paid net for your rev share?

Look, you've opened a can of worms.

I need to understand the question a little bit more, I think, on that, but yes.

I'll give you some time. I'll go through the first. So not a very good answer, but need to look at it, need to understand it, unsure what you've come across there. In terms of, I mean, these kind of announcements, there's obviously competition and other elements that suppliers or big brands that we work with, obviously, face all the time, would need to take a little bit more of a look to understand the impact in any kind of way on the business, if that's okay. I don't want to kind of shoot from the hip there. In terms of Direct via agencies, I'm going to say a very significant portion is -- but Dave may be able to add a little bit more color to that or...

Only from what we've talked internally, 40-60 levels, yes.

But significant agencies are big partners of ours, a lot of the big agencies. And in terms of the billings, we obviously tend to -- we tend to follow the client, what they want to do, but we would always encourage to be a partner rather than try and go around, or we want to be a partner in the ecosystem.

So is that 40%, agencies; 60%, Direct?

Other way around, yes.

60%, agency, okay. I'm sorry, that question -- that last question, just to step back. You mentioned that Direct had a higher margin -- sorry, low...

Indirect, yes, has a high margin, yes.

So which one does?

Indirect has a higher margin. Direct has a lower margin.

That's because you look at the revenue net, i.e., or because that is actually what it is on a comparable basis because you get rev share paid to you by Facebook, and then that's paid to you...

So I think in terms of Direct and indirect, I think that was our overall revenue split as opposed to specifically within Direct agency and clients, how they bill, but I've realized we're getting a little bit tangled up here. So to be clear, Dave is correct in terms of that split across there. And then even within the Direct line, you have clients who will book directly with us, and then you will have clients that will book via agency. So I thought you were referring to that.

No, its...

If I try and answer the question -- the question that Fiona asked was around the impact on margins of going more with Direct, i.e., via agencies or direct to brands. That naturally has a higher service cost, selling cost, go-to-market cost, resources internally. So it just naturally does that. The Indirect side of the business where we get the rev share through social or the money through advertising on our website has a more automated cost, and therefore, the margins are higher, yes. So it's just those basic dynamics of when you've got a direct approach with agencies or brands, you've got a selling cost or go-to-market cost, so the margins are naturally lower. In the shorter terms are even slightly lower because we're growing the bigger customers, and growing bigger customers cost you more to do. Yes, so it's really as simple as that. No other complexities in it.

[indiscernible]

Yes, yes, yes.

Will Larwood from Berenberg. Just one for me. Just obviously with the U.S. being sort of strategic focus, and Solly, having spent 2 months there and the senior hires that you're making. Just sort of what are the sort of early initiative structures that you need to put in place? Is it just sort of replicating what you've done in the U.K. and the U.S.? How much more work is there to get that sort of -- obviously, you're getting good client wins, but what else there needs to be done?

So I keep banging the drum on this one, but they have a fantastic product. So I attended an event that they held on Broadway, which is an in real-life event of one of their formats, which one of the founders actually creates and absolutely brilliant. 1,000 paying customers turning up and just demonstrating the deep engagement. So the Betches proposition is brilliant and has a number of facets that we actually don't have here in the U.K., which we're looking at how we can bring across as well as tapping into different audiences, et cetera. So they've got a great product, which we will continue to develop. In terms of the commercial setup, they are adding a number of different capabilities in there, whether that's account management, new creative resource to offer bigger campaigns and support. And how people are thinking about that measurement and effectiveness is a recent investment that they've made as well as really up-leveling the existing sales team and bringing more great people in. So those are some of the steps that they're taking. And we're taking to really bolster that. And because of the size and scale of the market and also because of the quality of the product, we're really encouraged by how that investment could, over time, pay off for us.

Alex Pollen from Berenberg. Just one on Mission Control, if I may. And it must be one of those sort of systems that the more you put into it, the more useful it gets to you and to your customers. Is there another angle in time to monetize that? Or is it always just going to be an internal tool for you to win new business and win bigger shares of wallets of your existing customer base? And maybe thirdly, is there any sort of anecdotal evidence you can give us on that?

It's a good question. It's not something we've even considered, really. I think in terms of exposure to our client base, they obviously benefit from the fact that we can offer them that insight from the tool. As I mentioned before, if you're paying GBP 1 for advertisement or much bigger numbers than that, of course, if you could generate the difference between 300,000 views and 3 million, that's 10x on the amount of frequency and impressions that you can receive across the audience base just through that insight that we have exclusively internally within our business. So the ways in which clients can benefit from Mission Control is through the intel and insight that we have. And we often apply that to the clients that we work with. Over time, that may be something that we look to evolve. It might be that if we've got the right clients and relationships in place that we do open up that may be to some of our clients, but we've not thought beyond our own benefit with our audience growth and also for the clients that we work with, but it's a good question. I'll ask it. Prompt me.

Bob Liao at Zeus. Just one quick question. You've made a very large number of hires over the last little while in different areas of the business. Wondering if you could just give us a flavor for where you're seeing the broader LBG platform needs further investment from those people and maybe some of the specific initiatives that you might have them working on in terms of business development going forward.

Yes. So one of the hires we've made is a lady called Victoria Bickle. So Victoria comes from a really incredible pedigree within the client sector. So being one of the MDs of one of the biggest agencies in the U.K. So Victoria joined us to be our MD of Client Solutions and comes with a wealth of contacts but back to that larger and bigger strategic relationships that we're looking to make. She is added bandwidth and support for our team on upskilling them and also integrating more clients into our setup. So that's just one, and we've made a number of hires within that space. The other is, of course, HR. Of course, we have to invest in that. Our people is what sits at the heart of our business. And therefore, Trudi, who, I think, one of the audience members knows from Auction Technology Group, she joined us recently to really bolster our investment into people generally across the business, both the people we have but also new people that we want to bring into the business. Neil is focused on M&A. So Neil, previous CFO over at JD. And then other areas that we're looking to invest in, of course, content is front and center and what we're doing in that space in different means and ways in which we can do that, whether that's bolstering our IP through original formats or looking at how we invest in that Gen Z audience base moving forward, growing across those platforms that typically skew towards those age demographics. So those are a number of areas which we're looking at and we're investing in. Of course, you've got the senior hires, but there's a lot of investment going on within the business, too, in those key areas.

Okay. Thank you, everyone, for attending and some lovely questions in there as well. And hopefully, see you around in the near term. Thank you.

Thank you.