Reach plc (RCH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Reach plc 2022 prelim results presentation. I'm delighted that joining me this morning is our new CFO, Darren Fisher; and our Editor-in-Chief, Lloyd Embley. I'm going to get straight into the strategy this morning before Darren takes us through the numbers and Lloyd's editorial update. I'll then talk briefly on the progress we're making on ESG before wrapping up so we can take your questions. There is no doubt that 2022 has been a challenging year for businesses everywhere. External factors, including the war in Ukraine and COVID have contributed to supply chain disruption and record levels of inflation. The volatile macroeconomic environment has a clear impact on both our cost base through the price of newsprint, but also on revenue with lower demand for advertising reflected in the reduction in open market yields. However, what is also clear is that despite these headwinds, our business is delivering on its data and digital evolutionary objectives. The customer value strategy is continuing to create the foundation for long-term sustainable and digitally led growth. Our consistent and relentless focus on a data-led approach and investment in digital capabilities continues to bring us closer every day to our online audience of 40 million. The majority of whom visit our sites monthly, enabling us to gather richer and deeper profiles of our customers' behavior. And we're now investing to grow that audience, leveraging our data playbook as we expand in the U.S. and build our appeal to a younger generation of customers who consume news in an entirely different way. More on that later. By focusing on data, our customers are receiving and responding more often to relevant content and an improving user experience. Our performance also clearly shows that increased customer engagement supports the growth of more effective and higher-yielding advertising products. We are a fundamentally different business than we were before starting this journey, more efficient, more strategically focused and more digitally driven. Teams focused in areas like data analytics, engineering and customer experience mean that over 40% of people at Reach work within the digital part of our business compared to only 12% at the start of 2019. We are enhancing the quality of our digital top line, data-driven revenue has grown strongly, while we are reducing the proportion of revenue that's driven by the open market where we are a price taker. So although the economic climate is challenging, we will continue to invest in the strategic areas which are leading to a more predictable and sustainable digital business. To support this and to address current macro uncertainty, we are continuing to evolve our organizational setup with an action plan to deliver further operating efficiencies now underway. The reliability of our cash flows and strength of our balance sheet will continue to provide a strong base over the long term. This ensures we can continue to build our digital capabilities and invest in value-enhancing assets when the time and price is right. It also means that we can support all our ongoing commitments to both pension holders and to investors for whom dividends remain important. Before we get started on the detail of how our digital strategy is delivering and reshaping our business, I wanted to spend a moment on our business model, the engine of which is our portfolio of over 130 brands. We often refer to being the U.K. and Ireland's largest commercial news publisher. That means that every month, close to 50 million people rely on our editorial teams to enlighten, empower and entertain. As a proudly mainstream publisher, we have plugged into over 3/4 of the U.K. and Ireland's online population. And it's that connection, those relationships that are the essence of the customer value strategy. By growing the depth of our data, we are developing those relationships, building the insights which shape our content and the ways we provide advertising to our brand partners. Our digital investment is, of course, underpinned by the enduring appeal of newspapers and the resilient cash flows they generate. So let's now turn to look at that engagement. Our digital audience has continued to grow. We've delivered strong page view growth of 4% while also growing page views per user, one of our key engagement indicators. Our registered customer base now stands at 12.7 million, which equates to 25% of our U.K. audience. And more significantly, a number of those customers now regularly active is growing. Our 4-week actives have grown by almost 30% to 5.6 million, almost double what it was 2 years ago. 2/3 of them, almost 4 million visited us at least once in the past week. Being a regular part of our customers' lives means interactions, insights and the signals they generate are more recent, more relevant and more valuable to our advertisers. Our focus remains on acquiring quality engaged customers that keep coming back to our brands. One of the ways in which we are doing that is through the development of more interactive digital content experiences. In 2022, we run thousands of these across our sites, including our tributes map in honor of the Queen, which had over 60,000 responses and our World Cup poles and predictions, which drew in a similar amount. These are helping us gather more signals and insights through both inferred and declared behaviors, which enrich customer profiles and grow the understanding of our audience. We're also seeing a higher level of retention for customers acquired in this way as opposed to acquisition via the likes of Facebook or Instagram, with around 80% of customers still active after 30 days compared to less than 60% when acquired through search. This contributes to a healthy customer base, which is engaged and active. I mentioned earlier, the growing number of customers who are active on our sites every month. What's pleasing, as you can see from the chart is that this growth has been consistently driven by a retained cohort, which is more than 75% of our active customer base. These are customers who stay with us month after month consuming our content and they're consuming more of it with registered page views now over 100 million per month, up by more than 70% for the year. As I think I've mentioned now, data is central to our strategy. And while registered customers are more engaged and generally more contactable, we are not reliant on the registration process to generate this data. This is an important point to note. The Reach ID is a foundation for a profile, and Mantis gives us behavioral and contextual insights. We know whether customers enjoy reading about new film releases, women's fashion on Newcastle United regardless of whether they are registered. That drives the insights which shape our content and support more effective advertising with a click-through rate and PLUS led campaigns up to 50% higher than campaigns without data. As I mentioned earlier, we are the U.K.'s largest commercial news publisher with a digital audience of 40 million per month, with around 30 million of them consenting to data collection, that's a large pool of signals and insights fueling the diversification of our digital revenue. And while the macro impact in consumer demand is a headwind for revenue overall, it's clear that the strategy is working. Total revenue driven by data-related advertising grew during the year by 56%. We've continued to grow revenue from our PLUS products with behavioral and geo data from postcodes improving advertisers' ability to reach the right customers. During the recent period of rail strikes, for example, we worked with several of the major rail operators who displayed ads for bus services, but only to people living in areas affected by the strikes. We've also been working with a national furniture chain who wanted to target customers, but only those living within a few miles of a showroom. PLUS data targets the right users, is transactable without third-party cookies and drives consistently better performance for our advertisers. The next stage of the development is about automating the data to build scale by transacting programmatically, which I'll come to in a moment. As well as using data to differentiate our ad supply, we're also growing the revenues we generate through affiliates, partnerships and e-commerce, all of which are less dependent on direct customer volumes. Our commercial partnerships team operate as category specialists working directly with clients across our network to create innovative often longer-term campaigns with the likes of Imagine Cruising, Jumpman Gaming and Shell. We've been developing our e-commerce capabilities. Our OK! Magazine subscriptions business, while relatively new, has grown rapidly with 70,000 subscribers and sales of over 200,000 limited edition celebrity beauty boxes since it started. Our data focus and broader development of CRM as part of the customer value strategy is playing a critical part as we look to build this revenue stream further. At our interims in July, I spoke about our increased use of content recommendation and next action tools to increase dwell time and engagement using machine learning, which identifies data points like category, concept and sentiment. We are serving customers with content, which is increasingly tailored to their interests. Our editorial and commercial teams have continued to develop the revenue we generate from our now 600 strong portfolio of newsletters. To give you an example, 66,000 customers are registered to receive information from the daily record. 71,000 subscribed to the Money Saving Club and 141,000 for the Manchester United Newsletter. All in, our newsletters are now generating around 60 million page views a month alone. It's also pleasing to see continued revenue momentum from In Your Area with the team successfully offsetting the customer churn we've seen since COVID, a time when interest in community news was understandably inflated. The team have been evolving their editorial focus with a greater emphasis on What's On and Things to Do, which is also unlocking opportunities for more commercial partnerships. This included the hugely successful activation with the National Trust, which saw In Your Area customers take up over 40,000 free passes to local National Trust properties and attractions. With an average order value up by over 50% and plans underway to introduce further commercial functionality, the award-winning home of local news, information and community has a strong foundation for growth going forward. Direct campaigns underpinned by data are generating a higher performance for advertisers and a higher value for us. The growth we've seen to date has been mostly human-led driven by our sales teams who physically pitched to new clients and upsell to existing ones. My commercial team often say we need to be awake to make money with our human-led data resource. Our aim is to generate revenue while we sleep. And to do this, our customer data needs to operate at scale. As a scaled publisher with hundreds of millions of ad impressions daily, the greatest opportunity to do that is by selling the data programmatically. The vast majority of our digital ad space is currently sold via auction through supply side platforms and collectively referred to as the open market. Open market auctions are light touch and facilitate mass supply and demand. What they don't do is enable publishers to differentiate. With so much supply available at varying degrees of quality, it's also difficult for advertisers to secure the performance we're looking for. To scale the return on our data, we need to make it available in a more automated way. Curated marketplaces, a development we're leading on from a publisher perspective, will enable us to do that, but this is not exclusively publisher led, more bespoke marketplaces mean that both publishers and advertisers benefit from greater control. We can leverage our first-party data and negotiate a better price, while advertisers can target customers, guarantee whether ads will sit and generate a better return on their investment. This is about trusted ads placed within trusted content, served by trusted publishers on behalf of trusted brands. We are working closely with a broad range of tech businesses and agencies to develop this opportunity, one of which is Omnicom's OMG marketplace. They predefine the publishers they want the supply to come from and choose the audiences they want to target, which includes food and drink, shopping, entertainment and automotive amongst others. For curated marketplaces to achieve scale, advertiser take-up is key, but momentum is growing. With the loss of the third-party cookie on the way, buyers are looking for alternative targeting solutions. We are in the driving seat with an evolving route to selling our data on a one to many as opposed to a one-to-one basis. This opportunity, however, is about more than participation as a publisher. At our interim results in July, I spoke about our continued development of Mantis beyond its original purpose as a brand safety tool. Mantis goes further than basic behavioral data by identifying the sentiment and emotion and content, which enables powerful contextual targeting for advertisers. This means we are uniquely positioned to partner with the tech platforms to create rather than just participate in curated marketplaces. We will operate as both a publisher but also as the data provider earning a fee accordingly. Mantis will scale and categorize the content of every article across all participating publishers, which means that advertisers can target customers across multiple brands and titles and not just our own. We're in the early stages of this, but are already working with Xandr, the data and analytics subsidiary of Microsoft to create marketplaces for gifting, I'm a Celebrity, travel and online shopping. Our success to date in evolving Mantis demonstrates our growing ad tech expertise as we develop our own IP and look to grow revenue by licensing our data. Another exciting avenue for growth is our U.S. expansion, which is now well underway. As you can see, with a total digital audience and page views around 5x bigger than the U.K. and with a much larger and faster growing advertising market, the U.S. provides a significant opportunity for the natural expansion of our existing digital business. As the U.K.'s largest commercial publisher of news and sport, we already have a global leadership of 50 million outside of the U.K. and Ireland, with around 25 million in the U.S., it's our second largest market despite little editorial resource to date and without the application of our customer value playbook. While we reach around 3/4 of the total digital population of the United Kingdom, we are at less than 10% in the U.S. With our U.K.-based competitors shown here in the slide, demonstrating the size of the volume upside. So there's a clear opportunity for growth as we increase our editorial coverage of the market and apply a more U.S.-focused lens to the U.K. stories, which already resonate with U.S. audiences. In addition to increasing our reach, however, is a significant opportunity to increase engagement, which is where the application of the customer value playbook really comes to the fore. The U.S. market for registered or subscriptions-based news is more developed, which provides an opportunity to leverage our growing strength in targeted newsletters. More significantly, the page views per user in the U.S. is 6x lower than the U.K., so there is a clear upside from applying behavioral and contextual data to drive engagement. We have identified clear gaps in the U.S. market for our main national brands to target both from a political and content perspective. The Express is currently our largest brand in the U.S. and will utilize its center right positioning while also focusing on the strong coverage of the Royals and broad sports coverage. The Mirror already reaches around 10 million people in the U.S. and leverage strengths in breaking news, celebrity and a personality-driven approach to sport while also building on a strong agenda setting reputation around social issues. The Irish Star, which launched just 3 weeks ago is our first large-scale dotcom brand, and we will feature news and issues in cities with a significant Irish diaspora with an initial focus on New York and Boston. The strong U.S. following of Premier League Football also creates an opportunity within our regional portfolio with MEN, Liverpool Echo and our Football London site, all featuring heavily in our expansion plans. We look forward to updating you further on the U.S. as the year progresses. The evidence is clear that the way we consume news is changing. With the younger generation now preferring social media is the main route to accessing news content. Our half year results in July, I spoke about the work we've been doing to grow our relevance with a younger audience looking at short-form video as we look to attract the next generation of talented journalists. Up until now, content creators, multitalented individuals who often write, present and edit their own content. We're most likely to work for themselves as influencers. With our growing focus on the social media generation, we are now bringing those people to Reach and making the most of their expertise. So towards the end of the year, we launched Curiously, our new social first video-focused brand. Curiously will be empathetic and nonpolitical, covering a broad range of subjects in a more distinctive and relevant way for 16 to 34 year olds. We're just in early stages of monetizing views through the key social platforms, but it's an exciting new development for Reach, which, hopefully, this short video will give you a flavor of. [Presentation]

While digital and data capabilities are key to future growth, it's print that makes strategic investment possible. Our printed titles still reached over 11 million people. That's 1 in 5 adults in the U.K. reading a Reach title every month. Print remains a large-scale resilient business. Cover prices are still relatively low, with newspapers a strongly habitual purchase as we've seen from the strong recovery in volumes post COVID and the steady predictable trends in circulation revenue. We have a long history of actively managing volume decline with efficiencies this year coming from the optimization of distribution rates and changes to both pagination and supply levels with little to no impact on availability. But there's always more we can do with better energy sourcing, the diversification of newsprint supply and improved procurement of ink and plates, all contributing to the savings we'll make in 2023. Our expertise in evolving the print business, ensuring editorial integrity at lowest cost means print remains a reliable business with multiple years of cash generation to come. Let me now hand you over to Darren to take us through the key elements of our 2022 financial performance. Darren?

Good morning, everyone. Let me start by saying how delighted I am to be joining you this morning and, of course, how excited I am to be joining Jim and the team here at Reach. Reach is a fantastic business with a strong heritage, a predictable and resilient print business and growing digital audience. I believe we have the right strategy in place to leverage those strengths and build a sustainable and growing business for the long term. In the more immediate term, we know 2022 has been a difficult year for many businesses, both from a cost perspective, with sustained record inflation and from a revenue perspective with reducing consumer demand. At the headline level, our financial results reflect that with the price of newsprint heavily affected by energy prices and the falling demand for advertising, which is being felt across the sector. However, throughout this period, we are focused on controlling the controllables. Tightly managing our cost base, continuing to evolve our operating model as part of protecting investment in our digital growth strategy. Revenue of GBP 601 million was down 2.3%, reflecting the slowdown in digital growth and accelerated rate of print advertising decline as the year progressed. Operating costs of GBP 498 million were higher by 5.3%, driven almost entirely by a 40% increase in the cost of newsprint, our biggest single input cost after labor. Lower adjusted operating profit of GBP 40 million is reflected in retained net cash, which ended the year at GBP 25 million. Operating cash flow for the year also includes a working capital outflow of GBP 20 million, largely related to our hedging of newsprint costs, which we don't expect to repeat in 2023. Finally, a full year dividend of 7.34p includes a proposed final dividend of 4.46p, which the board are proposing to hold flat. This is in recognition of the current macroeconomic challenges, which affected performance during 2022. Turning to the main drivers of revenue. Total print revenue has remained resilient and predictable, down 3.5%, which is only marginally lower than the 3% decline we saw in 2021 following the COVID affected comps of 2020 when print declined almost 20%. Circulation, which is now around 70% of print overall, was down only 1.7% for the year. Growth of almost 2% in the second half was supported by additional cover price increases taken across the key national titles. Advertising revenue declined by a little under 16%, which is broadly in line with newspaper volumes for the year, which are a key driver. This decline was more pronounced in half 2, with both the impact of the Queen's death in September and lower-than-expected seasonal advertising spend around Black Friday and Christmas during the final 2 months of the year. Elsewhere within the Print business, we saw strong growth in third-party printing, which has benefited from the pass-through of higher input costs on newsprint. Other print revenues were also up, mainly during the first half when comping against the period when base sport and events were still affected by COVID restrictions. Digital revenue grew by 1% with a drag from macro-driven softness in advertising demand, increasingly invisible during half 2, which was down 2.7%. As I've already mentioned, profit for the year was significantly impacted by inflation, which we've called out separately on the chart here. At a shade under GBP 40 million, this is significantly higher than we would see in a typical year. We worked across the course of the year to counter higher input costs as well as the reductions in print, supply and pagination that Jim just mentioned, we made further process improvements in editorial and streamlined the setup of commercial with greater alignment across national and regional teams. All of this contributed to ongoing efficiencies and supporting continued investment in the development of the digital business. Inflation has not been the only macro-driven factor visible in our performance in 2022. We spoke at our interims and again in January about the market-wide impact of reduced advertiser demand. The easiest way to illustrate that is by looking at the open market yield. Effectively, the price per thousand ads that we have paid in the open market, which affects around 40% of our total volume. Yield for the year was down around 1/3 with a 40% decline during half 2. A disappointing Black Friday and Christmas trading period is also reflected in the chart, with Q4 failing to achieve the seasonal uplift seen in preceding years. Using open market yield as a reliable proxy for advertising demand in general, it's clearly the extent to which weakening macro conditions impacted our digital revenue, particularly from Q2 onwards. In that contrast, revenue from data-driven products, the focus of the customer value strategy was up strongly by 56% for the year, whereas ad volumes sold in the open market allows little differentiation. Revenue driven by PLUS, In Your Area and newsletters, for example, is supported by customer data, which is driving a better performance for advertisers and a higher return for us. Data-driven revenue is now over 30% of digital in total, up from just over 20% last year. As I mentioned earlier, print revenues have continued to be robust, driven in the main by circulation, which is just under 70% of total print revenue and is the foundation for our strong cash flows. Circulation for the year was up by only [ GBP 5 million ] benefiting from additional cover price increases in the second half of the year. We expect a continued benefit from CPIs during the first half of 2023 as those increases annualized. While it's clear from the chart, the volume declines moved ahead in the latter part of the year, that response was as expected. Although our strategy is based around digital data, we have a significant amount of data, which supports Print 2, with analytics from dunnhumby, ABC circulation numbers and their own historical insights, which will help inform pricing decisions and likely volume impacts. Operating costs were up by GBP 25 million or 5%, which, as I mentioned earlier, was effectively all driven by extraordinary newsprint cost inflation, up by around 40% or 60% on a like-for-like volume basis. This has been driven by the increased demand for packaging post COVID, reduced availability of recycled fiber, rising distribution costs and most notably by record energy price deflation with paper and pulp production accounting for around 5% of global industrial energy consumption. Energy prices are now settling back to pre-wall levels. So hopefully seeing more normal demand and supply dynamics return to the market with newsprint prices now leveling off and expected to start falling. From a risk perspective, we look closely at our supply chain and procurement processes over the past 6 months. Diversifying supply to strengthen sustainability and increasing our inventories to support a position that leaves us materially hedged for the first half of the year. Turning to cash now. EBITDA to operating cash flow conversion at 51% was lower than we've seen in recent years. The key driver of this was an outflow of working capital compared to a similar sized inflow in 2021, with the latter driven by an in-year commercial deal, where upfront income must be accounted for over multiple years. In contrast, the outflow this year has been driven by an increase in inventories as part of our hedging strategy on newsprint. On average, we forecast a neutral working capital position and expect that to be the case this year. Payments for historical legal issues were at a level similar to the last couple of years, with pension funding in line with the level agreed in the last triennial review. We paid the penultimate deferred payment for 2018's acquisition of the Express and Star with a final payment of GBP 7 million, they're also having been paid in February just gone. During the year, we drew down a small amount from our revolving credit facility that's covered for intra-month movements in payment timings, though this remained unused. As a reminder, our RCF totals GBP 120 million with a facility duration extended during the year and now out to November 2026. Retained cash at the year-end stood at GBP 40 million. Although macro factors are holding back business performance in the immediate term, the fundamental principles of our capital allocation approach are unchanged. The resilience and longevity of print revenues, supported by predictable volumes and relate pricing power are the foundation of strong and sustainable cash generation. We're a business that understands how to drive organizational efficiencies. We've had many years of doing it. And we are further to go with our continued transformation towards a digitally focused operating model, enabling durable changes in our operating cost base. The success of the customer value strategy gives us the confidence to prioritize organic investment while also continuing to recognize the importance of growing dividends for shareholders and meeting the funding obligations of our pension schemes. As regards to 2019 triennial review, we now have agreed funding formally. We're in principle for all but one of the schemes. We continue to actively engage with the pensions regulator to agree funding for the remaining scheme and in the meantime, continue to make payments in line with the existing contribution schedule. Before I hand over to Lloyd, a few words on trading and outlook. The current trading environment continues to be challenging, particularly for the advertising market, which you can see here in numbers of January and February. This, however, is in line with our expectations, given our exit rate in December and strong prior year comparatives during the first quarter, which ease as we move through the year. From a cost perspective, we're a business that's evolving, we are committed to ensuring a fit for purpose and efficient operating model, while at the same time supporting investment around our digital growth initiatives. With changes already underway, we're confident that savings from our cost action plan will enable us to deliver an overall like-for-like reduction of between 5% and 6% in our operating costs for 2023. Operating profit for the year is in line with the current market consensus with a greater half 2 weighting for normal given improving comps and the phasing of savings in the cost reduction plan. Our next schedule update on trading will be on May 3 at the same time as our AGM. Thank you all for listening. I'll now hand over to Lloyd.

Thank you, Darren. A year of 3 prime ministers, 2 Monarchs and war in Europe certainly kept journalists across the Reach portfolio busy throughout 2022. Throwing a cost of living crisis, a Men's World Cup even without that elusive win and a triumphant Women's EURO for good measure, and things became busier still. But breaking news, covering history and holding power to account are all part of our DNA. Jim and Darren have spoken about the macro headwinds and how we have been tackling them as we continue to develop and evolve our customer value strategy. I'd like to take this opportunity to focus on our brilliant wide-ranging proudly mainstream journalism. Now journalism comes in many shapes and sizes, but it doesn't matter if it's politics or investigations, fashion or football, celebrity chats or analytical op-eds, it's all the work of journalists who live for what they do. It is their passion, it is their purpose. Holding power to account comes in different gauges too, and I am proud to be able to highlight some outstanding examples today. The Daily Mirror's Partygate expose ACE started in 2021, but it dominated much of last year, too, leading to Boris Johnson becoming the first sitting Prime Minister to be fined by the police and ultimately, to his resignation. He is now, of course, the subject of a standard investigation with the focus shifting away from what happened to our legal gathering, suitcases of wine, a DJ and a Karaoke machine to who knew what and when. The Mirror's powerful and determined journalism has rightly dominated the press and journalism award season, picking up a stream of industry awards. The fall of Mr. Johnson led to the rise albeit brief of the year's second Prime Minister and a piece of scaling political satire by The Daily Star, which captured the imagination of the country. The battle of survival between the stars Lizzie Lettuce and Prime Minister Liz Truss was tabloid journalism at its very best. The live stream of the ultimately Victoria's lettuce was viewed more than 5.2 million times. For several weeks, it dominated the national conversation. It was repeatedly referenced at PMQs and on news bulletins both here and across the globe. Lizzie even has her own very comprehensive Wikipedia page. It was in all senses, a little gem of an idea. 2022 was dominated by 2 other major news events, Putin's invasion of Ukraine and, of course, the passing of the Queen. After 70 years on the throne, the death of Elizabeth II was a moment in history like no other. Meticulous cross-departmental planning meant that Reach titles covered all aspects of her passing, the period of national mourning and the state funeral superbly. With unique events such as this, you only get one chance to get it right. And across the 10 days of mourning, we saw class-leading performances in circulation with more than 900,000 extra papers and magazines bought by people with the first to read our take on history. The state funeral also drove our single biggest traffic day in history with 71.7 million page views. The role of TV and wall coverage cannot be underestimated, but revealing the horrific toll of conflict through the eyes of real people on the ground and the use of powerful still photography remains compelling. We sent teams into Ukraine and to its borders with Poland and Slovakia with a particular focus on shining a light on the human stories behind the bombs and guns. Sometimes standing up for readers can involve heartbreaking and traumatic stories, and none more so than the case of Awaab Ishak in Manchester. Awaab was the 2-year-old boy who died from a respiratory condition caused by extensive mold in the rented flat where he lived. The tragedy made national headlines and has resulted in a change to the law announced recently by Michael Gove. But this would never have happened without the Manchester Evening News which broke the original story and remained relentless in the pursuit of a change in social housing protections. Awaab's Law is another example of how Reach titles help to shape and change the law to improve and even save the lives of ordinary people. On the back of recent victories and campaigns for cystic fibrosis sufferers and the rights of domestic abuse victims, the Daily Express on its fight to protect the triple lock for pensioners after more than 325,000 people signed its petition. The Express also fought for Zach's Law to be included in the Online Safety Bill named after Zach Eagling, an 8-year-old schoolboy with epilepsy who was targeted during a fundraising initiative by malicious flashing social media posts designed to trigger a seizure. The new legislation will mean that Internet trolls convicted of this kind of online abuse could face up to 5 years behind bars. In Scotland, the daily record has a proud history of campaigning journalism. With its powerful Our Kids, Our Future campaign, the paper has also been highlighting issues with online safety, particularly the horrendous rise in youth violence fueled by video content on social media. The record is demanding more funds and resources for kids in Scotland's communities and action from social media giants to prevent these videos being shared. The shooting of 9-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel shocked the nation. And the Liverpool Echo captured the mood of the city and stood up for the local community with its 'Whose Side Are You On?' campaign using the power of the brand's voice to urge anyone with information to help catch her killers. Now many of the subjects I have spoken to you about today are, by their nature, serious campaigning important stories. This type of content plays a huge role in our newsrooms. But as I said at the start, we are proud of our mainstream agenda. Our purpose is to enlighten, empower and entertain people everywhere through our brilliant journalism. And we do this not just in politics and campaigning, but with superb showbiz and celebrity coverage with real-life features with compelling crime coverage and expose ACE with football, fighting and Formula 1. And with projects such as the Daily Mirror's Disabled Britain: Doing It For Ourselves series and the Daily Express's Environmental Investigation into the horrors of waste plastics. I am excited that we are taking our brand of journalism to new areas with our expansion into the huge U.S. market and our focus on younger demographics through our Curiously project, and I'm very encouraged by the early signs. As the largest commercial news publisher in the U.K., we are a powerhouse, but we know we need to continue to evolve and innovate as we strive to give people more of the content they want to read, whether that is in the specific areas of interest or relevance or by telling them something they didn't know already by being their source for breaking news. I have said this before, but I repeat it with confidence. We are the best structured, most agile commercial news organization in the country and in a highly competitive industry, where most of the players have very different ownership structures and agendas. We do more than compete. We stand out. We shine bright. Thank you.

Before I wrap up and we open up for your questions, I wanted to touch on our work around responsibility and sustainability. As a publisher of news, sports and entertainment that people can trust, we've always understood our responsibility to society and communities. Our purpose to enlighten, empower and entertain gives us a privileged position to use our editorial voice to champion good causes, hold authority to account and campaign on issues that matter to our audiences. Our new responsible business framework will help articulate our approach to environmental, social and governance issues more formally, making it easier to communicate all the great work we're doing while tracking our progress as a responsible business now and in the future. From a climate perspective, we're now reporting against TCFD disclosures have made significant progress on our climate strategy and have begun a review of Scope 3 emissions as part of our journey to net zero. We've continued building a culture where people can thrive, becoming more representative of society and their audiences, both as a team, adding diversity targets at board and executive level and through our journalism. Our belonging project is a good example as it challenges our local brands to create content more relevant to communities that have so far been underserved. We continue to see this progress recognized by the industry and by trusted external benchmarks. This year, we have moved up to 29 in the company's list of inclusive top 50 U.K. employers and earned a spot in the benchmark social mobility ranking. We have also recently earned a place on the Sustainalytics top-rated ESG companies list. We expect the current challenging economic environment to continue during 2023. But although inflation and reduced market demand for advertising is holding back our performance in the short term, consistent and significant strategic progress is creating a foundation for sustainable long-term growth. A growing pool of proprietary first-party customer data lies at the heart of this. It is driving increased customer engagement, more effective performance for advertisers and a growing percentage of higher-yielding digital revenue, which is less reliant on the open market. We are not standing still and waiting for change to happen to us. We are creating the change, evolving our emerging strategy in an evolving market. Our growing capability as a developer and owner of innovative data technology gives us a competitive advantage, particularly as brands and agencies seek alternative advertising solutions to the challenges of the open market and eventual phasing out of third-party cookies. We have taken decisive cost actions to help mitigate macro headwinds and to ensure that we can continue to develop investing in areas that support digital expansion and strengthen us as a business for the longer term. While the external trading environment may not be conducive to growth in the short term, we are committed to strengthening and diversifying our digital offer, ensuring that we are well positioned to grow as the macro environment improves. Thank you all for listening and your continued interest in our business. We don't take it for granted. I would now like to hand you over to our operator, who will coordinate this morning's Q&A. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] And the question comes from the line of Nick Dempsey from Barclays.

Nick Dempsey here from Barclays. Yes. So I have 3 questions, please. So the first one, do you think that the drop in open market yields for digital advertising is purely a function of macro conditions in 2022? Or is there something structural going on here with advertising -- advertisers moving money permanently away from programmatic towards directly sold as they worry about targeting? Second question, on circulation, I think your chart shows about minus 15% on volume over several years. When I look at the January ABCs, looks more like 20% down across your title, maybe 19%. Is there something unusual about January '23 or can we now expect to see a decline more like 20% going forward? And is it sustainable to keep on putting through price increases at the sort of heavy rates for the last couple of years? Or should we expect circulation revenues to start to decline more mid-single digit or worse going forward? And the third question, just on the triennial review. I wonder if you could give us a bit more of an update on those discussions. I think you said it was with one remaining pension fund. And because those negotiations have taken a quite a while quite long time, does that mean that the negotiations for the 2022 triennial review will be similarly delayed?

It's Jim here. Good to hear from you. I'll just -- I'll take those questions and Darren can jump in if I left any gaps. On the drop in OMP yields, we have seen that basically been consistent since the end of March last year, which is the start of the Ukraine war, coupled with a reduction in consumer confidence. So in the main, it is a wider macro impact. And that's been consistent for the last 9 periods of last year. Will that mean that advertisers will look for more direct advertising? Well, the look for advertising, which is far more effective, which is why we have our data-led business. And it's no surprise that data is growing, 56% growth year-on-year, although it did slow down and normalize in H2. But again, that's the function of the wider market. So your premise is right. There will be a move toward effective higher click-through rates, which is why we started the customer value strategy. Overall, though, open market is important because it's still a significant part of all of our publishers business, and it's important that we have alternatives. On the ABCs, we've had quite a steady decline in volume net post-COVID. And if you look at the ABCs as an average, you really have to look at title by title. The days of the Mirror competing with the Sun are over. We have very, very fixed audiences and loyal leadership. So we will look at the overall average figure. But we look at the overall decline. Our decline has been mid to high teens. The important thing about circulation is a consistency in the decline rate. You spoke about CPI and will that -- I think what you meant from it was, will that accelerate decline rates. We haven't really seen a significant consequential impact of CPI in relation to volume. So post, obviously the new normal, which was essentially COVID, we've seen a steady decline rate. And the cover price increases that we've added, have enormous significant consequential impact on that. With regard to the triennial review, obviously, we still have to complete 2019. We're at the process now of gathering the data for the next triennial review, which we are working with the regulator and the pension schemes with. So,there's nothing really more to update on that. Darren, do you want to add anything to that?

No, not.

That answer your questions, Nick?

Yes, got it.

And the next question comes from the line of Gareth Davies from Numis.

2 questions from me. The first, you've held your GBP 95 million of kind of consensus operating profit for the year. But within the presentation, you're clearly outlining quite significant kind of growth initiatives in the U.S. and Curiously. I'm just wondering, can you give any flavor for the scale of the investment that's going into those 2 opportunities? And what's the kind of time line in terms of your sort of aspiration for a return on the investment? And then secondly, interesting chart around curated programmatic. A couple of questions on that, really. Can you confirm that you're getting any benefit from that currently? Or is that something kind of forward-looking. If you have any kind of feel for what the yield differential is between a curated programmatic versus open market campaign? And any flavor for what proportion of your sort of current open market inventory could be shifted across to that curated program?

Gareth, I'll take those. On the U.S. and Curiously, we have -- it's a significant investment, actually. Rather I'm giving you absolute details on the numbers. What I will say, by the end of this year, we're expecting to have roughly probably at least 100 journalists on the ground in New York. That's a significant operation. Why are we doing that? We are under index with regard to our U.S. traffic compared to our competitive publisher set. So we are high single digits percent of our overall traffic from the U.S. compared to high 20s from our other publishers. You might then say to yourself, why didn't do this earlier. The reason why we didn't is because we are looking for a similar yield response to the customer value strategy. That's now been the third year of our customer value strategy we're seeing, on average, 5% to 6% the yield, as you do from normal open marketplace. Why would you roll out into the U.S. into a new market, if you cannot apply a successful playbook, that's why 2023 is the right time to do it. By the end of this year, we expect to be getting significant traffic from the U.S., our business plan, internal business plan that we have. We're expecting that to rise into the double low digits. That will probably come through in H2. And at that point, we'll probably then start applying some of our CBS playbook. But up until that point, we'll be using the open market programmatic yield that we do in the U.K. for our non-data-led inventory. With regard to curated early days. So the data-led strategy is emergent. So these opportunities arise where we think publishers and advertisers and agencies can work better together. It is clear that the agencies have created marketplaces for the brands that they represent. And because of Mantis, we have the ability to create curated marketplace on behalf of Reach. So it's just early days in that. We have a couple of clients who are using it. And -- but it's not enough yet to show any significant uplift, but we're expecting at the time we get to H2, more and more clients will see the benefit of it. The important point to note in the curated marketplaces for Mantis is that I believe we are the only publisher who has its own bespoke IP and curated marketplaces where we use data-led information to drive higher click-through rates that in itself is a significant value to us.

[Operator Instructions] And the next question comes from the line of Johnathan Barrett from Panmure.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you, John.

Just following up on Gareth's question on the U.S. I wondered if you could perhaps scope out how we should be looking at revenues and costs in that business perhaps a little bit further out. I don't know if there's some sort of metrics you can give us on what level of investment is now going into that market and when you would expect to see some tangible form of revenues that you'd want to split out for us. That's the first question. Do you want to tackle that one first?

Johnathan, we're not giving any guidance on the revenues that we'll specifically get from the U.S. I think the important thing to bear in mind is that if you're putting 100 heads in with its own office space and a programmatic ability, which will -- and actually will be serviced from the U.K. The commercial teams will be moving in, in H2. I think that's when we can maybe start talking about the revenues that we'll deliver. With regard to the cost investment, again, not given specific heads because obviously, these are journalists are putting in there a higher competitive environment, and we're not really sharing that. But essentially, if you get 5% to 6% cost reduction overall in the group, you can actually -- you can probably get an idea of some significant investments going into our U.S. footprint, but we're not going to specifically say how much that is.

Okay. And then just sort of a follow-up, I think, to Nick's earlier question to a degree. I just wondered if you could walk us through your experience of the yield change in upper and the lower segments based upon what you've seen over the last year. So just a straightforward comparison of what the trends have been one versus the other, just to help contextualize the benefit you're getting in the upper ends, please?

Yes. So without given the yield values, if you take -- we spoke last year about PLUS products. The PLUS products are essentially you have explicit data on postcode, e-mail address and you know who the individual is because they've registered. In the main, that's delivering between 8% and 9%, the yield of the open market, 8x the yield of the open market. So if you take, I don't know, whether it be 14p, 13p, 24p, if we know the name of the individual customer, they make 8 to 9x that. Now data led is not all explicit knowledge of the customer. Some of it is behavioral data. Some of it is essentially a time spent on page. But we might not know the postcode of an e-mail address. That dropped that multiple, maybe down to 3 or 4. And that's over and above the 12.7 million. And those are all of our data revenues. Remember, data revenues are not just postcode e-mail address, it's behavioral information. If you take the average of that number, Johnathan, that's why we got the 5 to 6x the yields positive differential compared to the open market, which is why -- which is the reason why we did the strategy and why we continue to acquire additional customers. To give you an idea of whether or not it's been successful and what KPI to look for, it is the amount either of those customers who are active within a 28-day period or the amount of behavioral data we pick up during Mantis, that's why we say we'll get to 5.7 million to 5.8 million active customers every month.

And are you able to tell us what that multiple, how that multiple has changed over the last year with any precision or is it too difficult because the underlying mix is to get at that?

I mean there's so many variables in there. I mean so you get 56%, you get 12.7 million registrations, it's quite hard to be specific, Johnathan, which is why we [ give this ].

[Operator Instructions] And the question comes from the line of Nick Dempsey from Barclays.

Yes. It's Nick Dempsey here from Barclays again. Just a quick one on generative AI. Can you talk us through your thinking? I know it's something that's kind of popped up in the last few months and everyone's thinking their way through it. Can you talk about your thinking about how that could affect one, the efficiency with which you can create content and 2, the extent to which AI-generated content can prove a competitive threat to you in terms of eyeballs.

Yes. It's a good question, Nick. Just before I answer this question, I just want to say, AI initiative we started and is led by journalists and editorial. So this was not a lab innovative lab or corporate. This came through the business by an editorial function. And I think that's really important because there are wider ethical questions of the AI and the production of journalism, which is beyond this call, but I said important function to note. With regard to efficiency, AI allows us to basically produce content, which our readers are interested in and allows us to then redeploy journalistic resource into either breaking news or investigative stuff or rain about sport, et cetera. To give you an example of that, we've produced our first free AI-generated articles based around Newport, 7 things to do in Newport, best cafes in Newport, quite attractive content, quite sticky, bringing us a lot of page view traffic. If you go into In Your Area and search for on the Reach site, you'll see it very well written. That was written by a bot. 2 important things to note, that information in the board received was provided by a journalist and whether or not that was published was decided upon by the editors. So that's a very efficient way. And we're looking at the page views and the yield that, that drives at the moment as we speak, Nick. The other one is about whether or not it's going to provide competition. I think we can work hand in hand with the great journalism, these communities that we do in the nationals. The other main, we're here to deliver content, which is interesting. We deliver content about traffic. We deliver content about weather. We deliver content about What's On. AI can help us produce more of that and it's relevant to our readers that it allows our journalists to focus on other stuff that the editors may think is important. Does that answer your question?

There are no further questions, and I would like to hand the conference over to our speaker, Jim Mullen for closing remarks.

I would just like to thank everyone for the continued interest in our business. And also just to leave you with -- based on the 3 messages. We are delivering upon what we can control. One is the print business, which generates the cash, which funds our transformation. We've been doing it for decades, and we do it well. The second one is, obviously, the macro headwinds mean that we need to deliver efficiency drives. Those who have been following our business know that we do that well, and we're doing that again. And secondly, our customer value strategy we started 3 years ago about the delivery of data-led revenues to deliver higher yields is actually coming through as we expected to do when we kicked off the strategy. All of the macro environment, which is our weather control, we basically just manage our business accordingly. But when we do get to a more benign environment, then we know that Reach will be a more competitive place to deal with that. Thanks again.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.