In the room with me or online, or even watching on playback, welcome to our first half results presentation. I'm Zaid Al-Qassab, CEO of M&C Saatchi Group. Although today's focused on the numbers, obviously, I think it's important to be grounded in what it is we do as a business and we do for clients. I hope that video gave you a little insight. You'll be able to see here on this slide some of our recent work, award-winning work for Lego. I'll show you more of that right at the end. A new ad for the Fiat Panda. The format of this morning is that I'll take you through top-line results before handing over to Simon Fuller, who's our Group Chief Financial Officer, for more of the detail. I'll talk about our strategy before we take questions.
After a solid quarter one, we were not immune to the geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty in quarter two, particularly the ambiguity on tariffs, which led to client caution and project delays. Excluding Australia, net revenue was almost flat, down just 0.7%, which, given the macro environment, we believe was a solid result. Australia, however, was a particularly poor performer with macro headwinds causing client budget reductions, plus the flow-through of some prior year client losses contributing to a 27% net revenue decline in that region, bringing the total company net revenue to a like-for-like reduction of 5.1% in the first half. We took responsive action to correct the margin in Australia, restructuring the local teams, hiring new leadership, closing the loss-making Bohemia Media brand, and making significant property savings. In order to protect margins in a changeable environment, we accelerated our transformation program.
The combined effects of that, plus the interventions in Australia, result in a total annualized saving for 2025 of £12 million. As a result, we're targeting 2025 profit in line with prior year, despite that challenging environment. The first half results reflect that picture, with revenue flat, excluding Australia, and operational resilience in evidence. Despite headwinds, outside Australia, we chose to continue to invest in our strategic plan for growth, which led to a first-half operating profit decline of 36%, like for like. Net cash was healthy, despite dividends, put options, bonus payments, and M&A all taking place in this period, with an operating cash conversion of 137%, well above our 80% target. The fundamentals of the business remained strong: 171 business wins and excellent client retention. Clients who represented 93% of our 2024 spending continued to spend with us in the first half.
This puts us in a strong position for a profit recovery in the second half. If anything, the tricky market conditions have proven the robustness of our new model. We've continued investing in higher margin, faster growth areas, and new capabilities. We've started our program of strategic bolt-on M&A in the fastest growing regions and services, with the acquisition of Tune23, which is already operating as M&C Saatchi Sport and Entertainment in the Middle East. This is a responsible and future-facing use of cash to deliver shareholder returns. We have accelerated our transformation program, whilst additionally restructuring the business to focus on growth areas and to improve margins in lower profitability businesses and geographies.
These interventions and the agility of our business mean that although we're not immune to macro challenges, we're forecasting exiting quarter four with profitability improved and margin enhanced without needing to make cuts to the capabilities required for future growth. In summary, we have a resilient portfolio which continues to improve operationally, delivers excellent client service, and has a robust pipeline. We believe it's therefore right to hold the course on our strategic direction while sharing agility in how we manage the short-term challenges. I'd now like to hand over to Simon Fuller.
Thank you, Zaid, and good morning, everyone. My thanks as well for joining our presentation today, whether here in Golden Square or online. My name's Simon. I'm the Group Chief Financial Officer, and I'm going to take you now through the half-year financial review. Zaid's just confirmed that whilst the macro context has been challenging, notably in Q2, and with more severe and specific issues in Australia, we nevertheless target full-year profit to be flat compared to the prior year. That's been achieved, or will be achieved, through three key self-help drivers. Firstly, we've accelerated and extended the global business model changes that we'd already announced, phase two of our transformation program. That increases our annualized savings target from a previously communicated £3 million to now be £5 million. Secondly, we've rapidly completed other structural changes in the Group, particularly focused on advertising and consulting in Australia.
That will help to drive a further £7 million of annualized savings. Taken together, this is a combined £12 million of annualized savings and puts us in a strong margin position. Thirdly, and finally, we'll continue to carefully manage our largely variable cost base, ensuring strong colleague utilization whilst delivering great work for a wide array of clients, capitalizing on an improving pipeline. Let me take you through the summary financial headlines before further detailing the key drivers of our first half revenue, profit, and cash performance. Zaid's already said we had a solid Q1, but a weaker Q2 contributed to like-for-like net revenue for the half, being down 5.1%. Q2's market softening, which has been widely publicized, was driven by macro conditions following the U.S. tariff announcements and their aftermath.
That caused clients to scale back activity in light of considerable uncertainty, as well as this translating into, at times, a longer pipeline conversion process. Excluding Australia, and I'll expand on this a little more on the following slide, like-for-like net revenue for the rest of the Group was broadly stable at -0.7%. We'd already signaled to the market, which you might remember when we gave our AGM trading update, that H1 profit would be tempered by the annualization of prior year strategic investments. That's to support our medium-term growth aspirations. The effect of that was magnified in quarter two by the market softening, which was unanticipated. Secondly, a deliberate drive towards higher margin businesses by investing for growth in those areas. For example, our investment in the securitization of data for the issues business.
Thirdly, investment in new growth areas, particularly in high-quality leadership with future-facing skills, such as our appointment of Karen Boswell, previously Global Chief Experience Transformation Officer at VML, to lead both performance and consulting units so that we can make wider use of our digital data and AI capabilities and develop new customer experience solutions. This has already resulted in AI stack advances and partnership agreements with Adobe and other partners. Meanwhile, our new Australia CEO, Danny Bass, has experience leading a major digital agency, Digitas. Our new Chief Strategy Innovation Officer, Jackie Stevenson, founded and successfully built a content business, all skills that we need for future growth. This is supplemented by our M&A program of bolt-on acquisitions in high growth, high margin areas, and our acquisition of sports experts in the Middle East was our first in seven years and illustrates the direction of travel.
We now have early evidence of the success of this approach. On this chart, you'll see for each region a combination of existing clients who are growing and new clients won in the first half. As you can see, our approach attracts a very diverse client base, which provides resilience. You'll see, for example, our latest major win announced just this morning, the Department for Education campaign to recruit the new teachers the UK needs, alongside the recent win of the US Soccer Federation just in time for the World Cup in the US next year. This in-up-across client revenue approach, as I call it, founded on deeper client understanding and a regional go-to-market model, has helped us to deliver a robust revenue pipeline for the second half.
From retail to real estate, from beauty to banking, and from hotels to hire cars, we serve the biggest brands, and they're increasingly turning to us in a changing world. One particular area of focus for future growth is sport and entertainment, where we serve some of the world's most famous brands already. You can see some of those brand names here on the slide. It's a fast-growing market with higher margins and where we have global capability and credibility. We have existing strengths in sponsorship, talent, and influencer work, which typically manifest in social content, a fast-expanding part of the market. We're deliberately broadening our sports offering. We've just announced the launch of talent agency M&C Saatchi Football. We acquired Tune23 to complete our regional coverage, and we're building a plan to strengthen our sports rights capabilities.
It's being indispensable to clients that makes the M&C Saatchi model special and gives us confidence in future growth. We are a differentiated proposition offering clients connected and coordinated specialisms, which gives them the expertise they crave without the complexity of multiple agencies. Our issues business is uniquely placed to meet the challenges of geopolitical instability. Our consulting business helps clients to develop their growth strategy and navigate the impact of AI on their marketing. Our performance business puts an ROI on marketing activity to drive effectiveness of the client budgets. Our passions and PR and advertising businesses are experts at activating brands in digital and social channels, which is where marketing budgets are being directed. Our cultural power proposition and tools are perfectly positioned to help clients make sense of the increasingly complex landscape.
All of this is underpinned with the most famous brand name in marketing services, with a reputation for ideas and creativity, the elements which are required for clients' brands to stand out in a world of increasing automation. Perhaps just as important today is our agility, which differentiates us from the large holding companies. When the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, wanted an Independence Day message at 48 hours' notice to bring together a fractured nation, he turned to us and we delivered. Thank you for listening. A summary of our strategy and the case for investment on the screen here.