Okay, great. Well, that's a sail down the numbers. I'm in DACH at 9:32 A.M., so we'll start. Yes, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning for our FY 2024 trading update for YouGov. I'm Steve Hatch, the CEO, and I'm joined today by Alex, our CFO, and Hannah, our Director of Investor Relations. Happy to give you updates on how we're ending the year and how we're thinking about going into FY 2025. That's at a time when, in many ways, the company is in very robust health. Our most important asset, our panel, is the strongest that it's ever been. I'll share a little bit more detail on that a little bit later on. Our brand is in the same shape as well. In fact, it's been incredibly strengthened over the last couple of months, kind of particularly in the U.K.
And it's not often I get to kind of directly publicly thank our teams out there, but certainly to the teams that worked in the U.K. election. I don't know how many people on the call are kind of U.K.-based, but it was an incredible performance, dominated in terms of the coverage and indeed the accuracy. So our final MRP being more accurate than the exit poll. It was a great demonstration of the power and the potential and the capabilities in the company. Now, also, I know it's quite unusual for us to do a webinar at the time of the trading updates at the end of the year before we get together again in October for our kind of final numbers. However, we felt it was the right thing to do, particularly having had to issue our revised guidance a couple of months ago.
So this morning, we're going to take you through a few short slides, and then we'll go into Q&A. I'm going to talk about how we're ending the year. And then Alex is going to talk about unpacking kind of Q4, the kind of quarter, the very deeply frustrating quarter, to be very candid, that led to our requirement to release a revised guidance on our profitability and our revenue. Alex, I'm going to talk about how we're getting in the right shape for kind of innovation and for growth in FY 2025. And then I'll just share some of the summary in a bit more detail on those points. So yes, and thank you, everyone, for finding the time this morning. Okay, let's get started. Disclaimer, I'm sure you could have speed read that, so I guess we are jumping kind of straight into it.
Those that have seen our kind of initial kind of RNS would have seen that actually our results are slightly ahead of our revised guidance issued in June. That was particularly driven by a kind of strong performance by the kind of YouGov team across kind of all elements, actually including data products in the back part of Q4. So we slightly revised up that number for our total revenue at GBP 327 million-GBP 330 million. That's dropping through at an operating profit to, again, slightly a kind of increased range of GBP 43 million-GBP 46 million. And we've heard kind of quite clearly that there were different questions on what our leverage ratio was looking like. So just to be very clear about that, our leverage ratio is 1.82x.
I should say that includes kind of 12 months of CPS, which is kind of in line with the terms in our loan agreement. And just to unpack this somewhat, what we saw is our business performing in different ways. On our research division, and that is a combination of two parts of the company, our custom research, which is the work we do for large-scale clients at an enterprise level, which is bespoke to them. So they're often clients that come in through our data products. They see the value and the capabilities in the company and the unique data sets that we have. And then they ask us to take on new and unique tasks that they're about that aren't syndicated but designed specifically for them. It also includes our Omnibus, so our kind of fast turnaround survey work.
We definitely saw a spectrum of performance in these. We saw strong demand for that custom research, particularly among existing clients. That's research projects and trackers. So they have a longevity to them, even if they're slightly different to the subscriptions that we see within our data products. So it's very highly valuable for us, and it's definitely kind of an indication of the strength, the underlying kind of strength that sits within the business. So we saw good growth within there. That was part offset by the expected decline in our Omnibus and short survey work, which is the fast turnaround work. Historically, that's often been commissioned by PR agencies and other types of companies who want to get a kind of very quick read, sometimes in order to create a press coverage.
Now, with the decline in the way of that as an effective marketing technique, that's subsequently also seen a decline in that. And while we saw a slowing in that rate of decline, it still is a part of the business that we believe is best served by us maintaining and improving our kind of margin in that area through more automation and digitally-led sales over the long term, and also using our centers of excellence around the world. When we look at CPS, the kind of landmark acquisition of FY 2024, very pleased to see that that integration process is progressing very well. The team there continues to impress. They really are the kind of high-quality assets and the kind of high-quality data set that we thought.
It's also really encouraging to see a kind of high number now of cross-sells, particularly within our German market and our Italian markets, where we have both CPS and YouGov kind of operating in strength. You would have seen also in our announcement that we, and Alex will unpack the specifics on that in the next slide, that we did see a potential shortfall, but that was purely down to revenue recognition, depending on when the work is actually realized and delivered to clients. Again, I'll leave that to Alex to unpack in the next slide as well. Then finally, in our data products, in many ways, a kind of core growth engine historically for the company, we've seen revenues in line with what we've seen with the prior year.
And again, just to unpack that a little bit, our subscription rates have remained consistently high at 80%, where customers truly value the data that we're providing. And the team has also been successful in acquiring new subscriptions across that period, meaning that a number of subscriptions and our average pricing across those subscriptions has remained consistent with this year across the next. Obviously, something we're very focused in on FY 2025 and having a re-acceleration in those data products. And while very early days, we did see good data products growth in July as we go into FY 2025. And so while those results are ahead of the expectations or ahead of the guidance, they're certainly below our ambitions and certainly below the potential that we see and continue to see within YouGov for our long-term growth story and delivery of SP3. So I'm going to hand over to Alex.
He's going to unpack the quarter of Q4 to give kind of clarity about what happened there, but also the kind of two steps that we're making to make sure that we're in the right shape and kind of fit for growth and innovation in FY 2025.
Thank you, Steve. I just want to remind everybody that for FY 2024, we had assumed that we would have a back-end weighted year. If you saw us at our half-year, we were pointing to confidence in the second half coming through from good sales pipeline that our sales teams were working on. We knew that we would have to have a revenue profile that was really dependent on winning projects from white space clients. I really want to make the point this is an unusual situation for us to be in because, as Steve points out, data products have historically been the growth driver, and data products have a really predictable profile for us going into outlying months in terms of revenue recognition and what we should expect. More importantly, is a very strong profit generator.
What we found, and just to pick up specifically on Q4, because we've given you a waterfall here just to show you what the moving parts are, is we were expecting more sales of projects that would have short-term revenue generation to really fill in that gap for us, fill in the momentum for Q4, which didn't come through. We just had a delay in closing deals. The mix of what we were selling was a bit unpredictable. It's not to say we don't see those deals panning out and closing in the short term, but we had a particular low sales month in April, and May wasn't strong. That gave us sort of cause for concern in terms of being able to reach the target for the end of the year.
Consequence of that, we had a bit of indigestion of being able to then cover our costs so rapidly. So we'll come back to this point in the Q&A. We were anticipating lower than expected data product growth off the back of the half-year, the first half performance. And it was, we had a strong pipeline. However, we just didn't convert as many of those projects as we would have liked. We have had some excellent growth in some of our clients. There's some asymmetry internally in our performance. We're running higher cost sales than we have historically run because we're doing some work using third-party panels just around some specific audiences, particularly B2B. We have a lot of people profiled in our panel to do this, but it's a little bit specialist. And so we've been going to third-party panel providers for that.
This is work that we would always do. It's for important clients where we're doing an increasing amount of their research program. And so it's one, it's a testament to big clients really value our service, really value the products and data that we give them, and they want us to be able to handle all of their research. The more that we do that, that's where we feel we have a right to win. And we're also flagging the potential for CPS revenue timing shift on when they recognize revenue. We recognize revenue on delivery. And as we've been going through the close with them and preparing for closing for the full year, there's a few areas where they recognize revenue earlier than we would ordinarily do. So we're flagging as we do that review, there may be a bit of a shift in that revenue.
As a catalyst to the warning we put out, I think I just want to go through sort of 2 areas we're focused on in the short term and moving into FY 2025. The first is this is a moment for us to bring forward efficiency programs that we're looking for, already looking at. You will have heard us in the past talk about we want to be growing revenue and we want to be growing profit margin. And so it's always important that we really focus on activities that can scale.
As part of this, the last couple of weeks, we've been reviewing team structures. We've been reviewing products and services that we offer, countries, and taking some decisions that we probably would have taken a little bit further down the path. We are accelerating that now and taking action. So we've identified GBP 20 million worth of annualized cost savings.
We expect 70% of that to be realized in FY 2025. The majority of that saving is coming from right-sizing teams. 7% of the YouGov roles are impacted by this program. We're also looking at how we spend our money with third-party suppliers. That includes reducing the amount of projects that we're running with suppliers. It means we're rationalizing some of the spend that we have in a few areas. It means we're negotiating much harder than we would have ordinarily done with suppliers, really just getting to grips with what has been a bit of a proliferation of suppliers because we've been growing so fast over the last few years. It's also a moment for us to rationalize some of our real estate footprint. We're in a number of countries where how people approach working in the office has shifted.
A few of our offices, we have less usage than others. So we're not keeping those. We've made a decision to close a few of our offices. What's important about these cuts is that they really help us become more efficient so that we can continue scaling and growing faster. A lot of that work will help us land some of the focused investments we're making in FY 2024. We're going to keep our capital expenditure in FY 2025. We're keeping our capital expenditure in line with FY 2024 and really focused on data products. And that's clear. We have a clear plan coming out of the work we've been doing over the last few months. We have to bring the data products growth back to the fore in the business, obviously, to mitigate having to go through this type of scenario again.
There's a few key areas that we're investing in. Steve referenced Yabble. We've got some great opportunities to deploy AI and machine learning across our products and teams, really enhancing the usability of those products, but also giving us the potential to launch new things. We have already mentioned we're working on improving the user experience of our products. We've been investing in the user interface, user experience of the front end. That work is underway. We will be investing in sales leadership in some priority markets, coming back to that point, really focusing on deepening our relationship with some of the largest companies in the world and really driving that data products growth potential.
So just looking ahead and just summarizing what we spent the last 16, 17 minutes covering before we jump into questions. I mean, just to remind everybody, I mean, the competitive advantage that YouGov has and the right to win is stronger, in fact, as strong as it's ever been, in fact, arguably stronger. The panel and the data quality that we have is exceptional. And just want to say congratulations to the team that's doing all the hard work there. We just passed 50,000 Trustpilot reviews with an overall score of 4.6, which is way ahead of what we see in the rest of the market. That creates data accuracy because people really care about what they provide YouGov with and the attention that they pay in completing the surveys and also the breadth of data that they're comfortable sharing with us. That continues to grow.
We see kind of growth in our behavioral products as a testament to the different types of data that people across YouGov Panel are willing to share. Of course, the strength of the YouGov brand. As I mentioned right at the top of this, we saw kind of great exposure and coverage across the U.K. election. We're now subsequently seeing the same thing come through into the U.K. Two of our most important markets and areas where we know, particularly when it comes to the U.S., the higher our spontaneous brand awareness is within our target customer base, the more likely we are to become an automatic entry point for RFIs and new work as it comes through. We're a company that's built on innovation.
We pioneered a lot of the work that we see now as industry standard, even though we're still the best in those standards now. We're deepening kind of our AI and ML capability. It is that ML capability that meant we were the most accurate MRP across all of the U.K. in the election. But we're also empowering our teams to be using AI tools in their day-to-day work. So now everybody across YouGov has access to those systems. And as Alex mentioned, we're very excited to be announcing today the acquisition of Yabble, a truly brilliant company. Yabble have been pioneering the work of AI and in particular within the research sector. Since 2017, they've developed a whole suite of bespoke algorithms that enable us to extract much, much, much more value from the existing work.
So we're very, very delighted to have Kathryn and her team become part of YouGov. And we're very keen to make sure that we're taking those technologies and very quickly integrating them into our core data products, as well as seeing the kind of continued business for YouGov, sorry, for Yabble, I should say, thrive. In addition to that, we're investing in the right talent. Very pleased that we have Mark Ryan joining us at the beginning of September as our Chief Product Officer. He has an incredible track record with decades of work in the market research industry. Most recently, he's Chief Product Officer at Scuba. And then prior to that, he was the Chief Data Officer at Kantar and the Chief Product and Technology Officer for Kantar Profiles and kind of many other places between that.
So having somebody of kind of Mark's expertise and innovation, a true builder in the company, is really going to help us accelerate the changes that we want to make. And then we will continue to build out the panel and to do that in the right way in the areas where we're seeing the greatest demand. And as Alex mentioned, it could well be as well that we start collecting different types of data that enable us to recognize some of the unique and different opportunities and requests that we're getting for clients over the next 12 months. And so for FY 2025, this is all about returning to growth. We truly believe that there is a significant market opportunity that lies in front of YouGov. We are simplifying our sales strategy to make sure the emphasis is in the right places, and that's all underway.
Our cost optimization plan has already commenced, the GBP 20 million annualized that Alex has already mentioned. In fact, as of today, when that comes from the most significant contributor to that, which is kind of headcount costs, close to 40% of that has already been completed. And we're very confident in our ability at this point to meet the current market expectations into FY 2025. So I just finished by saying thank you to all of you for joining and for your continued interest in YouGov. And also to say thank you to the YouGov team. I mean, it really is a kind of exceptional group of people with some incredible capabilities. And I really appreciate all the hard work that's been done this year. And looking forward to taking the market on in FY 2025 with it. Thanks. And Hannah, I think it's now open to some questions.
I see a few have come through.
Yeah. Your first question comes from James at Fidelity. How are your data products contracts structured? And how much of the revenue is based on subs versus usage of data? And have you been impacted by customers cutting headcount?
Well, the way that we currently position from a pricing perspective our data products is effectively it's open all access. So we don't charge by seat model or by login model. We have historically had the belief that the more people that are using the products within the company, the greater value that will be seen within those products. And in many ways, that's been true. I mean, it's the exposure to, and we don't want to limit that. And it's part of our kind of has been part of our historic value proposition. So we don't see any kind of loss in pricing or kind of value for each individual sale if people are reducing the number of heads.
Interestingly, without considering what other kind of pricing or tiering structures may look like, but I'd say historically, it's enabled us to have a kind of deeper relationship with organizations by enabling as many people as possible to have the products. And therefore, it doesn't impact us from a financial perspective if there is a kind of reduction in our client size. Yeah, I'm going to say, I mean, the other side of that, nor does it benefit us when a client might expand and grow and kind of use more of that data product access. But that's often also where our custom research work then comes through.
Great. Thanks. Two questions from Dan at HSBC. First one, you've mentioned pricing pressure in data products. While existing clients continue to value your products, what do you think you need to do to attract new clients and improve competitiveness?
Yeah, there are 3 parts to this. I mean, one, I just do want to stress our products are viewed continuously as the best in the market. But of course, we want to make sure that one we're staying innovative and one we're staying deeply competitive. I also do want to say as well, there'll always be a part of the market that is not right for us. And we should be really okay with that. If there is a kind of few thousand GBP or kind of area, that's not what we want to play at. But to continue to kind of make sure we have the broadest addressable market, one, there is the continued value add in our core products. We've mentioned the UI and UX that's coming on stream in Q2 and Q3.
That's even before we think about how the components of Yabble can help add additional value and additional interest into those products. Secondly, we've mentioned a couple of times, I think, which is on our sales strategy, ensuring that the teams are really focused on the right types of offering for us that help create value for the clients, but of course, create kind of long-term value for the company. But we also think there is a right to win for us not only in the mid-market area as well, where we do see success. And that requires product innovation. Over the last two months, we have had live in market with some of our agency clients our product called CategoryView. And CategoryView is a product created from our syndicated data.
So it doesn't require additional research, data points from us, or indeed additional costs associated with that. It's utilizing the data product, sorry, the data that we have that we collect from our syndicated data. But rather than the full set of our syndicated data, it's specifically targeted to a category and the drivers within that category. And that came from the kind of insight that of all the brands that we collect data for, we actually only have a monetized relationship with 6% of those total brands. So there's 94% of the data that we're already collecting. It's not as a cost to us that we think we can create more value for at a more competitive price point relative to the full suite. So that you should expect us to be rolling that out with a focus at the mid-market level from Q2 onwards.
So just to summarize, it's about maintaining and creating great added value. Sorry, I've got a reaction thing. Bubbles up. There's a thumb when you do your thumb. A value on our clients. Second is our sales focus to ensure we're focusing on the right areas. And then three, which is bringing our product innovation that enables us to target the mid-market sector at a lower entry point, but with a more focused and targeted category product.
Thanks. The second question from Dan is, do you think you have sufficient management capacity to execute on the cost savings as well as integrating Yabble and critical path for CPS?
Yeah, Alex, you maybe want to take on that one.
Yes, we do. So it has definitely been a year of consolidation at YouGov, bringing in some new people. We have a new Chief Revenue Officer. I think it's really important to stress that a new Chief Product Officer also helps us create more structure in the way that we are supporting the sales teams and the broader commercial teams with really showing clients the real value of our data, making that much more systematic in the way that we present that. A number of steps also over the last few weeks in order to streamline what we're doing. And that's quite important. Really focusing on areas that can scale, I mean we're pushing the teams to stop doing things that just are tying up too much time. That's quite an important message for the broader YouGov team, which is this isn't just about taking cuts.
It's about a different way of thinking. So we can be much more efficient and reducing and focusing on reducing how many things we're doing and focusing on things that scale. We have the bandwidth for that. And we've taken the steps, obviously, to remediate that. I echo Steve's sentiment. We want to thank everybody at YouGov for what has been such a challenging few months of trying to hit the largest number we could do for the year-end at the same time as having to go through planning for starting the cost reduction plan before we got to the year-end. And we kicked off a number of things in the last couple of weeks at the same time as trying to deliver a lot of revenue.
So the team's done a fantastic job of dealing with high levels of complexity, keeping teams motivated at the same time knowing that we're going to go through a bit of a challenging time in losing some very valued colleagues as part of this.
Yeah, I mean, just the one, I completely agree with that. One thing I just add that whilst Yabble is very powerful and a kind of big acquisition from a technology perspective, it's also a relatively small team. So I think it's a very valid question. It was one of the things that we're mindful of, of how well can we utilize this opportunity. But we feel very, very confident, not least of all because we've been working with the Yabble team for over nine months now. So we see that as a relatively smooth integration and a great opportunity for us and for our clients for us to create more value for our clients as well.
Thanks. Three questions from Andrew at SEB. First one, it would be great if you could touch on what has driven the better-than-expected result. And has the U.S. election had a positive impact?
I'll start that. We built in a little bit of risk in the guidance just because we were having to, we knew that we would have to be sort of going through cost reduction at the same time as finishing the year-end. There's a very strong push from the teams to try to overdeliver as best we can do in July. We've been to July in a very decent place. So the beginning of our Q4 was weaker than we were expecting. But the teams have been able to, I was going to say pull forward. We haven't pulled forward. Just deliver much more than we would have expected while at the same time trying to go through this restructuring and reorganizing work. And that's an important point. We wanted to make sure that we're very focused on getting our cost base for FY 2025 in the right place.
And so we wanted to give a little bit of room to be able to do that. And so I think we're pleased. And it is testament to the resilience of the teams to be able to continue delivering while also going through the reorganization work.
Was there a second part to that?
Yeah, the U.S. election.
Oh, the U.S. election. So it's probably just taking a step back on elections and the benefit to YouGov generally. I think kind of people are aware as a sector, it's roughly 5% of the total revenues. I mean, across this, we might see some increase, but not substantive. And the reason being is often when election and campaigning work begins, it does coincide with government work reducing. So there's a bit of a trade-off there. We do see some upside through the U.S. election. In fact, our kind of U.S. team had completed their FY 2024 budget by, I think, around kind of January or February last year. So we kind of do see kind of potential there. But the real kind of true value for us is in what it does for our brand, what it does for panel.
Being at the forefront of the conversation, being able to show our visibility, demonstrating our power and our accuracy and the quality of our data is what brings in new clients. And it's also what brings in new panelists as well. So yes, we expect to see some upside, not to the degree that it would create any kind of change in our guidance for the year as it stands now.
Thanks. Looking into FY 2025, how do you expect profitability to develop in H1 versus H2? And related to that, on the cost savings, can you detail where the GBP 20 million impact will come from?
Yeah, I'll start with that. Yeah, we will be a little bit back-loaded in terms of just building up the momentum. This is an important thing for us to really focus immediately on, which has started. We need sales of data products to happen in H1 so that we have the revenue building from those new sales helping to contribute to margin improvements in the second half. I think it'll be a little bit back-weighted for a couple of reasons. Some of that is it's going to take us some time to realize some of the cost savings that we've put in place. We have to go through, as is right to do, consultation processes in a few countries. So there's a bit of a timing lag on those reviews being completed.
Some of the things that we're also doing in place with removing suppliers. We've got a little bit of a runoff in those. So we'll start to annualize. We have a bit of that really taking into effect in our second quarter. Obviously, then coming into the second half of the year, we'll have realized the majority of that. But we are expecting to have data products really being a key focus. That is because of the way that we recognize the revenue on a 112 basis when we start an annual subscription. That does mean that we have to have a back-end weighted year. I want to stress we're approaching budgeting in a different way this year.
That was the challenge in FY 2024 of positioning ourselves for growth and increasing our costs in the first half, meant we were really over-reliant on the performance really needing to come through in the second half to deliver our numbers. I'd make this point. We were making some focused investments, but we will be looking at our cost base in a different way going into FY 2025, focusing on fewer things so that we really focus on what we are delivering and executing on the margin improvement plans we have.
Thanks. And final question from Andrew. You're confident of meeting FY 2025 consensus. Is that on revenue and EBIT?
Yes, it is.
Thanks. Next question from Imogen. Why aren't custom projects priced to reflect the higher cost of the third-party data collection? Can you do this moving forward to limit the gross margin impact?
Yeah, we do in part. And certainly, it's our desire to always make it come from our panel. But equally, as Alex said, this is not work that we'd want to turn down. It just does come in a different form. Across this year, we're going to be exploring how we either kind of reduce kind of the per-unit cost of that off-panel work, or indeed how we can incorporate the data insights into our own and existing panel. I think I just want to be clear as well. There may well always be a desire and a need for us to go off-panel. There may be a specific market within a specific area that we don't necessarily have a panel for, or it doesn't make sense for us because it's only related to one client.
I'm happy to say I think our teams do a great job commercially, and our kind of margin is strong within our custom work. It's just not to the same degree that we see within our data products. We know that's where we see the cumulative growth come from within our enterprise clients. Entry on our data products. We have that. Then growth through additional custom research. But for sure, we want to do what we can to be more efficient in that off-panel spend. It won't ever disappear, but also potentially build out different data points in our own panel that would enable us to serve directly elements like B2B.
Thanks. Next question from Jess at Peel Hunt. Three-part question. First one, can you talk about changes in your sales approach other than investing in senior leadership?
Yeah, for sure. So as we've mentioned a couple of times, a lot of this is about efficiency and focus. We have a high number of products. And I think kind of over time, that's meant that the team hasn't always been able to be as focused as they could be. That's quite consistent. And I want to separate that from some of the specific geographical factors that we saw as well. So having Tom in as our Chief Commercial Officer with kind of oversight across all of our commercial approach gives a single point of contact who can orchestrate and guide and direct across all of our teams.
We're also sectioning our new business teams to be focused very, very strongly against our data products, with our account managers and our client service teams being focused on kind of some renewals on that, but also into kind of deep focus into custom work. We're reducing some of the books of business that our account managers have to enable them to be more focused and also for them to be more sector-specific. Now, it hasn't been uncommon for us to have an account manager that might be working across a high number of sectors and with a high number of clients, making it that much harder for them to have the impact when we see the biggest opportunities. Just to be very clear, you don't need very many of those large opportunities to really get great growth, particularly when we spend the time with them.
We understand the organization well. We move from one part of an organization to another, and they consistently then see the benefit. It creates a great kind of virtuous circle inside our clients as well, where they see the work they're able to do. And we end up with a kind of good, in a way, internal referral engine that that creates. And yeah, we have mentioned, I know, in our updates that in addition to that, to have leadership appointments in DACH, Germany, and the U.K. are our particular focus. And we're right in the process of making sure getting those appointments in place so they can make a difference in the first half of this year.
Thanks. Second question from Jess. You're scaling back in non-core regions. Which regions are these?
Yeah, we probably wouldn't share that kind of broadly many from a competitive perspective. But there are regions where we might have seen just in mind. And just to be clear about what we mean by scaling back is we are not over-investing in acquisition, in panel acquisition. So it's not as if we are disappearing from those markets or not being able to grow in those markets. We're just reducing our acquisition investment in those markets so we're able to sustain them for when the needs come through in order for us to be more focused on both the markets and the demographics that we see the greatest and highest demand on. So partly it's related to the, I think, two questions back now on our panel kind of costs.
We know we don't have to have that if we've got the right, the fullest amount of demographic opportunity in our biggest market where our biggest market demand exists. And to be clear, that typically still is the U.S. as the market where we continue to see the more we invest in panel, the more we see direct revenue growth that comes from that investment in panel.
Thanks. Question on Yabble. Can you give more color on Yabble's AI capabilities and what their focus will be in the near term? And then we have a similar question from Eric. Why did you have to buy the engineers rather than develop it in-house?
Yeah, great questions. I mean, on the first one, maybe I'd love to kind of do a separate session where we can talk about Yabble with the teams here. But there's a number of capabilities that Yabble have developed. They have developed different types of algorithms across the established kind of LLMs. So they have the best insight into which LLMs work for specific research tasks. They've also done something that's incredibly important as well, which is they've developed capabilities that de-risk the outcomes of that LLM work. So I think we're all kind of quite familiar now that sometimes LLMs can create outputs that are either kind of uncertain or, in some cases, could just be undesirable that you'd want to see. And what Yabble have created is filters and algorithms that stop that from happening.
So you dramatically reduce the kind of risk of either bad quality outcomes, but also kind of undesirable outcomes. Not many companies in the world have cracked that yet. And that is because they've been at this since the beginning. And it's kind of like good kind of foresight into that. And that partly relates. And they've also developed a really interesting personas project, sorry, product, I should say, as well, with the idea that you're going to be able to effectively have your customer on every single one of your, I suppose, desktops, but it may well be kind of phone as well, on the basis of for every single client in the world is a really powerful concept. What stops that is questions around kind of like quality of the data and the accuracy of the data. That's what YouGov has.
To be able to power those technologies with accurate and refreshing data, those are the two things you need. It's got to be accurate, and it's got to stay current. We have all of those kind of capabilities within YouGov. And then also the question of why did we? It's a kind of build or buy question, I guess, isn't it? It was very simple. You've got a really great established team that are working really well. We've been able to work with them closely over the last 9 months. We could do that. We could have built up that team, but it would have maybe taken another kind of 12-18 months to do that. And in addition, our established teams are really busy creating the kind of other work that's in the company as well.
So yeah, overall, not a difficult decision, particularly when we know if we can apply those technologies to our existing data products, that's a really, really powerful proposition.
Thanks. A couple of questions from Steve at Deutsche Numis. Can you give more detail on the sales and commercial teams? Where is it right? Where is there work to do? Also, have you invested in any sales systems? And what are you doing to make sure that the internal management information processes are accurate going forward?
Yeah, great questions. I think I may have covered some of the kind of sales part on the previous one, but maybe do you want to speak to systems, Alex, and how we're looking at this and approaching this so we don't have the bloody frustrating outcome that we had in kind of Q4 of this year?
Yeah. There's two parts to what we're doing there. One is systems, but the other part is then the sales process and consistency in the way that we're doing things so that you can rely on the data that's in those systems. We've added a number of things for people to better understand their pipeline. What we need to be investing in and landing is the way that the sales teams are managing and qualifying their pipeline. That's been too variable in the period. That has been hampered in a couple of areas. We haven't had the sales leadership in place to help drive that way of working. That's a task that we've been working on for a while and going into FY 2025.
Particularly, on Mark's point again, bringing in the CPO and really thinking about how do we have constant evolution in our products, which we're going into the market. We need to establish our YouGov way of doing this, which has just been a little bit fragmented because we've got teams that haven't been really connected in the way that they approach clients and how they structure their sales plans. Improving and increasing our commercial rigor, that has happened in parts. But clearly, there's a strong focus for us now in terms of getting that consistent around the group. We do want to make the point. We want to spend more time in the markets where we have the highest potential. And we also want to spend time with clients where we have the highest potential.
It's not just investing in the systems, but it's also investing in the training and the leadership of our sales teams so that we're setting them up for success as they sort of meet new clients, but also expand our relationships with existing clients.
Thanks. On data products, a few questions. Can you give a bit more color on new business wins? When is the new go-to-market Category View offering launching as well as the AI tools? And is there a risk of cannibalization of Category View?
Oops, sorry, I came off mute. I didn't need to do that. Sorry, three months out.
That's good.
Hannah, can you just give me that one again?
Data products.
Yes, data products.
Give more color on the new business wins.
New biz, yeah.
Category View versus cannibalization.
Category view.
Cannibalization.
Cannibalization. Okay, great.
AI tools as well.
Yeah, well, maybe I'll take the last one. Okay, kind of sort of four there, isn't there? Yeah, AI tools, there's every reason to think that we can create something actually quite quickly and quite strongly. We've already been working with Yabble. In fact, we co-developed a product with them already in AI Qual Explorer. So I'd say this is kind of day one with them. I'm with the team tomorrow night, and I'm with the team on Thursday morning. So we don't think we're talking certainly not talking halves of the years here. We feel at least we get to a position where we've got something that's minimum viable and really interesting. And I would hope to think that we could begin the trading season kind of in earnest with that in place. Conversation on CategoryView. It's different types of the market.
Of course, there is always that potential that's there, but they often are different sectors. So our agency clients, for example, they like to have the full suite of data because they're some of our kind of strongest clients when it comes to profiles, because they want to be able to operate across multiple number of verticals. It wouldn't be a reason not to do it. It's a straight answer. And we've seen, let's say, strong renewal rates across our existing syndicated data. And there are some clients that they want to see the kind of full picture, and they want to understand all categories because in a way, they don't just benchmark themselves against their competitors. They might benchmark themselves against other what might seem like out-of-category competitors.
So for example, if you're looking at the entertainment area, if you are a video streaming provider, you're as interested in what's happening in the world of gaming as you are as what's happening directly within your own streaming environment. So there's always a degree there, but that's a great thing about innovating and being able to be in a position to offer kind of new products. That is less than we see the overall potential of the increased value that we can create from the, as I said, 94% of brands that we cover that don't currently have a commercial relationship with. That was categorization. That was category view. I still forgot the other one, Hannah. Sorry.
The other one was on color on new business wins.
Oh, yeah. No, I mean, we've seen actually kind of quite a nice ramp coming through across actually particularly in the U.S., where we're seeing real success where people are being more sector-focused. We're also seeing expansion of territories as well within some of our larger data with some of our larger data product clients. So there's a bit of expansion of geographies, and there's some new sectors. I'd say the kind of third part of that is it's really great to see the encouraging work in FMCG begin to come through where we're seeing the CPS and the YouGov relationships in markets where that bond has happened kind of quite organically and quite strongly already.
Thanks. Question from Maoz at Montanaro. Can you give an update on your SP3 targets and whether you still plan to hit the 25% OP margin?
Yes. I mean, it's no doubt that FY 2024 has been a slower year than we were expecting. But as Mick put it, a bit of a year of consolidation as we go from one growth plan to the next and really focusing on the components that you're going to get as to the inflection point for meeting those targets. We're still confirming our commitment to those targets. I want to echo some of the things we've talked about in the past around the targets. We have set a medium term because there's a number of things we want to be putting in place that we have to build to. There was always going to be a component of finding a new product, whether it was behavioral data or a different way of interacting with our data products. That's obviously Yabble is part of that.
That gives us new things to be able to take to our existing clients, which continue to show them the value of our data. A couple of key things that gave us confidence. We continue to have fantastic relationships with large clients that we know that we can develop further. And this is a particularly important point when we've been talking about pricing competition and being able to convert sales. We've been taking the same approach to working to try to win new clients that are small and medium-sized as we do with some of the very largest companies in the world. We need to adapt that approach. We have relationships with some of the biggest companies in the world, but we'd like them to be much deeper relationships. And we have in Tom Fisher, a Chief Commercial Officer, who has done that in the past for us.
And that will be a clear part of our account management going into FY 2025 and beyond. Steve's already referenced reducing the number of clients that our account management teams have so they can really make a bigger impact with those clients. That is a particular growth opportunity for us. We want to give the team some time to do that, but we think the potential is certainly there. And I think we can demonstrate in the continued confidence and value that our existing clients put on the data products, this really is the best data that's in the market. And so really focusing on how we continue commercializing and advancing the product awareness within particular territories, improving our sales approach so we're able to convert clients quicker, really understanding which clients do we go for and which clients do we not go for.
I think we can definitely see some improvements in how we approach ourselves. We do expect our momentum to start building up within FY 2025, which will set us up for FY 2026 and beyond.
Thanks. Next question from Paul at Amati. You talked about previously about well-funded startup competitors in certain segments reducing prices pretty dramatically and clients getting better at comparing prices. How is this playing out?
Yeah, I'll take that one as well. I think this is a very important point around what clients we're going after. Where we've seen the most significant pricing pressure is with small and medium-sized companies. That is where the clients, the potential clients, don't have a very deep data requirement. They have usually very small teams as well. We try to sell our products on fundamentally an enterprise basis where you get access to everything. So in part, the way that we have been packaging those deals has made it difficult for clients to assess the two products together because you've got a smaller data set that the customers that our competitors are offering because we're only offering one or two sectors. We still insist, well, we're changing that. We have been insisting you take all the sectors.
That's why we're just overservicing those types of clients with that kind of offer. That's difficult for them to understand the value proposition. It's easier for them to look at a more simple product and be able to say, "Actually, this is good enough for what I need it for." We need to address that part of the market in a different way. CategoryView is the way that we think we should do that. We're not adding a lot more incremental costs. We're repackaging the data that's much more relevant to the way that those types of clients would like to see. That gives us something from a packaging perspective. We can then work on pricing to be much more competitive for those smaller with the competitive set. I'll make this point.
With the larger clients that want this type of data in lots of different countries, we still continue to win, but we just haven't put the same amount of sales focus in those larger enterprises as we have done. We've just diluted our sales focus across the entire potential market, treating small and medium-sized companies in the same way that we treat large clients.
Thanks. Next question from Joe Brooks. Is the 80% subscription retention rate what you are targeting going forward, or are your targets above this? And what have customers been citing as the key reasons for churn in the recent period?
Yeah, I'll take that one. I mean, it's a pretty decent level. We'd always want to see if we can improve on that, but I do believe that's one of the kind of best in the markets from a renewal level. Obviously, we can do a bit better, but 80%, we're not suggesting that that will be any different into the coming year, whether that's going to low or higher. And in terms of the ones that churn, there's a couple of reasons. One where they may have taken an additional product from us and then found that they don't kind of use it quite as much. And actually, I mean, I really like kind of looking at macro because I think our ability to grow, given the scale we're at and the ambition we have, shouldn't be determined by that.
But we definitely did see a kind of few clients who were just pulling back, and they just didn't necessarily go to a competitor. They just didn't go to anyone. So the main reason that we see tends to be kind of internal decisions. Either they reduce down to kind of one product rather than two, or they find that their own internal kind of cost, or they came into a product and didn't actually find as much value from it as they expected. That relates a little bit to what Alex is saying, which is, of course, we like sales, and we want to have that.
Having a more disciplined approach as to what does a really good high-quality sale look like that has a longevity that's associated with that cost of sale and just getting a bit more kind of data-led or more intentional than that, having a kind of large raft that you kind of fill through a bucket and a hopper kind of each time.
Thanks. Next question from William at Allianz. Can you add more details to what exactly makes your data the best data versus the competition? Is it collection, methodology, analysis tools?
Yeah, it's a combination of kind of all of those things. I mean, first off, it's the panel experience. The care that we take both on in a number of levels really is a competitive advantage to us. Again, if you're into it, I'd encourage you to perhaps look at some of the other reviews of other kind of research companies that are out there in this area, and you'll see just how strong ours is. And that comes from a number of factors. One, just doing the basics really well. If you're offering a member platform where people have rewards for that, just make sure they have access to those rewards simply and easily in a very clear and transparent way. Secondly, the differential that comes from that is our brand plays such a key part in this.
In fact, being part of being able to express their opinion and have their voice heard is one of the largest reasons why people come and join YouGov. But in many ways, that social contract that exists between the company is one of the reasons why we see the kind of accuracy in the data. We spend a lot of time evaluating two things on the survey side as well. One, how are the questions written? Are they useful? Are they engaging? We have great algorithms that ensure that the right kind of surveys are going to the right kind of people, that they're answering things that they're broadly kind of interested in. Again, we see kind of improved accuracy through that. One of the metrics we use for that is what's the time spent on this? Are people really giving the survey the attention that it should have?
The attention metric actually is also very happy is also very useful as a way of assessing whether somebody is a kind of either a good panelist or kind of accurate panelist. We definitely saw some integrity issues in the marketplace that it's still going through. Again, having that deep understanding of the panel where we're able to measure people just zipping through this thing or are they actually spending the right amount of time for it really helps us. Now, of course, the question is like, how do we prove these things?
That's part of having, that's partly where our public brand plays such a key role, to be tested, to have the most accurate MRP in the most recent U.K. election, to be the most accurate pollster in the last seven national referendums around the world, to find ourselves in positions where clients are blind testing against different providers and our accuracy is seen that much stronger than others is the reason within those big clients that really care about data quality and are some of the most data-sophisticated clients themselves. It's why they have continued to grow kind of into this year. Of course, it's our job to translate that more effectively into value and into sales and into kind of growth in the company. Just finally, just on an academic level, we're very, very highly rated. I can certainly kind of share later dates.
Some of the assessments were the top-rated research company in the most recent U.S. by Creative, I believe it's called, which is a very well-regarded academic assessment. I think there are a couple of organizations that were above us in that top five, and they were academic institutions and universities, two of whom we provide the data for. So that gives a real sense of the credibility and the quality that we have. It's our job, as I said, to then turn that into powerful drivers of the business as well.
Thanks. Probably the final one as we're running out of time. Can you give more detail on the UI/UX launches and how that will improve product delivery and application?
Yeah, sure. Well, I just want to be clear. This is one single big bang moment. This is a continual refreshment and kind of updating and upgrading of the products over the next year. I'll give one example on profiles. We've already introduced kind of vector search, which improves the search functionality so people are able to extract data out kind of more readily and more quickly. And then we are expecting kind of Q2 to be the moment where we have the kind of the design refresh. So there's backend work that's been going on. Those features are already coming on board. And then the kind of front-end work because you have to do sort of partly concurrently, but also backend and influences what the front-end looks like and vice versa. But we expect seeing Q2 and beginning Q3 for most of those significant upgrades to be rolled out.
Thanks. Do you want to summarize?
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, thank you. I'm going to say thank you all for joining. I know we've had a lot of people attend the call, which is obviously terrifically encouraging for us to go into and make the very, very most of the kind of great potential in the kind of year ahead. So again, thank you to Alex. Thank you to Hannah. Thanks to everyone for joining and the kind of interest in the company. We're really stuck in with a few days in already into FY 2025. And yeah, just finally, I just want to say thank you again to kind of all the YouGov teams across the world for the help and their work this year. I also would just want to say a big thank you to some of those folks who were saying goodbye to as well. They're kind of good people.
Those of them that I really appreciate the work and the contribution that they've made to the company in the past as well. And I wish them a kind of good success in the future. Okay, everyone. Well, thanks, Hannah. Thanks, Alex. Thanks, everybody, for joining. Look forward to seeing you all again in October. Thank you.