Good morning all. Thank you for being here. I'm delighted to be here. My first time as CEO. I will start with some brief opening remarks before handing over to Sharjeel, who will cover the financials for the half. I will then come back to introduce myself, although many of you know me already. We will move on to covering why I'm excited to have become the new CEO, why we have the tools and the track records to succeed, and the progress we have made to date. We will open up for Q&A. Now, turning to page four, it's truly an honor to be here, standing here in front of you today. I joined Future 20 years ago as a programmer, freshly arrived from the beautiful island of Mauritius, 20 years ago. The company I worked for was acquired by Future, and the rest is history.
During my time here, I experienced a vast amount of change, big and small, in the company as well as in my roles. I was Chief Technology Officer for the group for eight years, and I have spent 10 years on the leadership team. Most recently, I was the Executive Vice President of our largest division, B2C. So many things make Future a great company, from the amazing brands to its unique and proven tech stack, which remains close to my heart today, down to the talented 3,000 people working here. Taking them in, in detail, as I said, Future has amazing brands from GoCompare, to TechRadar, and stopping by Who What Wear, and The Week Junior, to which my children are subscribers of. The reasons why these brands are fantastic is because of our customer proposition, including our well-known editorial content quality.
We know our audience. We have created an affinity and engendering trust in our products and in our expertise. That is the backbone of our philosophy. Future has an amazing and proven tech stack, a true enabler, unique, proprietary, and integrated. These are fundamental characteristics to drive operating leverage, as demonstrated over the last decade. Importantly, over the years, we have enriched it to drive growth through innovative products and to remain relevant in a dynamic market. With agility, we achieved all of that with very limited capital expenditure. This is how we do things. That is not all. With audience and products, we get valuable, rich first-party data, and critically, it is for us to capitalize on it going forwards. Additionally, and importantly, these assets are matched by superb financial characteristics, meaning high margin and strong cash generation, which Sharjeel will cover more on that later.
What I want you to get from today is a sense of continuity. The roadmap might be different, but the destination is the same, focusing on audience and monetization to deliver growth. This is timeless. Now, turning to the next slide, what I want you to get also is that I'm committed to delivering on our strategy and remaining focused on shareholder value creation. We are doing this by reaching and attracting valuable audience and monetizing it effectively and efficiently. We are executing on a very clear path of actions. On creating shareholder value, we have returned over GBP 43 million to shareholders in the half alone. We have announced this morning a new share buyback program. Our investment is driving returns as the Q1 organic revenue growth of 2% testifies.
We remain cost-disciplined and only invest when it truly drives returns, notably in periods of macro uncertainty. I firmly believe that our assets and our agility will continue to serve us very well. When it comes to what we do today, we can do more with less. Focus resources on innovation and extend our track record of disrupting the industry further to capitalize boldly on the next wave of growth. Before handing over to Sharjeel, I would like to spend a bit of time going through some of the growth initiatives we delivered in the first half on the next slide, please. Now, in my previous role as the Executive Vice President of B2C, I have driven many growth initiatives alongside the team. Regardless of the macro, it is important to remain focused on the items we can control to drive growth, marginal gains time and time again.
Doing the basics well is also crucial. We have put even more focus on collaboration between editorial, audience, product, and tech teams, continually optimizing ourselves. We are getting stronger and more generative as a result, starting with audience engagement. In the half, we have deployed AI-enhanced recirculation. It provides our audience with suggestions of what to read next within Future. Using AI to surface existing content, this is driving substantial brand engagement by increasing the length of time spent on the site and therefore the ads volume served. This is done with no incremental costs. We have also enabled commenting on our sites. Some would say basics, but capturing the value from it is much harder. The reason why this is valuable to us is twofold. First, it contributes to brand loyalty, creating a sense of passion, community, and purpose.
Second, it brings valuable behavioral first-party data that feeds into Aperture, which is our audience segmentation and targeting platform. We have also recently launched T3 Germany on April 30th, using AI and limited editorial human expertise and input as overlay. This means reusing our vast array of published editorial content, again, at no incremental costs, and creating additional revenue monetized programmatically. We hope that this is the first of many. The platform effect is ready to deliver yet again through more brands and more languages. On this slide, you can also see this in action with the "Trust Me, Buy This Who What Wear" newsletter. The ad product has since been playbooked, creating new ad products and therefore scale using that same platform effect. Finally, what I also wanted to share with you, the career podcast "Second Life" has seen Cartier as the key sponsor.
Podcasts are a great brand marketing moment, offering a high-quality platform for luxury advertisers and, importantly, are platform agnostic. Now, turning to slide seven on monetization, our second strategic objective. Product and innovation are vital. We need to serve the products that work for our customers. We need to be relevant. During the half, we have launched a shoppable ads format, as demonstrated on this slide, where the audience can interact with and purchase through the ads. Furthermore, as mentioned at the full year results last year in December, reviewing the U.K. sales organization was paramount to drive momentum, further product innovation, leveraging the learnings from the U.S. commercials that are transferable to the U.K. and vice versa. The review is well progressed. We have continued improvement in trading expected throughout the rest of the year. Now onto magazines.
We have successfully slowed the rate of decline, leading to stellar magazines' performance in H1. Sharjeel will give you much more detail on this on the financial side. It is also worth noting that this performance in magazine is not through luck or market tailwinds. This is the result of 18 months of deep dive, leaving no stone unturned, using data to make informed decisions, but also investment in key brands for better acquisitions and retention of customers, resulting in reducing the rate of decline by at least 50%. Additionally, in the half, the Rolex Book, which I would recommend to everyone, has contributed to the strong performance also. B2B, despite challenging market backdrop, is focusing on driving initiatives, entering new verticals through a unified product portfolio.
I hope what you get from those two slides is that we are creating our own momentum and we are continuing to execute our plans of action at pace. The strategy is simple. We are focused on rigorous execution and delivery, and there is more work to be done. It is about building the business for tomorrow whilst delivering on today, which is a perfect segue for Sharjeel to cover the financials for the half. Sharjeel, over to you.
Thank you, Kevin. I'm delighted to open the evenings with you for the very first time. Starting with the financial highlights, we are pleased to deliver financial results which highlight that we are executing against our strategy, and we are concentrating on what is in our control. We have invested in the business with discipline in the past two years.
These investments drove good growth in the second half of FY 2024, and we saw that momentum continue into Future's first quarter of FY 2025. While the decline in organic growth across the first half of 2025 is a bit disappointing, it is important to note that Future was in organic growth until the end of February. In March, we were impacted by uncertainty, mainly across our U.S. digital advertising clients. I will break this down when I talk about B2C in more detail later. That said, I wanted to note right up front that the U.S. digital advertising market has stabilized in our Q3. More on this when I go through the outlook. Revenue of GBP 378.4 million was down 3% year-on-year on a reported basis. Within this reported figure, our organic performance was down 1%. Our adjusted operating profit of GBP 100.7 million reflects the expected half-year AOP margin of 27%.
The margin is flat year-on-year, and this testifies to our disciplined approach to costs. The stable margin, combined with reduced interest costs and the benefit of our share buyback programs, has translated into an adjusted EPS growth of 4%. The group continued to generate strong cash flows with a robust cash generation at 111% of adjusted operating profit. The balance sheet remained strong with net debt at GBP 1.1 million after having returned over GBP 43 million to shareholders in this period alone. In line with our capital allocation policy, a further GBP 55 million share buyback program has been announced this morning. To summarize these results, despite a challenging macro in the latter part of Q2, we are focusing on what we can control, relentlessly executing against our strategy, tightly managing our investment and costs, rigorously applying our capital allocation framework, focusing on creating value for our shareholders.
As mentioned at our full year results in December, we changed our reporting segments to reflect how the business is now managed on a day-to-day basis. Overall, the group's organic revenue declined by 1% during the first half, with good growth in Q1 of +2%, being more than offset by the uncertainty in the latter part of Q2, which was down 5%. Overall, B2C was flat, which is a good result given the short-term uncertainty we faced. Go.Compare was down 1%. This is in line with our expectations given the stellar performance last year, the expected decline in car being offset by the strong growth in home and other segments. In B2B, as mentioned in our full year results, the tech enterprise market remains very difficult. However, other verticals like financial services and education have shown good growth.
Right, let's get down to some detail by each division, always enjoying the detail. Right, starting with B2C. As a quick reminder, this represents 2/3 of the group. B2C itself is made up of 50% from magazines, 33% from digital ads and other media, and the remainder from e-commerce affiliates. Overall, B2C was flat year-on-year after being in good growth during Q1 and now taking each area in turn. In the first half of the year, our audience sessions were down 4%. It is worth highlighting that the underlying trend in sessions is better than that headline stat. There was a temporary reduction in sessions, specifically in Google Discover traffic due to image display issues, which we have now fixed. Without that temporary reduction, our audience's performance would have been approximately 2 percentage points better.
While sessions remain the key audience performance, it is worth noting that total advertising impressions, i.e., the inventory we sell, are up, benefiting from more time on each page as a result of the quality of the content, as well as the initiatives that Kevin highlighted, such as recirculation and commenting. Within our verticals, technology continues to do well. Following editorial investments, we have seen a rebound in women in luxury as well as entertainment. The gaming cycle has been weak. However, in H2, we have just seen Oblivion Remastered generate good traffic. Of course, Nintendo Switch 2 will launch on the 5th of June, which I am personally looking forward to as well. In digital advertising, it has been about puts and takes across geographies and quarters. I will cover the quarterly movement in the next slide.
In the U.S., March saw a number of pull-outs, delays, and an overall reduction in spend. This resulted in our U.S. digital advertising revenues being down for the half, despite good progress in the sales strategy and moving inventory from open auction into direct. In the U.K., the challenges experienced in 2024 continued. However, the work on the U.K. sales organization is starting to bear fruit, and we are seeing a slower rate of decline, and this is set to continue for the rest of the year. Turning to eCommerce affiliates, as mentioned in our February trading update, peak trading was good, with Q1 growing by 19%, with the basket size flat year-on-year. Performance in products has slowed in Q2, but this has been partially offset by strong growth in vouchers. We expect the growth in vouchers to moderate as we anniversary strong comparators. Last but not least, magazines.
Magazines have performed strongly with 1% organic growth in the half against an overall market which is in secular decline. This is a combination of two factors. First, we have produced a premium book for Rolex, and if you're into watches, I highly recommend it. Second, as Kevin highlighted earlier, there has been an underlying improvement in subscription as a result of key initiatives, notably around acquisition and retention, leading to an improvement in our net subscriber metric, which has been positive in the recent months. Overall, a mixed performance for B2C, which started the year very well but experienced the impact of U.S. softness in the latter part of Q2. This particularly comes to light when looking at slide 13.
As you can see in the two red boxes at the top of slide 13, we experienced significant swings in the U.S. digital ads between Q1 and then Q2. The delta is even more stark when you look at direct advertising, which went from up seven in Q1 to -10 in Q2. A couple of examples will help give some context. We had a client who produces in China, assembles in Mexico, and sells into the U.S., who pulled spend. Similarly, we had luxury and technology customers moving spend into the latter part of the year, where they would have more clarity. The other item I would like to point out on this slide is the improvement in the U.K., which is set to continue into H2. More on Q3 in the outlook section. Turning to slide 14, I wanted to highlight a B2C bolt-on we recently completed, Quizly.
While it is relatively modest in size, I wanted to give a bit of color on Quizly to help show some of our thinking around bolt-ons. It provides audience engagement tools, including quizzes, games, and polls embedded into websites. The bolt-on would improve audience attraction and retention as we roll it out to prioritized sites, increasing dwell time and therefore improving monetization. Further, we will gain more data from user registration and marketing permissions, which in turn can be monetized at a higher rate. Just a small example of how bolt-ons can help attract and reach valuable audiences and grow monetization. Moving on to Go.Compare. At GBP 95 million, Go.Compare represents a quarter of the group's revenues. Go.Compare revenue declined 1% in the period, which is a solid outcome given the 30% revenue growth we experienced in the first half of 2024.
Worth highlighting that Go.Compare has grown revenue at a 10% CAGR between 2022 and 2025. Car insurance revenue, as expected, was down in the period, reflecting declines in overall "volumes." However, this was partially offset by improved conversion when it came to users coming onto the site. Other revenue grew 10% in the half, a key strategic initiative to drive diversified revenue in Go.Compare. This is a very pleasing result to have moved four percentage points of revenue into non-car insurance, and non-car insurance is now 38% of the business. As mentioned at the full year results in December, we said we would leverage the re-platforming to improve user experience and drive audience engagement. This year has been packed with initiatives. We have launched quick quotes to drive cross-selling opportunities.
For example, if you have car insurance quotes, we will provide you with a home insurance quote with the data you have already provided us. We are looking to launch this for other products as well. Additionally, rather than emailing you, it's time to renew your car insurance, we will proactively send you a renewal price to simplify your renewal journey. We continue on simplifying the login journey as well, as this drives user stickiness and engagement. We continue to leverage Future's expertise to drive SEO improvements for Go.Compare. These organic actions have been complemented with the recent acquisition of RNWL, which brings me nicely to slide 16. We bought RNWL in March.
RNWL is an insurance wallet app, meaning that it stores all insurance-related documents in one place, making it easy for you to renew, claim, or even check any questions you might have about your policy, such as, "Can I drive in Europe?" Whilst these are early days, we are progressing with technical integration, and we are excited about the potential it can untap. Renewal is extremely rich on first-party data, and in time, we will be able to capitalize on this. To be clear, RNWL is available to everyone and will continue to be so, whether you got your insurance directly or whether you got your insurance through a price comparison competitor.
However, we are looking to scale the app actively by offering it to all Go.Compare customers, with a view that our customers will then stay within this ecosystem, which will help with renewals, but also in time help sell other products. The last thing to say is that RNWL does not have to stop at renewals for insurance. Our medium-term thinking is wider. Turning to B2B on slide 17. B2B represents 7% of the group with GBP 27 million of revenue. The performance in B2B continues to be challenged by the enterprise tech market. However, I wanted to note that the other verticals in B2B delivered growth in the period, like financial services and education, as well as retail and AV technology. A further point to note is that while B2B declined in Q2, it was an improvement on Q1, and Q3 looks better than Q2.
Within B2B, our SmartBrief newsletter platform remains a key asset, underpinned by a highly engaged first-party audience and a proprietary tech stack that consistently delivers strong email advertising performance for our clients. Going forward, and in response to the market challenges, we are actively integrating across the B2B group to unlock cross-brand opportunities. We are also embedding AI tools within our proprietary tech stack to improve campaign performance as well as streamline workflows for efficiency and for scale. Right, turning to slide 19, which highlights our P&L, it's time to get into some financials. Right, the group's gross margin of 73% was up 1 percentage point. This accretion reflects the change in revenue mix during the first half of the year, with less revenue from Go.Compare, which is dilutive at a gross margin level but accretive at a net margin level.
During the first half, sales, marketing, and editorial costs increased by 2%. This reflects the planned investments, such as more spend on editorial and sales capability, combined with general inflation and the annual pay increase. Within this line, we also had increased marketing costs in Go.Compare. This is timing-related between the two halves. Admin costs and other overheads saw a 10% decrease, reflecting the benefit of R&D tax credits as well as lower medical benefit rates in the U.S.. There was an increase in depreciation and amortization year-on-year as a result of CapEx investment in prior years. Overall, this meant the group's adjusted operating profit was GBP 100.7 million, and the margin has remained stable at 27%, which is a good outcome given the revenue decline.
Whilst we have continued to invest for growth, we remain disciplined during the current volatility, ensuring that each pound or dollar invested drives good returns. Further, we are remaining focused on any additional headcount as well as all external overheads. In certain areas, such as B2B, we have taken measures to right-size the business. As a result, we remain confident on reaching 28% for the full year. In the medium term, we expect to be in our stated range of 28%-30%. As ever, and as Kevin said, Future remains a strong margin business. Moving on to the net debt bridge on slide 21. As I said back in December, cash is my personal favorite topic, and it is good to see that Future continued its strong cash performance. In the first half, cash conversion was 111% of adjusted operating profit, which generated GBP 119 million of cash inflows.
After CapEx, tax, interest, and exceptionals, Future had a net cash generation of around GBP 65 million. We applied our capital allocation framework thoughtfully to utilize this cash. We spent GBP 3 million to buy RNWL for our Go.Compare business, and we returned GBP 43 million to our shareholders through dividend and share buybacks. Even after those uses of cash, the group still reduced its net debt to GBP 241 million and maintained its leverage at 1.1. With cash conversion expected to remain strong, this highlights the group's solid financial position, which is a good segue to the capital allocation slide. I wanted to highlight a few specific points regarding the framework. First, our allocation continues to be organic investment. Second, bolt-ons, which are actionable and are a great accelerant to our strategy. Our focus on bolt-ons is across three main areas.
First, they can help reinforce our leadership position in a particular digital vertical, be that in technology or women and luxury, for example. Secondly, we can bring in interesting technology or products quicker than building it and with less risk, such as RNWL. Lastly, it can give Future a skill or capability in a new area like Quizly. These bolt-ons will help Future to further attract and retain audiences and improve monetization. We have a good pipeline of small bolt-ons, but I can assure you that each will be diligently reviewed in terms of having a clear contribution to our strategy, and we have a strong set of financial criteria when reviewing potential returns. Three, strategic M&A. This remains greyed out at the moment. It is not currently a priority, but as we have said before, we will continuously review, and we will remain opportunistic.
Four, we retain our progressive ordinary dividend, which the board will review each year. Lastly, if we have excess cash, we will return it to shareholders such that the group maintains a floor leverage of one time, as shown by this morning's announcement of a new share buyback program of GBP 55 million. This will start as soon as the current one completes, ensuring there is no gap between programs. As ever, our focus is on driving across our businesses and to create value for shareholders by optimizing our use of our strong balance sheet. Turning to slide 24. Before we move to the outlook, I wanted to share a new slide. I intend on having it at each set of results, and over time, it will show progress across each of our capital allocation engines. Over the past eight years, you can see where the cash has been allocated.
Most recently, the shape has changed, reflecting the move from acquisition into shareholder returns in the form of buybacks. At all times, the focus is on value creation, be it investing it to drive organic growth, or an M&A, or returning it to shareholders. We will continue to apply our capital allocation framework with discipline and remain agile. Finally, turning to the outlook on slide 26. Whilst we are confident in continuing to drive growth initiatives, we remain mindful of the macro volatility. For now, the U.S. advertising softness in March seems to have been a specific period of heightened uncertainty. Specifically in the U.S., we saw growth in direct ads in April, and this is set to continue for the rest of Q3. We are also seeing an improvement in open auction yields. As I said at the top, U.S. is now more stable.
In terms of outlook, the group remains cautious for the second half of the year and expects full-year organic revenue to decline by low single digits. If trends were to change again, and things have changed a few times over the last couple of months, and even this week, this could impact the outlook in either direction. Given this backdrop, we will give a trading update in July on how Q3 has traded and give an update on the full year. In terms of margin, we are confident in achieving 28% for the year through a disciplined approach to all costs. The group will continue to generate strong cash flow at around 95% plus of adjusted operating profit, and we will wisely use this cash while maintaining financial discipline. With that, we'll change ends. Over to Kevin. Thank you.
Thank you, Sharjeel.
Turning on to the next slide, please. I want to remind you that whilst the strategy is unchanged, we are evolving our operating model through innovative products and first-party data, thus leveraging our fundamental characteristics. I often ask myself, what drives success? Can it be repeated over and over again to create scale? Future has demonstrated that it can, and this is down to three factors firmly embedded into our DNA, the Future DNA. First, it is a growth mindset. You need to believe that you can grow, not necessarily in the same way that you have grown in the past. Along the way, you have to reimagine your ways of working, your value proposition to both customers and clients. All of that whilst moving at pace. This, when coupled with innovation on this slide, drove Future's past successes.
We were the first in the 1990s to have cover amount on the magazines, offering a true and unique customer proposition, giving us permission to review our pricing, for example. We were revolutionary in bringing our brands on a single platform in the 2010s. We monetize our affiliate recommendation through our own eCommerce tech platform, which is first in class, alongside our ad tech platform, building revenue lines from zero to millions, thus leveraging our product and tech expertise. On to the next slide. In order to innovate going forwards, you need to have permission to think outside of the box, thinking differently. You need to take calculated risks. You need to perfect products through iteration, and sometimes you need to fail. This is how great ideas and improved products come to market and become successful.
Hence, this last key success factor is fundamental, as without it, the first two are pointless. You need to be agile, giving us the ability to pivot quickly in areas of opportunity and have a rigorous focus on execution and delivery, again, at pace. With them, we will be able to deliver sustained and scaled growth. Through this approach, we are building the business for tomorrow whilst delivering on today, which nicely takes me to the next slide. Now, some of you here would recognize some of the blocks on this slide. I just wanted to recap. Simply put, it is about the audience, and it is about effective monetization. First, reaching valuable audience. At the core, our valuable audience have intent.
Whether you are looking to renew your home insurance on GoCompare, looking at the latest Oblivion game on PC Gamer, down to the latest eye cream on Marie Claire, or even the perfect shade of paint on Homes and Gardens, this means that through the power of brands, we are connecting our valuable audience and clients. Whether they are advertisers, retailers, and marketeers, they can reach who they want. Critically and importantly, we are also agnostic in how we deliver our customer proposition, whether through an email, a website, on social, or whatever comes next. We are where our audiences are, recognizing the generational shifts and continuous changes in the landscape. Second, monetization. The way we make money today won't be the same way we make money in three to five years' time.
In order to monetize our valuable audience, we need continued focus, rigor, and again, pace to evolve that proposition, offering our customer proposition through innovation. We can do this at scale, driving, again, operating leverage because of that integrated tech stack. We do it once and apply it to the whole ecosystem. I am hoping what you got from this slide is that at its core, the strategy remains. It is all about the product innovation and first-party data, brand proposition, and cachet, and our unique expert quality content to drive future growth whilst maintaining our current operating margin. To close, as I said before, we are building the future for tomorrow and delivering on today. Thank you for listening. I will now open the floor to Q&A. Sharjeel and I will be here.
Hi, Andy.
This is him.
Andy Renton from Cavendish. A few different questions.
First, are there any sort of specific initiatives around monetization of audiences on social media? Have any of the Quizly aspects already been rolled out? In terms of sort of looking forward, you said there's an acceleration of growth in future years. Where do you see most of that coming from?
Can I take the first one?
Sounds good.
All right. Thank you. Specific monetization on social. Look, what we stated very clearly in the past, and we'll continue to do, is social is an enabler for our audience. It definitely drives our branded content, sort of like campaigns and monetization, and also drives brand awareness. Thirdly, where it can actually drive monetization, brilliant. Partly also driving through audience to our own and operated, right? In terms of Quizly rollout, look, this is fresh.
Very fresh.
Very fresh.
Very fresh.
I can reassure you and everyone that we have a roadmap, both in terms of integration as well as growth. Now, we shall be looking to actually sort of like give an update, right, in due course, right? Just to accelerate acceleration of growth in the future, which is the third one, right? As I mentioned in my presentation, we can only see so far. The mission is very clear, which is value creation for our shareholders, underpinned by our two key strategic pillars, namely attract and reach audience, and deliver effective, efficient monetization. How we get there is through sheer innovation, product, ways of working, how we approach efficiency, how we land it, etc., etc., etc., because it all rolls up to literally growth, right?
Let me just add a bit of color.
Sure.
I mean, until the end of Q1, we were in growth.
Until February, we were in growth, right? We already proved it. My first tagline when I joined was, "The strategy is clear. The strategy is working." You could see that in the first few months of the year. There was accelerating growth, right? We had the March blip, right? We will carry on doing what is in our control. Things like the T3 Germany is a fantastic example of a new product that will drive growth in the future, more languages, more brands. Recirculation is another great example of that. Commenting is another great example. Go.Compare, Homes grew significantly during the period. Now that we have RNWL, we have more user experiences coming up. SmartBrief continues to do well in B2B. The point I am making is you already saw it. Yes, March took a bit of a dip, but the strategy was working.
There is a whole bunch of things that me and Kevin are always talking about, new products, DNA, innovation, execution.
Oh, we are going to hear it.
It is Nick Dempsey from Barclays. I have two, please. Just, investors are concerned, I guess, when we speak to them about search moving away from traditional Google search to ChatGPT, Google's AI offerings, Perplexity, etc. Your traffic, looking at the back of your presentation, it has not been too bad, but can you give us any indication of how much change there has been so far in terms of traffic that comes from traditional Google searches? The second question, just looking at that traffic, Homes is the one that has performed the worst. Of course, some areas are getting better.
I'm picking on the one that's got worse, but can you give us an indication of any particular factors that are making that one down quite heavily?
Right. Thank you for your question. The first one, look, we acknowledge the behavioral shift, right? I just wanted to actually remind everyone that we have first-in-class audience SEO, right? Acknowledging that behavioral shift, what we're doing is investing and leveraging our expertise in deploying an audience AI squad and focus to better learn about AI in terms of search. We believe that our track record, our established track record through innovation and focus will bode very well in terms of us looking into how AI search operates and capitalize on this.
With regards to Homes performing, and look, that's what I've said before, which is as we look forward, right, it's all about customer proposition, evolving what we have today to actually service those needs. Again, we have had a strong track record, and we continue to monitor, understand their needs, and with our agility, move very fast in order to actually build new, new for our customers.
Yeah, just to add a couple of things.
Sure.
I know you picked on the one going down. I'm going to pick on the ones going up. All right. Women's and Luxury, which was down last year, we talked about it. It's up 19%. The reason I pick on that one is we invested heavily in the kind of editorial in that, so it came through. Technology continues to go up.
While there may be some specific things going on in Homes, I know Jason in the team and Hillary in the team are very much focused on that.
True.
I hope to stand up here.
Also, to add, entertainment is dutifully recovered, right? Yeah. I'll be reading all the Switch 2 stuff, so gaming will come back as well.
That's a bit of color. Just on AI, the other thing to remember, and Kevin, you talk about this quite well, is yes, there will be a shift to AI, very small at the moment, but Future has a history of being absolutely world-class on SEO. Our intention is to do that again in AI, to be there when they reference material. We've got an AI squad.
Yep.
You want to just mention that a little bit?
Yeah.
As I mentioned before, it's just like that AI squad is literally the learnings, right? What is new is largely unknown. First of all, it is understanding, learning, and then deploying a new approach. Okay.
Gareth Davies from Numis.
Hi, Gareth.
Hi. Just a couple on GoCo and then one on a Google comment you mentioned. Just on GoCo, in terms of the car insurance market, can you just talk a little bit about sort of how you feel you're doing versus the market there, how aggressive that market is at the moment? Because clearly different players take different approaches at different points and sort of thoughts into the second half. You have been very successful expanding into other insurance categories. We're starting to see some signs of life in things like energy.
Would the intention be for you to kind of go into a market like that as it shows signs of coming back, or is it just insurance for now? What's our expectation there in terms of other categories?
Can I take that one?
And then final one was just you mentioned you'd had a Google issue, which was kind of what contributed to the minus four in terms of sessions. Can you just expand a little bit on what the issue was and what makes you completely happy that it's kind of knocked on the head? I think we're a little sensitive to it elsewhere. It's been a longer-term issue than expected.
Why don't you take that one?
Yeah.
I'll start with that, and then you can kick in.
Sure.
So, just on the car insurance market, we were number two at the end of FY 2024.
We're down to number three at the moment. Look, people take different tactics. Our view and the board's view is don't chase revenue for the sake of revenue. It's got to be profitable growth. We are very mindful of what we do in terms of marketing on Google, but also TV and YouTube. There has been a slight loss in share, but we're good with that. It's on plan and on track. We have improved our conversion as well. People coming to the site are ending up with a quote, and people are finishing the quote as well. We've kind of done that, but we've dropped one place.
In terms of the energy market, before I touch that, just to remind everyone, last year we said we will replatform. We delivered the replatforming.
We also said that the replatforming will actually come with new initiatives, new product features, and we have just done that, and it is actually helping us, right? Rightly so. For Homes, for instance, it is worth also stating that the performance of Homes insurance has been dutifully on the focus, focus, focus, and the technical and product execution. That has helped us. Off the back of that, what that means is that when it comes to energy, as the market changes, with our agility of operation, we will be responding accordingly, leveraging our energy platform, reactivating it, thinking about a customer proposition, and landing that.
Just to clarify on the energy, Gareth, you can go to Go.Compare and check your energy now. It is there. It is live. It is not that we have to turn it on. It is there, and it is already there.
It just felt there has not been a real focus.
That is what I am saying, which is our agility is that as the market primes, we will be, as opposed to reactive, being proactive in that measure, right?
Yeah, no, yeah. Checked out some good deals last weekend.
In terms of the Google issue, in terms of the image, look, any business that moves and is on a growth path ultimately moves very fast for delivery. In this particular case, there are things that drop, and it is our responsibility to actually move at pace, identify, and fix accordingly. That is what we have done. As I mentioned in my presentation earlier, innovation requires agility. Innovation is all about coming in with new ideas, new products, customer needs.
The innovation is to move fast, but also be prepared to actually fail and then fail fast and then recover, right, but then grow out of it even more. Yep.
Hi, good morning. It's Lara Simpson from JP Morgan. I just wanted to pick up again on the session numbers. Obviously, we can see the trend to March. Can you give us any insight on sort of how that's fared April coming into May? Interest just in any trends around sort of consumer sentiment or consumer spend and how that's faring in the current backdrop. I wanted to pick up on, obviously, the growth acceleration strategy isn't really a feature today, but you did obviously have quite an outlined investment agenda behind that.
Can you just remind us one way we're tracking on those investments in 2025 and sort of are we on track relative to those targets, are costs maybe being redeployed elsewhere or pulled back in the current environment? Just a last question on magazines. Clearly, this was a positive surprise in H1. I know you're doing a lot of work around the premium titles. Obviously, you had sort of Rolex win. Are there any one-offs that we should be aware of in H1 that sort of boosted that number, or do you think sort of low single digit is the new runway for growth going forward? I suppose in that, how is that affecting, Kevin, your thinking about magazines strategically in the portfolio in years to come?
Okay. Should I take that one?
Right. Yeah, you do that one, and then I'll kick it to you.
Yeah, I'll take the top two.
Thank you for your question on magazine. Look, I started to say that, look, I love magazines. It's a large part of our business, and therefore, it's not like how much time you spend. It's like what you do with the time you spend on magazines, right? In terms of H1 specifically, there's a number of brands that has puts and takes, right? Some brands have worked, someone hasn't, right? However, for the large part, it's all about how we go about and operate, how do we actually think about putting magazines in the day and age, right, on shelf to subscribers, right? It is about that, how we operate, how we iterate, and how we think what the customer needs that has helped us.
Now, in terms of the outlook, look, we can't see further as we've presented today, right, which is we're going to give you an update. As far as I'm concerned, magazines are in structural decline, and it is right for us to decelerate that decline. We know how to do it. We've done it well, and we shall be continuing in doing that.
Sounds good. All right. I'm going to go in reverse order. Gas. The way to think of it, and you make a point about it not being mentioned much today, it's now embedded in the business. We put in GBP 25 million-GBP 30 million of costs. It is there now. It is part of our fabric. It is within the business. Over time, me and Kevin might go, "That's working a bit better.
We want to invest here. We may reallocate some of that costs, but we're committed to the 28% margin, right? Gas is now embedded in the business. Specifically, how much do we spend? I said between GBP 5 million-GBP 10 million at the December. It is closer to the GBP 5 million. That is a conscious decision given where the macro is. Your question on sessions, it was minus four . If you take out the Google discovery issues, which we fixed, it is around minus two . That is sort of the trend we carry on seeing. It is very difficult to say March, April, this, that. It fluctuates depending on all sorts of things. I do not see a dramatic change either way on that. Your question on products, as I said in my script, it is a little bit weaker in Q2.
That's part of the caution as we look forward into low single digit decline. That's kind of built into some of my thinking. You read the same thing that I read, consumer confidence in the U.S.. We've got to think, and we've got to be conscious of that. We go back, and this is what me and Kevin always talk about, do what's in our control. Carry on doing what's in our control. If it turns, a headwind turns into tailwind, we'll update you in July.
Hi. It's Johnathan Barrett from Panmure. I've got, I'll call it, three questions. First of all, just on the strategy level for the business, have you got any more thoughts on the B2B media operations and price comparison that are integral parts of the group going forward?
Second question, I wonder if you could just walk us through online advertising in a bit more detail in the U.K. and the U.S., just so we understand what you're seeing there and reconcile the volume of impressions with what you're seeing on yields and where you're getting to on improving your relative pricing, which is obviously part of your strategy. I appreciate the backdrop may make it difficult to discern that, but if you could at least try and give us a feel for those two markets, obviously, and we haven't heard a lot about the U.K. from you.
Thirdly, just to expand on Nick's question on AI search there, have you learned anything about the way that it's working that gives you a kind of solid idea of how you're going to approach this going forward, or is it still very noisy and messy and actually you do not see very good patterns of behavior from or policies from these search engines on the AI side?
I'll take it.
Yep. Thank you for your questions. Right. I'll take the top and third. Sharjeel will take your second. In terms of B2B and price comparison and Google compare, right, you talk about strategy. Look, I think today is my 46th day as CEO, right? I think, right? Not that I'm counting. Look, my focus has been rightly on the business, right? One of the things that is the reviewing in terms of our growth strategy.
B2B has a growth strategy. GoCompare stroke price comparison have a growth strategy. We presented part of it today in the presentation, which is the acquisition of RNWL. Sharjeel has covered in terms of the initiatives that came out of the replatforming. There is, of course, more to come through that, right? That is the continuity of the growth strategy for GoCompare and the same for B2B. With regards to AI search, let me try to explain that in the sense that it in itself, it is evolving, right? It in itself is actually generating a behavioral shift.
Remember, Future's DNA, our agility, right, to pivot and to find opportunity and crystallize on it is we are also learning and moving sort of like in lockstep, right, in terms of understanding how it works, understanding what it's providing to the customer, and then accordingly reacting and putting in. Now, I remind everyone that we also have an OpenAI partnership, right, which we are deepening in terms of working closely in terms of a better understanding now, right? We are learning on all fronts and reacting very, very, very rapidly.
Good. I'll try, Johnathan, to break down some of the advertising, but maybe if you want more color, myself and Marion can help later on. Just to give you a couple of things. The U.K.'s rate of decline is, so in the first half, in the first quarter, it was 17% down to 9%.
We're seeing that. In the U.S., it went from overall 1% growth in the first quarter to -13%. You see that's the March piece we talked about. Open auction has been tricky. The yields have been a bit lower in open auction. I read stuff from all of you, and some say it's going up, some say it's going down. For us, it's been a little bit weaker. We're now seeing that get a little bit better going forward. The key thing is getting more out of open auction into first party. This year, we moved two percentage points from open auction. Just to give you a factor, first party tends to be about five times the value of open auction. Moving more up the chain is the key thing for us.
We moved 2 percentage specifically into programmatic, but it is roughly the same thing. Hopefully, that gives you a little bit more color on where yields are and what open auction is looking like.
Hi, Jessica Pok from Peel Hunt.
Hi.
I have three as well, please. Just building on that, Sharjeel, can you remind us what the percentage of advertising is in direct versus programmatic? The second one is, you talked about direct deals being pulled in the U.S. in March and recovering a bit in April. I mean, the projects or the deals and the campaigns which have been pulled, is that actually being pulled or potentially delayed to moving to the second half? The third one is just on expanding into Germany for T3. What is the strategy of kind of moving into non-speaking countries?
Is it a matter of moving into these countries, testing it out, and possibly later on putting sales backing behind it? Or is it a matter of it's just going to run on possibly programmatic advertising and less on focus on direct sales? How should we think about the pace of the rollout into different countries?
I'll take that one. I'll take the first two.
Perfect.
On T3 Germany, which is non-English, this is a clear example of us innovating, product innovation and innovating as a whole and being agile to finding an opportunity and trying to actually seize it. Now, we've done that, and now we're going to test the results, waiting for the result to come in, and then should it actually work, the platform effect will evolve it and move rapidly.
In terms of I mentioned in my presentation, programmatic demonetisation, sort of. That is right at this moment in time, being again flexible in the opportunity and then proportionate, right?
Good. I will take the stat first, get that one out of the way, and then I can go on a monologue. In terms of impressions, 27% impressions are direct. In terms of the revenue, it is about 60-odd from that is direct revenue because of the increase in price. In terms of pulling, shifting and stuff, look, all sorts of things go on in the client base. The way I look at it is when you have big events, right?
When I'm talking big events, financial crisis, you've got a Brexit or you've got a pandemic, or even if you have smaller big events, if that's such a thing, U.S. elections, U.K. elections, European elections, you always see this uncertainty, right? That's my experience in all my years. The question then is, if someone takes something out, do they spend that plus what they were going to spend in the next quarter? That does not happen. You do not pull the 10 and then spend 20 the next quarter. The question is, do you spend 10 the next quarter or do you ramp it up from 6, 8, and then 10? Look, in my view, and this is why we're being cautious in the outlook, is you're not going to spend what you pulled and what you were planning to pull.
You're going to build it back up as you get the confidence and the uncertainty goes away. That's my view, and that's generally what I see across all media.
Hi. It's Roddy Davidson from Singers.
Hi.
Hi. Thank you for the presentation. Just a couple of questions, please, in terms of potential sort of incremental revenue opportunities, firstly with regard to AI platforms. How do you sort of think about them as an opportunity to monetize content, further monetize content? And secondly, with Go.Compare, is there much of an opportunity, do you think, in the B2B space, perhaps by white labeling in a similar fashion to MoneySuperMarket?
Yep. Thank you for your question. In terms of incremental opportunity with AI platform to monetize content, I think that was your question, right?
It's the same answer as I gave to one of the previous ones, which is we have an OpenAI partnership, right? At this moment in time, we are looking for offers. Should offers be, right? We're subject to the deal. We will take that. It comes to the OpenAI partnership itself. I think that we have to actually engage and deepen that relationship in order to actually together work in order to build the right customer proposition for them. Through that medium, we will find new ways to actually uncover and then crystallize those opportunities that you've aforementioned in terms of through content, right? It's an ongoing thing.
Good. On Go.Compare, me and Kevin and Lee as well, we spend a lot of time thinking about our strategy, what we're going to do, right? Both of us love the assets.
We're investing in it. I'm not going to get into specifics. I don't want to give away anything commercially. We've done RNWL. That's a new product. That's a new avenue. That's one type of the things we think about. What new products could we do? We've got a couple of ideas on that. The other thing is around partnerships. We're currently exploring a couple of partnerships. Again, can't tell you which ones. Again, thinking about how you could use our data along with other people's data at a bigger scale and what we could do there. We're thinking about licensing as well. Again, not going to get into the detail, but just to give you a bit of color, products, partnerships, licensing is a kind of topics that we're discussing at the moment and pursuing.
Can I just ask one more supplementary?
I mean, you have quite rightly emphasized the cash generative qualities of the business, talked about your capital allocation strategy, and we've got more share buybacks coming down the pipe. Against that backdrop, I mean, dividend, could you talk a little bit more about. I know the dividend policy is progressive, but in absolute terms, your yield is extremely low. It feels like that's another lever that potentially you could pull in terms of emphasizing your total return proposition to investors. Just wondering how you're thinking about that.
Yeah. Look, I mean, I referenced it, and the board will review it every year. I had one conversation with the board about it this year, and we'll carry on having the conversation. There's multiple facets, right? There's five engines I've put on.
One of the things I talk about internally with everyone is I want to get all of those five engines moving. Yeah, look, we'll have a look at the dividend. The board discusses it, had one discussion. We'll have another discussion for the full year.
Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you for being here. I hope you find it very useful and informative.
Thank you.