Good morning, all. I'm delighted to be here this morning. I will start with some opening remarks, and then hand over to Penny, who will cover the FY 2023 results. I will then come back to present our strategy before opening up the floor to Q&A. Turning to slide four, I joined Future in April, and it has been an exciting and fantastic journey. What is clear to me is the impressive energy and quality of our 2,900 employees, plus the very strong foundations upon which we can build the next phase of growth. We're in a very attractive space where there are big, untapped opportunities. We've got the brands and the leadership positions with scale, and as Penny will show, we are also financially strong. What I am also clear on is that media is a dynamic industry.
This is why having a robust and agile operating model and strategy ensures adaptation. I've done a thorough review of the group, and today is about unveiling the next phase of strategy, which accelerates the growth while maintaining our strong financial characteristics. Today, I will take you through the growth acceleration strategy, or GAS, as in the fuel you put in a car. Put simply, we are investing in the next chapter of Future's evolution around five key pillars to drive accelerated revenue growth, including a return to growth in the second half of FY 2024. Combined with our revenue growth profile, we maintain our strong financial characteristics of healthy margin and strong free cash flow generation, which creates further optionality. But first, I just want to quickly review 2023.
Penny will go through this all in detail in a moment, but I want to emphasize that we've delivered full year results in line with expectations, which confirms the foundational strengths that I've just mentioned. As you know, 2023 was a challenging year, and the second half was, as expected, a continuation of the first half trends. But importantly, since we last met at the interims, we've seen a stabilization of online users, which is a leading indicator, one of many, and Penny will come back to this later. Additionally, the financial characteristics of the group remained intact, strong margin of 32% and fantastic cash generation. With that, let me hand it over to Penny.
Thanks, Jon, and good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to be here to present our FY 2023 results. Slide hiccup. We're very pleased to deliver results in line with expectations, with good, resilient profitability, maintaining particularly strong cash generation and a very robust financial position. You can see the key numbers for the year on slide seven. Revenue of GBP 789 million was down 4% on a reported basis, including the favorable impact of foreign exchange, mainly the dollar, and contribution from acquisitions. Organic revenue growth was down 10%, in line with the first half. I'll come back to revenue in a bit more detail shortly. Adjusted operating profit was in line with our expectations, down 6%, translating into a margin of 32%, only down 1 percentage point year-on-year.
Given the impact, tough macro environment was strong, and we generated GBP 253 million of adjusted free cash flow, a 99% conversion rate of adjusted operating profit. This is a result of which I'm very proud. Consequently, we closed the year of net debt of GBP 327 million, translating into leverage of 1.25, below our self-imposed limit of 1.5 times, after three acquisitions and having initiated a share buyback program. It really demonstrates our ability to rapidly de-lever. Turning to slide eight and our P&L. As I mentioned, revenue of GBP 789 million. The gross contribution margin of 72% was down two percentage points year-on-year, with the impact of higher cost of sales in magazines and an adverse revenue mix. This has been mitigated by the strong group cost flexibility.
Sales, marketing, and editorial costs actually grew by 2% as a result of the inclusion of acquisitions, the inflationary impact on salaries of around GBP 5 million, and partially offset by marketing efficiency. Overhead costs were down 27% year-on-year, driven by a combination of one-off items and structural improvements. As a result, EBITDA was down 6% year-on-year, translating into an EBITDA margin of 35%, a very strong performance. Finally, adjusted EPS of 140.9p was down 14%, driven by adjusted operating profit performance, as well as higher interest and tax, as previously guided. Before diving into the revenue performance, I just wanted to take the time to talk about our audience.
I always like to break revenue down into volume and yield, and the consumers of our content are obviously the volume lever, and this is where we've seen more volatility over the past year. So I thought it would be helpful to give an update on how we're doing. Moving to Slide 10. We know that over the next 40 years, as we've seen over the last 40 years since the business was founded, the areas of consumer interest in which we operate have enduring interest, and our distribution channels will vary. Over the past few years, we've made a conscious effort to bring in capability to diversify our audience. The three graphs on this slide demonstrate the progress on this journey. Starting with the first chart on the left-hand side, which shows our progress to diversify the areas of interest of our audience.
We recognize the significant value of our technology consumer audience, and also want to diversify our exposure to other markets. You can see the progress on diversification here in the growth of the blue section of the chart, largely as a result of acquisitions, which we then successfully grew. The second chart depicts progress in bringing in new customer acquisition channels for website users. While SEO remains a significant and valuable acquisition channel for us, we've increased customer acquisition from other acquisition channels. In October, we saw a 21% year-on-year increase in website users from email and 69% through Google Discover traffic. The chart on the right-hand side shows our total audience reach. Historically, we've measured audience primarily using our website users.
In fact, we have significant audiences elsewhere who might or might not refer back to the website, and you can see these in the growing red section of the bar chart. As we increasingly identify how to monetize these users, it allows us to invest more in these other types of media. Today, almost half of our online audience consume our content outside of our websites. We have an increasingly diversified audience when it comes to content, channel of acquisition, and type of audience. To see what this looks like in numbers, let's move to slide 11. So the chart here is a new addition, showing our total and significant reach, broken down into each of the different audience groups. In the past, we've only focused on one cohort, our website users, which has the red ring around it on the slide.
They remain a big proportion of our audience, and our focus on them is unchanged. They're highly valuable with a high level of engagement. But we have other routes of audience engagement, with the potential for valuable revenue per user, which remains untapped at this stage, including 217 million social users, email newsletter subscribers, Apple News readers, and magazine subscribers who have immense revenue per user. Audiences outside of our typical website users offer incremental channels with the potential for attractive revenue growth. Moving to slide 12, as I mentioned, website users remain a highly valuable audience for us, so I just wanted to come back to this year's performance to show the foundation for growth into this year. On the chart, you can see the daily average users.
Highlighted in the red box, you can see the stabilization of the trend we've experienced over the last quarter, and in fact, beyond that. Moving to slide 13, we look at our leadership positions, which help to indicate the value of our audience. A market-leading position allows us to monetize our audience through digital advertising at a higher rate. We've seen volatility over the last year, and yet we've maintained or improved our leadership positions in all of our key strategic categories. So with that context, I'll move on to our revenue performance. On slide 15, you can see the revenue performance, both reported and organic, by the three key revenue streams: advertising, affiliate, which also includes price comparison, and then magazines. And you can see how our diversification drives resilience. The advertising environment, this is very pleasing.
Turning to slide 16, which shows the revenue split between our two main geographies. What's striking is the difference between the U.K. and the U.S. performance in digital advertising, with much greater resilience in the U.K. The U.K. brands are more established, with leadership positions in both homes and technology. As a result, we have more direct bookings. We also have a more established sales team and have more than 5 times the number of active clients than in the U.S. The outlook for the U.K. is more challenging over the next year, and that's reflected in our outlook. Our focus on the U.S. will provide a mitigator to this and offer significant untapped opportunities. Just turning to costs and cash. Moving to slide 18, which shows our total operating costs, and you can see total costs have decreased by GBP 19 million year-on-year.
Relating to an increase of GBP 23 million of the pro forma costs of acquisitions, gross of cost synergies of GBP 4 million. This represents roughly a 1 percentage point reduction in the margin. GBP 15 million relates to inflation on salaries and the cost of sales for magazines, in line with our expectations. The cost savings relate to the prior year full bonus accrual, not repeated this year for GBP 16 million. And finally, other cost savings of GBP 19 million include efficiency in marketing of GBP 5 million, savings in property through the consolidation of offices, and some further efficiencies in back office, particularly as we continue the migration onto our technology stack, which both optimizes the front end and also allows us to drop off legacy tech costs.
In order to navigate the macroeconomic backdrop, we've protected profit whilst making sure we double down on the things that matter, expert content, strategic sales force, and effective marketing spend, whilst benefiting from synergies across other areas. This gives us the platform to be able to invest for the future. Moving to our cash flow on slide 19, and our continued resilient cash performance in FY 2023. We generated GBP 253 million of adjusted free cash flow, and whilst this is a reduction year-on-year in line with profit performance, it's pleasing to see adjusted operating profit converting at 99% to adjusted free cash flow. This is a result of strong, continued working capital. We remain capital light, with CapEx representing just 1.5% of revenue.
During the year, we incurred GBP 19 million of exceptional costs relating to non-recurring transaction and integration costs, including a historic liability for Dennis that was paid in the year for GBP 9 million. Interest is higher year-on-year, reflecting cost of debt to fund acquisitions and higher base rates. Our average interest rate for the period was 6%. Tax paid was lower due to an overpayment in prior years. If we move to slide 20, we can see what this looks like in terms of year-on-year movements. In the red box is the net cash generation of GBP 166 million during the year. We then used that cash for the items on the right-hand side, for three acquisitions and the initiation of the share buyback program, and still delevered by GBP 100 million to 1.25 times.
The balance sheet remains strong, with GBP 900 million of facilities, with GBP 574 million of headroom. With the rise of interest rates, we've hedged GBP 300 million of our facilities at attractive rates, protecting us against further rises in interest rates. By design, we're highly cash generative, capital-light business, and our balance sheet is in a strong position to benefit from opportunities and fund investment while remaining prudent. So having laid out the strong balance sheet, we should talk about capital allocation on slide 22. You can see here the framework that we've shared with you before, which shows the hierarchy of priorities to ensure that we review the capital allocation in light of market conditions while aiming to create the greatest value in the long term. As I think I might have mentioned, we have strong cash flow conversion from operating profit.
Our approach is to focus on organic growth as a priority, and then, where appropriate, to leverage our strong cash flows to create value through M&A. We believe that provided we can execute on strategic deals, M&A is a great long-term value creation opportunity for shareholders, and this remains a core strategic lever for the group going forward. Given our current trading multiple, though, buying back our own stock is also an attractive opportunity, and so during the course of the year, we allocated some of our free cash flows to a GBP 45 million share buyback program, which remains ongoing. Going forward, we'll continue to follow this framework to maximize our opportunities, which brings me to our outlook. We enter the year in a solid position, with a clear stabilization of the audience trend, providing a foundation for future growth.
Jon will take you through our strategy in just a moment, and you'll hear from him our program to accelerate revenue growth. This plan is supported by an investment program, of which GBP 20 million will fall into this financial year. These investments will fuel growth initiatives for FY 2024 and beyond. As a result, we're planning for a return to revenue growth in FY 2024, which we expect to come through in the second half. Over the next three years, we expect an acceleration of revenue growth, with healthy margins in the range of 28%-30% and continued strong cash generation, providing further optionality. So that concludes my section of the presentation, but before I hand back to Jon, I wanted to quickly talk about my decision to step down from my role. So I've been with Future for eight years, and it's been a truly fantastic experience.
This is an organization full of brilliant, inspiring people... who are truly passionate about their interests. It's always a really hard decision to know when the right time is to leave, especially to leave a business like Future. In fact, I'm not sure there's ever a good time. As we've looked at what the right plan is for the next chapter of Future, I've determined that now is the right time for me to announce my intention to stand down. I'm very committed to ensuring that we get our growth plan off to the strongest possible start. And with that, I'll hand over to Jon.
Thanks, Penny. Before moving on to the next section, I just wanna follow up on Penny's last comment. As Penny said, she's not going anywhere soon, so we will save the farewells for another day. But I just wanted to take a moment to say my thanks to Penny. Penny has been an amazing member of the team, and actually an amazing partner to me, and played a huge role in making Future the business that it is today. Since I joined, she's been a superb colleague, as I've worked to get up to speed on Future, and then over the summer, as we've worked side by side to refresh the strategy. And so now I'd like to turn to the strategy and priorities that we've worked on together. Turning to slide 25. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, media is one of the most dynamic industries.
The pace of change has never been greater, but this creates opportunity. We've witnessed multiple changes to the Google algorithm, a tough macro, and the rise of AI. This is why, when I joined, I wanted to take the time to do a full strategic review of the group to ensure the sustainability of the strategy and the business model. This review, which has been thorough, has enabled me to validate the strategy and define our strategic priorities. Turning to slide 26. Today, I wanna walk you through our strong foundation, the attractive markets we operate in, our big untapped opportunities, and our refreshed strategy, which, as I mentioned, we call GAS, Growth Acceleration Strategy. This strategy will drive revenue and require organic investment that I will lay out. What it means is that we can turn changes in our industry into significant and exciting opportunities.
Let's turn first to talking about our markets. On slide 27, I just wanna spend a moment to remind you of the attractiveness of our end markets. The three squares display the size of the digital advertising and e-commerce markets by geography, along with the next 3 years of estimated compound growth rates in our served addressable markets. These numbers are huge, and we have a right to play and a right to win in seizing the opportunities in these markets. And through the execution of our strategy, we can expand our market share on top of the growth rates that are attractive in these markets. And so there's extraordinary headroom in our markets. We will not run out of addressable market. Slide 28. So what does this mean for our future? Turning to slide 29.
Fundamentally, the core equation behind our model, which you've all seen before, does not change. Because the model is simple, it can evolve to suit our needs over time. Today, we've made a small adjustment to it, adding the word engaged. It is no longer only about website users. It is about engaged users, wherever they may be. This could be on our websites, social media presences, events, price comparison, and magazines. And as one of our initiatives, we will be particularly focused on growing these engaged users in social. This increases our addressable user base and creates additional opportunities to create engagement. Then, wherever we meet this expanded pool of users, we can aim to increase revenue per user. We also have a very attractive user base. At its core, the Future audience is passionate, which is different from simply being interested.
Consumer budget allocations to passion is in the same vein as bills and food. It is a must-have. On average, passionate people spend twice as much as people that simply have an interest. In fact, they have 20 percentage points more of intent to purchase, according to a study that we conducted. So two key points to take away: Audience can exist and be monetized outside of website users. We recognize that website users are part of the equation, but they are a share of it, not all of it. Number two, it is about the value of the audience and engaging a passionate audience, and with a valuable audience comes higher revenue per user. So how does this translate into our strategy on Slide 30? Once again, it's simple. Why do I keep harping on simplicity? Because simplicity drives efficiency, focus, and alignment, which are fundamental to flawless execution.
In the first column, we have three strategic objectives, of which some will be familiar: reaching valuable audiences, diversifying growing revenue per user, and optimizing the portfolio. This one is new. These objectives are supported by four enablers in the middle column, which we believe creates a competitive advantage. Content, which is central to our consumer proposition as it drives audience engagement. Our operating model, which drives efficiency through its center of excellence and strategic location approach. Our tech stack, thanks to its uniqueness, proprietary nature, and common approach, it provides amazing support to profit growth. And finally, M&A. We know we drive value through M&A, so we consider it, when actionable, a fantastic accelerant to the execution of our strategy. By driving these objectives, we have three outcomes.
We drive sustainable revenue growth, continue to generate strong free cash flow, which we can then maximize through the application of our capital allocation framework. I will now drill down into how we are translating our strategy into the 5 GAS priorities over the next three years. The growth acceleration strategy, laid out on slide 31, can be broken down into 5 strategic priorities. First, a new operating model, which encompasses the segmentation of our portfolio into 3 categories, and each category will have specific actions and investment levels. Second, our expert content. This has always been a pillar, but we need to continually up our game in terms of the quality of our content in news, reviews, and shopping guides. Third, U.S. digital advertising. This is about bringing the U.S. business performance to parity with our U.K. business, driving significant revenue opportunities.
This is where I've spent the bulk of my career, and it's close to my heart. Fourth, social monetization. Again, one health. The success of an organization is delivered through two things: people and alignment. This is about ensuring we create an engaged workforce with effective communication, alignment, systems, and tools. Each of these priorities require investment in the next couple of years, so let me share with you the details. Turning to slide 32, which displays each strategic priority and its corresponding investment for both years and over the course of the program. As you can see from this slide, we have been very granular in our approach. Our plans are clear. We are now executing them. The operating model, which includes the portfolio segmentation, requires a GBP 7 million investment.
The majority of this is related to marketing costs at Go.Compare as part of our hero brand segmentation, which I will explain shortly. It is timely to spend for Go.Compare, given the current market tailwind, which I will also talk about. Expert content will drive new and improved consumer experiences through more video and improved buying guides. This will require new editorial heads, translating into a GBP 10 million incremental cost. U.S. digital advertising translates into hiring new U.S. salespeople and driving our brand in the U.S., resulting in a GBP 6.5 million incremental cost. Social monetization through the creation of branded content campaigns, requires some sales headcount, which is included in our third priority, but also requires content creators to design the campaigns, driving GBP 2.5 million of additional cost. Finally, organizational health, which is about investing in systems and processes, resulting in GBP 2 million in incremental cost.
I want you to take away two key elements from this slide. The majority will come in FY 2024, costing three points of margin. Each investment has a clear ROI, which we see the benefits in 2024, and we would expect an acceleration in 2025 of organic revenue growth. The execution on these priorities will drive mid-single- digit organic revenue growth, with continued healthy margin in the range of 28%-30%, and consistent strong cash conversion, which gives the group further optionality. Let's now review each strategic opportunity. Turning to slide 33, and our first strategic priority, the operating model. Our portfolio is strong and diverse on purpose. In order to manage this complexity, segmentation is crucial as it enables us to be more focused and to target our investment where it yields the greatest return. We have percent of the group's revenue.
The characteristic of these brands is that they live in low to declining markets and require little investment. As a result, they will be run for cash, and we will continually review their cost bases to allow for stable profitability. In parallel, we review our portfolio to ensure its composition is a fit for the group today and tomorrow. Let me just present a couple hero brands on slide 34, starting with Livingetc. Livingetc is one of our Homes brands. It is a strong brand with over 3 million users, and it doubled in FY 2023. It also has a strong social presence, with 1 million Facebook followers and almost 500,000 followers on Instagram. Livingetc is the lighthouse for unlocking US Homes monetization, notably in branded content.
It requires, as a result, investment in content such as video, which is a format that we know works well for home sites. It also requires headcount investment to drive more direct sales. This will drive revenue per user. We also plan to focus on e-commerce for this brand and category. Turning to Go.Compare. Go.Compare delivered strong growth in FY 2023, and we want to capitalize on these results by setting the brand up for continued growth in the years to come. Go.Compare is different from the rest of the group, but brings value through its rich first-party data that feeds into Aperture, our first-party data platform. It is a valuable brand for the group that contributes to the diversification of our revenue streams. Price comparison is a market in growth across our targeted verticals.
To leverage this growth, we need to invest in marketing while ensuring this investment drives a return. In addition to the market growth, we've identified action. By improving this ratio, we make our marketing spend work even harder. The second opportunity is cross-selling. If you're looking to change your car insurance, why not look at changing your home insurance? In order to drive this, we are looking at the use of our first-party data and also user experience improvements. These two initiatives require technology investment to improve the customer experience and use of our first-party data. Go.Compare is a great business with more routes for growth, and we are excited to be on this journey of continued strong revenue and profit growth. Our second strategic objective is expert content. Slide 35. Content is at the heart of our business model. It is a differentiator, but also a competitive advantage.
It's important that we continue to demonstrate expertise, authority, and trust, and this requires talent and investment. On this slide, I just wanted to showcase some of the content initiatives we are currently executing on, starting with video. Today, this is the format of choice, so we are doubling down on video content to feature on our sites, whether it be in news, reviews, or how-to guides. We are also focusing on buying guides, which drive a high revenue per user. This is an expertise of the group, but we are not resting on our laurels and continuously looking at improving the user experience. We recently introduced the Buy If feature, which tells you whether or not a product will meet your needs. As you can see on the right of the slide, we've also introduced the top grid, which summarizes the products being compared. Turning to slide 36.
Our content expertise does not stop at our websites. It extends to social platforms as well. Our content videos are featured on social platforms such as Instagram, with the example from Marie Claire shown above. We have also launched our first TikTok videos aimed at e-commerce, of which an example is featured on the right side of the slide. We've already seen the early signs of benefit from our content investment through the execution of a surge increase in news content, which was something I executed on shortly after my arrival. Future has a foundation of content expertise, but we continue to evolve, enhance, and expand the reach of this core part of our model. Our third strategic objective and accelerator is U.S. digital advertising growth. This is the biggest opportunity, and let me demonstrate why on slide 37.
The U.S. digital advertising market is 7 x larger than the U.K. 7 x. However, for us, the ratio is just two to one . The potential is obvious. Our U.K. digital advertising business has a more established sales function, and this combined with additional content leadership positions. This means that we are able to sell more of our inventory directly at a premium, which contributes to a yield differential of 30%. Our track record in the U.K. brings know-how on how to deploy this playbook to the U.S. Combined with my experience and network, this will drive significant revenue growth for the group. Where we play over the next three years, the U.S. digital advertising market is forecasted to grow by 3 percentage points more than the U.K.
I mentioned at the half-year results in May, the importance of building client and agency relationships, and having a, quote, unquote, "license to hunt and fish" in the U.S. through signing partnerships with big advertising agencies. To date, we have signed nine partnerships with agencies and holding companies. I mentioned earlier that the U.K. sales function was more established than the U.S. This is why we are investing in talent. Since May, we have hired 13 heads across sales and sales support in the U.S. Part of the investment is also going into building Future as a brand in the U.S., especially a trade brand, to bring awareness in terms of our scale, leadership, and value of our audience. This will help the sales force to drive the top-line revenue, but also enables cross-selling of our properties.
We have had some signs of success on this front, and I will showcase this in an example shortly. We are pushing hard on this strategic initiative, and with my background and experience in the U.S. ads ecosystem, this is one I am particularly focused on. Pillar four, social monetization through branded content. As Penny laid out in her audience slide, we have a large social following across the major social platforms. But how do you monetize in social? The answer is creating custom content, often video, for brand advertisers and distributing it on Future's social media handles. If our sites are one field, that we have 10 sites. In the example above, you can see a holiday gift guide campaign that Walmart is running on TechRadar and Livingetc, et cetera, highlighting our ability to cross-sell, as I mentioned in the previous slide.
This cross-selling ability also drives operating leverage. Branded content on site and in social is a format that brands and agencies are increasingly asking for and we see demand for in the market. Our brand, Who What Wear, serves as a lighthouse for this model, bringing in approximately 50% of its revenue from branded content. Branded content is a premium product that commands high CPMs, and with social distribution, is not dependent on site-level traffic or inventory. It is a new unplowed field, meaning and strengthening the health of our organization. This is not about bonus pool, although we want to ensure fair compensation. This is about ensuring we have an engaged workforce that has the process and tools to perform to the best of its abilities. The company has used goaling in the past, but we have rolled out a new format known as SMART goals.
Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound across the organization. In this time of transformation, I think the SMART goal format uniquely suits us in this moment. We've recently hired a director of compensation and people analytics to make sure our total rewards packages are fair and competitive, and aligned with our objectives and goals, and therefore, we are investing in talent. We've also recently rolled out our new HR system, and plan for this year to roll out a new sales IT system that will better track sales pipelines and salesperson productivity to ensure our investment is paying back. So in addition to talent, we are focused on the systems that will let talent perform at scale. We continue to invest in our people and systems to ensure we are building a world-class organization that can drive our acceleration of revenue growth. Concluding on page 41.
Media is a dynamic industry, and we have a strong foundation and a fantastic business with great brand leadership. We are investing for the next chapter of Future's evolution around five key pillars to drive accelerated revenue growth of healthy margin and strong free cash flow generation, which creates further optionality. The market opportunities are clear. Now it's all about execution. And with that, I'd love to open it up to Q&A.
Hi, good morning. It's Lara Simpson from JP Morgan. I had two questions on the growth acceleration strategy.
Yes.
Where you've outlined the GBP 30 million investments, and then mid-single-digit revenue growth. My first question was just what has changed in the business or maybe operating environment that requires these higher level of investments to really deliver broadly similar level of growth to what Future was achieving in prior periods or targeting to achieve in the future, are the right level to achieve this growth that you've outlined? Are there any sort of proof points or line of sight that you can share on that, I think would be helpful to reassure that sort of 28% is the right level of margin to now grow the business.
Yeah. So, a couple points. We did an unbelievably extensive review and dive into this strategy and to allocating all the costs, and so it was not something that we was done in short order. I've been working on this fairly compulsively since the summer, and so we think we've sized the costs right. We think we've sized the sales headcount, we think we've sized the editorial ad. You know, in totality, the bulk of our cost structure is, is headcount. You know, our CapEx is 1.5%-2%, so we're not a CapEx-heavy business by any stretch. We're gonna add 200 heads over the course of the program. 150 are in editorial, which I think is pretty exceptional at a time where you see so many media companies pulling back and cutting costs and going in the opposite direction.
We see these unharnessed opportunities. We're gonna add 40 in sales in the U.S., and then we're gonna add 10 heads that are in other areas. So we've rigorously sized the headcount allocation and where all of the cost is going, and then Go.Compare cost is obviously part of that as well, too, as we mentioned in the slides. I think what's changed is everything is constantly changing in the media landscape, and I think that I called out at the half year, the big social opportunity and the big demand that we were seeing there, and the fact that it is diversifies, diversifies us from traffic dependency, diversifies us in terms of ad product suite. Video, obviously, is the format of choice today. We need to invest more there as well, too.
And so I think that from doing the whole entire strategic review and process, it came back with, you know, higher costs than I had originally anticipated, and it's what puts us at the 28%-30% margin over the lifetime of the plan.
Morning. Gareth Davies from Numis. First one, in terms—you said you've got 13 sales heads into the U.S.-
Yeah
W hich you'd sort of flagged at the half year, and you've signed nine partnerships. Can you just talk about, in your experience, how long will it take to start to see any real benefit coming through from that investment and the sort of timeline on that?
Yep.
And then secondly, some interesting comments on GoCo. You referenced sort of cross-sell into home insurance, which is clearly a natural. In the way you're thinking about it, what how significant is the investment into finance verticals, the potential in energy switching coming back and sort of thoughts there? And then the final one. And apologies if I just didn't pick this up when you said it, but in the audience chart, the blip in September, October, and then the bounce back in November, can you just, what was that, I think, was that the relaunch of TechRadar, or was there something else behind it category-wise? Thanks.
Okay, let me take the last one first, because it's sort of the easiest to answer. There's a seasonality that occurs. September is back to school, and so we typically see a lot of activity with parents looking up products and services, kids shopping for clothing and laptops and all that stuff. So that's a normal seasonality that we would see. And we were very pleased to see the blip back up in November, continuing that stabilization, basically, since almost since September, really, when we had the large falloff. We've been largely stabilized since then. The sales investment. So those agency relationships, those partnership deals, I call them a hunting and fishing license, because you basically have to have them.
These agencies put you on a list of effectively approved vendors or of people where the CPM rates have been negotiated in advance, and then you are free to go within the agency, and basically call on individual account planners that work on individual brands, to try to lobby for RFPs and campaigns. I typically think the time for a salesperson to ramp is six to nine months, where they're kind of, you know, showing signs of life, what I call it, between six to nine months, and then fully ramped by the nine-month mark. The challenge that you have is you have to overlay a macro with this as well, and if the macro is challenging, you now have a new salesperson working in a challenging macro environment.
One of the areas I'm particularly focused on in the U.S., and I'm sure our, our Head of Revenue is listening to this, well, I've been very persistent that we need to hire in homes. Homes was a standout category for us in terms of traffic and revenue generation in FY 2023, and so we need to diversify the U.S. team out of being so focused on the technology category. But anyway, those are basically the ramps that I would see. In terms of GoCo cost, the vast majority of the cost continues to be marketing spend on PPC and brand advertising. We have a media mix model that we rigorously use to measure the ROI that we're getting on that media investment, and GoCo maintains margins in the thirties, as you know. So there's not a lot of...
There, there are some technical costs that need to go into a replatforming. We are putting some additional headcount into technology to do some of these UI enhancement-type things. You know, one example of something that we're working on, which our head of Go.Compare is gonna—now I'll really put him on the hook for it by kind of calling it out to you all, is what's called magic login, where you put in your email address, and it kicks you back a link, and you can just click it to log in. H
ave you, have you all experienced that on some sites? It's so much less friction. Right now, 30% of people that come to Go.Compare have forgotten their password because it's something that you do annually, and there's a lot of login friction there as well, too. So I believe that making some relatively modest technology investments, this is what we called out in the slide deck as UI improvements, can really move the needle.
It's Nick Dempsey from Barclays. I've got three, please. When we're talking about the midterm growth, I noted on slide 27 that you've got an OC&C study using with PwC global data. To what extent are you relying on those? Because let's be honest, they've been all over the place for the last few years in terms of their forecasts. So to what extent are you taking a big haircut to what they're assuming? To what extent are you relying on their market forecasts for your midterm growth? Second question: I guess you flagged at the half year the revenue weakness had predominantly been from traffic across the digital advertising, et cetera.
If macro weakens in the U.S., could you see yield weaken at the same time that your traffic is stabilizing, so we have an extra problem to deal with in terms of, revenue growth? And the third question: If revenue growth were weaker than you expect in FY 2024, could you pull back on your GBP 20 million of investment to try and protect a profit number, or is that GBP 20 million sacrosanct, set in stone for you?
You want to take number two, the yield weakening one, and I'll do one and three? Great. Okay, so how much did we rely on consultant firm market forecasts? Not heavily. I mean, we use them directionally in shaping our view, and as you know, we called out in the RNS, and we've called out continually the fact that we are expecting media growth of high single digits to low double digits throughout the course of the period, throughout the course of the term of the program, more bottoms up than top down. On your third question, were the revenue weaker, would we pull back on the GAS program ? It's funny, I've thought a lot about this, and I think it's a very good question. The answer is not unless it was dire.
If things in the economy were in the macro so much worse than we anticipated, that now is not the time. A lot of what we've done here is said that we're trying to call a turn in the market, basically. We're trying to look at the fact that consumer confidence, and I was just brushing up on this last night, actually, consumer confidence in the U.S. and the U.K. is up quite substantially now. I'm sure you've read the same reports that I have. And so we're trying to say that.
And with that, combined with audience stabilization, are the two factors that we've used in our assessment of the fact that we think that we're going to see improvement in the back half of the year. If that is way off, and we don't see improvement in the back half of the year, we could certainly reevaluate the timing of the GAS program.
I'm gonna echo Jon in the answer to the second question, which is: what we've see t his year is that we've been able to protect profit, and, and continue to generate strong cash, which gives us a really solid foundation to be able to invest. What we're trying to do is invest ahead of the curve so that we've got a strategic fit sales force who are in place and established.
We've got great content, which means that we're in a position and able to benefit from the market recovery as it recovers. And what we're trying to build is optionality, and diversification in the revenue growth for the future. So we've got a continued focus on growing the online audience, but also on growing yield through both the digital advertising for the online users, but also through monetization of our off-platform audience. So two growth, revenue growth levers for the future.
Thank you. Hi, it's Brady from Stifel. Can you just talk a little bit more about, portfolio optimization? You know, you've highlighted that about 20% of sales is coming from kind of, sort of lower growth cash generators. There were some rumors, I think, in the press earlier this year, that you might be, thinking about, carving out some of your B2B assets as well. Thank you.
We are always looking at the portfolio from a few perspectives, one of which is, you know, is it a fit today? Is it a fit tomorrow? Especially in the cash generators, are they maintaining the profitability profile? And, you know, there are no sacred cows, so to speak, which is basically, if something doesn't fit with the model or isn't performing to where we want or isn't a fit, we're very open at looking at divestiture. If someone were also to present a very attractive price for an asset that we feel would benefit shareholders today, we're fiduciaries, we have to look at that as well, too. As far as B2B, I can't comment on that specifically right now, of course.
Thank you. Second question, just on consumer tech. Can you just talk about some of the trends through Black Friday, and in the recent weeks up to, up to Christmas?
So Black Friday, and I, I would point to the BRC report, which showed that non-food retail was down 2%, during Black Friday. So Black Friday was definitely soft for us, particularly in the technology category. We did see nice growth in homes and sport, so there were other categories that showed strength, but the technology category is still under pressure. Laptops and computers was a very tough category, during that period.
So just thinking about your guidance for the year ahead, kind of broadly speaking, what are your assumptions for the tech category?
So I think the other build , just on Jon's comment, is what is pleasing is we've seen the technology audience in growth through November. It's just the consumer demand is weaker. So we've flowed through that expectation of sort of softness in consumer demand through our affiliate product. But what we are seeing is the appetite for vouchers and Go.Compare, both of which help the consumer save money are offsetting that.
Thank you. And a final one, just on AI. The investment into editorial, video, et cetera, you know, does the sort of risks from AI kind of play into that, or is that something that, you know, you sort of, kind of consider independently?
So with AI, to date, we see it as a very helpful editorial co-pilot. It's what I call it, which is we continue to use it for editors that wanna create product specifications and they want to pull product specifications. We'll have the AI gather that, the writer will take it, and then he or she will formulate the article based, you know, using that small part of the article as an input. The other way we're finding it particularly helpful is in video editing, allowing us to reformat videos, for example, from vertical to horizontal, horizontal to vertical. AI can do that quite effectively. And so those are the sort of productivity-enhancing things we're seeing in AI right now.
To answer your question about AI impact on search, which I think I assume is also what you were getting at, we've seen no impact to date. The Google AI search is still in beta. Bing is a very small part of the market, even though Bing is using AI. And it's really kind of unknown how consumer habits will change as a result of AI being integrated with search, if and when that does occur.
Hi, it's Roddy Davidson from Shore Cap. Bang goes my AI question. So I've got a couple of others. Just in terms of... You talked or you referenced Google algorithm changes, which are a kind of ongoing irritation, I guess. Do you, do you have a sense that you've become sort of better at reacting to those and sort of, you know, evaluating the impact? And the second question was just coming back to Go.Compare. Just wondering, I mean, you did mention that it's a very different business, but are there any sort of deeper integration opportunities, particularly in the use of data, that could be appropriate to the rest of the business?
So let me take your Google SEO question. It's funny, you never, you never wanna say things are going well with Google SEO, because that's like, you know, you're begging things to not go your way, basically. But a lot of publishers, I read in the press, I think it was Press Gazette or somewhere like that, were experiencing in this past October, a significant impact as a result of Google SEO changes. We, as you see in the chart, did not experience that. The only, you know, large impact we felt as a result that having been what fall into the categories of the puts and takes, was a year ago, September, which we obviously all talked about quite a bit at the interims. So I think we're best in class at SEO.
I also think that we're increasingly becoming best in class at working with Google Discover, which is an increasing source of traffic for us and a source of traffic for all publishers. On your GoCo integration and data question, you know, this is something, and thank you for asking it. This is something that people tend to overlook, although we have cited it numerous times, which is we do use the data from Go. Compare, where a person is filling out an enormous survey with tons of demographic and psychographic information, and that flows into Aperture, our first-party data platform.
Aperture becomes even more important to us because we can charge premium CPMs when we use first-party data, and also with Google planning to eliminate the third-party cookie in the Chrome browser sometime next year, we think advertisers will be flocking even more to first-party data, and particularly in the U.K., that GoCo overlay of all of that specialized information is particularly helpful. And then did you have an AI question you were saying, or?
No, I think that was it.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thanks. It's Ollie from Jefferies. So this is a bit of an old question, but now that you've been here for, you know, well, I guess more than six months,
Yeah.
What do you think about the quality of past M&A at Future? And are there any businesses you think shouldn't have been acquired or that you wouldn't agree with? And then secondly, have you considered selling any titles? And if you did, what would you do with the proceeds? Would you reinvest? Would you return cash? And then thirdly, you mentioned... Trying to take notes. You were trying to recreate something which you said would be something like the Financial Times or the New York Times. How achievable do you think that is? And do you think, given that you've got quite a broad portfolio of assets, with such a small amount of investment to go around, do you think you've really got too much to handle?
Okay. Too much to handle. Let me write that down. Okay. All right, I gotta, gotta get that fourth question in there. When I look at past M&A, I mean, take Go.Compare. I couldn't be happier with Go.Compare right now. You know, 8% growth, volumes up enormously in the year. You know, what's not to like? The flow of data that I was just commenting on. So I'm very happy with the portfolio that we have, although optimize the portfolio is very much one of the tenets of the strategy, which is taking a critical eye to parts of the business that may or may not be a fit today or tomorrow.
We are actively doing that study of our portfolio at all times, and I can't comment on specific transactions or specific concepts, but it's something that we look at very critically. And we have our hands on it. On your question of proceeds, it would go back to the capital allocation framework, which would be, we would wanna do M&A if we could accelerate the five growth levers of the GAS strategy. If we can't do M&A because of our multiple, and it proves impossible, then, you know, I did the share buyback, which is something that investors had been clamoring for, and we would look to do you know, return of excess free cash flow to shareholders if M&A was not a possibility.
We would also, of course, have to pay down debt if we did a divestiture, because that would eliminate some EBITDA just by definition. On your digital subs question, I, I've read this in your note, too, that you do talk about me saying New York Times and FT. I think if we go back to the tape, I did kind of caveat it by saying that they're the gold standard and what people would aspire to. I, I think I did have some caveats, but maybe you've got that right. We wanna build a digital subs business here. Subs is, as Penny pointed out, 50% of our mags revenue. It's very important to future-proof that, and we will start with The Week.
And not only will we start with The Week, we have hundreds of thousands of people that are paying for a digital print bundle subscription. They're paying for both. And the digital product they get today is basically a page flipper app. It's not a native digital experience. We wanna give them a native digital experience that creates greater user retention and loyalty that reduces churn. Every point of churn that we reduce in the mags portfolio is, is a huge benefit to our overall financials, so that's equally important as growing new users, is keeping the current bundle subscribers together. You know, too much on my hands. I think any executive operating a modern media company has a lot on their hands right now, and needs to, and needs to have a great ELT, which I think I have.
I couldn't be more pleased with the ELT. It's obviously a huge loss to have Penny going in the next 12 months. I wish she would stay, but, you know, I understand that people want to do different things with their life at different points, and I'm respectful of that. I look at Bob Iger at Disney. Does, does Bob Iger have too much on his hands? I mean, I look at David Zaslav at Discovery. Does he have too much on his hands? I think that basically, by definition, if you're in media, you better get comfortable with having too much on your hands, otherwise, you're in the wrong business.
Okay.
Great.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, all. Yeah.