Well, welcome to our half year results for 2024, and our first as the MONY Group. I'm Peter Duffy, CEO, and I'll be joined later in the presentation by Niall McBride, our CFO. Now, I'm pleased to say that in the first half of this year, we have helped households save an incredible GBP 1.7 billion. That's up 31% from H1 last year. At the same time, we also announced our best-ever revenue and profit numbers, with revenue of GBP 223 million, that's up 5%, and EBITDA of GBP 73 million, that's up 8%. Now, in April, we changed the name of the group to reflect our work towards becoming the U.K.'s leading listed tech-based savings platform. That's involved a lot of work to ensure we can grow and scale, which I'm pleased to say is now largely done.
The Money Platform today supports not only our own well-trusted brands, MoneySuperMarket, MoneySavingExpert, and Quidco, but increasingly other top brands. It's this platform, this two-sided marketplace, which is supporting our growth. On the consumer side, we use both our own and our partners' brands to attract customers to the platform, and we're taking steps to reduce acquisition costs by encouraging them to come to us directly, joining what we're calling our member-based propositions. That's the SuperSaveClub for MoneySuperMarket, that's the app for MoneySavingExpert, and of course, Quidco. In time, this should result in lower third-party marketing spend for the group. I'm pleased to say that all three propositions have good momentum behind them. We're on track to increase our customer loyalty, our retention, and our repeat purchasing, and that, in turn, will earn us more revenue per customer.
So more on that in the next section. Then on the other side of the marketplace, our platform can now enable third-party partners to enhance their businesses and earn more revenue by offering comparison services, which we then power. Having launched our white label B2B service in motor and home insurance last year, we've already won 10 car insurance partners. If we look at our B2B business across all our product lines, we now have 37 partners, including many household names like Rightmove, Auto Trader, ClearScore, and many more. For providers, and they're the companies who promote their products on our platform, we're also improving the services we offer to help them drive their profitability. Market Boost uses our data to help them understand how well their products are performing versus the competition.
This is now available for our Money partners, and we're gonna be rolling it out over the next few months for our insurance partners. In addition, we've also grown tenancy. That's the term we use for paid-for advertising slots on our site, where providers can highlight their offers to specific cohorts of customers. Both B2B and our improved provider services are offering new revenue opportunities for us. See this as a win, win, win. More great deals for customers, more revenue for providers, more revenue for us. I'm gonna come back with more on our strategy shortly, but now I'm handing over to Niall, who's gonna take you through the trading and what's happening in our markets.
Thanks, Peter, and good morning, everyone. As Peter said, we have had a strong start to the year. We continue to develop our member-based propositions and have made good financial progress with the group delivering revenue of GBP 223 million, which is growth of 5%. That growth has been supported by continued strong performance in insurance, as well as momentum in cashback. We have also improved group profitability, delivering our best-ever first-half EBITDA at GBP 73 million, which is up 8% on last year. As a result, basic earnings per share is up 9% to GBP 8.3. Operating cash flows were GBP 52 million, with technology reinvestment flat at 12%. We are increasing our dividend by 3%, having returned to dividend growth this time last year.
I'll now take you through the performance and market dynamics in each of our segments, followed by costs, cash, and capital allocation, before wrapping up with the outlook for the second half of the year. As well as our good financial results, however, it's worth highlighting that the strategic work we're doing around member-based propositions and enhanced provider services underpins our performance and will serve to increase our resilience as we go forward. The strength of the group remains in the breadth of services we offer both our consumers and our providers. This breadth differentiates our proposition against the competition and will serve to protect our business against individual market dynamics. In insurance, we delivered revenue of GBP 120 million, growth of 14%, as demand for switching remained strong through the first half. In car, the growth rate in premiums has slowed, but absolute prices remain elevated.
These sustained higher premiums, coupled with the greater number of products available in the market, continue to drive switching volumes. We saw similar momentum in home insurance, which resumed its place as our second-largest insurance channel during the half. Remember, trends in home insurance tend to lag car by three, six months, so we are now starting to see more stable home premium inflation levels. During the half, we saw record levels of traffic to our sites for car and home insurance and continued good conversion. Despite the absolute high pricing, there are still many great offers available.
For example, just over half of consumers who use MoneySuperMarket could save up to GBP 550 per year on their car insurance, showing there's still a compelling reason to switch. In travel insurance, demand remains robust, though we have started to see consumers seeking out a lower tier of cover. Turning now to money, where we've remained within touching distance of the record trading performance achieved over the last two years. On the borrowing side of money, revenue grew in the half, the first time this part of the segment has grown since September 2022 Mini-Budget. The growth was driven by a strong performance in credit card switching. Whilst traffic to our site remains strong across borrowing products, higher interest rates continue to impact affordability, reducing conversion in some areas, particularly in loans and mortgages.
For our banking products, there were fewer attractive current account offers available during the half, as providers increasingly focused on profitability, which resulted in lower levels of switching. The balance of these factors means that money revenue is down 2% compared to the first half 2023 to GBP 51 million. It is worth remembering that 2023 had a very good performance in savings and current accounts deals. On to home services, which represents 7% of group revenue. We finished the half down 10% at GBP 17 million, driven by broadband and mobile. In broadband, we took action to improve the way we attracted customers, including deploying new AI-powered campaigns that reach more users through more channels. These actions drove continued good levels of traffic onto our sites.
However, demand for broadband remains impacted by the ongoing cost of living crisis, as well as increased efforts from broadband and mobile providers to retain their existing customer base, including offering longer contracts in broadband and better direct deals across both. In energy, we had more switching deals in the half, with four live on our site at the end of June. While it's great to see more deals and wholesale prices coming down, uncertainty in the energy market from the ongoing price cap consultation and the ban on acquisition-only tariffs means that energy providers are still cautious about offering deals. We are not expecting any material revenue from energy switching this year. Travel, which is made up of our icelolly.com and TravelSupermarket brands and represents 5% of group revenue, delivered GBP 12 million in revenue, up 1%.
We had a good start to the half with a very strong January. As the period progressed, package holiday performance remained solid, but the market became more competitive, with operators increasing the number of low-priced package holiday deals available, resulting in higher marketing costs in the sector. As a result, we took action to adjust our marketing spend to protect margins, which impacted our performance. Car hire was also a headwind in Q2, with reduced daily rates across the industry impacting the use of comparison sites. Remember that travel insurance is captured within our insurance business. In cashback, revenue was GBP 30 million, up 3%, a great performance against a soft online retail market, which was down double digits in the year to June 2024.
Growth in cashback was driven by a strong performance in insurance, assisted by the growth of Quidco Compare, which launched in the first half of 2023. We also generated continued momentum in member growth during H1, with accelerated investment delivering new member acquisition, helped by enhanced onboarding and improvements to the user experience. Gross profit was up 5% to GBP 152 million, while gross margin was maintained at 68%. This is a result of the net of growth in insurance and more efficient spending on PPC, offset by the growth of cashback and B2B, which have structurally lower margins. We increased our EBITDA margin by 1%, now 33%, with EBITDA up 8% to GBP 73 million. That's ahead of the 5% growth in revenue and gross profit. Operating costs were up 2% in the half, as expected.
The work we have completed so far in building our tech platform and driving marketing efficiencies has enabled us to operate more cost-effectively. Distribution costs were down 8% in the half as a result of reduced spend on brand advertising. Admin costs increased 5%. We implemented further automation in the half, delivering efficiencies, which enabled us to hold the growth of people costs to 2%. Moving now to cash flow, we continue to enjoy strong cash conversion. A working capital outflow of GBP 6 million reflects an increase in receivables following growth in revenue from the year-end. Cash outflows on investing include GBP 5 million of capital expenditure. Net debt is now GBP 25 million, having paid down GBP 15 million on the term loan taken out for the acquisition of Quidco.
The remaining GBP 50 million, also included within the net debt figure, will be repaid later this year, moving us towards a consistent net cash position in 2025. Remember, for most of any given year, we are in a net leverage position as we utilize our revolving credit facility to pay our ordinary dividend. Our capital allocation policy remains unchanged. We have four distinct pillars, which are: first, we invest in organic growth, including CAPEX. Next, we pay our ordinary dividend, which we aim to maintain and progress. Third, we look for M&A, seeking out strategic earnings-enhancing opportunities. And finally, we look to deliver enhanced distribution to shareholders. Historically, this has happened either via a special dividend or a share buyback. In this first half, we've again generated growth, delivering our best ever H1 revenue and EBITDA, as well as expanding our EBITDA margin.
This was all despite the increased competitive dynamics in many of our markets and little sign of life in energy switching, as we discussed already. The current trading performance, coupled with the momentum in our strategy, means the board is confident that we will deliver results in line with market expectations for the year. As such, we will pay an interim dividend of GBP 3.3, an increase of 3%. Looking into the second half in a little more detail, we expect growth in insurance will become tougher as we lap the periods of extraordinary growth seen through the second half of last year. The structurally supportive factors of sustained high prices and a larger array of choice for consumers from newly introduced products in the market will continue to provide support.
In energy, as we have said previously, we continue to expect no material revenue in 2024. On operating costs, excluding depreciation and amortization, we continue to expect a low- to mid-single-digit % rise for the whole year. Lastly, CAPEX levels will remain between GBP 11 million and GBP 13 million for FY 2024, in line with previous guidance. This provides sufficient capital to invest in the strategic initiatives that will drive our growth. With that, I'll now hand you back to Peter.
Thank you, Niall. So our strategy is simple: It's to grow a two-sided marketplace, where on the one side, customers get great deals on household bills and everyday spending, and then on the other side, providers can cost-effectively reach new customers. We attract customers to our platform through our three main brands. That's MoneySuperMarket, MoneySavingExpert, and Quidco, as well as through B2B partnerships with other leading brands. To reduce our acquisition costs for new customers, we are increasingly using what we're calling member-based propositions. That's the SuperSaveClub, the app from MoneySavingExpert and Quidco, all looking to encourage customers to come to us directly rather than through expensive third-party media. Now, these propositions are also going to stimulate further purchase, which will help us grow our revenue per user.
And then on the other side of the marketplace, we're increasing the range of services we're offering to providers. They're the companies who offer insurance, credit cards, et cetera, and we want them to be able to even more cost-effectively find those customers that they want to acquire. So how are we doing? Well, let me start on the consumer side of things, running through our membership-based models, beginning with the MoneySuperMarket and the SuperSaveClub. So, as you know, MoneySuperMarket is our price comparison brand, where consumers predominantly buy annual contracts. Customers tend to look at more than one price comparison website when they shop, meaning we have to spend on third-party marketing to stay front of mind. And historically, consumers have bought just over one product a year from us. So the SuperSaveClub is looking to address this.
So for anyone who's a member, it does three things: firstly, we offer a price guarantee, so consumers don't need to worry about whether they could find a better deal elsewhere. Secondly, members receive meaningful rewards. So when you join, you get a year's pass for three days out at thousands of venues in the U.K., and then up to GBP 15 in rewards on every subsequent purchase. The total reward value can be nearly GBP 300 a year, and that's on top of the money saved from getting the best-priced products for your needs. And then on top of that, just recently, we've also launched cashback in the SuperSaveClub, and that means we provide yet another way for members to earn rewards and save. And then thirdly, and importantly, we're using our platform to make it increasingly easy for customers to save again and again.
So, for example, we provide free credit monitoring, we use data to simplify purchasing across different providers, and we're providing a policy hub that allows customers to store their policy paperwork and keep track of the key dates all in one place, and that's going to drive further engagement with the app. So no one else in the category is doing anything like this, and SuperSaveClub is uniquely placed to be different from the competition because of our breadth in product offering. When we say to our shareholders that we have strengthened our breadth. That also has meaning for customers as well. MoneySuperMarket is so much more than a general insurance comparison site. Customers can also save money on money products, on home services, and on day-to-day spending through cashback. So SuperSaveClub helps them to do that and to save even more money.
So how's the SuperSaveClub going? Well, we trialed it from May last year, and then we fully rolled it out in September. And I'm pleased to say we've made great progress, and the club is scaling with momentum. So we now have 10 MoneySuperMarket products live in the club. That includes credit monitoring, and that means it now offers rewards across more than half of MoneySuperMarket sales channels by volume. And then in July, we've also launched cashback in the club, which brings more frequent customer engagement opportunities than the pure price comparison model. Our MoneySuperMarket brand advertising is now centered around the SuperSaveClub, and that's helped us pass the milestone of 500,000 members. And club members are already returning higher satisfaction scores, and they're more likely to recommend us to their friends and family.
Now, we'd normally only provide detail on the club once we had annual figures available, but we've heard requests over the last few months for more disclosure, and we're keen to acknowledge that. However, we are also cognizant that the data we have so far is very early stage. So before I do share some information, perhaps you'll allow me some caveats. So, as I say, we are still very early stage, with only a few monthly cohorts passing six months of membership. It's only once we pass the first anniversary of the club that we're really going to start to understand seasonality, renewal behaviors, how year two cohorts will behave. So please take this as indicative rather than absolute. The customer behavior that we're seeing with the club is in line with our strategic objectives.
So when we look at the consumers who joined us between September and December of 2023, and then their behavior over the following six-month period, we're seeing that 20% more club members are coming direct for their second purchase than traditional MoneySuperMarket users. That's being driven by a fivefold increase in the take-up of the MoneySuperMarket app and a twofold increase in their propensity to engage with CRM. Directionally, the club is supporting our goal of reducing reliance on paid marketing. Then we're also seeing that club members are inquiring more frequently across a wider number of products, and they are buying more from us. So within their first six months, we saw a fourfold increase in members buying a second product from us versus non-members. Again, directionally, this is positive behavior for our objective to grow customer lifetime value.
So while it's early days, we're encouraged by what we're seeing, and we will continue to share data as we progress over the following months. Moving on now to the MoneySavingExpert app, which is our member-based offer for MSE, and we've seen really good momentum here. 18 months after the launch, the MSE app was called out as one of the top 10 news apps in the U.K., that's alongside the BBC and Sky News, by Ipsos. And since June last year, app downloads are up 166% to 1.4 million, and we averaged over 440,000 monthly active users in the half. We've taken the content of Martin Lewis and the brilliant MSE team to help users get the MSE they love in the format they want.
As an example, more than 9 million weekly tip email recipients can now open the tip in the MSE app. Personalization is crucial to the app's success, and that's all centered around My MSE, which aims to build customer interaction and stickiness. Now, the big launch in the half was the new and improved MSE Credit Club, with its unique eligibility rating. The eligibility rating is a new tool for anyone who wants to know their real-world credit power because it translates to acceptance for credit cards, loans, mortgages, even contract mobile phones and energy bills. This eligibility rating is a clear competitive advantage over existing credit services in the market because it tells consumers not just if they could get the credit, but provides an affordability score to help consumers understand whether they should. Crucially, the tool shows users how they can improve things.
So the existing 1.6 million Credit Club customers have been upgraded to the new product across the half, and it was then opened to new users at the end of June. So this is a real step change in the Credit Club offering in the app, and we're very excited about its possibilities. Now, alongside this, while there has been no material return in the energy switching market, of course, there have been a few fixed deals around for users, so we've switched back on Cheap Energy Club. And this means that our growing MSE audience helps us towards our strategic goal to increase direct traffic to our sites, driving loyalty and engagement, while, of course, furthering our progress towards the wider MSE and company purpose of helping customers save money.
Then the last of our member-based customer offers is Quidco, where consumers can save on their spending across travel, online retail, and services such as insurance, broadband, and mobiles. Members can make purchases from over 5,000 participating merchants, and they can save money at the same time. Quidco taps into everyday consumer spending, providing much more frequent touch points with our members, and we've seen good momentum in the first half. We are working hard to improve user experience and deliver a more personalized and targeted CRM strategy. Of course, all this is possible because of our previous investments in data and top-rate CRM. That's allowing us to target individual cohorts rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach. Our progress on personalization is proving effective in attracting users who are increasingly engaged.
As mentioned earlier, cashback deals, of course, powered by Quidco capability, are also now available in the SuperSaveClub. Let me now turn to the other side of the marketplace and our services for providers, because our revenue comes from our providers. Part of our investment in data and in our platform was about enhancing what we can offer them. First, we wanted to get their products onto the platform faster. This is commercially attractive because we can now simultaneously launch them across MoneySuperMarket, Quidco, and MoneySavingExpert, as well as all of our B2B partners, and that gets them more eyeballs and more routes to market. Now, new deals often mean better value for consumers. As an example, we now have nearly 260 products for customers across car and home insurance.
That's almost 20% more than we had in 2021, and that in itself is a driver of growth. Secondly, Market Boost, which is our service using our data to give insight to providers on their performance on the platform. This is helping them improve their product design and their targeting approach, helping to drive conversion. That's already available to our money providers, that's loans and credit cards, and we are rolling it out in the next few months to our insurance providers. And then thirdly, Tenancy, which enables providers to promote their products using targeted advertising spots to specific cohorts of customers. These spots are above the results group and are clearly marked as sponsored to ensure transparency for customers. And in recent weeks, we've been able to roll out Tenancy into the SuperSaveClub.
We've started that with a pilot for broadband, and that's been very successful. Tenancy is now available across all core product lines, and we see an opportunity to grow all of these provider offerings and drive further revenue growth in the future. Moving on to our B2B proposition, which uses the group platform to power switching services for third-party brands who want to offer a comparison service themselves. This allows us to leverage our existing tech to generate additional revenue at limited incremental cost. So we've grown the B2B offering over the last six months, and we now have over 37 B2B partners across car, home, broadband, mobile, and energy, including well-known brands like Rightmove, Auto Trader, ClearScore, and many others. And having only launched our B2B car insurance journey in the first half of 2023, we quickly won 10 new B2B car insurance partners.
These partnerships are still new, but we're seeing early momentum. Now, when we spoke earlier this year, we said we wanted to become a one-stop shop for digital businesses looking to offer comparison service. So this is exactly what we're doing. By using our platform to support comparison journeys for other brands, we have the opportunity to become the tech platform of choice to power an industry. Now, we've also made progress operationally within the business, particularly how we've used AI to improve efficiency. Operating costs were up 2% in the half, and it's our strategic achievements that are allowing us to deliver continued cost control. Largely, this was down to the ongoing simplification and automation within the business. We are almost getting there with everything on one platform, which is enabling us to operate with greater simplicity and in turn, on lower headcount.
The half has also seen a step up in our use of AI in day-to-day operations. We've switched on Copilot solutions in software development and data analytics, and like many organizations, we now use AI extensively in our content creation and our customer operations. For example, our chatbot that we launched on MoneySuperMarket now resolves 2/3 of our direct customer contact with strong positive feedback. It's the opportunity to enhance and change the customer proposition further that really most excites us, and that's what we're working on in terms of some exciting new ways to begin to develop the offer further. We are still at a very early stage of AI, so at this point, it's actually the cultural adoption of this across the group that's as important as any individual applications.
Now, AI integration within the business has to be seen alongside the work that we've done on data. So as we said in February, our data transformation is now complete, and our rich real-time data is available throughout our organization. This data transformation is integral to our goal of increasing customer conversion and loyalty, as well as to growing the efficacy and value of our provider solutions like Market Boost and Tenancy. So our data transformation will be the platform for much of the opportunity we hope to realize with AI-based solutions. So to conclude, we've delivered the group's highest revenue and EBITDA numbers ever in a half, and we have grown our EBITDA margin. At the same time, we've continued with the momentum with our strategy, and we're confident of more progress throughout the year.
The confidence in our strategy means we've chosen to grow the dividend by 3% and to reconfirm our guidance for the year. We're excited about what we're seeing in our growing our member-based customer propositions and in using our platform to grow what we do with providers and third-party brands at the same time. So as a reminder, our goal is to reduce our dependency on paid traffic and to grow revenue per user by improving cross-purchasing, repeat purchasing, and customer loyalty with our already well-trusted brands. So we're still in the early stages. Over the coming years, we will see our member-based offers and our new and expanded provider propositions start to reshape our business.
But the foundations are now in place with our data, our tech platform, and our marketing infrastructure, which means that we are in the best health we've ever been, and we're well-positioned to continue to grow. Thank you for listening and for your interest in the MONY Group, and Al and I will look forward to taking your questions in the call at 9:30.