Good morning and welcome to the Q&A session for MONY Group's interim results. If you would like to ask a question during today's call, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. You can also submit your written questions via the webcast by clicking on the questions button at the bottom toolbar and typing them in. I would now like to hand the call over to Peter Duffy, MONY Group's CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you and good morning, everybody, and thank you for taking the time to join us this morning. Hopefully, you've had the chance to watch the results video that we released at 7:00 A.M. Before we open up for questions, perhaps I can just give a quick recap of the main messages there. We've had a good start to the year, achieving both financial and strategic milestones, and we've helped U.K. households save an estimated GBP 1.4 billion. We've grown revenue by 1% to GBP 225 million, and our adjusted EBITDA is up by 2% to GBP 75 million. That's a resilient financial performance given the exceptional growth in car insurance last year, and that's given us confidence to reiterate our guidance for the full year. We continue to deliver on our strategy to grow both sides of our marketplace. The MoneySuperMarket SuperSave Club has welcomed half a million more members since February.
That actually brings our total members now to over 1.5 million. We see plenty of opportunity for further growth here, so we've been investing to drive that with the introduction of our first purchase rewards scheme. We've also continued to enhance our offering to providers. We had 11% growth in this area, and we've scaled our 34 B2B partnerships, and now we also have over 100 providers signed up to Market Boost. That's our innovative data product. All this has been doable because of the investment already made in building out our data and tech platform, which is serving our diverse product range. It's enabled us to unlock further cost efficiencies and is also facilitating the development of AI-enabled features and optimized product offerings right across the group. This is all adding up to a highly effective and resilient business, well positioned for profitable growth.
As a result, we're expecting to deliver a package of shareholder returns totaling GBP 96 million over 2025. That comprises our ordinary dividends, which we've increased by 1%, and the ongoing GBP 30 million share buyback. With that, I'll open for questions.
Thank you, sir. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please signal by pressing star one now. You may also submit your questions via the webcast on the questions button at the bottom toolbar and then typing in there. We'll now take our first question from Andrew Ross from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Great morning all. I've got two if that's OK. The first one is just a clarification on the outlook language. You talk about the board being happy with the range of consensus expectations, but could you just clarify you're happy with the midpoint of consensus expectations for this year, so around that kind of GBP 144 million of adjusted EBITDA? That's the first question. The second one is to double-click on some of the disclosure you've given on SuperSave Club and to compare that to what you gave us at the full year of results. It looks like the new customer acquisition is still strong, but the ARPU has gone from GBP 25- BP 27, and the share of revenue from SuperSave Club has gone from 12%-1 4%, which is a relatively modest step up. Help us understand that.
The margin of incremental transactions seems to have gone down from 79%- 75%. If you could help us understand the drivers of that. Thank you.
Thanks, Andrew. Let me just go straight into the clarification on the outlook. Yes, we are happy with the midpoint, so I can confirm that. Niall, do you want to just pick up on the double-click on SuperSave Club?
Yeah, Andrew, I think a lot of this is going to be, the answer is going to be slightly in the mix, really. Obviously, 75% of last year was related to charge, so that is quite a good margin there. Clearly, more people are coming in and buying more products. There is a mixed element to that. The 12% and the 14%, remember that you've got first purchase in there as well. You are getting some people who've only made one purchase in that percentage. It'll sort of grow over time as those people then mature. The ARPU number, and clearly we're hoping that people will do more with us over time. Hopefully see that move in the right direction.
Thanks.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question over the phone, please signal by pressing star one. Our next question is from Luke Holbrook from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. My first question is just on the energy segment, which seems to have a material Q o Q impact and rise. I'm just wondering, how much improvement have you seen since the price cap activity? Is this something that you expect to be sustainable into the second half of this year, and how we should think about that trajectory into 2026? My second question is just on the PPC rates, which you've been calling out as rising for some time. I'm just wondering if you can give us some context around what's driving this. Is it just more competition in the market? Is there some other structural factors to be aware of, just in tying that back to how we think about the marketing margin going forward? Thank you.
Great, thanks, Luke. I'll do energy and I'll pass CPC over to Niall. I think let's start by having a look at what's happened for customers. If we go back to the peak of energy in 2019, 2020, average bills now are up circa 40% from those days. I think the significant difference is that customers are typically only saving about 10% today versus what would have been about 30% back then. To a degree, that's because regulation is still sitting heavily on the market. Obviously, we have a price cap, but we still have a ban on acquisition tariffs, which is likely to be in place until at least March of 2026, the end of March 2026. However, if we look at what's happened in the first half of this year, go back 12 months previous, we had a handful of providers.
We now have seven providers with deals on the platform, and actually they're the majority of the major providers in the U.K . We've had 10 exclusive deals in the half, and that's been the majority of the switching. That's been about 60% of our switching volume. I think what we saw in the half is when the price cap increased in February, we really did have very strong customer switching at that point. When the price cap decreased, essentially the forecast was a decrease in May. We still saw interest, but it wasn't as strong as it had been in the February announcement, really. In saying that, two-thirds of customers are still on the price cap tariff. We have re-engineered MoneySavingExpert's Cheap Energy Club, so we've really optimized our journeys for traffic. I think we're optimistic about what it looks like going forward, but realistic at the same time.
We're expecting this market to come back gradually, and I think that would be the main message. Now, anything to add to that or go straight on to CPC?
No, I'll pick up on, so Luke, we're calling out in the pack there that PPC costs are up 20% year-over-year, and really that's an extension of what we saw in the second half of last year when we saw that really pick up. That is quite correlated to the time when the headwind in cars started to come in. When we look at our analysis, it suggests that a lot of that is driven by competitor behavior, and we're sort of observing, depending on which segment you're looking at, we're seeing quite divergent behavior from competition. There are occasions where there are things going on where we don't really understand that.
I think when you take a step back from it, ultimately our long-term strategy is to reduce reliance on paid media, which is why we're leaning into growing the clubs and obviously focusing on profitable growth as well.
Understood. Can I just clarify that your energy revenues therefore peaked in February, you were saying, and then have come back a bit since? Is that the right way to think about the trajectory?
I think what we're saying is that the way that the market is operating is that consumers are looking when there are price cap movements. It's not to say that nothing happens in between, but you get a lot of volume around those movements. There were obviously two price cap announcements here in February. It was the one where prices were going up. That tends to drive more looking from consumers.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
As a reminder to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one. Please make sure the mute function on your phone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. You may also submit your questions via the webcast. Just locate the questions button at the bottom toolbar, type in there, and thank you. As a reminder again, if you wish to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one. We'll pause for just a moment to allow you to signal or to type in your question. I will now like to hand over to Jen for any webcast questions. Over to you, Jen.
Yeah, we have a question from Jessica at Pure Hunt. Do you expect there to be more exclusive energy deals for H2? You mentioned some of the marketing costs being moved into social, and can you comment on the ROI for social versus PPC?
Social versus PPC first, social is a paid channel. We don't get into necessarily the ROIs of any individual channel, but clearly it's a paid channel. It's also a channel where you can scale effectively across a number of platforms. It was a good place to diversify for the travel segment in this half. In terms of energy deals, we are always looking for more exclusives. We had 10 in the first half, and the team is working hard to get more for our consumers in H2.
Okay, we have a follow-up question over the phone from Andrew Ross from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Sorry, guys, I thought I'd squeeze in a couple more since there aren't any other questions. First one on the working capital. Just help us explain the dynamics there in terms of the outflow of receivables in the first half and how we should think about that into the balance of the year. Should we be assuming some kind of outflow in the working capital for the year? That's the first question. The second one is just to kind of double-click on the trends you've seen in motor through the half. Am I now right in saying that on a run-rate basis, the switching market in motor insurance has kind of bottomed out and we're through the worst, or is this just a scenario where things could deteriorate further from here? Thanks.
Great, thanks, Andrew. Let me pick up on car first and then pass over to Niall on working capital. Maybe let's just look at general insurance as well as car in giving you that answer, really. Let's start specifically with car. Prices now are on average 42% higher than they were when GF was introduced at the start of 2022. Whilst we've seen premiums fall in the half, they've fallen by about 9%. This is really against exceptional growth in 2024, where in the first half of 2024, they were up by 18%. That's the tough comparator that we've just been working through. I think the peak in car premium inflation is definitely behind us, and we'll see a gradual easing of that across the second half of the year.
The context, Peter, is as we guided previously, trends in home tend to mirror those seen in car typically by six to nine months. In a similar way, in the first half of last year, we saw home insurance premiums up by 30%. They're up by 4% in the half. We'll see some similar effect happening in H2. In total here, we've got over 250 products for home and car insurance on the platform. There is significant competition between providers that plays out, I think, to the advantage of customers, and they're finding they can make significant savings. All that adds up to us remaining confident that we can navigate our way through any headwinds and the strength and breadth is really going to be a big plus for the group. Niall, onto working capital.
Working capital. Andrew, I think first thing to say, there is always a bit of a H1, H2 effect. Actually, the cash conversion in this half isn't that different to what it was in 2023, for example. However, I think the thing to note that we're calling out is in this period, what we've seen is a sort of timing and mix effect, which is specific to the half, I think, around the fact that we're mixing out of char, which has a slightly faster cash conversion cycle, and mixing into energy and life, which have slightly slower cash conversion. This is very much a timing and mix effect. I think overall, cash generation remains strong.
Cool. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. It appears that we have another question on the webcast. With this, Jen, over to you.
Yeah, this one's from Gareth Davies at Deutsche [Mömins]. He asked a question on working capital, which we've already answered. His other question is, could you give a little more color on the people cost reduction?
Niall, do you want to pick that up for Gareth?
Yeah, Gareth, I think this is really a manifestation of a lot of the heavy lifting that has been done on the data and tech platform flowing out into cars. If I give you a sort of single example, we have removed something like 50% of legacy code. When you take out code like that by collapsing all of those various things into a singular platform, you don't need engineers to maintain what was there before. You then have choices to take it in cost or to take it in efficiency. We've done that, and we believe we've improved productivity of the team along the way as well. We have taken opportunities from automation, from that re-platforming work to deliver the cost saving.
To build on that, this is very much a new way of working, really. Across the last two years, we've seen a 300% improvement in the productivity of our tech teams. This is just the benefits of working on new modern platforms installed in a very consistent way right across our range of brands and products. It's sort of the benefits of a new approach.
Okay, it seems that we have another question on the webcast. Jen, over to you.
This one is from William Loward at Bamberg. Can you talk more about the gross profit margin decline and what proportion is due to first purchase rewards, B2B, etc.? Also, how do you expect margin to progress into H2? Can you expect further decline due to first purchase rewards?
Niall, do you want to pick both of those up?
Yeah, I mean, I think we've talked about this before. Margin is ultimately always a function of mix. What we've seen in this half is margin has gone from 68%-6 6%. There are three main effects in there. I'm not going to get into the breakdown of it, but first purchase rewards is a part of it. The other is PPC. Clearly, we're now seeing the annualization effect or the year-on-year effect of that 20% uplift that we've talked about. The other is that we've grown the B2B business or the white label business. In any given period, we are looking to optimize margin where we can. If white label can win a very big contract at a structurally lower margin, that is still good business that we're going to do.
Ultimately, when we look across revenue and costs for the year, we're very happy with where the consensus range is for the full year.
Thank you. It appears there are currently no further questions. With this, I'd like to hand the call back over to Peter for closing remarks.
Thank you. I'll just wrap up briefly by recapping. We've had a good start to the year, and as we look forward, we really do see a compelling outlook for growth with significant headroom in our member-based propositions. That's going to increase loyalty and internal lifetime value. Our innovative product development pipeline to improve customer experience will boost conversion and tap into new markets. Of course, confidence in our end markets as well. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us this morning. We're looking forward to following up with a number of you across the course of the next week. Thank you for joining. Speak soon. Bye-bye.