Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us for our Annual General Meeting, whether here in person or listening remotely. Thanks to all our shareholders for your continued support as we deliver and evolve our strategy. It's now 11:00 A.M., and as there's a quorum present, I declare the meeting open. My name's Nick Prettejohn, Chair of your company, and I'll take you through today's meeting. Before we continue, can I draw your attention to a couple of brief housekeeping points? Firstly, there was a practical example of it a second ago, all mobile phones should be switched off or placed on silent mode, thank you. Second, if the fire alarm rings, please follow the instructions given over the PA system and make your way to the nearest fire exit, which can be found by following the green running man signs.
No fire drill practice is apparently scheduled for today. May I remind you that when we come to the part of the meeting where questions will be taken, they should be from shareholders, proxies or corporate representatives only. Before asking your question, please state your name and the capacity in which you're attending the meeting today, shareholder, proxy or corporate representative. Finally, please be advised that unauthorized photography or filming of any kind is strictly prohibited during the meeting. You'll be asked to stop if you're seen to be doing so. As the Notice of the Meeting has already been made available to you, can I ask your permission for the notice to be taken as read? Is that agreed? Thank you. The meeting today has four parts.
After a few introductory remarks from me as Chair of the meeting, our CEO, Piers North, will share a short presentation to update you on the strategy as well as a summary of this morning's Q1 trading update. We'll then be pleased to take your questions before finally voting on the resolutions set out in the notice of the meeting. At the end of the meeting, we'd be delighted if you could join us for some refreshments. Let me start by introducing you to the other members of the Board. On my far left, your right, is Non-Executive Director Olivia Streatfeild. Next to Olivia is Non-Executive Director and Sustainability Committee Chair, Priya Guha. Next to Priya is Denise Jagger, Senior Independent Director. On my immediate left is Piers North, our Chief Executive Officer. On my immediate right is Georgina Sharley, our Company Secretary.
Next to Georgina is Darren Fisher, our Chief Financial Officer. We have Anne Bulford, Non-Executive Director and Audit & Risk Committee Chair. Moving to my furthest right is Barry Panayi, who is a Non-Executive Director and Remuneration Committee Chair. I, along with my fellow directors, am confident that this Board is a balanced and strong group. I'd like to thank them for their hard work during the year and the challenge and support they've provided to management. Before I hand over to Piers, I'd like to give a bit more context about how the Board viewed the company's recent performance and progress. Over the year, we've all continued to navigate significant geopolitical complexity, to put it mildly. On top of this uncertainty, media businesses like Reach have been further affected by accelerated changes in referral traffic.
For news publishers, these have presented a challenge, they also underscored the value of reliable journalism at a time when journalism and journalists are under attack in so many areas, and the need for diversified business models. Against this backdrop, the Board is encouraged by the group's ongoing progress. We've advanced our digital capabilities and maintained a sharp focus on long-term value while carefully controlling our costs. When I last spoke to you in this setting, we had only just appointed Piers North to the CEO role, since then, the Board and I have worked closely with him and the management team to confirm our updated strategic priorities. Several important initiatives sit within these priorities, we've seen good progress already in areas such as video and digital subscriptions.
We also support the adoption of the Where People Live brand proposition, which serves to align our diverse teams and audiences. This proposition highlights our core strengths, a strong presence within people's communities, coupled with a deep insight into their values, beliefs, and interests. There are numerous examples throughout the year of Reach titles making a real difference in those communities. I'm thinking particularly of the Manchester Evening News, Awaab's Law campaign, which passed into law in the autumn and will ensure that families in social housing are better protected against dangerous housing conditions. I'd also like to mention the Express team, who won a British Journalism Award for their 3-year-long Assisted Dying campaign, which put this difficult topic firmly on the parliamentary agenda. The Board continues to support our commitment to make Reach a more sustainable and inclusive business.
Highlights include the company's first near-term science-based targets announced last spring, our second cohort with The King's Trust, giving people from underprivileged and underrepresented backgrounds better access to a career in journalism. All of this good work takes effort and resilience in a demanding market, and reflects the skill and the dedication of Reach's teams. On behalf of the Board, I'd like to thank all our people at Reach for their continued commitment to serving our audiences and stakeholders. I'll hand over to Piers, who will talk about the strategic progress through the year and this morning's trading update.
Thank you, Nick, and thank you everyone joining today here and also online. I'd like to take you through some of the milestones of last year and remind you of the strategic priorities, these priorities we launched last summer. Then I'll share a brief update on the Q1 trading position before we move on to questions. As Nick reminded you, that our publishing sector is undergoing a challenging time right now, with an online landscape that I think is changing more rapidly than ever before. I've worked in this industry for nearly 30 years, the pace of change that we're undergoing is as significant as it has ever been.
It was with these kind of overall trends and background of those trends that we had in mind when we first unveiled the strategy last summer, and the three priorities that have guided us that you can see on the screen behind me. We recognized then that we were on the cusp of big seismic changes to the ecosystem that we operate in, and we needed to prepare for that. I'd like to remind you of these priorities and the principles behind them before updating on how we've delivered against them. The first one is connecting with our audiences, and this really means something very different now than even five years ago, let alone 10.
The size of the news market has matured, and within this we've obviously seen big shifts in the last 12 months towards large language models and the AI platforms, non-web browser consumption, social media now becoming less social and more established as effectively a broadcast medium, and as a platform for news. We know we have to diversify our revenues. It's essential that we diversify our revenues beyond our traditional ad-led model that has supported our digital business to date. Obviously, as part of this, as Nick referenced, we launched subscriptions on our digital platforms last July. Obviously we need to also develop more video and monetize that better as well. Of course, we can only do all of these things and get where we need to be to embrace, we need to embrace technology and AI.
It enables all of this change. It's not just beyond the content, it runs through our company in terms of all the data we process and the functions that we need to operate. It supports our people to do the best work they can in the most efficient way possible. All of these priorities are designed to make our business more relevant to our audiences, and obviously more resilient as a bigger part of our revenues move away from advertising. As I'll explain in a moment, it's become clear as we move through last year and into this, that it's the need for diversification is absolutely essential. Let's take a look at the performance of last year. Here you can see a snapshot of 2025, which captures our headline performance numbers and some of our strategic highlights.
We delivered a good financial performance with growing profits and a market-leading operating margin of 20%. We made strong strategic progress against the priorities that I outlined that we designed for the changing landscape, and more importantly, we took decisive action to put our business on the right course. By decisive action, I don't mean just along the strategic initiatives. But also operational decisions around our costs and, of course, our print facilities that we announced recently as well. As for the big factors that impacted the year, at the start of 2025, our owned and operated audience on our browsers was in fact growing, and then started quite abruptly in H2 to decline, and we've seen major referral changes, as have many of our competitors, which we're still seeing now.
Certainly the shifts that we've seen this year have only confirmed our belief that the priorities we outlined last are right for the business going forward. We've been implementing the initiatives at pace, which include but are not limited to, adding video resource and increasing our video output, integrating AI tools across our workforce, whether that be in our editorial functions, commercial, or indeed our support functions, and of course, as I said, launching our premium digital subscriptions. In the nine months since the plan, we've been working at pace to deliver a platform, refine our proposition, and launch them. We've launched on 11 of our titles. We started with the Manchester Evening News just before Christmas, and since then, the titles such as WalesOnline, the Daily Record, and The Express have also rolled out, amongst others.
As we said at our full-year presentation in March, we set ourselves a target of 75,000 subscriptions for the year, and we're making good headway towards that, and we've just ticked over 30,000 subscribers for the titles we've launched. Next month, we will launch on The Mirror and the Daily Star, two of our big nationals, and we will be focused on refining the proposition too. It is not only important to launch the proposition, but invest time and resource to make sure the product is as good as possible so we can make sure we retain the customers that we acquire. In order to make these kind of investments in these strategic areas. We restructured the business last autumn with a focus on creating leaner central teams and putting more of the resources firmly behind the priorities that we need to drive forward.
As we announced earlier this year, we've taken a big step to consolidate our print operations and focus the business more firmly on our digital priorities. These were the right steps to take for our business. We've already made progress in strengthening our business for the environment we now operate in. At the same time, I can't ignore that we faced, and are still facing, some challenging headwinds that have impacted our digital performance and some of our long-established revenue streams in that digital space. Most significantly was the drop-off in referral traffics that our sites and many other sites across the internet have begun to see. We started to see that at the beginning of the second half of the year, and mainly from the Google changes.
When I step back and I think about the speed and the magnitude of those impacts on Google, I'm proud how the company and the teams responded, and how our digital held up at GBP 129 million. Taking all of these things together, the teams deserve a huge amount of credit for the strong financial delivery across my first year as CEO in the face of some very challenging market conditions. Whilst I, and I said this at the full years, I will never be content until we have a steadily growing digital business, I am realistic that the online landscape is likely to throw more challenges our way over the course of this year. I know with the priorities that we've outlined, we are moving in the right direction.
We foresaw these issues in the market, and we're already taking the necessary steps to counteract them. Crucially, we've maintained strong control of our costs and made the necessary decisions to support the 20% profit margin. Again, in the environment we operate in, this is no small feat for the teams. So I do wanna echo my thanks to all of the teams at Reach for their work over the past year, my first year as CEO, to deliver against this environment, to make the progress against our strategic priorities in such a small amount of time, and keep serving our communities with real dedication and skill. Whatever change we come up against, it's the focus of the people that we serve that will keep us on track. I'd like now to move on to our editorial highlights.
Before I move onto the Q1 trading, I think it's important to take a moment to showcase some of our editorial highlights of the year. Nick has already outlined some of the most prominent ones, but it's beyond that where we operate and Where People Live, whether that's in their local communities, or a football fandom, or being in channels in the formats and social platforms they love. We've had a strong year in terms of editorial output, and I think it's only appropriate given our push into video that we have a short video just to show you some of those examples. If we can run the VT. Thank you to the studio team who put that showreel together.
I think, hopefully it gives you a glimpse of the variety of content that we have across platforms, geos, titles, and really brings our proposition of being where people live to life. I did finally wanna move on to the trading update for Q1, which covers the 3-month period to the end of March 2026. In summary, we're seeing more of the trends that we talked about at our full year's presentation in March. Our digital revenue declined just over 8%. This was primarily down to those lower referral volumes from Google that I talked about earlier. This meant we had lower on-platform audiences, and this affected our digital revenue despite the headway we're making in our other strategic areas.
Elsewhere, print and advertising revenues remained more reliable, with a 6.6% decrease supported by strong promotional activity and a cover price increase. As I say in the statement, it is clear we're seeing another major shift in the media landscape, but we are doing the right things to navigate this. In the meantime, whilst on-platform audiences are showing signs of stabilization in recent weeks, we do remain cautious on our outlook for digital revenues this year. In line with previous guidance, we remain confident in delivering the planned reduction in operating costs, and we're on track to deliver in line with market expectations for the full year. I will share a further update at our half-year results, which are in July. Once again, thank you to all the teams at Reach for all of their efforts over the last year, and thank you for listening today.
I'll now hand back to Nick for any questions.
Thank you, Piers. If you have any general questions pertaining to the business at this meeting or questions on a specific resolution set out in the Notice of the Meeting, now is your opportunity to ask. If you wish to ask a question, please raise your hand. Someone will bring a microphone to you. If you can wait until you have the microphone before speaking, it will enable your fellow shareholders and others in the room to hear. As I referred to earlier, before you ask your question, it would be helpful if you could, as a courtesy to your fellow shareholders, say your name and if you're a shareholder, a proxy, or a corporate representative. Can I again remind you that, as you've seen in the notice, only shareholders, proxies, and corporate representatives are entitled to raise questions.
Who would like to ask a question? Chris?
Chris Morley, Proxy, National Organizer for National Union of Journalists. Hello to you, Chair, and the Board, and also shareholders too. Good to see everybody. Hopefully, you'll have seen the letter that we put together for shareholders this morning on your way in. In it, we certainly welcome the change of strategy, the introduction of digital subscriptions for Reach titles, and we're really pleased to see the video just before about the work of your journalists and our members and showcasing the talent that you have in your ranks. I think the importance there is the issue of quality.
It's so important that if you, if the strategy of digital subscriptions is to work, you've got to have that quality maintained. The readers are just not going to part with their hard-earned cash unless they know that they are getting something in return. The work of Reach journalists is excellent, and it needs to continue to be so, and that's why we're saying that you have to have also not just, you have to have the numbers of journalists to do that work as well. Last year, and into this year was pretty painful. There were a lot of redundancies that were made.
My question would be this: with the announcement that the company wants to make cuts of between 5%-6% to its cost base. What is that likely to mean in terms of future redundancies for journalists? We see it as incompatible to have that level of quality with a reducing number of journalists. It is a large amount of money that is concerned in that 5%-6%. Allied to that would be, to meet the expectations that the company is giving the city around operating profits. Will it meet that from increased revenue, or will it be as a result of more cost cutting? Thank you.
Thank you. I'll ask Piers.
Yeah.
To respond.
Thank you, Chris, and thank you for the support on the digital subscriptions. It is, as you know, a central part of our plan to diversify those revenues. I think we're in violent agreement that we need to make sure the proposition is worth parting for the hard-earned cash, and that is obviously a combination of content, but it's also the platform, the tech, the delivery, and the marketing. On your point around costs, as I said, we are managing our cost base appropriately. It's why we took the steps that we took on the print consolidation for this year. That is a big part of it. We will continue to monitor our cost base overall. There are a lot of uncertainties going on right now. Nick referenced the geopolitical situation.
Our focus, my focus, my team's focus, everyone I know is focused on growing that digital revenue. None of us will be satisfied until we return that part of our business to health. I think again, in that sense, digital revenue is all in this. That is the message that goes around the teams. I'm convinced that everyone is focused day to day. Absolutely, we're focused on digital revenue, but at the same time, we will always continue to look at our cost base. Clearly, our people are our biggest single cost base as part of our organization. We will continue to keep a very close eye on how we operate and also how we navigate the landscape that is changing around us.
Thank you. Mr. Bedell?
Thank you very much. My name's Mr. Bedell, and I'm a shareholder. I'd like to pick up some of the points that the CEO has made there this morning. Sorry, can you hear me? I'm very sorry. At the moment, my mouth's a bit dry because I rushed here. I'm very sorry about that. Picking up some of the points that the CEO made this morning with regard to the cost cutting and all that, and also with regard to video and digital and all that. He stated there already that we're down on this quarter 8%. When you look at the report for the last year, right, our print revenues earned three quarters of our revenue and three quarters of our profit.
Are we going down a road of what I call vanity projects as such, like video and digital? I would like to know. You must do it all the time. Compare this with other newspaper groups that are in this era as such. We'd like to know exactly with regard to the revenues as such, we generated three quarters of our money from print revenue, and how we cannot expand that again. I know it's falling down. That may be on price, you know, when we got a cover price and all that. You should be looking at that type of thing as well because people cannot afford GBP 1 odd for a newspaper.
Whatever title there, whatever title there is, or even if it isn't one of our own titles, people look at that first. I think you could look at the cover price as such because there's free newspapers on the market. You know, one at the Daily Mail as such. I think a group like we are should be able to look at that. That's just one of my questions. Could I go on a bit more?
Shall we take that?
Yeah, sure.
That bit first and then.
Shall we take that up?
Yeah.
Thank you for the question. I think the question was fundamentally around the cover price. I mean.
No, it's not around the cover price.
Okay.
It's around the revenues that we make.
Yeah.
We make three quarters of our money.
Yeah.
From print revenue.
Yeah.
Not from digital revenue or video revenue.
Yeah.
I know you want to go down that. You may well be the expert.
Yeah.
Argue with that at all. You personally may be.
So?
I'm not. What I see on paper, anybody, anything that's making money, you go in that direction, and try and improve that direction. You don't go into what I call vanity projects that can end up losing money. According to what you said here this morning, I'm sorry if I'm cutting you in bits here. The digital is down 8%.
Yeah.
On this quarter. What it was on the last quarter, I don't know. you talk about the figures.
Yeah.
As such, I do read this book.
Yeah.
I do. I honestly do.
It's a good read. As such.
Shall we let Piers have a go?
Okay.
15,000 contributors.
Mr. Bedell, shall we let Piers have a go at answering your question?
Yeah. I think you're absolutely right.
I apologize.
We are acutely aware that we manage our print business very carefully, and we cherish not only the business that we have, the readers that we have, the products that we put out, but the industry in print is in structural decline.
We know.
It is incumbent to make sure that as the print revenues decline, the management team, we need to grow our digital business, and you're right to point out the Q1 trading position, and no one is disappointed as the teams back at the ranch. We are working every day to make that business back into growth. As you know, the platforms, which obviously recently announced their results as well, are hoovering up an incredible amount of value out of the global ecosystem in publishing. We always have a twin strategy. We will nurture print, and we will manage that business very acutely, and you're right around the cover prices. Again, we're confident in the products that we offer, the promotions that go with it. When you buy the newspaper now, it is not just about the cover price.
It is not just about the content. It's to make sure you've got, English Heritage, free bets, whatever we can do to make sure that we're offering value back to the readers. We cherish that business a lot. It is a key part of what we do. We also need to make sure that we are growing digital because the print business will not be here forever. Therefore the digital, the digital focus is right for our business. Clearly, as we've outlined, there are lots of things happening around the publishing sector, and we have to flex our strategy accordingly. You're right. The beauty of print is it has always had two flows of revenue, the cover price and the advertising. Digital, when it started in 1998, when I first started in digital, we eschewed the cover price.
We went down a free-to-air model globally. Obviously most publishers now are realizing that we have to find a way to convince users, and as you say, their hard-earned cash. We're well aware they're paying GBP 15.99 for Spotify and GBP 185 for the license fee and a broadband connection and that. And we acutely recognize that we need to provide the value in our digital premium subscriptions. That's when I, when I was answering Chris's question, there is a broad support for that push, and it is right that we focus and we invest our time and our resources to make sure that digital premium subscription becomes a bigger part of what we offer than it is at the moment. We are well aware print is under pressure. We love that print product, and we will continue to nurture it.
That audience is in structural decline, and it would be remiss of us and not nonsensical of us not to focus on digital growth.
Yeah, it's still making three quarters of our money.
It is absolutely making three quarters of our money.
That money. That's the bottom line of it.
100%.
The other quarter comes from what they call the vanity projects.
Yeah.
Do you have a second? Sorry, a second question?
Sorry. I'm sorry if I don't want to go down that road in any way as well. My second question is, basically I'm always on here about pensions, and we seem to be going down the road, and I have read the book, booklet, as I said. We started off at six, paying back GBP 64 million into our services that we should have had as such. We keep on going down and down and down. We're now down in 2027 to GBP 58 million we're putting in. Why is that when we really and truly should be wiping that out really and making the pensions really secure?
We're not, because what we're doing is that the pension schemes now are going into, they're going into a buyout situation where the company is now finding an annuity with some other insurance company, and you sort that situation out. I think we're gonna go down the road of never ever paying this money back, that we had this surplus, the surpluses were taken away from. I believe you need to look at that somewhere down the line because I hope as such, that our pensioners will not lose out in any shape or form. Knowing what companies are, they all look as if they're honest, but behind the scene, things happen.
I believe we need to look at that a bit more, more in favor as such, because I can see as the years go on, the figure that you pay in will become less and less and less, and I think it won't exist anyway because what you'll do, you'll go into a buyer situation with many companies. You've got a company in here, M&G, as such, which M&G is also a big shareholder of this company as such, yet you've gone down the line of giving them money from us again back to that situation. That can't be right in any way whatsoever because there are other companies on the market.
Darren?
I think you ought to look at the pension situation.
There are a number of quite fundamental misconceptions in what you've just, in what you've just said. I'll ask.
No, absolutely.
I'll ask Darren to answer.
Yeah. Mr. Bedell, thank you and good to see everybody today. There are a lot of misconceptions in there. I mean, we are actually doing the completely opposite to what you're talking about. We are working very closely with all of our pension schemes. We do have, and we're aligned with our pension schemes in terms of where we wanna get them to from an, let's call it an endgame point of view or perspective. All of our schemes want to go into being fully insured, because they see that as being the most secure way to protect their members and to make sure those obligations to pay their pensions is secure.
That's why you're seeing, you were referencing before, one of our schemes in Q1 this year, TRBS went into full buy-in. That's a massively positive step for them. Again, we don't have the option as a company to tell them what they can do, right? You've talked about the choice to use M&G. That was a trustee decision. The company cannot make that decision for them. They have made that choice. The contributions you're talking about, so the GBP 59 million for 2026, GBP 58 million for 2027, and GBP 15 million for 2028, all of those are contribution schedules which were set in the 2022 triennial review.
That is done again with the pension schemes, and they are all designed to get them to a technical, fully funded position, at which point in time, they are able to then, start to go into that process of going into their endgame. Those contributions were set three years ago. They were set with the schemes, and obviously with the blessing of the pension regulator. We're now in our 2025 triennial review. We're just in the process of kicking off those conversations with them, to review where their funding levels are. We will reset those contribution schedules, to affect those same outcomes, which is effectively getting them to a point where they are self-sufficient. We will continue to work with all of our schemes.
We'll work with them as they go through the journey that they want to go through, which is to get to full buy-in, ultimately full buyout, and then winding up. We are doing everything we possibly can to make sure we are securing the benefits for all of the members of all of our pension schemes.
Yeah. Fair enough. I'm keeping an eye on it anyway.
Can I ask?
Sorry.
Mr. Bedell, can I ask if there are other shareholders who'd like to ask a question? We can always come back to you later. Yes.
Thank you, Nick. Andy Smith, I'm Proxy, an NUJ full-time official. The question I had was covered partly by your answer to Mr. Bedell's first question. I mean, with the sale of the two print sites that our members are telling us that that has had an effect on the deadlines for some titles. And therefore the impact of that on coverage of late-breaking news for those titles, what are the company doing to provide readers of the print product with value? For how long do you think you will be producing, printing newspapers at scale?
Thanks, Andy. Piers?
I mean, I think I've broadly answered that question. As said, we are very focused on the product that we offer in the printing capacity. As Mr. Bedell said, it's a big part of our revenues, so it's a big part of our focus. We continue to invest in the printed product. In terms of extra pagination on weekends, we've got new puzzles going or have gone out, extra content and puzzles over the weekend. We continue to focus on that product. We will continue to do so. As for the last part of the question, we will always keep an eye on the longer term outlook of print and make decisions accordingly. Ultimately, there is still an audience for print.
It is getting smaller. That will not stop. We will continue to service that audience as best we can. In terms of those changes to off-stone times, there have been changes over many, many years. There will continue to be many, many, many changes over the years. The printing industry will have to reflect those. I think again, we stand by the quality of our products, the stories that run, and the offers and the value that we offer our readers. It is a massively important part of our business. We don't take it for granted.
Another question. It's related to that. Chris Morley again, proxy and NUJ. Yeah, associated. It's a great question that Mr. Bedell raised around pensions. Over the next few years, it's had a massive impact on the company over many years now. That has led to, you know, additional cost cuts to meet that commitment that was given all those years ago. That is gonna be diminishing over the next few years. What I wanted to know is with that increased financial flexibility from that direction? What is the Board's intention? Where does the Board want to get to with the size of the company in terms of revenue, and in terms of employees over, you know, three to five years when that flexibility starts to feed through, in more, in a more significant way? Thank you, Chair.
Thanks, Chris. Piers?
Well, you're right, Chris, to highlight the change in our financial commitments over the coming years. Darren can add more color to that. He's talked about the GBP 15 million figure in a couple of years. Clearly our focus right now is to make sure that we can rebase the digital business, that we can navigate the changes that are going on, get that digital business back to growth. We believe the priorities we've outlined, whether it be subs or whether it be video, we will continue to make sure we focus on those in the coming years and make the digital business as big as it can be.
Clearly right now, as Darren outlined, our focus is to make sure we manage those pension contributions over its sort of hopefully its final few years. Then we will take the business forward, we will invest in priorities that we see fit to keep that digital business growing.
The size of the company?
In terms of revenue, we obviously have a rolling 3-year plan that we keep an eye on. Of course, you have to do it from where you start. We recognize that we're declining, as been pointed out, 8% in Q1. We will look to see the outlook for the full year, then we will rebase accordingly. Clearly our digital business is smaller, as has been illustrated. You know, it is mathematically true that our digital business is only 25% of our revenue. Our job is to make sure we get that back to growth. Then we will take a look on what size of business in terms of both revenue, employees, offices, sites, whatever, as we see appropriate.
Other questions. Mr. Bedell, going for the hat trick.
I'm very sorry about this, but that's what you're there for, to answer questions.
Yes, we are.
You're looking after my money, I hope, as, I'm not trying to be rude with that remark either. That's not me. Let's get down to what I wanted to ask. You haven't spoken yet this morning about the share price, and you haven't spoken yet also about your dividends. Your dividends haven't altered for two years. I know you're paying dividends. Before you wasn't as such. Do you not think a company the size of us, and you're saying we're doing well according to you, as such, that you can look and tell me what the price is? I do look at the price. It's very low, as it so happens.
I do think that you ought to tell shareholders exactly what price, the share price is, at least coming to a meeting like this, especially when you're having an AGM, so it's open, good. All companies do that. Every company that I've got shares in, they do it. I think you ought to look at that. Can I just ask one more question about costs? You wanna hear about cost. You're closing this Saltire plant and the Watford plant as such. I've spoken at these meetings about Canary Wharf. All right? Canary Wharf must be costing us a fortune to rent, right, on a lease.
There's other companies, newspaper companies, that have moved around to other buildings and been able to still operate the type of business that they want from other buildings. Why are we still in Canary Wharf? With regard to these buildings that have been or are going to be, I gather they're gonna be sold. They'll probably be sold for housing. Once you sell it off to a developer, when is that money gonna come back to the shareholders as such? Holborn never ever come anywhere near shareholders ago, and I've held shares in, well, in Trinity Mirror or in The Mirror for a long time now. When we closed Holborn, we never saw a penny of it. Not a penny of that thing, yet we owned that building in Holborn, and we owned it for years and years and years, the Daily Mirror. Could you kindly answer those questions?
Piers?
Well, I think I'll defer to Darren on office costs.
Yeah.
The print site's future. Obviously on the stock price generally, clearly today obviously was a Q1 announcement, so the stock price will be moving, and I'm sure it's been moving since we've been in this room. It'd be inappropriate for me, I guess, to guess what it is right now. Clearly, the focus of the management team has to be on the long-term future of the company. The stock price is one aspect that we will look at. It will not help the business long term, to your point, grow the digital business to be as big as print if we're wholly. [crosstalk]. Yeah. Partly why the stock price is where it is is because of the digital performance in Q1. The market is super interested in our digital growth strategy.
We need to, as I said before, we absolutely, it is incumbent and sensible for us to make sure we can outline a growth strategy for digital. The best thing we can do for our stock price, the best thing we can do for our journalists, the best thing we can do for our entire business, it all comes back to digital growth. That is, again, why the management focus is on that part of the business.
You should've been able to give a share price to this morning.
Well.
Even the current share price, you look at other companies?
I will d efer to the stock tickers on a phone.
There are different sectors from media, but I'm just saying to you.
Yeah.
Other companies that-
We could have given a closing price stock if that were appropriate, but I take that at the Board. I'll defer to Darren on the two things around, the future of the print site Saltire, which and Watford, and also office costs generally.
Yes. Yeah, so we announced our print rationalization in Q1, which effectively was reducing our current estate by two sites, leaving Oldham as the sole one. The business logic for that is because it had got to a point in the sector where from a capacity point of view, those sites were not being fully utilized anymore. And therefore, it was obvious to us that we had to find a different alternative, which was to go into the JV Newsprinters as now with out source arrangements. We've done that. We think that's the right thing for the business. You know, we're not fundamentally a core manufacturing business, we are a publishing business, that made sense for us.
From a finance logic perspective, it was a very strong business case. We expect to get our pay back in two years with a very, very high return on investment. It also ticked all of the boxes from a financial business case point of view as well. In terms of the sites themselves, yes, they will be marketed, and they will be put up for sale. We'll be trying to market them this year, and then hoping to dispose of them next year. That will obviously give us some proceeds from a cash point of view, which is a part of that business case which generates that return I talked about. Your point around, you know, how does that cash get back to shareholders?
Well, we pay dividends. Ultimately the dividends are the reward for shareholders from a cash return, perspective, which incorporates, you know, all of our business, not just those individuals', proceeds from sites.
Canary Wharf?
Canary Wharf. Yeah, Canary Wharf.
How did you do today?
Canary Wharf, we have a lease that goes through to the end of 2028. We are already starting in the market to have a look at what's available to us, not only where we are today, but also in terms of the city. I think you underestimate the cost of properties elsewhere outside of Canary Wharf. Canary Wharf is probably actually quite competitive is the honesty of it. However, having said that, we've got a while to go yet before we determine what our next step is for that site. What we will be able to do is release a the second floor that we have, which has not been used. We'll actually get a benefit from that anyway.
Need to be acknowledged.
Yeah.
Any other questions from shareholders? No? Okay. Thank you. We can move then on to the next part of the meeting. I'll move on to the formal business. As noticed, noted in the Notice of Meeting, the most democratic way to assess how shareholders wish to vote is to conduct a poll which reflects fully the votes of all shareholders who have voted, whether or not they are able to attend the meeting in person today. Unless anyone requires an explanation of the fairly standard set of resolutions to be voted on, then in a moment I'll call and open the poll. If you are a shareholder or hold a proxy, you should have received a poll card when you signed in with the registrars before the start of this meeting. You should also have been given a pen.
If you haven't got a card or a pen, please raise your hand and they'll be brought to you. We'll allow a few minutes for you to fill in the poll card, and the registrars are at the exit to collect the cards. Registrars, please can you stand so that shareholders know who to hand their cards to? Registrar, single by the look of it. If you are unclear of the process, perhaps you could speak to the registrar's registrar. For those shareholders listening remotely, for your votes to have been counted, you must have submitted your proxy votes in advance of the AGM today, either by hard copy proxy form or electronically, which must have been received no later than 11:00 A.M. on Friday, the 1st of May, 2026.
We'll publish the results of the poll this afternoon in an announcement to the London Stock Exchange. They'll be posted on the company's website at the same time. I now formally call for each of the resolutions set out in the Notice of Meeting to be decided by a vote of all shareholders through a poll. The poll is now open. A reminder of the resolutions is displayed on the screen behind me. The poll will be open for five minutes and will close at 11:54 A.M. Please complete your cards and hand them to the registrar. That concludes the business of the meeting. I now declare the meeting closed. Outside there is tea and coffee. I hope you'll join me and the rest of the Board, where we'd be happy to take any other questions you may have on a more informal basis.
Thank you for attending our 2026 Annual General Meeting.