Good afternoon from London. I'm joined by Peter Redemaker, our CFO, who's in Amsterdam and Scott Spirit, who's our chief growth officer, and he's in Singapore. And this is the second presentation we're doing today on our half one results at S4. We've had to shorten it because our Capital Markets Day starts at 2PM London time. So Scott will be leaving us at about twenty to two London time to prepare for that, but Peter and I will be here.
And we've got an abbreviated presentation. We we made a a two hour or an hour and a half, hour and three quarter presentation this morning in London, which is on our on our website. And we've abbreviated this afternoon's presentation to results, which Peter will cover, clients and mergers, which Scott will cover. And I'll come back with a summary and outlook and Q and A. So over to you, Peter, to take us through the results.
Thank you, Mr. Martin. Good morning, good afternoon from Amsterdam, indeed, as Mr. Martin just indicated. So I flip to the Page four, it's called financial performance.
I'll try to guide you through. But before I start, I would we would like to summarize our first half year as industry leading progress despite COVID, and we're well on track to deliver our full year expectation. Having said that, I want to run through the bullets. The billings, which is our revenue, including pass through, especially media related million on a pro form a basis, it was EUR264.9 million. Our revenue, EUR141.3 million, 61% up from EUR88 million last year.
On a like for like basis, revenue up 7% and on a pro form a basis 8%. Gross profit are our most important measure, EUR 124,000,000, 77% up from last year's EUR 70,000,000 and a little bit, and a like for like of 12% and a pro form a growth of 13%. Immediately you see here, and not so much to justify that gross profit is a better measure, but you can see that revenue grew, but gross profit grew faster and that's the result especially in the second quarter where some projects were delayed or shifted over to digital. And what I mean with these projects, those are more the event driven projects, some TV commercials we produce that basically stopped and that was moved over into more digital work and as a result of our gross profit grew faster than our revenue. Our operational EBITDA was EUR18 million, which is 87% up.
Like for like, it was down 6% and on a pro form a basis, it was down 5%. Main reason for that is, as we may have read in the press release, we maintained our fabric. Of course, we were able to especially non business critical cost savings, but from a headcount point of view, we maintained our fabric as we call it. Our operational EBITDA was 14.5%, 0.8 margin points up on 2019 and on a pro form a basis it was EUR14.6 million. Our operating profit was EUR2.5 million, which includes adjusting items of EUR13.8 million and these adjusting items relate to acquisition expenses, amortization and share based compensation.
And that was versus an operating loss of EUR 6,200,000.0 last year in 2019 and a pro form a operating profit of EUR 3,000,000. The result before income tax was EUR 100,000.0, again, including the adjusting item versus a loss of last year of EUR 8,500,000.0 in 2019. And the result for the period, which is the net result after tax, that of course, again includes the adjusting items after tax, was EUR 100,000.0 versus a loss of EUR 8,500,000.0 in 2019 and a pro form a result before income tax of EUR0.7 million. The adjusted basic net result per share was EUR2.3p, last year it was EUR0.9, so in other words, 155% up. And our basic net result per share was a 0.1p loss versus a 2.5p loss last year and on a pro form a net result was rounded 0p.
Mid year cash was EUR 7,200,000.0, including our term loan coming from 2018 when we did the medium term transaction and including our drawdowns that we did early this year at €35,000,000 approximately 32,000,000 sterling. We had a and from a cash point of view, I'll come back
to that later, we have been operating in a net cash position basically since the start of this year, for a week or two, three. But the main period of overall we've been operating in a
net cash position. Finally, a very good start in Q3. In July, our gross profit is
up
18%, come back to that later, which also means that we're going to deliver or we are well on track to deliver our full year expectation in double digit growth with a strong or reasonable EBITDA margin. If I go to the next slide, you can see our gross profit performance on a like for like basis. When we do our budgets, which we typically do in November or in October, November And also in doubling in size organically, that means a compound growth of approximately 26% and that's the sort of range where we budget and plan against. And that's what we saw in January where we had a 33% growth. And February where we were already immediately confronted with COVID impact in Asia Pacific dropped to twenty one percent, March at six percent, April which we consider to be the trough at three percent, May five percent, June eleven percent and then July, as I just mentioned, eighteen percent growth.
So it was in a sort of the range as we were in February. And if you look at it on a quarter by quarter basis, 19% up gross profit like for like in Q1, 7% in Q2 and over the full half year a 12% growth. Now moving to the next slide, our unaudited condensed consolidated income statements. A couple of the numbers I already referred to, we'll pick a few. This is the reported numbers, the first two columns from the left hand side, then the like for like numbers from last year and the last two columns on the right hand side are the pro form a numbers on a full financial year basis or at least up until including June.
And operating profit of 6,200,000.0 to a sorry, that's wrong an adjusted operating result of 86% compared to up compared to last year, a positive PBT, as I just mentioned, of 0.1. And if you look at our income tax expenses, although in absolute terms limited, but higher in comparison to our PBT because of some of the non deductible costs in acquisition related expenses as such. So, still a €600,000 income tax charge, which ultimately delivered on a statutory number of €500,000 after tax. And in the next slide, what we always try to do, especially in relation to the adjusting items, so I repeat the share based compensation, the amortization and the acquisition related expenses, we sort of normalize that. So our operating profit in the statutory numbers was EUR 2,500,000.0, then that EUR 13,800,000.0 added to it and we try to approach an EBITDA, let's say, in the old world of EBITDA or before IFRS 16, the right of use assets.
So, if we take that all out, our EBITDA in the again, in the old definition is €18,000,000 after central costs and our central costs were approximately EUR 2,500,000.0, so delivering a EUR 20,500,000.0 EBITDA for this year. And the other items are just for your information purposes, some reconciliation to the operating profit and the PBT. If you look at the next slide in relation to our earnings per share, so we had a loss of EUR 4,500,000.0. But again, if you would take out the adjusting items and take out the tax charge on these adjusting items, our net profit was almost EUR 11,000,000 to be precise, EUR 10,900,000.0. And with our weighted average outstanding number of shares of EUR $465,000,000, that means that we were able to deliver a EUR 2.3p per share as an adjusted basic result compared to last year of 0.9%.
In other words, like I said, a 155% increase compared to last year. Going to the consolidated balance sheet, a couple of highlights in here. As you can see, our total asset value is now $857,000,000 Sterling and approximately 70% is in relation to our merger activities, our intangibles that we capitalize on our balance sheet. A big part we are amortizing on an annual basis and for the rest we have to take our fair value adjustments if needed, not necessary. So, we keep on amortizing these.
And what you also can see and that has been much focus ever since it's always much focus, but especially there was more focus during the COVID period on our receivables. So, although we increased significantly, you see our receivable position decline as a result of much focus on getting receivables in. And basically, in general terms speaking, we have had some conversations with our clients on maybe some delays of payments, which we requested, but we were able to decrease our outstanding position of receivable or in other words, have a good working capital management. Our net cash, what I just said, 7,200,000.0 including the term loan and including or after deducting the term loan and the revolving facility. And in the first half, next to the fact that we concluded the transaction with Serkos, we have also settled most of our deferred considerations in relation to prior year's merger activity.
And if you would look at the next slide, and I already sort of teed it up with the balance sheet, we consider this as a strong cash flow for the first half because if you look at our cash flow from operating activities, which were approximately EUR 37,500,000.0, that's a sort of in relation to the EUR 18,000,000 EBITDA we produced. So in other words, high cash conversion as well as, again, like I mentioned, our working capital management are our big focus on that. That has helped out as well delivering a 37,500,000.0 cash flow from operations. And like I just mentioned with the merger activities and finalizing or settling the last bits and pieces in deferred consideration, you will see in our cash flow from investing activities that we had approximately €45,000,000 cash outflow. So we settled deferred considerations on our activities in shares and in cash because we typically do our mergers on 50% cash and a 50% share basis.
And this accounts for, of course, in the cash flow statement only for the cash settlements in total, including, like I said, the service acquisition. So, drew down in early March our revolvers in the meantime that they have been paid back and of course this whole cash flow does not include our share placing, which we did in July, which currently brings us even at a stronger cash balance sheet positions. Moving over to the next slide, our pro form a gross profit and operational EBITDA by practice. Our content practice grew with 77% I'm sorry, it was 77% of total and again 75% in 2019. And our data digital media practice gross profit was 23% of total against 25% in 2019, a bigger increase in content also as a result of merger activities.
Content practice operational EBITDA before central cost was EUR16 million, which is a 16.5% as a percentage of gross profit. And our data and digital media operational EBITDA was EUR 5,000,000 in the first half, delivering a 16.9% percentage of gross profit. And my final sheet is the pro form the pro form a gross profit by geography. Americas still the biggest part in gross profit delivery and it's also revenue for 72% of total, 2,000,000 around it and that's up 14% compared to last year. And EMEA 19% of total, 24,000,000 GBP plus 7% compared to last year.
And our Asia Pacific activities at 9%, an CHF 11,000,000 contribution, which was up 18%. So, this summarizes briefly our half year twenty twenty performance. So, over to you, Scott.
Great. Thanks, Peter. So I'm taking over on Slide 14 now. So H1 was a strong time for us from a new business perspective. We drove a lot of growth and that helped us with our with our figures and our resilience during the first half of the year.
Now we've discussed our land and expand strategy in detail before. And H1 saw us land new engagements with new clients such as Twitch, Bumble, PayPal, Shopify, Verizon, Doll, the LA twenty twenty Olympics and some clients under NDA, including a global automotive company in Asia, a global FMCG and a global consumer electronics company. At the same time, we saw significant expansion in clients like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, HP, Amazon, Netflix, Uber, P and G, Mondelez, Sprint and others. Head on to the next slide. So far this year, 54% of our revenues come from the technology sector.
And with a deep exposure to that sector and clients like these, and obviously, we have a great opportunity to grow with them given their top line growth. And clearly, our ambition is not to stand still, but to grow our share within them, too. And this exposure to tech is something we want to maintain. We're constantly expanding our tech client portfolio. It's a natural fit and a natural understanding because we, like them, are digital natives.
But there's significant opportunities for us in other client sectors who want to tap into our expertise and leverage our skill set for their own transformations. Now we define whoppers as clients delivering over £20,000,000 of net revenue annually. We currently have two. Our 20 squared target is a plan to have 20 clients at this level in the medium term. Now there are several clients already in our portfolio on the organic track to become whoppers in the next year or two, plus we're involved in several pitch opportunities with major potential whoppers to more of which we hope to hear very soon.
The next slide, this is the section on M and A. So we started the year in January with the merger of Circus in Latin America. And then when COVID started to have an effect in Q1, we decided to balance protecting our balance sheet and liquidity with a desire to continue expanding our capabilities and our geographical coverage. So we did make some transactions during the COVID period. Now our road map has primarily focused on building out our data practice.
So we did DiggerDAP in Latin America and Lens ten here in Asia Pacific, which now give us global coverage on Google and Adobe Analytics. And then more recently, after the H1, we've continued with Orca Pacific, the full service Amazon agency and Brightblue, the predictive modeling and measurement specialist. Now obviously, with our July raise of GBP 112,000,000, we continue to be active and have a strong pipeline, particularly around data and analytics, specific geographies and e commerce and digital transformation. And with that, I will hand you back to Martin.
You're on mute, Martin.
You're on mute.
Sorry, sorry, sorry. Thanks, Scott. Thanks for doing it speedily given our Capital Markets Day in a few minutes. But I just want to summarize and give you the outlook. So I'm grateful to say that all our people or most of our people have been safe, and most of them are working from home.
There's a there's a regional variation, obviously, in Asia Pacific. Number of people in the office is higher than Western Europe, which in turn is higher than The US. But the the main point is that we really haven't suffered directly. I mean, sadly, a number of our people lost older parents, older relations, and we will all wish them long life. But beyond that, our people have adapted extremely effectively and well to COVID-nineteen.
The second thing is we continue to lead the industry in terms of growth, top line growth, both revenue and gross profit and indeed in margin. We've got a strong balance sheet with significant liquidity, and we stress tested it and good. I'm glad I'm glad to report that we've we've hit the the the outpaced even the most optimistic assumptions that we we made or scenarios that we made at the March, April. We took early cost action, as Peter indicated, particularly in the freelance area and travel and nonessential costs, and we retain flexibility in costs too. We've got a very favorable client portfolio, 54% of technology.
If you add in health care and telcos, we're up to almost 60% in those v shaped verticals. And we have a very healthy new business record and indeed pipeline, as you will see very shortly. The trends are certainly being have been accelerated by COVID nineteen towards digital transformation and disruption. And we're seeing a a larger and larger number of change agents, what we call change agents inside companies, who are not brooking any resistance under the direction of CEOs and CMOs and CIOs and CTOs, not are not brooking any institutional resistance to change. And COVID-nineteen has clearly accelerated the adoption of our holy trinity model and indeed our integration.
So we've dropped leases. In some cities, we're homeless, actually. And when when things refer return to the next normal or new normal, whatever you have it, whichever way you have it, we'll be integrating even faster. And we're ready for the recovery whichever shape, although we do think it's reverse square root show with with some verticals that's of the general economy with some verticals v shaped, u shaped, and l shaped. And conversion at scale is a priority.
2018 was a half year for us, and we're celebrating or will celebrate on September, our second anniversary on the London Stock Exchange. But, really, '18 was about awareness, generating awareness. 19 was about trial, and 20 is about conversion at scale, as we said before. And already, the jungle jams are beating about significant conversion at scale, which will be announced tomorrow. So we've set a priority of 20 squared for clients.
I've unashamedly taken that from Globant, a company I respect and admire highly. And the squared objective is we want 20 whoppers. That is companies that generate $20,000,000 of revenue plus for us. That's about 5% of our revenue base. Our objective is to get to 20.
We will have well, we have two, Google and one other, which is NDA, which is a major tech company. We will have another tomorrow in another category. We believe we will have another by the end of the year and probably another one organically. So we think by the end of the year, we'll be at five five whoppers. I just point out that if we were to secure 20 at 20, that's equivalent to our revenue base currently at 400,000,000.
So that's the presentation. I would have got about thirty five minutes before we're due to depart for for the Scott has to go slightly earlier. He's got fifteen minutes before we go for the capital markets phase. So your forbearance on that. So over to you, operator, for questions, please.
Certainly. The first question comes from the line of Michael Levine from Pivotal Research Group. Please go ahead.
Congrats on results, guys. Terrific results and great color. Minor point, but was curious just about where you've basically seen the recovery and I think you've done a good job talking about industries that are going to look more V, look more U, look more L. As you're looking in July and you're looking into the back half of the year, are there any that you think are going to end up being surprising or have been surprising thus far that have performed better than your expectations and maybe some that have performed worse than your expectations?
Well, I'll lead off. And Scott, you've got some thoughts on this. I think retail has surprised. I mean, I was on a call, I think it was on the Google call actually, where I think some of the Google executives expressed some surprise that retail had been so strong. And I think retail, particularly the traditional retailers or the physical retailers, how they had adapted quickly.
I mean, whether it's Home Depot or Lowe's or Walmart or Target, they do seem to so I think that would be probably in the surprising category. We don't have a heavy retail presence. We're we're sort of fleshing that out with WBA and Ace Hardware and others. But I think that's one area where I think there has been surprises on the upside. On the the the ones that we're not so surprised at, we're not surprised about tech or health care or financial services.
I think financial services probably will be a little bit stronger. We've had discussions with the CMOs of a couple of financial services organizations recently, and there's a lot of traction there. But I think, Michael, the the real point here is that all companies in all categories, COVID-nineteen really has resulted in all bets being off. The status quo has been disrupted. And what we're seeing is these change agents inside companies, hitherto, they've been resisted.
They're no longer resisted. Scott, do you want to add anything on categories that you've been surprised at?
No, I think you've covered it from a client category perspective. And I think from a practice area, we've seen obviously, you can see from the results, strong growth in the content side. On the data and digital media side, actually, data has been incredibly strong as well. Media was probably the most affected sort of discipline, if you like, during the COVID period, but it is starting to come back now, we saw a decent July there. And we're having a lot more conversations that have kind of come back up around, particularly in housing and transparency and some of the other issues that Mighty Hive really focus on.
So yes, things are looking good.
Okay. Michael, anything else there?
Terrific. Congratulations. You. No, that's great. Congratulations and looking forward to hearing the Capital Markets Day.
Thank you very much. Look forward to seeing you there. Operator, next question.
There are currently no further questions in the queue. Are no further questions in the
queue,
sir. Okay. Over to
So thanks, everybody, for joining the call. We look forward to seeing you at the Capital Markets Day, which will start in about thirty minutes. And we look forward to further announcements on one or two things later this week. Tomorrow, I think we've we've got a couple of things coming up, so which we'll brief you on during the course of the Capital Markets Day. So thank you very much for joining us.
Look forward to talking to you when we discuss our q three results. Thank you very much.