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May 7, 2026, 4:23 PM GMT
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Earnings Call: H2 2025

Mar 26, 2026

Matthew Moulding
Founder and CEO, THG

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our full year 2025 results presentation. It's a pleasure to be here reporting on what has proved to be a landmark year, our first as a consumer-focused group, packed with a large number of important initiatives. We delivered a strong full year 2025 performance ahead of both our guidance and market consensus with adjusted EBITDA of GBP 76.6 million, setting a solid base for meaningful progress again in the year ahead. On the balance sheet, we've deleveraged meaningfully. Our debt facilities are now extended out to the end of 2029, and we ended the year with over GBP 330 million in cash and available facilities, giving us real financial flexibility going forward.

At the start of the year, we completed the demerger of THG Ingenuity, and with that, THG became what it is today, a focused consumer-led group built around two leading businesses in their respective markets, THG Beauty and THG Nutrition. For the first time since COVID, both businesses delivered full year revenue growth in 2025, with nutrition delivering four consecutive quarters of growth in the year. The group's momentum in the second half was especially encouraging with Q4 delivering our best performance of the year at 7% revenue growth. In THG Beauty, we had a record year for new brand launches and a standout performance in our home territories, particularly LOOKFANTASTIC U.K., where we took share in established and high-growth segments.

In THG Nutrition, our multi-model strategy is delivering meaningful market share growth, and Myprotein delivered nearly 10% revenue growth in H2 despite the model changes across Asia and India initially reducing sales in those regions. A combination of new partnerships, growing offline and licensing channels, and category diversification are all contributing to a more balanced and resilient revenue base. We have also seen significant progress regarding our VAT claim, which now totals around GBP 78 million following the prudent treatment of protein, collagen, and supplement products over the years while some of our competitors zero-rated products. We expect a resolution later this year, which along with the meaningful free cash flow generation could broadly halve net debt by year-end.

Turning to THG Beauty, a business which has seen a significant overhaul to the business model in recent years, which has created a strong and unique platform for our revenue and active customer growth. We had our biggest ever year for new brand launches on the platform. We are firmly the destination of choice for the world's leading beauty brands, and that was very evident in 2025. Our biggest ever new product launch was the Huda Beauty Lip Contour Stain, a fantastic exclusive that drove enormous engagement and traffic. Beyond this, our advent campaign in peak trading set new records while THG Beauty had its biggest ever year for exclusive product launches, which is so important for differentiation in a competitive market.

THG Beauty also became the biggest UK beauty retailer on TikTok Shop, a channel we see as strategically important for reaching the next generation of beauty consumers. On the own brand side, our biggest launch was the Biossance Eye Serum, which further strengthens our margin accretive brand portfolio, where we have invested during the year to repackage and reformulate to remain relevant and compelling to beauty regimes. Moving to THG Nutrition and Myprotein specifically. Myprotein is the world's number one sports nutrition brand with an enviable level of engagement in a rapidly growing and evolving health and wellness demographic. This position of market leadership continues to strengthen. Brand awareness hit record levels this year, achieving our highest ever unaided awareness score in the UK, where we are clear market leader.

Myprotein's aided awareness also reached a record high, further supporting the success of the major rebrand undertaken in 2025. Over half of our target demographic now recognizes the Myprotein logo, which speaks to the scale and effectiveness of our marketing investment and our multi-model approach. Myprotein's progress in offline and licensing expansion has been exceptional with all of over 43 million products now licensed and sold into global retail. The launch of our Mars products this week serves to build on the uniqueness and quality of the Myprotein brand with the world's largest brands keen to work in partnership and gain access to the Myprotein community. This channel is still early in its growth journey, and when combined with the wider B2B retail partnerships, it's clear why we're confident about the medium-term trajectory for this business despite the well-documented commodity price pressures.

Outside of protein powders, activewear is a category to watch. It's a structurally attractive margin accretive category, and our expectation is this will be delivering a run rate of GBP 100 million in sales within 12-18 months after delivering over GBP 50 million of revenues for the full year of 2025. Turning to the outlook. On the full year expectations, we are guiding towards mid-single-digit group revenue growth with gross profit margin improvements year-on-year, despite the current record high commodity pricing. We expect to deliver meaningful EBITDA progression, not only from continued sales growth and improving margins, but also from the benefit of significant OpEx savings as we annualize headcount savings while continuing to deliver new savings in utilizing AI.

Looking at each business, THG Beauty enters 2026 with strong underlying growth, particularly in the U.K. and U.S., our two largest markets. After a slower start to the prior year, the U.S. is performing really well, and our new brand and product pipeline remains very healthy. For nutrition, we are seeing strong progress across channels with clear actions in place to improve mix and profitability alongside a defined strategy to manage whey price volatility through procurement, diversification, and disciplined pricing. Once commodity pricing starts to fall from record highs, hopefully before the end of the year, then we expect this to have a marked impact on profitability growth beyond 2026.

On cash, we expect to deliver free cash flow of GBP 25 million-GBP 50 million, with CapEx running broadly flat year-over-year, working capital inflows following last year's temporary investment in stock and a reduction in financing costs. Our results demonstrate our continued progress against our strategic vision of becoming the leading destination for prestige beauty and sports nutrition. This alignment between strategy and delivery underpins the strong momentum carried into 2026 in fundamentally strong end markets. The team are here with me today, and we'll be happy now to take some questions and thank you once again for all your support.

Operator

Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask an audio question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Also please ensure that your line is unmuted until your signal reach our equipment. That is star one for questions. Our very first question this morning is from John Stevenson of Peel Hunt. Please go ahead. Your line is open, John.

John Stevenson
Research Analyst, Peel Hunt

Hi. Morning, all. I've got two or three questions, but I'll try and maybe I'll keep you to two. I think, you know, start with the VAT claim. Just on the VAT claim, you're still treating sales as being standard rate at the moment and paying that over to HMRC. Then secondly, you know, assuming HMRC confirms that protein powders that are going to be zero-rated, does this go into cheaper pricing for consumers, do you think? Second question is then on nutrition's margin recovery prospects this year. There's obviously a lot of moving parts. You know, there's strong growth in apparel. We've got offline licensing on whey sales. Can you sort of chat through the drivers how you see things panning out this year?

Maybe finally to throw in the last one, obviously, you sold Claremont last year. What are your thoughts on potential of further sales of non-core assets? I guess what do you consider to be non-core?

Matthew Moulding
Founder and CEO, THG

On progress with the VAT claim more generally then, look, I think we've got a bunch of claims in with the Revenue that total about GBP 78 million. Yeah, you're absolutely right. The Revenue have lost their appeals against the vast majority of the items in there. There have been competitors for a number of years that took that approach anyway. Naturally, we took a very prudent approach where we continued to hand over VAT monies to HMRC and then follow the situation closely. Now, in terms of the treatment of VAT, this year, clearly we'll be changing that treatment.

It's probably an ideal time as well really to be changing that treatment because, you know, whey pricing is not only on record highs, it's on explosive highs, as there's been a number of market forces that have just caused almost a tulip moment in the commodity. Naturally, we're in a really good position to be able to absorb that versus our competition, especially now as we've got the benefit of the zero-rated VAT to be able to apply. In terms of what that means for consumers, I think over time, naturally, consumers are going to see some benefit.

Given that THG has been operating already by subsidizing the products, that you know whilst our competitors have zero-rated or some of them have done, then as a result, we've already taken that competitive position. We would expect to see significant margin improvements both from falling whey prices and from the VAT treatment. They are two significant tailwinds that we look forward to unlocking whilst whey pricing sits at the levels that it sits at today. We're probably not going to see the true benefit of that for a number of months, but we are looking forward to that feeding through.

In terms of your question on margin progression for Myprotein, naturally, there are a good number of opportunities ahead that set the scene for a very strong margin recovery, not least whey pricing, but put that one to one side. You've then got VAT, so we can put that one to one side. As we touched on in the presentation, we've sold 43 million products through licensing and offline into global retail last year, which is bigger than any other nutrition brand's total product sales, globally. That's just our licensing and offline business model. Now, the licensing side of that is pure profit, so that's great for margins. The offline retail sales, we've entered that market on a low margin basis, almost running that channel at a break-even or to slightly negative to slightly positive depending on the given period.

Now, as we've now built a significant install base, we will continue to build that base because we're seeing fantastic opportunities. Naturally there's going to be a really strong period where we can start to make significant improvements in that margin stack as well. Other points I touched on, I think, just in the opening intro there, you may have heard categories, new categories that we've entered into, such as the activewear is really accretive. I mean, to give you an idea of just the trading margin on that, trading margin in that category has evolved from 42% trading margin on a much lower sales number just a couple of years ago to where currently we're trading margin around 60% in that category on a much greater scale.

As categories like that, creatine and other collagens and various other products that we've launched expand then and become a greater part of the sales mix, we'll see significant margin progression through the Myprotein division. Factors we can't control, just explosions in whey pricing will naturally cause some, you know, near-term volatility from time to time. We are very confident that the underlying factors driving that volatility will pass, and there'll be a much more normalized market at some point in the not too distant or, you know, 12 months, 18 months at the very latest, because there is so much new supply coming on, coming into the market too. Then the final question I think was around other assets that we have.

The group is full of really high quality small businesses that don't get much recognition outside of the group. We have had bids against a number of those businesses, not least, you know, one of those divisions or one of those small businesses at the end of last year, we had an approach on. It didn't meet our valuation, which would have been, you know, a very significant number. We've no interest in letting assets go. You know, high quality assets that are trading incredibly well, whilst they might not necessarily be at the forefront of what the market sees THG as, we see great value in them. Unless we're gonna get a proper valuation, we won't let them go.

You know, again, this year there are other assets, different assets again, where we've had significant interest posed to us. Each and every time, we're very clear, we don't waste any time. We know what assets are worth, like you saw with Claremont. If someone wants to pay a proper price and it's the right thing for the group, then naturally we would do that. Should we do one of those this year, I suspect that would take us to net debt free, you know, given the VAT point and the size of the value that we'd be looking at for one of those small businesses.

John Stevenson
Research Analyst, Peel Hunt

Okay, brilliant. Thank you. Thanks, Matt. Cheers.

Operator

Thank you for your question, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, if you have any questions or follow-up questions, please press star one at this time. We'll pause for just a moment. We have another question just came in, and this time the question will be coming from Grace Gilberg calling from Jefferies. Please go ahead, Grace.

Grace Gilberg
Senior Associate, Jefferies

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my call, or my questions. I have a few, if I may. The first one around nutrition. I mean, you already actually answered a little bit on the previous question, but can you speak a bit more about some of the cross-selling opportunities in that division, and how you'd be able to consistently defend that segment or within Myprotein against some of the more specialized players out there? Whether it's around athleisure or other nutrition brands, that'd be really helpful. Then the last two I have are also on beauty. Obviously beauty is another larger component of the group and becoming more and more critical to the business.

Can we speak a little bit more about the growth targets outside of the U.K. and how you're consistently defending the beauty proposition there outside of the U.K.? My last one is probably a bit more general, but it'd be helpful to understand a little bit more of the mix shift within beauty and how we're thinking about moving between makeup and skincare. Obviously, skincare had such a huge boom in the pandemic. We've seen that come back a little bit, but how do you think about your beauty businesses being working between both of those segments? That'd be really helpful.

Matthew Moulding
Founder and CEO, THG

Sure. Nutrition, how does it defend against specialist players, et cetera? I think one of the key things is we do have a significant community, not only at a consumer level, but also at a marketing level. The strength of the brand, the quality of the product that we put into the marketplace means that as long as we execute well, we can you know really work well with the Myprotein community. The strength of that community is reflected for online retailers. If you were to ever speak to any of the people that have taken Myprotein into store, you'll see that we have a big impact on traffic going to offline retailers into certain product categories.

I think we've talked in the past about Iceland, you know, with the Myprotein partnership there and the quite material impact that's had on their footfall and customer demographic. Even if you go to major retailers such as the scale of Tesco's, you'll go into there and we're literally the only player in the market that can bring together in retail, in a big retailer like that, one big branded bay which is pulling together multiple product categories. When you look at the Greencore Group proposition we've had, the number of people the brand will bring to the lunchtime meal deal aisle in a retailer will dramatically change because there's Myprotein products that are positioned in there.

What that's telling you is the community that we're operating in is passionate about the brand, there's trust in the brand, and we can, as long as we deliver real quality, we can put new areas into them. Just the likes of the partnership with Mars, etc., does show you that the scale of recognition that there is across the wider industry of the power of the brand that we've got. You know, if you looked at the athleisure wear progress we've got there, just because that's one that you mentioned, you know, we've been able to increase margins by 50%, in absolute terms on the product. We've been able to move our price point significantly, and we've but it's all been supported by an incredible level of quality.

If you were to go and try the product, et cetera, you will see that the quality of the design as well as the marketing that's going behind it is exceptional. The influencer community globally can relate to the Myprotein product on so many different levels in their life that they can become true brand ambassadors rather than one day pushing, you know, a bit of Myprotein and the next competitor two, three, four and five, they can actually live the brand. I think then we got onto beauty. Did we go straight into beauty then?

Neil Mistry
CEO of Nutrition and Wellness, THG

Beauty growth outside of the U.K.

Matthew Moulding
Founder and CEO, THG

Yeah. I've got Lucy here with me. Actually, instead of me answering that, you know, I should let Lucy have a word. It's her specialism.

Lucy Gorman
CEO Beauty, THG

Of course. Thanks. Hi, Grace. In terms of our focus outside of the U.K., you'll remember a number of years ago that we did choose to exit some of our other territories that we operated in. We fully exited Asia, and we significantly pulled back and right-sized the business in Europe. Now, we do still have a small business in Europe, but in terms of where our focus and investments are going at the minute, that is solely on the U.K. and the U.S., where we believe there is plenty of headroom for us to make significant gains in each of these markets over the next few years. The U.S. is performing strongly for us.

We have quite a nice defensible proposition in the U.S., where the focus is on high-value clinical skincare, which is quite different to what the likes of Ulta and Sephora and Amazon are offering. It's very much regimen based, so we have mixed baskets, and there's a lot of interaction with the consumer to help them figure out what skincare regimen is right for them. Your next question, I think, was around category and what dynamics we're seeing within the category. We're actually fairly broad in terms of our category mix across beauty. The category for us is around the same size in skin, hair, and makeup, with fragrance being the smallest for us, on the contrary to what the overall beauty category sees.

We've been able to take advantage of growing our fragrance portfolio ahead of the market over the last couple of years, and that has driven a significant amount of growth. We're actually seeing really healthy growth within cosmetics and like you said, while skincare growth has tailed off coming out of the pandemic, it's actually still been relatively strong for us. In terms of haircare, that's seen a huge boom in the category over the last couple of years. Actually, that's where LOOKFANTASTIC came from. There was a time where LOOKFANTASTIC held around 80% market share in professional haircare online. Naturally, as some other players have come online into that category, that has diminished somewhat. Haircare for us is about defending our kind of stewardship and leadership in that category.

We've actually seen fairly broad brush positive growth across all of those categories over the last 12 months or so and into this year. You know, we don't see the skincare dropping off to be a huge problem for us, albeit the trends within skincare are evolving every day.

Grace Gilberg
Senior Associate, Jefferies

Perfect. Thanks so much. I appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you, Grace. Our next question is a follow-up question from John Stevenson calling from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.

John Stevenson
Research Analyst, Peel Hunt

Great. Thanks again. Just a couple more. You've opened your second LOOKFANTASTIC store, I think down in sort of Bristol way. How has that gone? What's that done for the sort of the online halo? And have you got any plans for more this year? And then second follow-up just on the licensing pipeline within nutrition, both in terms of existing partnerships and potential for new ones, if you could chat a little bit about what's to come this year.

Matthew Moulding
Founder and CEO, THG

Look, I think I'll answer this one for Lucy 'cause Lucy would love to open, you know, 10 or 12 stores, you know, and put some CapEx into doing that. Logic says we get quite a fast payback on some of these stores, right? I think when we open a store, we get a payback depending on how much support we get in various areas. You'd be talking a two-year payback on opening a store. Obviously, offline is a challenged market more generally for the longer term structurally, but beauty is a category that's in material growth. As a result, we will be opening more stores. You know, there'll be a steady, relatively slow progress of opening stores physically. It'll be solely our brand.

That said, you know, there's actually an increasing chance we're going to do partnership with other players where we will take over the running of their stores and rebrand them into ours. Which is a lower CapEx. They've already got the traffic footfall. We bring a lot to the offering. As a result, that's something that we are actively exploring too. Now, if we did that would accelerate the number of stores that we would have out there quite materially. Look, I think every store that you open broadly adds GBP 2 million worth of revenue.

You know, it's in the grand scheme of our beauty business of what GBP 1.2 billion-GBP 1.3 billion of revenue, it's not massive, but it's what we do see is real brand value, marketing value, et cetera, in having a small estate. We won't be rushing to open 10 more in the next 12 months, but there'll be steady progress.

John Stevenson
Research Analyst, Peel Hunt

Nutrition and licensing.

Matthew Moulding
Founder and CEO, THG

Yeah. Sorry, yeah. Look, Neil.

Neil Mistry
CEO of Nutrition and Wellness, THG

Yep.

Matthew Moulding
Founder and CEO, THG

Do you wanna touch on a couple of, I mean, we can't name them?

Neil Mistry
CEO of Nutrition and Wellness, THG

Yeah.

Matthew Moulding
Founder and CEO, THG

you know, just some ideas around the licensing progress.

Neil Mistry
CEO of Nutrition and Wellness, THG

From a licensing standpoint, you'll see us continue to roll out our Mars partnership. You'll see, it's been mentioned already, but the Mars product has been launched this week, and that's got off to a great start. You'll see more of the Mars partnership come to life throughout the year. You'll continue to see more partnerships in the flavor profile space, and probably more leaning towards the U.S. market. From a licensing out standpoint, you'll see the rollout of the Greencore and further rollout of the food to go area. You'll also see us playing in new spaces like ready-to-drink as well.

Matthew Moulding
Founder and CEO, THG

Any-

John Stevenson
Research Analyst, Peel Hunt

Okay, brilliant.

Matthew Moulding
Founder and CEO, THG

Any other ones, John, while we've got you?

John Stevenson
Research Analyst, Peel Hunt

Thanks, Matt. Ooh, where do I start?

Matthew Moulding
Founder and CEO, THG

Just saving you coming back in 10 minutes later.

John Stevenson
Research Analyst, Peel Hunt

I can keep going, but yeah, no, cool. I can keep coming in though. That's good for now. Thanks, Matt.

Matthew Moulding
Founder and CEO, THG

All right. Cheers, John.

Operator

Thank you, John. As we have no further questions at this time, I'll turn the call back over to Matthew Moulding for any additional or closing remarks.

Matthew Moulding
Founder and CEO, THG

Okay. Well, thanks, everybody. Just a big thank you to all the team in making this happen. It's been a pretty lively year. Much appreciated, and I appreciate the support of all the shareholders and stakeholders. All the best.

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