Good morning, and welcome to the Videndum plc half-year results 2022. My name is Katie, and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to ask a question during the presentation, you may do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I'll now hand over to your host, Stephen Bird, Group Chief Executive, to begin. Stephen, please go ahead.
Good morning, and welcome to our half-year results presentation for 2022. As usual, I'll begin with a brief summary and then give an update on our market and strategy before we review our financial results in more detail. Martin Green, our Group Finance Director, is currently taking a short period of time out from the business for personal reasons, but it's anticipated that he will return soon. We have a really strong finance team, and Andrea Rigamonti, our Deputy Group Finance Director, is handling the group's financial matters in this interim period, and he's presenting our results with me today. Now I'd like to tell you about how we performed in the first half. As we said at our Capital Markets Day in June, the group is in really good shape, and we've had a great start to the year.
We delivered a record first half performance with significant growth across all three divisions. This reflects the underlying strength of our markets and our strong execution. Reported revenue was up 23% versus 2021, and up 11% on an organic constant currency basis. PBT was up 36% and 17% respectively. These record results were achieved despite some capacity constraints and component shortages. We all know that in the last six months there have been multiple macroeconomic and geopolitical challenges, and that these are continuing. We have a really experienced leadership team at Videndum, which has responded extremely well to mitigate these headwinds. Our margins are improving and are on track to our stated mid to high teen goal, and we remain focused on managing our cost base while continuing to invest in our key strategic priorities.
We own many of the industry's leading brands, and our premium prices reflect their competitive strength, product quality, and our investment in new product development. Last year, about half of our revenue came from products that we had launched in the last three years. Our products are typically mission critical to our customers. They often help drive productivity and are a relatively small part of a customer's budget. As a result of all this, the price increases we've implemented across the group during the last 18 months have stuck, and these will more than offset inflationary headwinds and will have a further positive impact next year. This, coupled with our operational excellence, helps us on our pathway to achieving our mid to high teen margin goal. Cash performance was again exceptionally good, even with increased investment in working capital to support our growth and to manage supply chain disruptions.
Our net debt to EBITDA is expected to decline materially by the end of the year. Given our confidence in the future and our dividend policy, we're proposing to pay an interim dividend of GBP 0.15 per share. As we said at the Capital Markets Day, our markets are larger and growing faster than pre-pandemic. This is driven by the structural changes which were accelerated during the pandemic and our exposure to new markets like audio. Of course, we're not totally immune to current conditions and, for example, our products associated with travel were impacted during the pandemic. Even these are recovering, and the consumer segment is somewhat impacted by softer consumer spending but accounts for less than 10% of group sales. As a group, we continue to execute well on our strategy, and we've built a platform to significantly grow the business.
We're driving organic revenue growth from three different routes. First, our core business is growing. Second, we're getting growth from new areas of content creation like audio. Third, growth is coming from live streaming with our Amimon technology. On top of all this, we're also improving our margins and making value accretive M&A. Our outlook for this full year is that we now expect adjusted PBT to be at the top end of current market expectations despite the challenging backdrop. Now let's have a short recap on the organic strategic ambition which we set out at our Capital Markets Day in June. Our goal is to achieve GBP 600 million revenue in 2025, and that's growing from less than GBP 400 million last year.
We expect more than GBP 100 million of operating profit and mid- to high-teen operating profit margins in the zone of 16%-18%. We also expect to reduce our net debt to EBITDA to below 1.5x. As I've said, we've built a platform to significantly grow the business, and we're on track to achieve these ambitious targets. Now let's have a look at our total addressable market. Our total addressable market pre-pandemic was about GBP 2 billion, and it was growing slowly at low double-digit .
Post-pandemic, the TAM has grown to GBP 3 billion, particularly due to the growth in live streaming, our exposure to new markets such as audio, and we're also seeing growth in some of our core markets. We now believe that our TAM is growing faster at high single digit CAGR, driven by the increasing demand for our products. Therefore, just through organic growth by 2025, we expect our TAM to be about GBP 4 billion. Specifically, about 75% of our business is being driven by four key drivers, which I've talked about in detail before. First, the internet and the demand for photography and videography for retail e-commerce. Second, influencers driven by social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube. Third, subscription TV, both feature films and the volume of TV shows for subscription TV channels.
The final driver is live streaming, which is a very big opportunity for us. Technology change is also driving shorter product replacement cycles. First, advances in technology in our market, for example, cameras moving from HD to 4K, means that we are having to replace all of our HD video transmitters with 4K. Second, our own technology innovations, for example, our revolutionary Flowtech tripod or our patented Amimon technology, also drives shorter replacement cycles. As I mentioned before, last year, about half of our revenue came from new products launched in the last three years. Now moving to briefly discuss each of our three divisions. We renamed our Imaging Solutions division, Media Solutions, during the first half. This was to mirror the wider range of content creators that the division now serves.
This market is larger and growing faster than pre-pandemic, mainly driven by demand for content for the internet, social media, and subscription TV, as well as our recent acquisitions. We continue to invest in new product development, particularly in our core professional business, and the faster-growing segments of vlogging and audio. We're also continuing to develop our market leading higher margin online sales capabilities. We launched a new JOBY mobile-friendly website during the half to further improve our digital marketing and get us closer to our customers, and also enable more cross-selling. Our high-end professional segment is resilient with strong demand from professionals who need equipment to take still and video product images for online retail sales. Both our Savage and Audix acquisitions have been fully integrated and are performing well.
Our B2B business is seeing significant growth, mainly being driven by demand for our Avenger lighting stands, which saw record revenue in the half. JOBY is an important strategic growth engine for the group, with a huge on-tap customer base of influencers who earn a living by sharing their content on social media. We're using our digital platforms to grow the install base and are adding new technology to the JOBY ecosystem with software, motion control, and workflow management apps. The new JOBY on-camera microphone range is due to be fully rolled out next month. Overall, Media Solutions core business is growing, driven by the internet, and we have new growth areas in content creation and audio. Now let's look at Production Solutions.
Production Solutions is once again a star performer, achieving record results across the board driven by demand for original content, automated production, and on-location news and sport. Litepanels lighting products continue to gain share. The recent launch of the 2x1 Hard light was a huge success, with stock sold out immediately, including large orders from leading production companies. Our exciting strategy using Quasar Science lights in virtual production stages is also progressing well. In mobile power, in June, we launched the new upgraded Anton/Bauer VCLX battery. This is the market leading product in any high-quality production, and the new product has been very well received. Our new technology to enable automation to drive cost efficiencies in studios is an important growth opportunity for the division, particularly as customers look to reduce production costs. Our robotic camera systems and voice-activated prompting had an excellent half.
We're also benefiting from rescheduled major sporting events, and I'm really pleased that this market has returned to normal and broadcasters are now actively planning for events over the next two years. In summary, in Production Solutions, our core business is growing and we're continually evolving with innovative new technology to drive shorter product replacement cycles. Now let's talk about Creative Solutions. Creative Solutions is growing strongly. Sales of our 4K HDR products have really taken off, but we estimate that we're only about 30% through the replacement cycle. Demand is very strong, and this is another example of technology change driving a shorter product replacement cycle. Revenue growth is still being impacted by component shortages, particularly the chips in our Teradek Bolt transmitters. However, the situation is improving.
In the cine industry, our customers are demanding more remote access, and we've invested to evolve our monitoring technology to the cloud so that it can be used both on set and remotely. We've also started to integrate Lightstream technology into our cloud offerings. In the enterprise market, we expect continued growth in our high-end Teradek IP-based live streaming products. There are also significant growth opportunities in the medical market, where our Amimon wireless video solutions are being used in operating theaters. The medical segment was up significantly on 2021 and has a very large order book and growing pipeline of leading medical equipment manufacturers who want to integrate our zero delay solutions into their products. We're also supplying the industrial market in remotely controlled machinery such as cranes.
We've introduced new high-end streaming products with ART, which was incredibly well-received at NAB earlier this year, and initial sales are well ahead of what we were expecting. ART has been delivered to CNN and NBC, and feedback has been positive. CNN used ART during the Queen's Jubilee celebrations, for example. As many of you saw at the Capital Markets Day, ART dramatically increases the viewer experience with higher video quality and a lower transmission delay over the internet or mobile network. The team is working on miniaturizing ART into smaller devices and to embed ART into the entire Teradek product range. We expect ART to become a significant part of our business over time and are extremely excited about its potential. In summary, in Creative Solutions, our core business is growing strongly, and we have significant growth opportunities both in new vertical markets and with our ART technology.
Now a brief update on ESG. Over the last 12 months, we've made really good progress developing our ESG strategy. We have clear targets and priorities, and our initiatives are centered around the seven key priorities listed on this slide. We have a focused and coordinated group-wide approach, and we've significantly improved our data collection, measurement, and disclosure. We published comprehensive ESG and TCFD reports in April with all the detail as well as videos to explain some of our environmental and community projects. Now I'll hand over to Andrea for more details on our financial performance.
Thank you, Stephen. My name is Andrea Rigamonti, and I'm the Deputy Group FD. I've worked at Videndum for over 11 years in total, having rejoined in 2021 following six years at Senior plc. I'm proud to be presenting an excellent set of half year results to you today. I'll go through a top-level overview before focusing in a bit more detail on the performance of each division, turning then to our strong cash generation, and finally, I'll provide selected guidance on some financial items for the full year. Turning to the half year results. As Stephen said, the first half of 2022 has seen record revenue and profit. On an organic constant currency basis, revenue was up 11%. This is a great performance. Gross margin was maintained at 43.8%.
Excluding royalty income, which as expected reduced slightly, gross margin improved by 60 basis points. Price rises were implemented in 2021 and also in the first quarter of 2022. These price rises covered the cost inflation that we experienced in raw materials, freight, duty, utilities, and labor. We increased price again in June 2022. The benefit of these will be seen in the second half. We believe we can continue to more than offset inflationary pressures. Operating expenses increased mainly due to recent acquisitions and FX, with the remainder due to investing in growth. The pace of increase in expenses was lower than the growth of the top line, and as a result, our operating margin improved from 12.1% to 13.4%. We believe that we are on track to achieve our mid- to high-teens goal.
Net finance expense increased by GBP 1 million year-on-year, mainly due to the borrowings for acquisitions and the interest on their IFRS 16 leases, and partly due to higher interest rates. At the end of June, around 60% of our borrowings were fixed through swaps, which will mitigate the effect of future higher interest rates. For the first half of 2022, I'm very pleased to report that PBT was a record GBP 27.1 million. With the effective tax rate reducing to 23% from the 25% of the first half of 2021, EPS grew by 39% to GBP 0.454 per share. As a result of the strong trading performance and improving market conditions, the board has declared an interim dividend of GBP 0.15 per share, which is an increase of 36%.
For the full year, we expect dividend payout to be within our policy of 2x-2.5x cover of adjusted earnings per share. ROCE was up year-on-year, driven by our profitability and partially offset by the initial effect of acquisitions. In summary, the first half of 2022 was an excellent performance, delivering on all three of our strategic priorities, organic growth, margin improvement, and growth through M&A. Let's now take a look at each division. Every division delivered more than 20% revenue growth and all set new records. At Media Solutions, the growth was driven by the acquisitions of Savage and Audix.
On an organic constant currency basis, revenue grew by 2%. Significant growth in lighting supports continuing the strong trend seen in 2021 was largely offset by headwinds from lockdowns in China, the war in Ukraine, weaker consumer spending, and the move of Amazon Prime Day from June 2021 to July 2022. Production Solutions grew by 24% on an organic constant currency basis. There was a significant uplift in sales of manual and studio supports as the broadcasting returned to pre-pandemic levels. Sales were also boosted by our voice-activated prompter, which was launched in 2021. As usual, we also provided our bespoke equipment at the Winter Olympics and Paralympics. Creative Solutions revenue grew by 13% on an organic constant currency basis.
This was driven by our continued rollout of our 4K HDR ecosystem despite component shortages which limited our ability to fulfill some orders. The order book remains at a record level, and we expect to fulfill the backlog in the coming quarters. Sales to the medical market grew significantly as we embed ourselves further into the operating room and develop relationships with more customers. Around GBP 2 million was invested in sales and marketing to serve new verticals as well as in R&D to drive future growth. Operating margin improved sequentially from the second half of 2021. Corporate costs were GBP 2 million higher than in the first half of 2021, primarily reflecting the RSP share awards that were issued in June 2021 to retain key people and, to a lesser extent, fees relating to legal, tax, and audit services.
Now that we have looked at the P&L, let's turn to cash. The record profit led to near record cash generation. Cash conversion was strong at 90%. Working capital increased by GBP 7.8 million. Inventory rose by GBP 12.2 million, which was expected following cost inflation, capacity constraints, and component shortages. This was partially offset by an increase in trade payables, net of trade receivables due to increased activity. Gross R&D was maintained at around 6% of our fast-growing revenues as we continue to ensure we invest in future growth. Overall capital expenditure reduced, reflecting the non-repeat of the JOBY investment to bring production to Italy in the prior year. Other items include the add back to cash of the non-cash share option charges within operating profit. These increased, as mentioned earlier, due to RSP awards. Tax payments were lower than in H1 2021.
The prior half year had included a GBP 3 million payment to HMRC of a charging notice in relation to EU State Aid. We continue to expect that this will ultimately be paid back to us. The lower tax was partially offset by higher interest costs due to fees for the Audix term loan, as well as the increased P&L charge. The earn out and retention bonuses are in relation to last year's acquisitions of Quasar and Lightstream. Whilst restructuring costs include the rebranding of Vitec to Videndum. The resulting free cash flow of GBP 19.3 million was GBP 3.5 million higher than last year. Let's now see how that flowed through to net debt. Net debt increased with the acquisition of Audix and the final dividend of 2021 more than offsetting strong free cash flow.
The other items bar includes GBP 8.3 million of IFRS 16 lease additions, largely reflecting property leases of the recent acquisitions of Audix and Savage. There was also a nearly GBP 15 million adverse impact from FX on net debt due to the stronger U.S. dollar. Total liquidity of GBP 81.6 million remained strong. Net debt to EBITDA on a covenant basis was better than expected at 2.2 x. We expect the ratio to decrease materially by the year end. I'd now like to provide a few quick pointers for the full year, which I hope can help you with modeling. We continue to expect to deliver high single-digit organic revenue growth. R&D amortization is expected to increase in H2 with a full-year charge of around GBP 7 million.
Net finance expense will be higher in the second half and given expected increases in interest rates with a full-year charge of around GBP 7.5 million. The effective tax rate for the full year will be similar to the 23% of H1. Thereafter, we expect to revert to the 24% of previous guidance. Gross R&D will be around GBP 30 million for the full year, a GBP 5 million increase on 2021 as previously set out. We expect the full-year cash conversion to continue to be at least 80% as previously guided. Cash tax is now expected to be GBP 10 million and lease additions around GBP 15 million as the second half will include the expected renewal of our Media Solutions property lease at Cassola. Let's recap. The first half of 2022 was a record performance for Videndum.
We are managing the impact of inflation well. We continue to control our balance sheet, converting profit into cash, and going forward, we're well-positioned entering the second half of the year. I'll now hand back to Stephen.
Thank you, Andrea. To summarize, 2022 has started extremely well. We achieved record first half results.
The content creation market is a great place to be, being larger and growing faster than previously envisioned. Videndum is right at the heart of this fast-growing market and executing well on its growth strategy. Our market leading premium brands and operational excellence are allowing us to manage inflationary headwinds and supply chain challenges. While we're of course mindful of uncertainty in the current economic environment, the board now expects adjusted PBT to be at the top end of current market expectations. To conclude, we've built a platform to significantly grow the group, and we're well-placed to deliver sustainable growth and value for all our stakeholders. We're now gonna move on to our question-and-answer session, so I'd like to hand over to the operator. Dial-in details are shown on this slide.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you would like to remove your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. We take our first question from Scott Cagehin from Investec. Please go ahead, Scott.
Thank you. Good morning, Stephen and Andrea. Congratulations on an impressive set of results. Two questions from me. Could you just elaborate a little bit more on the headwinds that you dealt with and how you dealt with them, not just about sort of inflation or pricing, but just general headwinds and how you see that playing out in the second half, please. The second question is, could you give us a bit of a flavor for the composition of the order book, i.e., is it higher margin products in there? So can we expect some sort of margin upward pressure going into the second half of the year as you deliver those products? Thank you.
Hi, Scott. Good morning. Thanks for your questions. First of all, in terms of headwinds, yes, like, I mean, like everyone, we do have some headwinds. I've got to say they are, I think, becoming less worrying for us. For example, supply chain, component shortages and so on, we are managing very effectively. Right now, we don't have major component concerns. We've got a variety of challenges around business, but it's not material. Right now, you know, even if we had every component we needed, we would probably only sell a sort of another GBP 5 million worth of product. We are slowly managing that problem quite well. Inflation, of course, has hit us. Inflation is pretty significant.
However, the great news is, and we said this a number of times, is that because of our market position and our strong brands and our investment in R&D, we've managed to put our prices up significantly and well ahead of that. You can see in these numbers at last that the impact of pricing is in the zone of about GBP 10 million of additional profit through the bottom line, and that significantly outweighs and mitigates and offsets inflationary pressures. We will see more of that in the second half and more of that next year because the first half does not include the fact that we've significantly put our prices up in June. For example, in our biggest division, Media Solutions, we put our prices up by 8% in June.
Those are stuck, and those will be having a strong impact on the second half. Component shortages we're on top of. Inflation we're on top of. The market situation is really encouraging. Nearly all of our markets are extremely robust. A couple of areas that we talked about before, travel had been a bit soft, so we had a bit of a headwind with people just not traveling and not buying things like photographic bags and travel tripods. That is getting better. I mean, you're probably aware the travel business is coming back, so we're seeing a benefit now from that. That's gonna start to become a positive tailwind. Also consumer spending, generally, of course, consumer spending is a bit soft.
We've seen a bit of softness in some of our pure consumer business going through Amazon, for example. Even there, actually, we've seen things pick up a bit. The latest Amazon Prime promotion has been very powerful for us. Just to remind you, the consumer business is less than 10% of our business. Over 90% of our products are bought by people who use those products for their living, and so are not, you know, maybe quite so affected by consumer spending. The final thing just to mention on headwinds is that, you know, there's been a lot of speculation in the press about what's happening to subscription TV, particularly with Netflix.
I'm really pleased to say that, you know, at the coal face, we can see that whole business model is alive and thriving. Netflix may have lost a little bit of share, but you may have seen today Disney have just released some numbers which are well ahead of what was being expected. They've added, I think, 14 million subscribers, which is more than people are expecting. We can see that happening. The only thing that's holding back more and more live content being produced, which is of course what these companies need to do, is capacity. There's not enough capacity, not enough stages out there to shoot these productions. You'll see a huge amount of building of new stages. All of that is really, really good for us. I think that was your first question.
The second question was about the order book. We've never had such a big order book. It's roughly twice as big as it was at the beginning of last year. The beginning of last year, I think we did say it was, you know, even then it was pretty big. It was about GBP 40 million-GBP 45 million. Our order book now is twice as big as that. Some of that reflects customers changing the way they give us orders, giving us orders more in advance, which is really helpful for us, gives us much better visibility. That's good high quality. Some of it is also starting to see large medical orders, which tend to be slightly longer term.
You know, a lot of our business is book and bill, and it's quite short-term visibility, but some of these medical orders are quite big and are longer-term. The margin in the order book is extremely strong, but much stronger than, for example, we've seen in the first half. The size of the order book is really encouraging. All that is pretty encouraging.
Very helpful. Thank you very much.
Okay.
The next question comes from Andrew Douglas from Jefferies. Please go ahead, Andrew.
Morning, gents. I've got three questions and then, I guess half a question, a bit of a follow-up on your previous comments.
Morning, Andrew.
Hi, can you hear me okay?
Yeah.
Right. Three questions, please. Can I just double check something on Media Solutions? It looks like you had 2% organic growth in the first half. I'm not sure if that includes price or whether that's just volume, because I guess if you have mid-single digit price, that implies that volumes are lower year-on-year. I just want to make sure that my math is right, and if that is right, kind of what's going on there because I take your point on the consumer stuff, but you just said that it was only a small part of that division. If you can just give us an update to make sure my math is correct there. Just following on from your Netflix comment, do you have the ability to break down your exposure by Netflix, Disney, Apple?
'Cause I think a popular misconception is that, you know, Netflix loses subscriptions, that's bad, and you clearly has talked to that. Do you have any understanding of the splits by subscription TV people? Last but not least, there's nothing that I can see on the Creative Solutions strategic review. I was just wondering if you can give us an update on that, please.
Sure. In terms of Media Solutions, the underlying organic growth in Media Solutions was a bit softer than we would like. That is, as I said, the one area that has been slightly affected by slowing down consumer spending. There's a number of moving parts. I mean, overall, there is nothing here to be concerned about. The underlying growth of that division is going to be stellar.
Yeah
Extremely exciting. We're very comfortable with that. Just in terms of the detail, yes, the first half has had a little bit of an impact from consumer spending, so for example, around JOBY. Secondly, Amazon have moved the Amazon Prime promotion effectively out of our first half into our second half. That has actually quite a big impact. You know, the Amazon business is quite important to us. Amazon Prime has been delayed into effectively the second half. That means that the comparatives are slightly affected by that. Then in terms of pricing, it does include pricing, but the big, as I said, the big price increase from VMS, we held it back until June.
All the pricing that you see in the first half is mainly in the other two divisions. There's a bit in VMS, but the big price increase we put through in VMS is 8% across that whole division, which has been implemented in June, so will but not be in these numbers, but will be in the second half. You'll see those comparisons pick up very nicely. Andrea, do you want to add anything on VMS?
Yeah, yes, Stephen. Just as I mentioned earlier, there was obviously a little bit of holding back from China and lockdowns there that we saw in the first half that hopefully won't repeat, and a little bit of the situation in Ukraine as well that hampered them in the short term. That's
Sure. Hopefully that helps, Andy. Certainly.
Yeah
You know, VMS is our powerhouse, you know, and we expect it to be powering ahead, certainly, going forward. Second, Netflix. I don't have to hand out our split by each of the different companies. Netflix has been obviously very important. They've had typically about sort of 40% of the market. They are losing a bit of share to all the other new players. You know who they are, but you know they are.
Yeah
... big companies, pretty huge amounts of money. Apple TV, you know, I'm now a subscriber of Apple TV, which I swore I would never do because I wanted to watch Ted Lasso. You know, programs like that are being produced.
Yeah
We are on those programs. We have a sort of even coverage over all of these. If you look at the share of these companies of the overall market, we're pretty much evenly spread across them. The other thing to mention is even if, and there's a lot of discussion about what's going on here, but I can tell you the model is incredibly healthy. The way these companies will succeed is by generating new, exciting live content. That is the way they will survive. There's no real other way for them to be successful. They need to shoot fantastic programs that we all want to watch. Of course, they will want to manage their budgets sensibly. Our products within those budgets are a tiny fraction.
Most of the budget is in the time of the number of people you've got and the amount of equipment you've got out on rent for a particular time. Our products reduce the setup time for a production. They make a production more efficient. For example, our monitoring products allow the director to see very quickly whatever camera is seeing, check every camera's in focus, that it's looking at the right stuff and the lighting's right, and then they get the production going quickly. Our products reduce setup time and reduce production costs. We are part of the way that people may try and run their budgets a little bit more lean. That's also true of broadcast with robotics. Final question on the VSS strategy.
There's not much more new to say there, so I'm not really gonna. Well, I will repeat what I said at the Capital Markets Day, which is, you know, we think we have a phenomenally exciting business with hugely exciting technology, particularly with ART. ART is going extremely well. We're not gonna give any more numbers on ART because it is now becoming quite competitively sensitive. So, you know, frankly, we don't particularly want competitors to know exactly what we're doing. We've given a bit of flavor about who we're working with. We're starting with the broadcasters, and they are using the product, and they're loving it. Our focus is now to miniaturize that product and take it down from a rack-mounted product to a smaller product.
Again, we're looking at the options for what we do with Creative Solutions, and we have a range of options which range obviously from looking at whether we can do some partnerships and JVs with people, whether we can sell the technology itself, or whether essentially even we might sell the division. Right now, there's nothing new to say about that and you know, we'll probably update you early next year.
Okay, super.
Is that, Andy, does that cover most things?
Yeah. No, that's perfect. Just one quick follow-up, if I may? On your comment on ART and the kind of, I guess, the evolution of that product. From an analyst who's never actually done a proper job, how difficult is it to kind of reduce the size of the ART business as you just said?
The answer is it's extremely difficult.
Right.
It's what we do.
Yeah.
We're very good at it. It's what we've done and it's what Creative Solutions have done. It's what Teradek did in the early days, and that's what the engineers are all, you know, tuned up to do. You know, you develop a product, you make it work in a rather sort of Heath Robinson way, and it's
Yeah.
You know, typically rack mounted and PC operated, and then you take all that and you miniaturize it. That's what we're good at. The team in Creative Solutions is, you know, fantastically talented and that's what they're doing. You know, enormously difficult for anybody else to get into this market, not just because we have technology, but also because we have this expertise. ART is, you know, enormously exciting. It's been very well received by the customers who are using it and you know, we'll tell you a bit more about it when we can.
Okay. That's really helpful. Thanks very much. I'm with them.
Thanks. Thanks, Andy. Andy, make sure you have a look at the Disney numbers because I think, you know, I think it's interesting to see because there's been so much debate about Netflix and so on.
Yeah.
It's interesting to see how Disney are doing, you know, their numbers are, I think broadly, they've added 14 million subscribers in the last quarter. They were only expecting about 10 million. You know, there was a huge hoo-ha about Netflix losing 1 million subscribers. There's a bit of a share gain going on there.
Yeah.
Overall, the net gain is for us.
Okay. Good one. Thank you.
Thanks, Andy.
The next question comes from Henry Carver from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead, Henry.
Thanks, yeah. Morning, guys. Just one from me, actually, just around the margins, the operating margin and how we should look at that sort of through the rest of the year. 'Cause obviously we've had a good step up and just mindful of your comments around the timing of the price increases and stuff. You know, should we look at more, you know, further progression in the second half or, you know, just if you could outline any sort of scenarios around H2 margins? That'd be great. Thanks.
I mean, Andrea can probably add a little bit more color to that without giving too much information away. You know, clearly, the margin progression is really encouraging. The things that are gonna drive margin improvement in the second half are clearly growth and operating leverage. As we said, we're gonna drive 30% operating leverage through the business. There will always be one or two things that help and don't help, but broadly that's what we're going to do. We'll see good operating leverage driving the margin improvement. The pricing that we've just put through on VMS is extremely important. We'll see an improvement in margins there. We are also seeing FX helping us as well.
I don't know whether that necessarily massively help the margins. That's something that's gonna help for the second half. Andrea, do you wanna jump in and say anything more about that?
Yes. As you said earlier, Stephen, the pricing effect will also help quite considerably in the second half, as we drive that through to leverage. We are on the journey to get towards the mid- to high-teens margin, and therefore we should see progression in second half.
Yeah. You know, Henry, you've probably seen that we've been sort of guiding you all that, you know, we're going to be achieving numbers at the high end of current consensus. I mean, just to give some very simplistic color to that, you'll have seen that we've done over GBP 27 million PBT in the first half. We have never been first half weighted in all the 12 years I've been running the company. We've never been first half weighted. We're normally second half weighted. We're normally actually sort of at least 52% weighted in the second half.
You can see if you take GBP 27 million and you just double it, that we're looking at a pretty strong second half.
That's great. Thanks. Very clear, guys. Cheers.
As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. We take our next question from Tom Fraine from Shore Capital. Please go ahead, Tom.
Thank you. My question was actually largely covered just then. I was hoping to get a bit more color. The FX tailwind, the June price increases, Prime Day and also the World Cup you know could make H2 you know considerably more than 52% of the year you know from where I sit. That's the way things seem. Is there anything else that could potentially hold that back or are there any other growth drivers we should be aware of that could potentially increase upgrades?
On that point, in terms of the macro downturn, aside from the 10% that they're exposed to consumer, are there any other specific impacts that you could see from a macroeconomic downturn, such as more cautious investment spend on content creation and e-commerce? Is there anything more specific you can talk about in terms of potential headwinds and tailwinds in H2?
Yeah. Okay, Tom. Thanks. Andrea might jump in in a second, but I mean, we've you know we have got quite a lot of things helping us. You know, we know that you know the pricing is going to significantly offset inflation in the second half. That is going to help us. We also at the moment know that if FX rates stay where they are, then that would help us to do even better in the second half. Clearly, I think if exchange rates stay where they are, then we may well you know do better than the high end of consensus. You know, at the moment, we would rather just keep our powder dry on that. Let's see how things go.
In terms of, are there any major headwinds, you know, apart from the obvious, and we've kind of factored that into our numbers already. You know, just to be clear, if we do end up only doing sort of 54 or so, that would be a 50/50 split for the business, and we've never done a 50/50 split before. It's usually been sort of 48, 52. The obvious headwinds are, you know, that there is a, you know, a potential recession happening potentially in the U.S. Is that gonna affect us? Maybe a little bit. Consumer spending is not a big part of our business. And also for most of our customers, as I've said, you know, they make their living from using our products. They can't really stop using our products.
Some customers might. Some retailers might hold a little bit less inventory. As I said, for most of our customers, we help their business run more efficiently. You know, as I said, a great example from on-set monitoring allows people to set up productions quicker. You know, the idea that you won't invest in on-set monitoring, particularly if you want to manage your budgets, is kind of unthinkable. We are the only product that you can use, if you wanna monitor in 4K. Another example is broadcasters. Broadcasters continually want to get more efficient. The way to get more efficient is to use more robotics. We're the leader in robotics, and that helps our broadcast customers reduce their production costs. We're part of helping our customers already reduce production costs.
Without sounding like I've got my head in the sand, I'm very confident that the market drivers that we've talked about at the Capital Markets Day around content creation are there. We're actually seeing some things improving, like travel, for example. No, there's no hidden headwind that we're particularly worried about. Andrea, do you want to add anything?
Yeah. There's a couple of things I mentioned in my guidance, actually, just to be aware of. Amortization of R&D is gonna nudge up a little bit in the second half. Nothing major to worry about. Obviously non-cash charge that one. Also interest, you know, we are all aware of rates going up. We are hedged, 60% of our debt is fixed now. We will see a slight increase in interest charge in the second half. We're well aware of all of these, and they are within our expectation.
Tom-
Okay, brilliant.
Does that answer your question? I mean, I think, you know, we. As we said, you know, the drivers of our business, you know, around, more content being consumed, more content needing to be created, higher quality content needing to be created, those drivers are not gonna go away. Even in frankly, even in a recession, you know, I don't think those drivers are gonna go away. We feel. You know, we factored in to our forecast some caution around consumer spending, obviously. We factored in some caution around retailers, maybe holding a little bit less inventory. But otherwise, you know, we see the business as being very, very strong.
That's great. Thank you. Just in terms of the 25%-30% category growth forecast that you talked about in scripted TV spend within that S&P Global's forecast, is that a good proxy for spend on your kind of product? Is a lot of it related to, say, TV rights and other areas? If so, could we see growth from some areas of the business being up to about 25%-30% level in the future?
Yeah. I mean, it is a good proxy. You know, obviously, some of that money is spent on, you know, things that we don't benefit from. You know, paying actors more money and building more stages and renting more stages and so on. It is a reasonable proxy and, you know, our Creative Solutions business, which is the main business that's exposed to that, should be growing at close to those sorts of rates. It is a good proxy. It also affects, you know, businesses like, you know, Avenger lighting stands, which are growing really nicely. It also affects some of our products in Production Solutions like Quasar Science, which we've recently bought, and Litepanels.
It might not be quite up to that level, but I think, you know, for Creative Solutions, we certainly see the future as being very positive. I think, you know, the main point I would make out here, you know, whether it's 15%, 20%, 25% growth in that area, is very healthy. You know, some of the negative press about Netflix, I think is very misplaced.
Understood. Thanks very much.
Okay. Brilliant. I think that is it. Unless anyone else has got a question right now, I'd like to thank everyone. Thank Andrea. Great to have you helping here. Thank the team, and I hope everyone has a lovely day. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.