Good morning, and thank you for coming along today. This is LBG Media's 2025 set of results.

For those of you that haven't met me, I'm Solly, founder and CEO of LBG Media, and I'm joined by Dave Wilson, Exec Chairman, who's going to be joining me today to take you through this. To kick things off, I'm going to give you a little walkthrough strategic highlights, what we've been up to, how it's changing, how it's evolving, and I'm going to hand over to Dave, who's going to take you through the financial review, and then back over to me to talk you through a bit of what we've been up to across those different areas of strategic focus.

To kick things off, I'm very excited today to talk you through what is very much a new chapter for us. There's a number of key things that we're focusing on and doubling down on.

The first of those is going to be young adults. We've continually focused in on this area, we're going to continue to double down on this.

AI is a very exciting development, and we see it as a real opportunity. Of course, it comes with issues, it comes with threats.

However, I'm a firm believer that the future of the market is very much embracing AI and the intelligence that that will bring. We've got some great examples of that.

We're also going to be focusing on repeatable IP, which we're seeing a lot of success in already, a high-growth area of the business, and also within that, very much focused on developing predictable revenue streams, which again today I'm going to talk you through. Just to kick off with, we've had a strong 2025.

We've generated double-digit revenue growth and continued growth in our profit, and underlying that, we've seen high growth in the real areas of strategic focus for us around predictable revenue across the UK and US market. We've continued to focus on young adults, and we continue to have serious scale: over half a billion audience members, two thirds of all UK and US young adults.

We are growing at a rate of knots in the US, and we see the US as a real accelerator to our business and a multiplier on some of the success that we've had in the UK. Our direct business is more predictable growth, and we've continued to develop that to make it even more predictable, long-term, and multi-year, and we've made some great progress on that this year.

We also have strong cash generation and a balance sheet that enables us to really kick on when it comes to investing in our future and strategic direction. Just before I kick on any further, what I wanted to do was just share some insights of what I'm seeing in the market, what we're seeing through the research that we've done that has informed the direction of travel and where we're going.

For me, I see these as very exciting developments on what was already high-growth market. We can see pockets starting to open up in a big way that very much work in our favor.

The first, and you'll not be surprised to hear this, is consolidation of eyeballs when it comes to young adults across both social and streaming platforms. AI is very much accelerating winners now, and we can see that starting to come through.

I think a number of years ago it was very much a buzzword, and what we're starting to see now is businesses across the industry who have embraced it very much utilizing it to accelerate as winners. The US continues to be the largest advertisement market and general market in the world, and by 2030, Gen Z are set to be the wealthiest generation of all.

We're also seeing an ongoing shift from traditional means of consumption through to areas such as social and creators, and you can see this is really accelerating. In terms of predictable revenue, this is something that we've been very focused on over the last year, and we've seen real progress across a number of areas with this.

The first is we're very much leaning into developing our direct revenue stream at a faster rate. It's more repeatable, it's high predictable, and also we're across both markets, both in the UK and US, which is an opportunity.

Again, you'll see in the numbers today we've made real progress in terms of seeing some of that come alive into '25, but we are very much set up to further benefit on that over the coming years. The way we've attacked that is we've created a clear tiering system across our clients, and what we do with that is we offer them exclusive products, white glove service in terms of client management, carefully understanding their business challenges, and most importantly, ensuring that we are driving high ROI for their businesses and understanding their challenges and moving those forward.

We're seeing more and more demand for multi-year commitments, we've started to see more of those come through, which again gives us more predictable revenue streams. We've seen high demand for our IP, which again is another form of income for us that is repeatable and predictable in the sense that is people sponsoring our world-renowned IP formats such as Snack Wars, Fan Debates, and many others.

We're also investing in our proprietary tech, and I've spoken about Mission Control previously. We are investing further in that, our panel, LADnation, which is the largest youth panel in the country, and we see that as an opportunity to monetize with our clients moving forward, and we've seen good demand coming our way in terms of that.

In terms of ROI, we've seen some very good case studies forming. We've seen clients see a return of anything from £5 per pound spent with us up to £10 in some cases.

It wouldn't be an LBG event without a video. I'll kick off with a little bit of a video on what we've been up to.

The angriest individual I have ever met! We must do more on arrests, targeting, safety orders, better prosecutions.

All of that has to be done, I would never move away from that. We have to bring about a behavioral change.

Here are the top three things that you need to know about Gen Z when it comes to what wellness means to them. I'm Lewis Capaldi, the sexiest man alive.

Can you imagine three weeks in high school and it smelled like egg for three weeks? Egg!

One more of the light brown. It's fanny.

Gemini, please show me a photo of this savory trifle. I just made some Christmas cards with Gemini.

Hi, yeah, I found out about this job through a LADbible post. LADbible is doing brilliant work, and I'm really glad to see it.

Oh god, never! Good to see it.

LADbible.

Brilliant. I guess you've probably seen a couple of areas on very much laying out why it is that we win within that video.

However, I just want to take a few minutes just to walk through that and why we're in a fantastic position to kick on in terms of those market trends that I mentioned before. The first thing is the scale that we have.

We are the fifth-largest digital reaching proposition here in the UK behind Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta. I'm not usually one for shouting about being fifth, but when it's in the company that we're talking about there, it is something I believe that we should be shouting about.

Of course, in terms of that scale, that also lives over the pond in the US, where we have two thirds of all millennial and Gen Z young adults. We generate billions of views and engagements every single year, and we are by far the biggest place when it comes to entertainment and engagement for young adults.

We've got great scale. However, we also care massively about brand, and had a fantastic example of that recently where we had one of my son's parents over to the house in New York, we're just meeting new people, and they were asking where I worked, didn't say what I did, but I mentioned LADbible eventually, and I got what was a very typical reaction, which is, "Oh, I love LADbible."

We see that across our portfolio, whether that's LADbible, Betches, or others. For us, we've built that up over time.

Brand equity we see is extremely important and something that we see as a differentiator, especially in a space of lots of noise. There's lots of content out there, there's lots of noise to consume.

However, having a brand that differentiates is massive. We're very fortunate where we have IP that also supports in that nature too, the likes of Snack Wars.

We had Hailey Bieber reach out to us more recently to ask to feature as part of that piece of IP. The roster of names that we have that we either work with across those or reach out to us proactively is massive.

We will continue to build and grow our brand equity as well as the scale that differentiates us. On top of that, we've also been investing in our data and AI capabilities.

From a data standpoint, we have Mission Control, and I'll touch on that a little bit later on and how we're using that and how we're going to evolve it. Also from an AI standpoint, we are starting to create content, we are starting to utilize it to help our clients drive better results, and we see it as a real accelerator moving forward.

All of this is ultimately our products, which we work with some of the biggest blue-chip advertisers on, as well as content going out on platforms which we monetize. That's all from me for now.

I'm going to hand over to Dave, who's rocking the Betches colors today.

Thanks, Solly. For once I've got my branding right, I think.

Let me take you through the financial section. First one is the track record.

Since IPO, LBG has nearly doubled its revenue: a revenue CAGR of 17% and the EBITDA CAGR of 13%. Hope this demonstrates a strong and differentiated business model with great people delivering against a 1.5 billion service-addressable market opportunity.

You may also have seen in the statement today that we're sharing revenue by division, which I'll talk you through shortly. This should give some background to highlight why we're accelerating our investments in growth and also provides you some guidance numbers later on.

As outlined, we delivered a double-digit revenue growth at constant currency and continued profit growth. Revenue was up 10% at 92.2 million, while adjusted EBITDA was up 3% to 25.2.

In the UK direct, this was against a tough prior comparator, as previously discussed, with the Men's Football Euros generated approximately 3.5 million of the revenue in 2024, extra national insurance rates for the UK employees, and approximately a million pounds worth of additional costs we invested. Also in '25, we added in around £800,000 worth of senior hires out of our £5 million accelerated cost of investments.

I'll talk through this a little more later on. Moving on to adjusted revenue, this slide shows business unit performance by revenue, highlighting growth trends and key drivers, direct and indirect operations.

Overall, direct revenue continues to lead our performance, supported by strong UK and even stronger US performance, while indirect growth is primarily driven by web. Direct revenues grew 17% overall.

The growth reflects deeper, longer-term client relationships and successful deliveries around cultural and sporting moments, delivering innovative branded campaigns that reinforce our position as a trusted partner for advertisers. Calendar Q4 for both of these businesses continued to perform exceptionally well, and our booked order pipeline moving into 2026 is almost two times higher than the previous year.

These are all important signals showing why we're building bigger, longer-term relationships and why we have trade triggered significantly more investment in FY '25 and FY '26. Direct revenue grew 11% to 30 million.

Growth was against a tough comparison, as I discussed. Direct US has performed exceptionally well: it grew 32% at constant currency.

Indirect revenues grew 3% overall. Web delivered a strong like-for-like growth of 17%, increasing revenues to 21.4 million, helped by new Facebook content monetization initiatives for photos and text-based content, the source of which comes from our web business.

Social declined on a like-for-like basis to 19.7, mainly due to the reduced referral volumes following the Facebook policy changes. Overall, the money we received from Facebook was in line with our overall growth, and we expect our single-digit platform reliance to continue to reduce to below 20% over time.

As that obviously is a consequence of our direct business growing faster than the indirect. Our web business, we currently have a very small market share, we have good growth potential over time.

We've recruited two senior hires into the business, and I know it's obvious, but we now have the right people, excellent content creation capabilities, more brand focus, with outcomes being more controllable, and it also has a higher margin profile than the other areas of the business. Costs: our overall costs grew by 10% in line with revenue growth.

Content costs increased by 22%, reflecting larger campaigns, increased paid media investments, higher average deal sizes, and expanded talent participation. Overall, our costs were well managed.

Payroll increased by 3% and our other overheads 7%. The main increases in these areas are additional technology, marketing, to help our future growth in the direct business.

Explaining the accelerated investments in more detail, we have over the past 14 months invested 5 million in 11 high-caliber hires as a significant investment to accelerate our growth. 800,000 of this occurred in FY '25, with a further 4.2 million has been incurred and will be recognized in FY '26.

In addition to this, we'll continue to invest in the use of AI, technology, marketing, and content. Solly will talk through some of these great hires that have joined us in our US business later on.

KPIs: the following highlight the KPIs and demonstrate the group's sustained progress and momentum over the year. LBG has grown through focusing on larger blue-chip clients and those in million dollars and above category.

With continued progress in the US, where the number of clients has increased to three, evidence the maturity in our client base. Our US audience grew to 143 million, and the average deal size, key measure on this, grew to $178,000 from $62,000.

Direct, the brief conversion for the group, this isn't just the UK, was 28%, up slightly on FY '24, while our repeat client revenues rose 8% to 82%. In the UK, the clients above a million dollars reduced from 13 to 11, and this was two of these were because they placed business with us in the Euros, and the other one has done some restructuring, is pausing some spend with us at the moment.

They're still in our order pipeline. The global audience grew to 509 million, up from 503 million.

While the daily web sessions saw a decline, the web yields per thousand sessions rose 6% to £10.20. Moving to cash, cash and cash equivalents at the period end amounted to 30.8 million, cash generated from operations 23.3 million for the period.

We're committed to our employee benefit trust, and we paid in 4.7 million into that last year. We paid $5.5 million, or £4.3 million, earn-outs to Betches founders, and are very pleased they have met their targets, and this year, exceeded their targets.

Overall, which is a good indicator, our EBITDA-to-cash conversion is 93%, which continues to be over 90% as we've guided. On to capital allocation, Betches also exceeded the target, and we've got somewhere between $9.5 million and $13 million to pay in next year for them.

We'll also look to reinvest for organic growth, example being the £5 million or $6.5 million we spent on senior hires. We've also got a healthy acquisition pipeline and obviously the strong balance sheet and some debt to support that moving forward.

On my final slide, I'd like to talk through the guidance of our accelerated investment growth. The direct focus gives us more control, and as we move into bigger clients, this will help drive higher growth.

We expect our direct business to potentially reach 75% of our revenue mix. This shift reflects both audience demand and advertisers' spend moving decisively towards digital-led solutions in the UK and the US, the largest advertising market.

Our indirect revenues will remain a key part of our flywheel business model and continue to build repeatable IP, applying our content, insights, and monetization engine to creators with the help of AI and first-party data. We anticipate direct revenue growth to be in low- to mid-double-digit range with margins before central costs in the mid-20% range.

We expect absolute EBITDA margins to remain in line with current guided levels, reflected our accelerated investment strategy and the change of EBITDA to margin mix from indirect to direct. Over time, we expect the margin improvement in direct and overall business to improve, and as we lower our central costs using AI, we'll benefit from operational leverage and higher-value IP and content, as this is monetized across multiple channels.

Our strategic investment costs will be partly offset by headcount reductions we are making in social and web. This helps us moderate the rate of cost growth without limiting the group's ability to scale.

We call this internally our growth engine. This investment strategy supports both our long-term range, more predictable growth, and allows us to reduce our reliance on any single platform or revenue stream.

Just to re-emphasize again our acceleration investment for growth, we have over the past 14-month invested 5 million in 11 senior hires: 800,000 was in last year, 4.2 million in financial year ending September '26. In addition to this, we'll continue to invest in AI, technology, marketing, and content.

These appointments, as well as our strategic investment, position the group to increase market share, promote sustainable growth, and continue to entertain and delight young adults, making them laugh, think, and act. That's it from me.

I'd like to hand back to Solly to talk us through the operational review.

Thanks, Dave. Hope everyone appreciates the symmetry on haircut and shirt today.

Takes a lot of work to get that done. Anyway, I guess just to move on to the operational review, what I'd like to do is just talk you through some of the progress that we're making in the areas that we kicked off with before.

Bit of a recap. AI is a major focus for us and something that we've seen a lot of progress on internally.

I know when people talk about AI content, you typically think about AI slop and some of the rubbish that's out there. What I'm really excited about here is some of the technology that you can use whereby I've seen the community that we're part of producing content that could have come out of Disney or Pixar.

Some of the capabilities around creation of characters, animations, language translations, and some of the different things that a company like us could never do in a million years because of the cost that's associated with it. For us, from a content creation standpoint, from the way that we're using it with clients, but also how we're using it to drive further intelligence is something that we're very very optimistic about and investing in heavily.

Other areas for us is the US. Since the acquisition of Betches and coming together as a group, that market has been very lucrative for us.

That business has doubled since we bought it and has a great leadership team in place, it's got great momentum, and I genuinely believe we're at the beginning of that journey of building into what is the largest advertisement market in the world. Creators: so this is a very exciting space, and the economy within this space is growing at a rate of knots, and I'll talk you through a little bit later around that and the part that we play.

IP monetization: so again, very much differentiating ourselves to the rest of the market, cutting through the noise through the IP that we've created. However, we are now starting to see some real progress and acceleration in the monetization of that that is helping our drive towards more predictable revenue streams, which again, I'll build on how we develop that a little bit further through this.

Just to kick off with AI. There's a number of key areas where we can see this coming to life quickly.

The first is Mission Control. Mission Control has tens of billions of different data points going through it each year, and we use that tool to very much inform the decisions our 200-plus content creators make on navigating what's working, what's not working, what should we do more of.

Off the back of this tool, we've seen uptick in engagement, we've seen uptick across a number of different areas by having insights that no one else has in market. As it stands right now, it's a very well-put-together dashboard that people can access, use, slice and dice that information to make those decisions.

However, we are very close to adding a level of intelligence across that database that could just be prompted by our content creator teams and also in the future, clients that we can work with too. As smart as I believe our people are in the business, by giving them this tool with an intelligence applied on top of it that can query that data in a way that we struggle to do, I'm really excited about the movement forward in an example such as that around what we do on a day-to-day basis.

Other examples that we are using this for, we've created a production management tool, which of course makes our production more efficient, and we've developed a tool which can give us an idea on what's accelerating in culture and what's decelerating. We can see very clearly based on inputs from Reddit and X that feed LADradar.

This was a tool that we built. In terms of content creation, it's very early doors in terms of our testing here.

As I say, I believe we're right at the beginning phases of the more sophisticated use cases that we can do here. I was chatting to a filmmaker who started to use this to weave into films more recently.

I think that is where we're going to see a real interesting movement forward in creativity and AI coming together. We've started to experiment, and what's exciting about some of that, you'll see the bit on the right where we've got a real human, it's a human at the bottom, commenting on what's happened in a cultural moment.

Above him, we tested out different forms of content: we tested out AI-generated content, we tested out footage that we licensed, and what we found is a 20% increase in performance with the AI-driven footage that we put in on top of him. I just want to stress here, I think a lot of people think the left-hand side completely AI-generated content when you talk about it, but I am very excited about how it can be weaved into existing storytelling mechanisms and enhancing that moving forward, and we're starting to experiment with that in a big way.

Ma'am, I need you to step back from the animal. You're really...

Oops. In terms of the US, we've got great progress, and to really move that progress forward further, we've brought on a number of brilliant people.

Paul, Maggie, Lauren, Bill, all come from incredible pedigree. Maggie scaled the Axel Springer team out in the States and grew that sales operation as Chief Commercial Officer over there.

Bill was over at Condé Nast, looked after a significant piece of business, and Paul joined us from a fantastic background of Warner Music and more recently an ad tech business. We are bringing on some excellent people to build on what is already a great team to help accelerate that further.

Where we're seeing that come through is the growth of blue-chip, longer-term strategic relationships that we're building across there. We are seeing that grow in size, and what's really exciting about this business is we still haven't really brought over elements such as Mission Control and LADnation, our panel, across that market just yet.

We've implemented some elements of it, but there's huge opportunity moving forward as we add more into that, and we know the size and scale of the market. This piece is really interesting.

When you look at the market growth expected between now and 2034, the creator market is going crazy. We're talking about going from 30 billion to just short of 120 billion within a short space of time, and we see it as a key area that we're going to be investing in moving forward.

The way that we're doing that is we are partnering with some of the biggest creators out there, one of them being John Nellis, TikTok superstar, who's filmed with MrBeast a couple of weeks ago. The way that we're partnering with them is we've built a fantastic platform.

We've got 100-plus sales team here in the UK, over 30 in the US, we've got Mission Control data and insight capability, and we very much understand how creators think and how they navigate platforms and the production around that. We are using our platform to partner with some of the biggest creators in the world to enter that space, help them grow, but also enter that space in a very careful and considered manner that enables us to drive into that large market that's forming.

IP monetization: so this is an area that we've been in for a while. We previously saw it as a very important brand-building exercise for us.

However, over time, as people have migrated from traditional TV and their programming is more on the likes of YouTube, streaming platforms, we've seen this really explode both in terms of audience growth and consumption, but also demand from advertisers. We now have multi-year commitments from advertisers to sponsor our programming.

It's a very exciting new addition to our business, and we're expected to see minimum 5x growth revenue-wise year-on-year in terms of this area here, which, as I say, is a repeatable, predictable revenue stream that we've seen very high ROI when it comes to giving clients a return on their investment. Then just to take a little bit of time just to talk through how we think about this.

Our top 20 clients typically make up for about 70% of our revenue. It's very well spread across those top 20, and we promote and we relegate those different clients.

However, the biggest development for us is the new tiering system that we put in place across this. I mentioned about exclusive products, white glove service, and very much spending time on getting in with the most senior operators across these businesses to really understand their business challenge, being very key.

We've got a brilliant set of clients in this top 20 who we have CMO relationships. I'm heading to dinner with five of them in a couple of weeks' time to talk about the future and AI and creativity and how marketing is going to evolve, and we are producing fantastic results, hence why they keep coming back and why they are repeating business with us in a bigger way.

Just in terms of M&A, we've got a great track record in this space. I talked about Betches: fantastic business, fantastic team, doubled in the two years since we brought them into the group.

We also have a great track record in terms of bolt-ons as well as bigger acquisitions previously. We are putting the infrastructure in place to accelerate our M&A activity and see it as a key lever in bringing forward our strategic direction in which we're taking.

We've got a very strong pipeline. We've got six businesses in live discussion: very very interesting businesses in a lot of the spaces that I've talked about today, who are also very serious about the potential of having some sort of activity with that business.

There's nothing to report on today in terms of anything that we've got imminently coming down the line. However, we do feel very confident moving forward about the cadence of M&A activity that we're looking to bring forward into the group.

Just a couple of things to leave you with. A key one is we are very thoughtful about ensuring that we think about how we use our voice in the right way.

One of the topics that we've engaged with recently is a taboo, and it's not widely talked about just yet. I know in a couple of years' time, as we saw with mental health, this will become much more broadly talked about, and that is porn addiction.

It's very accessible in a way that it hasn't been previously to younger audiences, and there are some negative impacts to it. We created a campaign that addresses this, which has been recognized by the House of Lords, the government, and we've worked very closely with them on this.

This is a very important topic for them and something that we've managed to make a big difference on. For us, that's something that we will continue to do, and across a range of different topics, as well as areas that we've continually looked to focus on now and in the future.

Just to finish on, we've had strong double-digit growth, accelerating in key strategic areas of focus, both direct UK and US when it comes to revenues, as well as profitable growth moving forward. We continue to do great things when it comes to scale with young adults, and I talk through some of the numbers before in terms of that.

It is unparalleled, and we are absolute market leaders. We've also built brand recognition at scale that others struggle to compete with, and we'll continue to invest in building that.

We are accelerating our predictable revenue streams, both across the direct business and certain products that we have within that, such as our IP and technology that we're going to be looking to take to the market moving forward. We see IP, US, and the creator market as key multipliers for our business, and we've made great progress across all of those.

We've also got a strong pipeline of direct business to reinforce that confidence moving forward, both in the near term and beyond. That's all from me.

We'll hand over to yourselves for Q&A. I'm going to forget to say what I need to say on the mic, but I'm sure it'll sort itself out.

Hi, morning. It's Jessica Pok from Peel Hunt.

I've got three, please. Can you talk a little bit about the economics on the direct side of a larger client versus some of the smaller clients?

What I'm getting at is, as the business grows and expands, the larger clients potentially get larger. Is there any margin differentiation between the two?

The second one is just on the US. Some of the costs have gone in for FY '25 and you've got some costs going in '26 in terms of the salaries of the new hires.

Is that it now? Have you got enough there in order for the next 2 to 3 years of growth, or can we expect further hiring or investment going into the US in the near term?

The final one is just on Betches. Betches US going very well.

You launched Betches UK. Can you talk a little bit about the traction there?

Shall I give a quick overlay on the direct moving forward, and then obviously underpin it with some detail from within? On the direct side, in some cases larger clients can be lower margin, and the key driver to that is just the mix of capability that we offer them.

It might be that certain products are higher margin, others are lower margin. I wouldn't say there's a one-size-fits-all on there.

Where we are becoming more sophisticated in management of that is the tiering system that I mentioned before. Typically the bigger investment, we can obviously include certain types of products that might be slightly lower margin, but getting that mix and the controls around that is obviously key, and that system and the sophistication around that is something that we're investing in.

Then the other element to that is just the demand we've got for Mission Control and our panel. It's not something that we've formally take to market, we utilize, but those are powerful tools that don't require a lot of people, they're not people-heavy tools or technologies to offer clients.

A lot of that work is invested up front, which we're very excited about in terms of the possibility of adding more capabilities that grow that margin moving forward.

Just to add to that, as our clients get bigger and more repeatable, as Solly said, we've got some clients have regular quarterly income coming in. We can plan better our resources against there, will naturally become more efficient as they get bigger, and we see that visibility.

Shall I cover the costs one and you come on to the Betches UK? On the cost side, we've got the team that we want in the US, and we accelerated that from mid to late calendar year to get the right people in.

They're all in play now. As we want to get at least 20 clients where we're doing over $3 million each with us.

As those clients are coming on board, if we accelerate those, we need more senior people to be able to consult, converse, and talk to them about the market dynamics. We may have other senior people coming in, but we've got the right people at the top of the C-level in the US to do that.

I'd just add to that with the engine for growth. We've got a dynamic model internally that gives us a red line on affordability.

If it's in high growth, we've got more space to invest in that against the forecasting. Of course, as I talked about today, there's huge opportunity in the market, and we've always run the business in an affordable way, we've always been profitable since day one, and we'll continue to do that, but there will be more based on the opportunity ahead.

It will all be done in a controlled and affordable manner.

The other thing down the line is, as Solly talked about, as we bring some of the capabilities we've got locally in the UK like the use of Mission Control and LADnation into the US, we will do that probably smoothly, but there will be in particular years when we decide to move on that, we'd want to move fast to make best use of it. Yeah?

We don't know when that's going to be yet, but it will be over time. Then the Betches UK.

I think in terms of Betches, fantastic brand. I was chatting to Lauren, who's featured on this, one of the sales team out in the US, and she's just joined us and she was explaining why she joined to me, and she said 70% of my friends follow Betches.

It's just insane, the power of that brand and the equity behind it in terms of how synonymous it is. It reaches one in two women, millennial, Gen Z women, over in the States.

For us here, we've had a massive uptake, both in terms of audience consumption, and it's been taken very well in the market, but then also demand from advertisers and clients. It has been brilliant.

It feels like that space in terms of entertainment for young women in the UK is ready to be disrupted, and Betches is a great entry point into that.

Hi, thanks for the presentation, guys. Roddy Davidson from Singers.

A couple of sort of follow-up questions on the US, please. Firstly, just wondering if there need to be any changes in the investment, your physical footprint out there to service the market?

In terms of sort of metrics, I'm not sure if you'd be prepared to share, but in terms of sort of things like average deal size, repeat client revenues, things like that, can you give a sense for where you would like those to sort of move to? Finally, just on M&A, which I guess is also sort of US-related, keen to understand what resources you have in terms of sort of assessing deals, how that sort of process happens, and also just what sort of acquisitions you're looking for and what sort of scale those might be?

Thank you.

Thank you. In terms of physical footprint, I physically moved out there, and hopefully that gives you an idea of how serious we see that as an opportunity in the business.

We have just moved into a new office, or moving into a new office, which we've identified to enable more growth and more people that we are looking to invest in over time to feed that growing market. In terms of the right investments, we see that reinforcing the kind of capability I mentioned are working across here: research and insight and measurement of ROI for the work that we do with clients being a real area of opportunity to build further, as well as development of their very successful products, which has got brilliant IP and other aspects to it that we'd like to do more of.

It is definitely going to be growing, but all within the engine for growth, which gives us sustainable, affordable growth. To move

on to the other points, the deal size I talked in the presentation, it's moved from $62,000 up to 178. That is relatively small, so as we're moving into our top 20, we want 20 customers of over $3 million.

Therefore it depends on what campaigns they want to run over time, whether it's consistently every quarter or consistently every month, or a block campaign or not. That'll be the depends on it.

The value will increase and then the frequency will also increase on that. Then that's on the deal size and the repeat revenue.

It's obviously we want 20 or more. When we get to 20, we'll want 40, and when we get to 40, we'll want 60 more clients repeating their revenue depending on their cycles of business.

I think the other question was on the M&A resources. We've got a team of 20 people in the business that meet monthly to promote, talk about opportunities or targets of businesses, because it's across the globe, and we come across businesses that we know are doing well, doing different or doing things.

That's how it all stems from a monthly session like that. Then internally, we've got a person at the moment and quite a lot of Solly's time talking to the founders.

It's like a group effort, but then it's focused in on the conversations with individual targets at the right levels at the right time. Yeah.

Just in terms of the sort of nature of the businesses that you're targeting, I think you've alluded to sort of data research, etc., and if you can find more Betches, presumably that would be the golden ticket. I think so

types of investments, type of M&A potential opportunities. I think Dave hit the nail on the head, which is the pipeline is the best quality that we've ever had it and the density of the quality of that due to the input from the team and the people that are on the ground.

The sales team who are competing, the audience teams who are also in the same, the quality of that is there. In terms of the types of business, US, of course, is a factor in that.

We are looking at a number of opportunities out in the US to accelerate that. Then also absolutely brands that can enable us to have a wider conversation with clients, whether that's down to demographic.

In the US, we are heavily Betches, we are looking at propositions that could complement that. Also in addition to that, we're looking at capabilities.

Our clients are naturally leading into certain things that we're offering them, and we are speaking to a number of businesses at the minute that we believe are enhancing and also that we actually work with them currently across with our clients. Everything from geo, different demographic, through to tech and capabilities that would add value is in the mix of that top five that we're in live discussions with at the minute.

Good

morning, it's Jonathan Barrett from Panmure. Got a couple of basic questions for you, Dave, if that's okay, and then something for Solly.

Just on Betches, could you give us a steer on where that's got to on revenue and EBITDA? Then just your constant-currency revenue growth rate for this year and that D&A charge, I'm guessing that's going up a bit with the investment?

The Betches figure in UK is 19.4. When I showed on the divisional split, which is Direct US, that's Betches, okay?

In terms of the guidance out there, the margins on that I won't give you exact margin, but it'll come out when we disclose it, is in the low-20s, just above 20% on that. The guidance they've given is effectively at constant current, unless there's a big shift like there was in April last year with the Trump, because we had $1.25 up to 1.34.

If it moves a little bit, it won't affect our numbers much, but if it moves that way, hopefully it'll move back, our numbers are better, but it may shift the other way, we never know. Then the depreciation it's more likely to be relative to revenue, but we are capitalizing a smaller amount, a few hundred thousand pounds, which is the Mission Control, and also in the UK we're moving to a new building, and in the US we're moving to, not building, they're not significantly higher, but it will affect over a 5 years that we show it.

People keep serving up after the show?

They're in line with the revenue, yeah.

That revenue growth, sorry, on a constant-currency basis, it's?

If you net out the various guidance that I gave in, it works out in mid-double digit, slightly above mid-double digit. Then

just for Solly, you've talked about working with proven creators. Just do we have to think about that differently now?

Do we have to think that you have to give up some margin for working with the high-profile proven ones? Is there a logical trade-off for you there, or does it not work like that?

Is it a different thing?

I think it's probably still very early doors to see how that relationship's going to evolve. We do a lot of work with creators anyway, either weaving them into our content, our formats, day to day.

It's a very symbiotic relationship similar to the celebrity side of things where we often aren't paying celebrities to work with us, they come to work with us in that symbiotic manner. Similar with creators, we understand them, we can help them grow their businesses, and then in addition to that, we often represent creators for clients and work with them on that basis.

Very early doors to say exactly how that business model is going to be in 3 years' time and how that evolves, but typically we're quite selective, and we're not trying to work with everyone in market, and we'd rather work with a few and go bigger than try and do that, and that means we can be a little bit more selective where we deploy and, I'd say, a little bit less exposed on that side.

Sorry, just one cheeky small one: do you want your CFO to be based in the US, given the focus?

Dave's moving. I think the US is obviously a critical market for us, we've got a great team out there.

Of course, we do have interest from investor base out there with the business that's growing, and therefore, as well as the operations, it probably would make sense for us to have more presence. In terms of location, I don't think it would matter either way in terms of that as long as travel is fine.

Thank you. Hi,

Andy Edmond, Equity Development. Just considering the themes on a couple of questions that have already been asked, let's stick on the margin thing, because, Solly, you were talking about the discussions and enclosure of longer-term agreements with larger clients.

Just curious, lots of benefits of visibility and repeatability of businesses, is there another slight trade-off in margin in those discussions? From a group level, it sounds like you're pretty confident medium term on margins, Dave.

If there is any deterioration with better agreements, might that just be offset by the cost controls that you've been talking about and greater use of technology on the cost base?

It's a great question. What I would say in regards to that is, yeah, we're not a mass-market sort of stack them high, sell them cheap proposition.

We've got a unique service, unique proposition in terms of scale, all the elements that I've talked about today. We can afford to be selective about who we work with, how we work with them, and vice versa.

Often the clients are on the other side, very much what's fair to us and fair to them in terms of what's right there and the right value exchange, and therefore, the tiering system that I mentioned before around the controls provides those guard rails in place in and around that, and something that we are developing to make sure that it is the case. In terms of the higher-margin elements, I suspect as we start to offer Mission Control more formally in market, and then also the way in which we price LADnation, and then also look to roll that across the pond, that could see some potential benefits in that, but we're very early doors, and, yeah, we do have multiple levers to manage cost base.

We've generally got goals in place around affordability, what we won't invest in order to protect those margins. Something we monitor carefully, but those I'd say are probably the biggest areas that will impact control and offer us opportunity in the future.

Just to add to what Solly said and the question that you asked is that Solly touched about earlier, we have internally what we call a growth engine. What that is is each division has its own forecast and its own minimum margins.

If the forecast is going above, with a little discount for contingency, then they can reinvest as much or as little as they want to do against an agreed strategy plan. All of those dynamics work in the business weekly, basically as a call every week where that's discussed.

That is embedded in the business, it was put in just over a year ago, and everyone's used to working to that. The things that may come outside of that is like when we've had discussions around bringing on C-level people for the US, we may give a little leaniency on that to just bring it forward rather than waiting for the resource to be able to brought in.

There'll be major decisions like that that we decide consciously to bring it forward. Now that may be in the year before we talk to people like yourself, but we'll always communicate it as soon as we know that.

Our margins are well controlled across all elements of the business.

Great, thank you. Then on M&A, hearing a slightly different tone to the statement today, which talked about selective bolt-ons, and you're sounding a lot more progressed and looking for another Betches which seems to make perfect sense, because you've got the cash generation, you've got the opportunity, you're right to be investing.

I'm just curious again, talk about control, Dave, if you're that far down, what are the financial metrics of things that you're looking at? Strategic fit must come first and foremost, but not at any price.

Can you give a little reassurance how you justify a price under

Strategic fit, Solly's talked to some of the points on there. Also a key thing is the cultural fit, because the Betches business, we spent 3, 4 weeks presenting to each other before we reached a deal, and that we knew that would work well on there.

The cultural fit is really important. On the financials, we'll work to a cash-based internal rate of return, which will be above 20% in line with the PE approach, private equity-type approach, and we will, like we did with Betches, we'll have earn-out targets if our valuation metrics are different than their wants in terms of sellers.

It's worked very well for us, and it works exceptionally well for Betches as well.

Good to hear. Thank you.

Hi, Caroline Gulliver from Equity Development. Could I just ask another follow-up question on your target client base?

You talked about trying to get 20 clients over $3 million, and obviously it seems like there's a huge amount of opportunity in the US and the deal sizes are going up. Just in the UK, I saw that it's gone down from 13 to 11 in terms of the number of clients over a million dollars.

Do you see that reversing? Do you see that then going back up, and is it from growing your existing clients significantly, or do you expect to win lots more new clients?

That goes for the same for the US as well, is it just generally the pattern, start small and they just grow and grow and grow with that repeatable revenue, or are you putting as much effort into attracting new clients?

I think the key thing for us where we're seeing a big step-up is the amount of investment that we're getting from those top 20, and also how predictable it is in the sense that the names that you are seeing in the top 20 are chopping and changing less for us. That for me is very much the efforts that we've put into really understanding the business, building relationships up top, say from the most senior level down, and that is, in turn, driving higher value for them, which ultimately is the reason why they're spending money with us, is to help them drive their businesses.

I mentioned about the £5 to £10 ROI. We're seeing more and more of that as we are focusing more.

For sure, I think across that top 20, in terms of advertisement spend, we're probably less than a couple of percent from those, there's plenty to go at, but also we are constantly nurturing that next wave coming through, and we'll promote and relegate based on it. In terms of the service that we offer, the focus, going deep, that's typically how we work.

Dave mentioned a number before. Just to demonstrate this, if we go from say £40 million to £80 million in revenue, the top 20, which makes up for about 70%, will need to go from about 1.4 million on average to 2.8 million.

For us, we've got a number of clients that are already spending well over that, quite a few, and so for us, building more of those is a focus and building deeper and better relationships where we can see we are driving ROI and tangible results for them and understanding their business better is a big focus.

Just to clarify those, but that's 20 in the UK and 20 in the US. Obviously US values will be higher, just because the marketing spends are higher in the US.

Out of those clients that haven't spent with us so far, two of them spent for the Euros, they may come back and spend in the future. We're early on the number of clients, and in the future we'll have a KPI of showing how many clients are spending over $3 million, but it's too early in that cycle yet.

It's about four at the moment, but we're too early in the cycle. If one does, you'll say, "Well, why isn't it one dozen?"

We will build that KPI moving forward. Oh,

hi, guys, Rupert from Zeus. I know that the very bottom of your demographic age range, but do you have much client interactions or your own concerns about social media bans for under-16s and the sort of gathering momentum that seems to have got globally?

I wouldn't say concern in terms of impact for us in regards to that space. I think it's an important topic.

I think, having two kids myself and understanding the space very well, I think it's important to have some governance across it. In terms of the impact, I think naturally it will soften around the edges, there'll be specific apps that are created for younger audiences where the controls are in place.

For us, I don't see that as a material impact because as they graduate towards older audiences being exposed to advertisement and other areas as well, which is where our sweet spot is, is natural. It's obviously something to watch out for and to see how it progresses, but not something that we're losing sleep over.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you very much.

Have a good day. Cheers.

Thanks for coming.