Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's Future plc pre-close trading update call. My name is Seb, and I'll be the operator for your call today. If you would like to ask a question during the Q&A session, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question from the queue, please press star two. I will now hand you over to Kevin Li Ying to begin the call. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us at short notice. We really do appreciate it. When we reported our FY 2025 results last December, we were clear where our exposure to the search landscape sat, namely programmatic advertising and e-commerce. We set out the challenges in that part of the market as a result of the changes in the ecosystem. What we've seen is that rather than stabilize year-on-year, it has just become tougher, with organic search results being further down the Google Search page, driving more zero-click search, impacting our sessions. This is a challenge not just for us, but for the industry. We remain cautious in our outlook on sessions and expect continued decline rather than stabilizations of trends. In addition to this, PPC inflation, which we noted in February, remains higher. This is another industry issue, but clearly it has an impact on Go.Compare's profitability. To give you some color on this, PPC costs are double digit higher year-on-year. As you know, these are high margin parts of the business. However, as a reminder, over 80% of the group's revenue is not directly correlated to audiences. On the other hand, where we are able to exert greater control is against our strategic initiatives. As planned, these are driving growth and ramping up. Just to quote a few, our AI visibility advertising product, Future Optic, is building momentum, some of it landing in H1 and more than double in H2. We have a strong pipeline. Earlier this month, we launched Helix, our next-generation first-party data audience intelligence engine designed to drive guaranteed commercial outcomes for advertisers. Following successful testing across 20 campaigns, we're seeing double-digit increase in click-through rates alongside meaningful improvements in return on ad spend. We are rolling this product out at pace in the U.S. and then on to the U.K. On to SheerLuxe, which we acquired in January, is trading very strongly, outperforming our plans, testament that the Google Zero strategy works. This is amplified with our own Google Zero brands like Kiplinger and Ideal Home, which are also driving our performance. We continue to manage magazines efficiently, delivering another very resilient performance. Then on to Go.Compare, which has returned to growth in March, thanks to growth in car insurance. We launched Renewal, our insurance wallet app, in February, and we're working on a pipeline of new features, including AI functionality, to push to it. As a reminder, Renewal is all about improving retention and lowering customer acquisition costs via PPC. Finally, the rate of decline in B2B is abating and is set to grow in H2 with the benefit of new first-party data and AI-led products. However, these initiatives, our strategic initiatives, while driving growth, are not yet sufficient to offset the macro downside from sessions, given the accelerating decline there. Let me hand it over to Sharjeel to talk through what this means for guidance. Thank you for joining us this morning. First, turning to the outlook for the half year. On half year organic revenues, we are broadly in line with where we thought, around -6.5%. However, the revenue mix that half year is different, with more revenues coming from direct digital advertising and print and less from higher margin e-commerce and programmatic, which has resulted in a margin at around 24%-25%. Looking forward to the full year, we are deliberately taking a cautious view on audiences in the second half, even though we have easier comparators in the coming H2 period. The key change is that we're now planning for audience to decline going forward instead of stabilizing in H2 as we had planned. Given the ongoing volatility in audiences, this is the prudent thing to do. For H2, we are assuming a continued decline in e-commerce and programmatic revenues, similar to the rate of decline we saw in the past two halves. These are the high margin revenues which we highlighted as being more directly linked to audiences. On the other areas, there is growth in the business. We expect direct digital advertising, both in the U.K. and in the U.S., to deliver good growth in H2, assuming macro conditions remain consistent. We expect magazines to remain resilient for the rest of the year. We expect Go.Compare to grow throughout H2, as it had done in March. Remember, in an inflationary environment, we see that Go.Compare grows, and we expect B2B to return to growth in H2 as we launch new products. All of this translates into H2 organic revenue being down low single digits. On the inorganic side, you will have a full six month inclusion of SheerLuxe, which continues to outperform, as Kevin just mentioned. Turning to the full year profit, the impact of the B2C revenue mix, combined with the PPC inflation in Go.Compare, is expected to result in an EBITDA margin in the region of 25%-27%. I want to assure you all that we're being very proactive when it comes to costs. We are driving automation across the business and reducing costs, but also continuing to invest where it drives a good return. Regarding cash, the group continues to generate high levels of cash with conversion for the year in line with guidance of around 90% of EBITDA to adjusted free cash flow. This is the same as the previous 95 in AOP terms. The board is clear that our shares are fundamentally undervalued, and we will use this strong cash generation to buy our shares. It's the best investment today. Given the share price, we have decided to accelerate the current GBP 30 million share buyback program. We still have GBP 22 million to go on this. With that, back to Kevin. Thank you, Sharjeel. Before taking your questions, I just wanted to take a step back to look more broadly where we are at. Notwithstanding today's disappointing news, taking a step back, this is a business that still generates a strong level of EBITDA and a net free cash flow of circa GBP 100 million. This is not a set of numbers reflected in our valuation. With this in mind, we're going to be even more focused on driving value for the areas of the group that deliver the platform effect and to realize value for shareholders from those that do not. As I said earlier, this is working, but we want to make sure that it works faster and at a greater scale. With that, Sharjeel and I would be happy to take any of your questions you might have. Operator, over to you. Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star two. Our first question on the line is from Nick Dempsey with Barclays. Please go ahead. Yeah, good morning, guys. I've got two questions. First of all, I think back at the full year results, you were making quite a clear distinction between Google Discover and Google Search. Are those lines starting to blur now as your traffic from Google Discover is starting to be hit by changes to that, as we've seen from some other people? Is that part of the reason for the traffic weakness? The second question, you just mentioned sort of net free cash flow. Did you say circa GBP 100 million? I just wanna try and understand what the definition of that is. Are we including the buyback in that, or that seems lower than I would have expected based on your guidance. Thank you, Nick, for your two questions. Sharjeel, did you want to take the Discover piece and versus organic and net free cash flow? Yeah, I'll pick up both of them. Thank you. On audiences, Nick, on audiences, what we've seen is overall audiences have been down in the first half, about - 20%. That's pretty much in line with what we saw in the second half of last year. There are variances between how audiences on Discover and how audiences on Google Search have performed. Relatively similar. I mean, overall, it's down - 20%. It's not that one is up and the other is down. Both of them are down. They remain very volatile, and hence the guidance today. Going forward, we'll see. We're taking a cautious view. We had previously assumed that audiences would stabilize via Discover or via Search. What we're saying now is instead of that stabilization on year-on-year, we're assuming, look, it just carries on declining. Not accelerating, but carries on declining in the same trend we've seen over the past two halves. On free cash flow, that doesn't include the buyback. That GBP 100 million is what we've got left after paying tax, interest, managing the business in terms of working capital. It's what the board can decide to do in terms of dividends, share buybacks, acquisitions, bolt-ons and so forth. That's the definition of the GBP 100 million. Sorry. Thank you, Sharjeel. It includes cash interest, cash tax and the buyback. No, excludes the buyback. Sorry. Excludes the buyback, but includes cash interest and cash tax. Yeah. I see. Sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Lara Simpson with JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Hi. Morning, all. Thanks for taking my question. I just had two. The first was, again, just coming back to the outlook. You've obviously assumed for continued audience decline in H2. Could you just talk a bit more around the level of visibility that you have and how you have confidence that that decline can't actually accelerate in the second half? So what are you seeing from a Q2 exit rate? And then I think also important just to address the midterm financial algorithm at this stage. Clearly, we've had the margin reset. Given the change in mix, how do we think about potential to rebuild margin? And I think from a top line, how are you thinking about sort of the audience trends more broadly? My second question was just, maybe Kevin, for you, just to come back to the comment and the turnaround in your stance on the portfolio. It feels like there's a bit of a change in turnaround realizing assets and asset optionality. Could we just talk a little bit more around what changed there and any more color you can give as you do review assets that drive the platform effect and those that don't? Thank you. Right. Let me take your second question, and I'll pass along your first one to Sharjeel. Well, look, we have a clear, well-defined strategic initiative programs, right? Which we set out at the start of the financial year. These strategic initiatives are progressing well, and they are driving growth. Future Optic is one that is worth covering in terms of its demand by clients across U.S. and U.K., as well as our sort of like creating the habit functionality whereby people follow us, comes to our brands to consume our editorial expertise, right? Now, like Future Plus, Colab, these are showing green shoots as time goes by. Those are driving growth, as I said. We expect these to ramp up through the rest of this financial year and into FY 2027. We should also remind ourselves that we have our sort of like Google Zero brands like Kiplinger, which is performing very well year to date on an organic basis, as well as Ideal Home and actually the Homes vertical, which is again performing year-over-year very well year to date top line. Also not to forget that SheerLuxe, the acquisition that we made in January, is outperforming our own plans, which again combined with the Kiplinger and the likes of the Homes vertical brands are all Google Zero. Now as Sharjeel mentioned, and I also mentioned, we're expecting e-commerce and programmatic to continue to decline, but then it's worth remembering that we have lower small numbers as we progress into the coming months. We should expect that overall, the sum of the two translate into growth into FY 2027. I'm giving you more than you have asked. Sharjeel? Yeah. Lara, let me pick up your three in one. In terms of visibility, I think the best way to look at it is H2 2025 audiences were down -20%. H1 2025, again -20%. There has been relative stability over the last, I would say eight weeks or so, but we're being cautious. You know, volatile. You can see week-on-week how things are changing. There's another Google algorithm update going on right now. We're being cautious, and I'm applying another -20% to audiences in the second half of the year instead of assuming a small decline. We don't have visibility, and that is the reason for the deliberate caution. I hope we beat it and we're being overcautious, but I think the right thing to do is be cautious. Your second question was on the mid-term. Look, as Kevin has said, we have a clear strategy around moving away from getting audiences pushed to us, to having audiences pulled to us by our Google Zero strategy. We've got internal brands, and Kevin's talked about our acquisition as well that proves that. They will be at a slightly lower margin, right? e-commerce is at a higher margin, you know, 80%-90% margin on that kind of incremental buy, where some of these will be at a very good margin, but not at that level. AI visibility and using that to drive audience-led revenues as well. Look, too early to get into medium-term guidance, but, you know, we've given a range for this year. We'll build it back up. We'll have great initiatives that Kevin and the team are working on, and we'll look to build it back up, going forward. Your last question was around audiences more broadly in the future. Well, the strategy isn't pinned on audiences coming back. The strategy is pitted on pulling audiences, either through membership, either through Colab, either through making sure our brands are very clear and that brands and trust become more important in an AI world. Thank you, Sharjeel. Operator. Thank you. The next question is from Weng Lum Khoo from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Morning, everyone. Two, if I may please. Firstly, could you perhaps speak to the impact of the strategic initiatives that's specifically supposed to drive non-Google traffic, so Colab Signal? Perhaps any update there since the September presentation would be helpful in terms of how that's driving, you know, direct traffic, how that's driving, you know, e-commerce revenue streams, et cetera, et cetera. Then the second question, I think you partially answered it. The building blocks to your change in guidance and assumptions. You spoke to the volatility of audience, the Google algorithm change. Is there any other external factors or internal factors that are driving the change in guidance? Thank you. Thank you, Weng. I'll take the first one. Sharjeel, you'll take the second one. The impact on the SI, as in the strategic initiatives, I'll just focus on Colab, if I may. Look, Colab, similarly to Future Optic, we've released that over the last, what? Six months and just a bit, right? We've expanded that on a number of our brands, namely the luxury and lifestyle brands, and they're performing very well. What does performing very well mean, right? They're performing very well in terms of attracting a niche set of audience that are extremely valuable to us, one. Two, they are very engaged. Our engagement metrics is 3 x more than what we actually see out at. A minimum 3x more in terms of what we are actually seeing in terms of, like, people coming to other non-collab types of content, editorial content, right? And then three, there is—there's a bridge with what is produced by those content creators, those influencers, through the prism of the collab products, bridging that with commercial, right? Commercial branded content package, commercial sales activities and with a clear view to drive yield and top line. That is just to give you a bit of color on the impact on collab. With regards to, I think you may have mentioned Future Plus, if I'm not mistaken, but I'll sort of like expand briefly on this. This is an, again, an initiative that was born six months ago or so. Far, we've actually driven in excess of 180,000 free members, which is again drives returning repeat visits, which drives a higher engagement, which offers us sort of like valuable first-party data that we can package downstream and sell through our commercial sales activities. That is only launched on three brands, I believe. We're rolling it out on other brands. I must touch on Future Optic on its impact. What we're seeing is strong client demand in terms of solo sale of Future Optic, but also package sale as part of branded content across our portfolio so far. Pipeline is very, very strong. This is. I'll stop here, but hopefully you get a bit of color in terms of the impact so far. Sharjeel? Sure. Weng, I think your question was around what's changed in terms of the factors. Let me answer it for H2 and then looking forward as well. For H2, quite a lot of the revenues are going exactly as we planned in terms of the strategic initiatives and some of the other revenue lines across the group, and a couple are actually a bit better. What's changed is the caution on audiences. We're assuming similar declines, but if the audiences and the revenue are at very high margin in those two areas, as you know, and as you highlighted in your note recently. That is what the main change is into H2 and driving the margin down to 25%-27%. I mean, looking forward, look, Kevin's told you about all the great initiatives and actually how the click-through rate or the engagement rates or the things are doing better. Some of them will do very, very well, but they will be at a lower margin. Hence that margin question in terms of the medium term, we'll give guidance when we've got a better feel for it. Those are the main factors that are impacting us. It's the drop in margin rather than a major revenue change. Right. Thank you both. Thank you, Sharjeel. Operator. Thank you. The next question is from Johnathan Barrett with Panmure. Please go ahead. Morning, chaps. I've probably just got down to one or two questions now. Perhaps you could give us some perspective on what all of the new products are actually doing in revenue terms now. We've, you know, got all these new products that are being launched, but it's very hard to contextualize what they're really doing at the revenue level. Perhaps you could try to turn that into some sort of number for us today. The second question is around GoCo margin going forward. This PPC squeeze seems to be something which will remain a problem for some time. Should we start to think about a different structural margin for that business given that impact? If you could give us your thoughts around that. I think those are my two remaining questions. Thank you. Sharjeel, I shall leave both of those questions to you in terms of impact on top line and GoCo margin. Okay. On the strategic initiatives, I think the best way to look at it is in terms of this year and Future Optic is about. We've got a good GBP 10 million pipeline for this year. On some of the others, they're very early, Johnathan. I know you're keen to model it, and I'll go into more color in May, if that's all right. But Future Optic is the one that's doing very well. As Kevin said, you know, we've had a good half year on it and it's gonna double. A decent pipeline from zero to around GBP 10 million in terms of the outlook and the pipeline. That's a good one. On the rest of them, Johnathan, I get it, and I understand why you'd want it, but can I save that for the half year and I'll give you more color at the half year then? In terms of GoCo, look, well, we've managed the business really well over the years, and it's doing a very good margin. Now on the PPC, yes, it's not just a GoCo thing, it's in the market, and we're getting more costs. But we're also doing things to counter the costs. The way to look at it is, you know, Future is brilliant at search. Yes, search is harder in terms of where we end up on the page, which is further down the page rather than, you know, even if we rank one, two, and three. Over the last four or five months, again, we've improved GoCo's rankings on search to make sure it's very visible. We're also being more efficient on how we buy our PPC. Every other company will do the same as well, but we're very focused on making sure we buy PPC correctly going forward. Then we've launched Renewal. The key thing on Renewal is very early days, very small base, but it will grow, and we'll get all our GoCo customers onto it and other people's customers onto it as well, is the plan there is to reduce the reliance on buying individuals again and again and making Google much more rich. That is the longer-term play. Then as you think about what else are we doing, well, we're using Future Optic on GoCo and making sure our own product is very visible in ChatGPT. We're developing new product for ChatGPT, and Kevin will give an update about that in May. We're also gonna improve our AI process in Renewal as well. I mean, look, that's a very long way of saying, yes, PPC costs are going up, but we're gonna try to counter it either by being more efficient, either by retaining people better and driving costs out of the business. Longer term, I still think it's a good EBITDA 40% margin business. Thank you, Sharjeel. Great. Thank you. Our next question is from Andrew Renton with Cavendish Capital Markets Limited. Please go ahead. Hi. Just a final one for me. Given this is going to be impacting Google revenues as well, do you have any thoughts on how they're going to approach this decline going forward and sort of mitigate their business model? I mean, feels a little bit like they obviously have sort of jumped with their AI Overviews, but it's having a big impact on them as well. Just be interested to get your insight around any changes going forward from them. Thank you. Sharjeel, I will take this. Look, what Google's roadmap is public and what I see you see and everyone sees, right? They don't sort of like divulge anything in terms of like core strategic moves in terms of revenue, how they make revenue, and how they want to actually sort of complement existing revenue with others or shift from existing to net new. At this point, you know, we can all sort of like posit thesis and approaches what we all can see, but that's more or less what I can actually offer you, Andrew, at this stage. Thank you. At this time, we will wrap up the Q&A session, so I'll hand the floor back to Kevin Li Ying for any closing comments. I just wanted to actually thank everyone once again for joining us on this call today, especially at such short notice. We really do appreciate it. Hopefully, what we've shared and conveyed to you is very clear and I wish you all a very good day. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all very much for joining. You may now disconnect.