Short tape. This demonstrates the quality of our global content slate, the brilliant programs we show on our screens, and what's coming up particularly for ITVX. Please play the tape. Citizens of Snowpiercer. Are you ready? Yeah. Not till tomorrow. This is for Ryan McGregor. Excuse me, what are you doing? I'm very good at knowing what a woman wants. Oh. Oh, don't kill my vibe. You're really awesome, bro. Think you find it hurting me, don't you? Hey. I wanted you to know that you don't belong here. Think you find it hurting me, don't you? Oh my God. How's it all going? Well, we're the dream team. Or you should have been a little better. You have a good look, honey. This is my routine. Don't kill my vibe. It looks like he's set up a gas explosion. I need expo support now. Embarrassing that we all wore the same outfit, right? That's life, isn't it? Hello. I think this might be Prince Andrew. This is Ranvir Singh from ITV. This fictional party was a business meeting. Under cover of darkness, a column of tanks headed towards Kharkiv. Welcome to the tent. Good luck, you can barely stand up. I haven't got time for this. Rachael Blackmore raises the bar with the Opera Cup. Are you saying they put me on this because I'm a woman? Jesse Lingard. Justin Gela. How many times do I have to tell you? I am not a traitor. We are a family. We are going to get back what's ours. I can't say how truly sorry I am for what I did to your daughter. Do you push everyone away? Yeah, I do. I wanna know what happened to her. I got it so wrong. Oh, shit, that hurts. I'm gonna confess to the murder, to everything. Murder, burglary, arson. I say I killed Keitha. We're working on his first-ever murder investigation where nobody's actually died. You gotta keep the faith. Oh. We recorded a strong performance across the business in the first half of 2022. Both our studios and media and entertainment divisions performed better than we expected at the beginning of the year, with ITV Studios rebounding faster and TV and streaming delivering stronger growth. Total ITV Studios revenue grew ahead of the market and with growth across all divisions. ITVX is on track to launch in Q4 as we remain fully focused on delivering the digital acceleration that we set out at our full-year results. Reflecting our robust balance sheet and strong cash flows, the board has declared an interim dividend of 1.7p and remains committed to paying a total dividend of at least 5p for the full year, which we of course intend to grow over time. These charts demonstrate the continued growth in our business. Total external revenues were up 8% in the first half and up 14% compared to 2019. Total ITV Studios revenue was up 16% and up 22% compared to 2019. Total advertising revenue was up 5% year on year, as previously guided. Within this, digital advertising revenue continues to grow strongly, up 20% in the first half. Group adjusted EBITA was down 3% with underlying profit growth offset by GBP 20 million of investment in M&E in preparation for the launch of ITVX, in line with our guidance. ITV Studios profits grew significantly, up 31% year on year. Cash generation remains strong, driven by good revenue growth and a continued focus on working capital management. I'm going to now hand you over to Chris to go through our operational and financial performance in more detail. Thanks, Carolyn. Good morning, everyone. I'll start with studios. ITV Studios delivered an impressive performance with a strong slate of deliveries as we continue to focus on growing and further diversifying by genre, by geography and by customer. Total revenues were up 16%, with good growth across all businesses, but particularly from the UK and global formats and distribution. The UK saw growth both on and off ITV Network, with significant drama deliveries, including Grace, Shetland, and Noughts + Crosses, some of which had been delayed from 2021. Global formats and distribution had a strong first half, demonstrating the value of our 90,000 hour library, our growing scripted catalog, and increasing global demand for our popular non-scripted formats. Adjusted EBITA was up 31% to GBP 124 million, with an adjusted EBITA margin of 13%. The increased margin year-on-year is helped by GBP 3 million of cost savings and fewer costs associated with COVID protocols. We're on track to exceed 2019 revenues in 2022, and to grow total studios revenue by at least 5% per annum on average to 2026, which is ahead of the market. We're also on track to deliver EBITA margin of between 13% and 15% over the full year in 2023 and thereafter. As previously guided, we're seeing production cost inflation, so expect to be at the lower end of that range in the shorter term. To mitigate the inflation, we're looking at our property footprint using technology and data to drive cost and revenue efficiencies, taking further steps to digitize our production processes, and using cloud and remote editing more routinely. High-end scripted hours were up 60-133, driven by dramas such as The Outlaws in the UK, Petra in Italy, and another season of Snowpiercer in the US. We now have more scripted hours in production in the US than ever before. The number of formats sold in 3 or more countries increased to 9, including I Love My Country, Let Love Rule, and The Voice. The percentage of total revenues from streaming platforms increased by 3 percentage points to 19%, with deliveries such as Physical for Apple TV+ and Murder in Provence for BritBox. Turning to media and entertainment, total revenue grew by 4%. Within this, total advertising revenue was up 5% as expected in spite of the tough Q2 comparators. We continue to make good progress in digital. Total digital revenues were up 22%, with 20% growth in digital advertising and a 44% increase in subscription revenue. Both BritBox UK and Hub+ showing healthy growth. As previously guided, SDN's revenue was under pressure this year, down 24%, as older contracts were renewed at the new lower market price for DTT capacity. We expect this to continue into next year as further contracts are renewed. Partnership and other revenue decreased by 6%, and this was driven by lower revenue from competitions against tough comparators in 2021, and also reflects weakening UK consumer confidence. Content costs were up 11% with the return of key shows disrupted last year by COVID and increased investment in content to drive live audiences and younger, harder to reach viewers. As previously guided, we expect content costs over the full year to be GBP 1.23 billion. Variable costs were down 3%, mainly driven by lower payaways because of lower competition revenue, partly offset by an increase in commercial payaways and bandwidth costs in line with increased viewing. Infrastructure and overhead costs increased by 10%, mainly as a result of our investments. In total, we invested GBP 20 million in the half, largely in data and tech ahead of the launch of ITVX. This was partly funded by our continued cost saving program, which delivered GBP 8 million of savings in the half. We're on track to deliver a total of GBP 17 million savings over the full year across the business, and therefore we will have delivered GBP 100 million of cost savings since 2019 in line with our targets. In total, adjusted EBITA was down 16% despite underlying growth due to investment in content, data and technology in line with the strategy. As expected, total advertising revenue comparatives are tough in Q3 against the Euros last year, and we are mindful of the macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty. July is forecast to be down 9%, which is in fact better than we were expecting, and August is forecast to be down 18% in line with our expectations at the start of the year. Both months are better than the comparable period in 2019 pre-COVID. It's too early to give a detailed forecast for September, but for the nine months to the end of September, year-on-year TAR growth is expected to be broadly flat. Compared to 2019, the nine months are anticipated to be up around 8%. Looking at TAR in a little more detail, the categories with the largest year-over-year movements are as expected. Airlines and travel are up 117% following travel restrictions last year. Cars and car dealers are down as a result of supply chain issues, and governments and charities are down off the back of COVID-related spend last year. Overall, as you can see, H1 is up 5% year-over-year. E-commerce companies, excluding gambling, decreased 12% in the period. Within this category, the largest decline was from food delivery brands who spent heavily in 2021, in Q1 to take advantage of the lockdown and in Q2 during the Euros. In addition, we've also seen a significant reduction in spend by energy comparison websites for obvious reasons. This was partly offset by growth in online travel brands. Onto the M&A KPIs. We've already covered digital revenues. In terms of streaming, viewing on our own services and Amazon was up 21% with a strong schedule of drama, entertainment, and sport, and the huge success of Love Island, which is having its biggest ever series on ITV Hub. This was offset by lower viewing on other streaming services, such as Sky and Virgin Media, where we've taken the strategic decision to reduce the availability of pre-transmission drama drops and box sets where we can't serve and monetize dynamic advertising. In total, streaming hours were up 6%. Monthly active users were flat at 9.7 million against the tough comparatives of Oprah with Meghan and Harry and the Euros last year. Total UK subscriptions were up 16% compared to the 31st of December, ahead of our plan and driven by a strong slate of originals. This includes 778,000 BritBox UK subscribers. Over the full year, we expect there may be some short-term disruption to subscriptions as we transition into ITVX. Turning to broadcast, we've continued to deliver those large audiences which are so valuable to advertisers. With 94% of the top 1,000 commercial programs up one percentage point. We've also grown our share of commercial viewing up marginally to 33.7%. BritBox International continues to see strong growth in its subscriber base and is ahead of plan with 2.7 million subscribers, up from 2.4 million in December. This is against a very competitive backdrop, with other streaming services seeing a decline in subs. BritBox is now available in eight countries, most recently successfully launched in the Nordics. We see an increasing opportunity for BritBox International as a complementary niche product alongside the global streaming giants. By 2030, we expect to have attracted 10-12 million subscribers for BritBox internationally outside of the UK. Turning to adjusted and statutory results. Adjusted EBITA decreased by 3% to GBP 318 million. Adjusted financing costs were down GBP 7 million, largely due to higher returns on gilts and deposits. Over the full year, we continue to expect financing costs to be around GBP 36 million. Our adjusted tax rate was 19%, and over the full year, we expect the tax rate to remain around the same level. In the medium term, our adjusted tax rate will move to around 25% in line with increases in UK corporation tax. Adjusted EPS increased by 2% to 6 pence due to lower financing costs and is marginally behind EPS in 2019 of 6.2 pence. Statutory EPS rose to 4.8 pence from 2.4 pence, reflecting significantly lower exceptional items in the period with the final payment for Talpa having been made last year. There were GBP 31 million of exceptional items in the half, which largely relate to digital transformation costs and our move to White City, both of which will drive a permanent ongoing reduction in our cost base. Over the full year, we expect exceptional costs to be around GBP 60 million. Looking at the balance sheet, our cash conversion was up 81%. We expect to maintain profit to cash conversion at around 80% over the medium term. Our net debt at the end of the period was GBP 615 million. Net debt to adjusted EBITDA is 0.7x. Our covenant leverage is 0.6 times, and we have total liquidity of over GBP 1.35 billion. The accounting surplus of our pension scheme is GBP 352 million, compared to a GBP 8 million deficit at the end of 2021. In June, we agreed the triennial actuarial valuation of GBP 252 million net deficit as at December 31, 2019, which is almost halved from GBP 489 million at January 1, 2017. In addition, we extended and amended the SDN Pension Funding Partnership. We've made a one-off payment this year of GBP 80 million relating to the SDN partnership, but we will see total funding contributions coming down significantly over the next few years. Here's a reminder of our approach to capital allocation. Our first priority is investing in the business in line with our strategic priorities to create shareholder value. Second, we'll continue to manage our balance sheet consistent with our commitment to investment-grade metrics over the medium term. Third, we want to sustain a regular dividend which will grow over time. We will continue to consider value-creating M&A opportunities against strict financial and strategic criteria as we have with the acquisition of Plimsoll. Finally, any surplus capital will be returned to shareholders. This year, we have a number of draws on our cash, the dividend, pension contributions, including both the one-off payment relating to the SDN partnership and regular contributions, and the acquisition of Plimsoll. In addition, the 2022 EUR 335 million bond matures in September this year. We'll redeem it using available cash in order to reduce gross cash and gross debt, which will improve the efficiency of the balance sheet and strengthen our credit metrics. Our full year planning assumptions are based on our current best view and are unchanged. Lastly, a quick word on inflation. Given the nature of our cost base, I don't expect a material increase in costs this year. For 2023, we'll look to mitigate inflationary pressures as much as we can. Now back to Carolyn. Thanks, Chris. We are very focused on digital acceleration and clear that our vision is to be a leader in UK streaming and an expanding global force in content. As you know, we've evolved our three strategic pillars to reflect this. Expanding studios globally and growing revenues faster than the market. Supercharging streaming with a strong digital-first content strategy and user experience, resulting in a compelling free consumer proposition. Third, optimizing broadcast by continuing to attract unrivaled mass simultaneous audiences. Before I talk about what we are focused on in each of these pillars, I wanna start with digital transformation, as this is a critical enabler of all the elements of our strategy. We're digitally transforming both our internal ways of working and what we do for our viewers and customers. This includes the ways in which we use data, our central services systems, our content supply, and rights management processes, for example. M&E is driving our viewer-led digital acceleration with the launch of ITVX, while Planet V puts us in a strong position to capitalize on data-driven growth for our advertising customers. We are also developing our linear addressable capabilities, which we will deliver through the Planet V platform. In addition, the studio's innovation hub is streamlining the way our production teams store and share information on a day-to-day basis, as well as embedding innovative ways of working, such as cloud-based editing, virtual sets to help us deliver our programs faster and more cost efficiently. Returning to our strategic pillars and taking each in turn. First, studios. We have made really significant progress in growing ITV Studios globally, and we're continuing to build from a position of strength. We are laser-focused on our strategic priorities and have set out clear measures of success for our studios business by 2026, which are, first, growing our scripted business to 400 hours, second, growing our global formats business with 20 formats sold in three or more countries, and third, further diversifying our customer base with 25% of total revenues coming from streamers. These ambitions will drive revenue growth of at least 5% per annum on average, and we expect the studios business to deliver a 13%-15% margin range from 2023. Our strategy is already delivering strong results. As you can see on this chart, ITV Studios revenue has delivered consistent growth to date, growing at 6% CAGR between 2015 and 2022, and the margin will be at the 13%-15% range in 2023. The resilience of our studios business stems from being scaled, diversified, and global. As you know, we are the number one commercial producer in the UK, one of the largest producers in Europe, and one of the largest independent producers in the US. We have over 60 labels now across 13 countries, and we are a top three producer in the majority of the countries in which we operate. Now, as you can see on the following charts, we're not reliant on any one customer or type of customer. Excluding M&E, no customer represents more than 5% of studios revenue, and we are increasingly diversified by customer type. ITV Studios generated close to 60% of its total revenues internationally. In terms of genre, scripted revenues now account for nearly 30% of total revenue, and this will continue to grow. Now let's turn to our shows. They are the foundation, of course, on which everything else in studios is built. We have a strong global scripted slate from Noughts + Crosses in the UK to Ten Year Old Tom in the USA and Baby Fever from our international division. We also have a growing list of global unscripted formats, such as Love Island, Let Love Rule, I'm a Celebrity, which are being produced in multiple countries. We continue to attract and retain leading talent, most recently with the acquisition of Plimsoll Productions, the largest independent producer of natural history programs in the world. Plimsoll are behind high-value productions, such as Giant World for Apple+, Hostile Planet for Disney, and the upcoming A Year on Planet Earth for ITV, Tencent in China, Fox Nation in the US, and ARD in Germany. With Plimsoll Productions, we can capitalize on the growing demand for natural history and factual programming and further strengthen our relationship with streamers while leveraging our unique integrated model to increase viewing across our linear and ITVX platforms. Earlier this month, we announced that the very highly regarded drama producer and TV exec, Ben Stephenson, previously head of TV at Bad Robot Productions, will join ITV Studios to set up a new transatlantic drama label. We're also seeing an impressive slate of new commissions coming from our recent talent deals, such as Night in Paradise from Windlight Pictures for StarzPlay and Nolly from Quay Street Productions for ITV. Now, Chris talked you through our KPIs. We remain on track to achieve the KPIs that we've set out by 2026, and we are confident in our growth trajectory over the next five years. Let's now turn to the other two strategic pillars. As you know, our M&E strategy is to supercharge streaming and optimize our broadcast business, driving digital viewing and revenues while continuing to deliver mass audiences, which are so valuable to advertisers. With the launch of ITVX, we have set ourselves clear targets over the next five years to deliver at least GBP 750 million of digital revenue. We are confident about achieving this. We will do that by bringing more viewers to our service, doubling our monthly active users to 20 million, enticing those viewers to spend more time on our platform, doubling our total streaming consumption to 2 billion hours. With a compelling premium tier, we will double our total UK subscriptions to 2.5 million. ITVX is, as you know, a free streaming service funded by advertising. It will supercharge our streaming proposition and represents a significant step change from ITV Hub. ITV Hub, which will disappear as a brand, was predominantly a legacy catch-up service with less than 2,000 hours of content prior to 2021. By the time ITVX launches, we will have at least 15,000 hours of streaming content available, and this includes 9,000 hours for free to viewers, with a premium tier offering an additional 6,000 hours of content. All in all, 15,000 hours without ads. For all viewers accessing ITVX for free, there will be weekly exclusive premiere drops, the dramas on our linear channels will be made available in full on ITVX as soon as the first episode has aired. We will have the UK's largest free film library and hundreds of hours of bingeable acquired box sets. There will also be 20 new free always-on FAST channels that are built around different content themes, and of course, all our linear channels are available on ITVX. It will have data at its core, harnessing the power of data and analytics to help viewers find their favorite shows. We'll be moving from what was a legacy catch-up service with limited capabilities to a fresh new platform with a huge amount of new content dynamically on track to be in over 90% of streaming households at launch. Our progress is underpinned by the evolution of our data capabilities, which ensures that we can target harder-to-reach viewers, allow continuous testing, and deeply understand the viewer journey, which is of course for the benefit of customers. ITVX will fulfill advertisers' appetites for both targeted advertising using our very extensive first-party data, which is one of the top three largest data sets in the UK, and for mass simultaneous reach through our linear channels. This is a powerful combination which has been welcomed by advertisers. ITVX responds to both viewer needs and to advertisers' needs, and it creates value. ITVX will enable us to increase reach and significantly increase our inventory. With Planet V, we will use our scale data capabilities and first-party data to sell targeted solutions and higher-value data-driven inventory. All of this leaves us confident about being able to double our digital revenues to at least GBP 750 million without diminishing our strong position in linear advertising. Why are we confident about this? We're confident we can do this because of ITV's significant competitive strengths. First, we will be able to offer our advertising clients the best of both worlds, enabling them to grow their brand through the unparalleled mass simultaneous audiences we generate while extending this with incremental reach and a targeted offering on ITVX. Second, our broad range of content, driving live appointment to view and streaming viewing, must-see dramas, shiny floor entertainment, live sport, exclusive content. Our content is not only very popular, but will also be the right content for our target audiences, all powered by significant content investment over the next five years. ITVX will be a fantastic platform for viewers and advertisers, which we will continually evolve. We have an incredibly experienced team in commercial who have a very strong track record. With the launch of ITVX and the continuous development of innovation in Planet V, we believe we are very well-positioned. This has been recognized in conversations with many of our long-standing advertising clients. Now, as you also all know, ITV is an advertising-led integrated producer broadcaster. Recent developments, such as streamers introducing an advertising tier and moving production in-house, further reinforces actually our confidence in the ITV strategy. Global streamers are entering the advertising market. There are lots of unknowns around their proposition, but what we do know is that while they're introducing ad-like tiers, they will remain subscription-led. As you would expect, we have gathered external agency and advertiser views to complement our own, and we see the risk associated with streamers entering the ad market as relatively low. Their ad inventory will not have the scale of ITVX. They remain subscription-led, as I said, and therefore audiences will be comparatively small, and their ad load will be lower than BVOD by a long margin, as it is ad light, not a free proposition. As I've just said, ITV will be able to offer our advertising clients something no streamer will be able to, and our competitive strength gives us real advantage. In addition, our analysis suggests that their proposition will not take material amounts of money from linear TV, and instead will drive the existing trend of money being drawn into the TV market away from some traditional media, as advertisers are increasingly consolidating their spend, fewer, more effective advertising mediums and partners. I'd also add that in a tightening economy, having a free ad-led proposition is beneficial. Secondly, Planet V. It's now an established programmatic advertising platform, the second-largest in the UK, and that positions us strongly in the ad market. Finally, we're really pleased to see both in the recent white paper and in the Queen's Speech, that the government has set out their intention to reform the legal and regulatory framework and to update the Communications Act of 2003 to ensure that PSBs, including ITV, have prominence, inclusion, and fair value for both live and on-demand content on all the major connected platforms where audiences expect to find it. Therefore, we believe we're in a strong position and firmly on track to deliver the ambitions we set out by 2026. Growing our digital revenues will be a key measure of success, and I wanted to provide you with more detail on how it is made up and will grow. In 2021, our digital revenue amounted to GBP 347 million, which comprises GBP 293 million of digital advertising revenue, which includes ad revenues from Hub, digital sponsorship, linear addressable advertising, and YouTube. GBP 42 million of subscription revenue and GBP 12 million other revenue, which is largely made up of revenues from ITV Win and third-party distribution partners. To deliver GBP 750 million, we would expect to see CAGR growth in the mid-teens for digital advertising as we increase our share of the broadcast digital advertising market to be more in line with our share of the linear market. In the mid-twenties for subscription revenues and in the mid-single digits for other revenues. Our digital revenue target represents a minimum threshold, as we have said, and we are confident in delivering more. We have set out some sensitivity analysis here on this chart, which demonstrates that if we delivered high-teens CAGR for digital advertising, we would grow our digital revenues to GBP 850 million by 2026. As you know, targeted inventory is much more valuable to advertisers, and we can drive further value from growth in audience volume and reach, expansion of the streaming advertising market, further innovations in ad products, our advanced data capabilities, increasing dwell time and informing content decisions, driving more non-TV advertisers to our platforms and CPM inflation. I'd also like to go into a little bit more detail on what these sensitivities mean for net ITVX investment and associated returns. There is a slide in the appendix, which is a reminder of our investment profile, which will be offset by growing incremental revenues from 2023. As we said previously, the incremental revenues of ITVX will cover incremental costs by 2026, as we deliver around GBP 750 million of digital revenues. Net investment from 2022 to 2026 will be around GBP 350 million. That equates to less than 10% of our total content spend over that period. If we were to achieve higher digital revenues by 2026, the inflection point when revenue covers the cost comes in 2025 or even 2024, and net investment is significantly lower. Beyond 2026, we expect digital revenues to continue to grow strongly off a scaled base, therefore delivering strong operational gearing and a highly attractive return on investment. In addition to our relentless focus on delivery, ITV's unique integrated producer broadcaster model strongly positions the group. Our studios business is able to take advantage of a sustainable base of core commissions, with ITV serving as a promotional engine for its world-class content, and in addition, and very importantly, it helps attract industry-leading talent. It benefits M&E through access to world-class content and multiple monetization opportunities, including bringing brands into programs, creating more integrated advertising opportunities. While studios and M&E transact at arm's length, the IPB model also provides some mitigation against content price inflation. This provides ITV with a unique competitive advantage in both broadcasting and content production, delivering strategic and financial benefits, and ultimately, creating value for ITV shareholders. In summary, with our integrated producer broadcaster model, strong growth from our scaled and diversified global studios business, alongside the launch of ITVX in Q4, and continued strength in delivering valuable mass audiences, ITV is well-positioned to deliver phase two of the more-than-TV strategy. In terms of short-term advertising outlook, we are very mindful of the U.K. macroeconomic factors and geopolitical uncertainty and tough Q3 TAR comparators. However, to date, we have not seen a material impact, and we expect TAR to be broadly flat for the nine months to the end of September compared to the same period in 2021. Q4 TAR will benefit from the FIFA World Cup. Thank you very much for your time, and now we're very happy to take your questions. Details of how to ask a question via the conference call facility is in our announcement this morning. One moment. We're waiting for the first question, Pippa? Yeah. Hi there, it's Omar from Morgan Stanley. I'm gonna kick off, if I may, with a couple of questions on ITVX. First of all, on the marketing budget that you're planning to invest ahead and around the launch, can you just kinda talk about how you're planning to kinda size the marketing campaign? How you're planning to drive viewers to the and you know, how you're gonna promote the content perhaps on the linear channels. Then secondly, just wanna clarify what you're sort of saying and thinking about advertising on Netflix. Are you saying that Netflix advertising, an advertising tier on the Netflix platform won't be incremental overall to online advertising or sort of TV advertising revenue in the UK? Just kinda wanna clarify what you're thinking there. Essentially, you know, do you think that. Do you assume that that's gonna be a competitive product or not really for the launch of ITVX. Then finally, on slide 51, you talked about the total net investment in ITVX. Just to clarify, I mean, I suppose most people would look at the total investment in ITVX to include the shared content costs. You know, what would you say is the net investment when you include that as well? Thanks. Okay. Thanks, Omar. Just on the marketing budget, we have increased the marketing budget, and that's all within our numbers per year for obvious reasons, because of ITVX. The way we would look at this is that we will make sure everyone knows that ITVX has launched, but we don't see Q4, the launch. There's no particular day. It will be a build-up over a period of time, and it will be continuous. We will want a continuous drip of communication all the way through, because we've got these weekly drops, and we want people to come in and come in not only for those weekly drops. One of our key objectives is dwell time, and we want people to stay, to browse, to stay. With 9,000 hours of content, you can do that 'cause there's something for everybody in that 9,000 hours. Whereas in the past, we had 1,000-2,000 hours on Hub, which just didn't allow people to browse, and that's why it wasn't a destination as ITVX is. It was just a catch-up service. This is much more. We have to communicate some key brand messages about this being a destination, about it being kind of a, you know, modern, having some acquisitional content. There will be some American content, some quite young content, some comedy, which we haven't been able to do in the past. There is a real difference in ITVX that we're gonna have to communicate. That's a long way of saying that's how we will be driving viewers. There will be a combination, I think of, obviously we'll be using ITV, because when you look at that 23 million mainstream audience, which we've identified and we've talked to you about before, that 23 million are people who view ITV, but there's an element of them that just don't view it regularly. We want to communicate that with those infrequent ITV viewers, and ITV is a good platform to do that, as well as capturing another proportion of those mainstream. We will also do highly targeted advertising to people because the beauty I think of ITVX, and as you know, we're building Hub into ITVX over the months. At the moment we've got 6,500 hours and improved functionality already on Hub, and we have data on Hub. We're gleaning a huge amount of information about what people like on Hub. We will use that to target content to them that we know they will like. I'm not gonna give you a number on marketing specifically 'cause at the moment that's really about next year. There will be a launch campaign, but it won't be quite as you'd predict it to be in terms of a great big bang above the line. I mean, you won't fail to notice it, but it's not gonna be a traditional launch campaign in that respect. I hope that's okay on marketing, but let me know if it's not. Netflix, I would say, that we don't know if it. You know, obviously our objective again there is that it will be incremental, so that they will expand the market. That is the upside, I think of Netflix coming in. Because they could expand the TV market, and they could take from digital. We don't know any of that yet because they've not been completely clear about what that proposition is. We know that Microsoft is gonna be doing the bulk of their selling. I don't know. It would be great if it was incremental, obviously, and that would be our objective. We'll be talking to advertisers about that. 'Cause they will do something that is different, very, very different to what we do. It's a very different sell. It will be interesting to see. ITVX, I think was the net investment question. Yeah. Omar, the numbers in the pack are the incremental investment and the incremental revenue associated with it, and that's how we've looked at that ITVX investment. If you recall, we did a you know very detailed bottom-up study of what content we needed to drive the incremental viewing, to drive that incremental revenue and then costed it up. That's where the investment costs come from. Now clearly, ITVX will also benefit from the linear programming budget. In terms of the investment decision itself, that was all incremental revenue and incremental cost. Okay, thanks very much. Our next question is from Thomas Singlehurst of Citi. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Cool. Thank you very much. Yeah, Tom here from Citi. I had a couple of questions on studios. The first one was just to get a sense of, in a way, how the model works and deals with inflation. I mean, obviously, there's inflation in costs, which you guys have been dealing with for some time, and probably some additional costs from COVID still working through the system. But how is it impacting the outlook for revenues? Is it, you know, is it effectively a cost plus model, so you should be able to pass on some of the inflationary pressures through to revenue? That was the first question. Then secondly, you made a very clear point of emphasizing the benefit of sort of integrated producer-broadcast model, which is well made, I mean, it's something I agree with. I suppose it doesn't appear to be recognized by the market more broadly. I was just wondering whether there's anything else you can do to show the value of the studio's business. I mean, would it be, you know, massively inconvenient for you to consider selling a minority of the business to create a reference point for like valuation or something like that? Any thoughts or comments on that, much appreciated. Thank you. Yeah, Tom, on the inflation, I mean, there is an element of the portfolio that is cost plus. You know, first thing to say is, you know, we are seeing inflation in production costs. In a way, the good news is that's driven by the unprecedented demand for content at the moment. That is driving a bit of inflation. As you'd expect, the studios team are really focused on it. There are some cost plus models which they can pass on that. Even when it's not a cost plus, they will always have a conversation with the commissioner in attempt to pass on all, or parts of the inflation. Sometimes they can do that, sometimes they can't. Then what they do if they can't is they'll look at how they might achieve the same creative output, but at a, you know, in a different way so that they can meet the commissioner's budget. They also look at efficiency and ways of working, and, you know, Carolyn McCall talked about, you know, sort of remote editing, cloud editing and so on. There's a number of levers they can pull. I think, you know, the one thing is that we have reiterated, we will be in the 13%-15% range next year, because we know we've got a great team who focus on that as one of their KPIs. Actually we've got the pipeline- We've got the to evidence that. Yeah. So. Yeah. On the IPV, I mean, I think that's, I think you're absolutely right. I really don't think we're recognized, not only for the value of the studios business, but actually for the strength and resilience and actually how much cash the broadcast business throws off, and how it's modernizing, and how we're, you know, how much progress has been made there. I think that, you know, we obviously look at a variety of options. Tom, I think I can't say anything more about that. I mean, other than to say it's absolutely the correct kind of view, and that the board talks about it and thinks about how we can recognize that value from, you know, how do we do that most effectively. That's on the radar very much for us. That's perfect. Thank you. Our next question is from Julien Roch of Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning. Well, first of all, thank you very much for breaking out digital revenue. We now can map it to your account. And having digital advertising is great progress. And also thank you for fleshing out the 2026 target. It's now very, very clear. My question is on linear analog advertising because that still is the biggest part of your business. If you had to venture a best guess for annual decline, that would be great. That's my first question. Then the second one on pension contribution. Chris said that your actuarial deficit went down. You also paid a bit this year, and the total funding contribution would come down significantly. Could you give us the funding for the next couple of years and the exit rate? That's my second question. Thank you. Go on. Yeah. Julian, on linear advertising, you know, we don't guide more than that we can see into the future. You know, the whole thesis around ITVX is based on the fact that linear audiences will continue to decline, I think much more slowly than other people, you know, many of the sort of bears would say. You know, it's very clear that linear C7, you know, consolidated weekly viewing has declined steadily at the sort of 2%-3% over the last five years and the five years before that. Actually the revenue has grown. Yeah. Yes, to date, the media inflation compensates for that. There is a scenario where, you know, NAR could be flat. I think the exciting thing about ITVX is it opens up so much more inventory for us, and that inventory is capable either of being used to extend reach in a mass reach campaign, or it can be used for targeting. In a single sale, you know, single commercial team selling both sides of the coin. Pension In 2024. It's really by 2026 onwards, it's just the amortization of the SDN scheme. Of course, we have the pleasure of starting the next triennial valuation in a couple of months' time. In 2026, how much is just the amortization of SDN? GBP 17 million. GBP 17 million. Okay, thank you very much. Okay. Our next question is from Conor O'Shea of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. It's actually Lisa Yang from Goldman. A few questions, please. I think firstly, I think you know, Carolyn, you mentioned you haven't seen any impact yet from the current macro environment. I'm just wondering what's driving the 18% decline in August? Is that just driven by particularly tough comps? Because obviously it doesn't look like, oh, it's a bit more advertisers. I'm just wondering why it's down so much. That's the first question. The second one is obviously you mentioned sort of the resilience of the ITV business and how that's changed, probably not really well recognized by the market. I'm just wondering how you're thinking about Can I just interrupt? Interrupt. Sorry. Can I interrupt a minute? Sorry. Could you just speak a bit slower because we're just struggling to hear your question. Sure. Would you start on your second question? Not the first one. Okay. No, I think the second question is more like how do you think ITV would perform in a potential. Sorry, can you hear me? Sorry, I have some issues with my mic. The second question was how do you see ITV performing in a potential. Essentially, I mean, I think you mentioned earlier the business has changed to become more resilient. Just you know wondering your thoughts around that. What could you do to potentially mitigate the impact of weaker macro, especially I think around your ITVX investments. I think we talked about GBP 45 million investment next year. I'm just wondering if the macro really deteriorates whether there's any flexibility in terms of maybe shifting a bit of that investment to again protect your bottom line. That's the second question. Thirdly, just wondering like, what do you expect the potential out of scope or impact of recent CMA review, like, I think on the sports production side to be? I'm not sure like how impactful, how meaningful that could be to any part would be appreciated and sorry for the line issues. I'm hoping I got all your questions. Do say if I haven't answered any of them, and Chris will come in. On the macro environment, what we're saying is that there was nothing that we saw so far, that we've seen so far that was away from our expectations of what we would do. The August number, we were expecting that, and we actually said that. Because it's comparing, you know, a very buoyant period last year. We've always said Q2 comps were gonna be very difficult. The Q2 decline, so it's off a very low base. To put some context. August is up, we're saying, 5% versus the equivalent in 2019. You can see it really is just driven by that comparator. That comparator is because Love Island shifted later because we had the Euros last year. Yeah. We had the benefit of Love Island in the beginning of August. Yeah. So that's August. I think. You've asked about a recession and what may and may not. I think the thing to say is that we'd be going. If we saw some kind of slowdown, and as I've said, you know, every company is going to be doing a range of scenarios looking at that because the, you know, the macro news is not brilliant in terms of cost of living and so on. We have said we haven't seen anything in the numbers yet, but I think that advertising is obviously correlated to. That we will invest and protect the strategic areas that we have to invest in because that's what we did, and that has really paid off for us, as you can see in our numbers today. I would say that we emerged from the pandemic a much stronger, more resilient business than when we entered because of the actions that we took and how we took them. I think that's something that's important. Actually, we have obviously looked back on other recessions. One of the things that comes through loud and clear is that the snapback or the bounce back for advertising, particularly for TV, is very, very strong, and COVID again demonstrated that. I mean, that's one of the reasons the comps are so tough, Q2 and Q3, is that as COVID restrictions were lifted last year, you know, the bounce back for advertising was incredibly strong. We need to always have that in mind as we're going through any kind of slowdown environment. I think you asked specifically about investments in ITVX, and the major investment in ITVX really is content. What we would say is that for us, that would be only a short-term lever. It is an obvious thing, because you don't think it's going to be damaging, but actually, in the medium to long term, it would be very damaging to be cutting content spend. Because we know that content is what not only drives viewers but keeps viewers. It retains viewers, and that's incredibly important for ITVX. If we had to, it would be a short-term lever. We did that in COVID, we deferred, we postponed. Didn't come completely out, but it was just a deferment of budget. I would say that would only be a short-term lever that we would pull. That's on recession. I think your third question was about the CMA, which I think is pretty well-publicized, that there's a sector-wide inquiry, investigation. It's about freelance rates in sport. It's as I said, across sector, involves other broadcasters as well as ITV. We are working well with the CMA at the moment. Of course, we're fully cooperating, and we have no other information on that yet. Okay. That's really helpful. Thanks so much. Thank you. Our next question is from Nizla Naizer of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Thanks. I hope you can hear me well. I have three questions. The first is on the macro conditions sort of going into the second half. Is there anything that could potentially change your view on the timing of ITVX or the investments going into it? And related to that, I mean, you've now had experience investing so far in 2022 on ITVX. Do you think the incremental content investment that you flagged for next year, which is, I believe, around GBP 160 million, is that sufficient based on the trajectory that you're hoping to gain and the experience you've had thus far? Some color there would be great. Secondly, on Q4, you have the clear advantage of screening the World Cup matches during that quarter. Have you had conversations with your advertising clients already on, you know, the potential, sort of advertising that they would want to get around, the event? Some color there would be great. Lastly, in the studio business, I mean, there's been all this talk about subscribers moving away from streaming platforms just to cut costs or rationalizing their own sort of number of subscriptions that they pay for, et cetera. Is there a risk that there would be a cooling of demand, or is that something that you factored in, or, are you still seeing such solid demand that, you know, the% growth that you're talking about, is still very likely? Some color there would be great. Thank you. Okay. Chris, if you take the first two, ITVX investment H2, incremental investment sufficient, and onto Q4. Yeah. I mean, Nizla, we fully intend to launch ITVX at, you know, in Q4, and that's not changed. As Carolyn said, you know, we will invest through the cycle. I think it's very important that we do that to grow ITV in the medium term. The hundred and sixty million, is it sufficient? I mean, from everything we've seen, as I said earlier, we went through a really detailed bottom-up view. You'll have seen that, you know, viewing on our owned and operated on Amazon, the viewing of Hub and BritBox is up 21% year-on-year, so that's still growing really strongly. And that hundred and sixty million is on top of what we're spending on linear. You've got the weight of all the linear content, including the World Cup, that will drive people to ITVX, plus the what we call the digital first, which is what the GBP 160 million is therefore to broaden out the offering on ITVX over and above what we've got on linear. Yeah, you know, we maintain the same view, really. I think just remember, you know, what's brilliant, I think, is having a one content budget, a proportion of which, as Chris says, is digital first, but it's a GBP 1.35 billion budget now across everything that we do. That gives Kevin and the commissioning team a lot of flexibility as to how to optimize that spend as and where it will make the most return. So that's a big shift which we made about 18 months ago, and it's working really well. On the World Cup, yes, very exciting. We, you know, I think viewers can't wait, so we expect that to be big. Yes, of course, Kelly and his team are talking to all, you know, advertising clients every day about the World Cup. Huge amount of interest as you can imagine. You know, we expect it to be a very strong month for ITV as a result. Lots of excitement from clients, and they've done roadshows and all sorts of other things, talking about the World Cup. Your third or fourth question, I think, was this moving away from streaming and subscriptions coming off and that highly publicized Netflix subscriptions coming off, et cetera. Just remember that we are launching ITVX. It's a free service to viewers. It is ad funded. Our business is about subscription being a premium. It's 10% of our revenue, roughly, 10%-12%. Will remain 10%-12% of our revenue going forward. BritBox is actually bucking the trend, and I think that's because it's a very niche service. It's unreplicable in any other platform or. It is particularly British content and appeals to a very specific audience. If I give you those figures, we've got over 3.6 million global subscribers for BritBox. Precisely 733,000 subscribers in the UK, which is up 45%. BritBox International is 2.4 million, which is up over 50%. You know, the aim there is to get to 10-12 million by 2030, which we think is very doable because it's launched in South Africa, it's launched in the Nordics, and it's done very well. It is a niche product. It's not a global, massive, you know, driving a particular kind of streaming service. Really, I think the really important thing to bear in mind is ITVX is free to viewers, and if you want to watch it ad-free, you can go into the premium tier and get BritBox and ad-free ITVX content and pay for that. It's only a small portion of overall. I think it de-risks us quite significantly from that. Thank you. Very helpful. Thank you. Our next question is from Richard Eary of UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Yeah. No, many thanks. Can I just ask two sort of housekeeping questions? Chris, just on Plimsoll, can you give us a feeling in terms of impact on second half? I know in the press release you talked about EBITDA, but whether you can talk about revenues and EBITDA for second half this year and full year next year, that would be great. The second thing, if you go to, let's say, the cost line item ex content in the media and entertainment business, given the puts and takes that are moving around, can you give us a full year expectation on that number? That would be great. On Plimsoll, Richard, broadly speaking, it's about GBP 35 million of revenue and GBP 5 million of EBITDA this year, that it adds to the P&L. You know, we closed the deal on the first of July, so that's half year impact. That gives you know, I think pointers of the orders of magnitude on an annual basis as well. And then the costs ex content. We think the, I think you're thinking about sort of compared to consensus at the half year. We think that's really a phasing issue. Broadly speaking, you know, we believe consensus is in the right place for the full year. That number's R590. Is that correct? I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. I said that number for basically other cost ex-content, is that GBP 59,600? Yeah. That's yeah. 59,600. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Our next question is from Sarah Simon of Berenberg. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi. I've got two m questions. First one, can you give us an idea of, you've given us streaming hours, but, can you give us an idea of total hours of ITV content consumption and how that compares to last year? The second one was, you know, you've obviously increased massively the amount of content on Hub, and year-on-year it's, I think, close to 4x, and obviously it's a big step up versus year-end. Are you happy with an 8% growth in terms of streaming hours? Because it's obviously not massive, and if you're at 7,500 hours now, you know, and you're going to nine, the increment is not that huge. If you're not gonna do a massive marketing campaign, I'm just wondering how easy it will be to deliver the kind of KPIs that you're talking about. Thanks. Second question first. It's about 6-6.5 thousand hours at the moment. It's gonna go up to 9. We haven't promoted that in any major way. We are just preparing for ITVX and just building Hub. We've not done any event marketing or above the line promotion or any of that, other than what we would normally do for main channel or ITV2. I think that we're not worried about the KPI. I mean, we are worried. We're always worried about everything, but I mean, we're not anxious about achieving the KPIs. We think we can do that. But, um- Sorry. I was just gonna say, Sarah, I think in what you may have missed, the streaming hours are up 6%, but what I said earlier was that there's that really is a game of two halves. The viewing hours on our platforms are up 20% in the half. Wow. Wow. The reason the overall streaming hours are only up 6% is that, until recently, we had a series of sort of box sets and box set drops at transmission on some of the big pay platforms, and that was viewing that we couldn't monetize because we couldn't dynamically insert those ads. It's not like it comes and then it goes, the program goes. It's gonna be on for a long time. On studios, do you feel like you're being a little conservative, you know, 16% growth in the first half, you know, over 13% margin. About what you expect from that. Is there any sort of net benefits or not to come out of that, do you think? Honestly, we, you know, I don't think it's in our interest to be conservative. That commercial PSBs take less minutes than others, who are unregulated and whether that's