Digitalbox (LSE:DBOX) — Results for the six months to June 2026

0:00 Good morning. Welcome to the DIGITALBOX PLC investor presentation. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. And I'd to hand you over to James Carter, CEO. Good morning, sir. Good morning. Thank you for coming along to the 2026 DIGITALBOX interim results. I'm joined by Jim Douglas, chief operating officer, and Richard Spillsbury, our chief financial officer. We've got a presentation that will take about thirty to forty minutes to run through, and we'll then be taking questions at the end. So I think our cameras are gonna go down now, and I will push the presentation to full screen.

0:55 Firstly, introduction to DIGITALBOX who for those who aren't fully versed in what we do, but this is the composition of the board. We're very well versed in PLC existence with experiences across EMAP PLC, future PLC, REACH PLC, Bauer Media, and including the Daily Mail within that significant list of of media operators within the public space. In a nutshell, DIGITALBOX is a pure play digital media company that focuses very much on digital delivery. And we have a strategy to create and grow products through our existing model that I'll explain later and transform properties that we acquire.

1:53 At the moment, we have 11 assets that we operate, owned operated digital brands. We started off in the market with one, which was Entertainment Daily, and have grown out into quite well defined areas, which we've labeled recently as our vertical strategy. And in a simple sense, we publish great content that attracts audiences to go and visit our websites and consume that content, And we then monetize those visits through advertising impressions, typically through programmatic solutions. So just to run through what we're gonna cover today, we've got the first section, I'll take you through really the backdrop to which we've been operating in. So the environment media environment over the first half of this year.

2:51 Richard will take you through the detail of the financial results. And the second half of the presentation is really looking to how we can expand the business, and Jim will cover the detail there, and I'll then summarize in terms of looking to the future. So first, let's look at the market backdrop we've been operating in. There's been much commentary about this, but increasingly, consumers are faced with two distinct journeys. Website direct website journeys have come under pressure over recent years, and the big tech players are increasingly trying to hold consumers within their walled gardens for longer.

3:43 And that's a result of changing technology, AI, answering consumer questions. It's a result of elevating on platform video distribution above publisher distribution of content on the platforms, and a whole raft of measures which the big tech players are using in order to steal audience share. So it's one of the big factors we have to contend with, and it's been fairly significant, these changes over the first six months of this year. Part of that battle that's taking place within big tech is being fought around who can hold or who can harness the best content on their platforms.

4:34 So in particular, Facebook and TikTok have been having an almighty battle over recent years, and there's a big battle taking place as to who can harness the best creators in order to make their platforms as sticky as possible for users. This has played out in the first six months of 2026 with a significant algorithmic change. And, fortunately or unfortunately, you can see, which is very useful for everyone looking at this chart, on April the second or third, the metadata broke as a result of them changing this algorithm, we think. But you can see in the middle of the charts where the data drops to zero, an algorithm change was put forward into the whole of Facebook and other associated platforms that really enhanced the level of amplification given to creators.

5:40 So just to explain the chart, the dark blue line is our follower follower reach that we're experiencing on one of our brands, and the light blue line is the non follower reach that we're experiencing. And as you can see, after April the second and third, whilst our follower reach was retained, the amplification delivered via non followers was crushed heavily. And in some instances, that reduced our total reach on platforms by about 75%. So significant change we had to contend with there. And just to put some further context around how that's advantaged or gave a benefit of reach to some creators. This is Georgia Blue who vlogs in the entertainment space covering shows like Love Island, etcetera.

6:40 You can see there are a total follower base on Facebook below her image to the left of the screen of 1,858, total followers on Facebook, 6,904, on Instagram. But as a result of these changes that were put through on April 2, if you look at the red box to the right, you can see how much reach she was given as an influencer or a creator, where 96% of her reach was coming from non followers and just 4% from followers. So that situation has been pushed through meta systems from April 2, and it has changed since.

7:31 But it's created quite a volatile situation where it's not necessarily working for Facebook, and we're seeing ongoing changes take place. We can see how this has worked for the biggest social brand, I think, in the world, Lab Bible. Now it's been a gradual process how Facebook and Meta have downranked unoriginal content. When I say unoriginal content, this is most likely to be content that could be produced elsewhere, user generated content. For example, a cat doing something funny. Someone being offered £50 in order to allow someone like Lab Bible, and there are other operators that have that model as well, to share that that video content.

8:25 As a result of that video content being duplicate, it's been heavily down ranked within the algorithms that are in in play amongst meta in particular. And this chart shows from twenty twenty four, the interaction per thousand followers from that period, which was running at 600 plus at its peak, and it's now down to a level of 20 or 30. So a massive, massive reduction for this particular brand, and it's something that we've seen play out across all media brands, but not to such a severe extent as you're seeing here. So let's have a quick look at our trading.

9:13 The dark blue bars are h one twenty twenty five, the light blue, h one twenty twenty six. We started off the year from an audience point of view in reasonable shape. We expected audience decline compared to the previous year. But we were on track exactly within forecast over January, February, March. However, April and May, you can see much more significant drops to the right of the chart in light blue. And overall audience for the period was down 28% for the first half of this year. Taking a look at the advertising performance, the dark blue again on the left shows our session values that we're generating in 2025 in the bars and the advertising index for The UK markets in the charts below that.

10:18 Two things really to point out here. One is if you could look at the the chart to the lower part, the advertising index, you can see that h one twenty twenty six, not as volatile, but it was certainly down as an average across h one twenty six compared to h one twenty five, but much more significant growth spikes in in the previous year. However, if you look at our advertising performance in terms of session values, we've managed to grow the average session value that we're generating within DIGITALBOX by 20%. So it's a fairly strong advertising performance in a, what I would call, really, a stable market across h one twenty six, but certainly not in growth.

11:11 So let's see how that shapes up in terms of revenue. First quarter of this year, again, dark blue is 2025, light blue, 2026. Revenue for the first quarter of the year was up, and we had a pretty strong performance. And as you can see, the meta changes really impacted our revenue generation from April onwards where it's visibly down. And overall, we finished the half year at around 6% down in revenue compared to h one twenty twenty five. So looking at where we're operating, the most recent data for the advertising markets, and this is the global advertising markets for both all media and digital media, all media in light blue, digital media in dark blue, you can see that our primary markets being The UK and US for audience are in pretty rude health, really, in in the sense that advertising spend per head is running at $735 in The UK and $915 in The US. So there's some pretty powerful digital ad markets to be operating in, which is a positive.

12:39 In terms of changes around short form video content that we have seen over recent times, in 2023, the average person in The UK was consuming around forty two minutes per day of short form video content. And that's grown by over 50% to sixty two minutes per day in 2026. So a big change in behavior in terms of short form video. And also looking more deeply into the advertising market, there's been a big change in how advertising dollars are spent. Increasingly, the branded content and branded content solutions market is growing ahead of the regular digital market.

13:34 This comes in two forms. Really, it comes in creator content being distributed and branded content being produced by websites and creative solutions to deliver for clients. The UK spend in billions here is around, in 2025, around 3,500,000,000 actual, and it's forecast to grow to about 5,800,000,000 by the end of twenty twenty eight. So what we're seeing is growth ahead of the regular digital ad markets through through this route to advertising. A big issue for both tech companies and publishers to contend with over recent times has been the massive growth in in content volume on the Internet.

14:30 So it's grown by 2.4 times since 2023 to 2026. Now that comes with that comes a number of challenges, but one of them is obviously it's increasingly important to get stand out as a publisher in order to get your content to punch through. It's also a challenge for tech companies as they look to sift through and value the best content in order to push to their consumers on their platforms. And along with that comes a big trust issue. And trust in content, whether it's actually true or not, is, we believe, becoming an increasingly important factor within consumer publishing.

15:21 Here's an example. And I won't say it's not a trusted brand. Google, I must say, probably is a trusted brand by most consumers. However, this on the left is from their Discover feed about a week ago when I was scrolling through Google, and it announced Coventry City fires manager Frank Lampard. And I thought, well, that's odd. I haven't heard that anywhere. And it does come with a little byline saying generated AI, which can make mistakes. However, a few searches later, and I couldn't find anything on Coventry Live, there was nothing on the BBC, nothing on the Telegraph, nothing on any websites with any credibility.

16:09 And so I sought further information. I found one page by some lone blogger on Facebook who tended to be putting out all kinds of random football information. And clearly, here, they've influenced the algorithm within Google by putting out the announcement, the official announcement that is completely unofficial and untrue, which has skewed the Google algorithm. Increasing occurrences of things like this is resulting in increasingly low levels of trust in unofficial sources. And here's another example that we looked at. We're probably all familiar with AI produced examples of a tsunami bowling down 5th Avenue in New York, cars being tossed either side of the road, etcetera.

17:07 But when the Nepal tragic floods happened a few weeks ago, you can see a real difference as this news was coming through in how first party creator or first party witness content was given less watch time due to the fact quite simple fact that it was not to be trusted compared to the Daily Mail here, where you can see the numbers scaled much more quickly at about three times the rate. And that will be self fulfilling. Trusted brands that get more views will rise to the top of the algorithm. Untrusted sources that will be questioned will fall lower down.

17:59 So key market trends for h one twenty twenty six, platforms are directing less traffic to publishers. Meta has been giving creators greater amplification, but it seems uncertain whether that's playing out successfully. Programmatic advertising inventory values for us have been really positive, but for the market have been relatively stable. UK and US markets continue to lead in terms of audience value and volumes for DIGITALBOX. There's growing consumption of short form video, which is an area we've increasingly started to move into. And there's a growth that is outpacing the market in bespoke commercial solutions.

18:50 And underlining all of that, originality is key. So sharing secondhand content is no longer a route forward for businesses like Lab Bible and perhaps Jungle Creations that formed an engine really distributing content into social channels. And verification and trust is gonna become an increasingly important factor as we move forwards from this point. So over to Richard to dig into the financial performance of the business. Thank you, James, and good morning, everyone. As you're aware, since we last updated you on our trading performance, many digital publishers reported significant declines in financial performance due to algorithm changes and an uncertain macroeconomic environment.

19:47 We have not been immune to these challenges. And while overall performance is disappointing, we can see opportunities for organic growth from our existing portfolio and extensions to our portfolio, which we will explain to you. We are also in a strong position to take advantage of appropriate acquisitive opportunities, which we proactively consider. On to our income statement. Overall, turnover fell 7%, which reflects the algorithm changes widely reported in the market. Despite this, gross profit rose three percentage points. Contribution before head office costs fell from NOK713000 to NOK513000.

20:38 Excluding central overhead costs, the contribution margin was 30%, down from 39% in the prior period. Restructuring at the end of the reporting period addressed this reduction in margin and led to a one off charge of GBP 59,000. These cost reduction measures are expected to benefit the second half of the year. Here, I present information about our underlying performance, which is represented by adjusted EBITDA, which shows a loss of GBP43000 compared to an adjusted EBITDA in H1 twenty twenty five of GBP129000 after 129,000 after new product development costs, a variance of GBP 175,000.

21:33 In H1 twenty twenty five, we incurred GBP 160,000 worth of new product development, and we have not reported this new product development separately in 2026. In 2025, 32% of our full year adjusted EBITDA before new product development arose in h one. Adjusted EBITDA capsulates the underlying profitability of the group, giving you greater visibility of trading once we have taken into account the following factors. First, value measurement changes such as depreciation, amortization, impairment and share based payments.

22:19 And secondly, one off project costs for restructuring. In addition to the standard value measurement changes like depreciation and amortization, the group recognized an impairment charge on intangible assets as a result of a review of the value and use of assets given the change in market conditions, and that charge was £634,000. Together with other changes in management and costs in relation to one off projects of GBP59000, the group made an operating loss of GBP983000 compared to an operating loss of GBP 217,000 in H1 twenty twenty five.

23:12 We turn now to our segmental revenue. We continue to report our segmental analysis with three segments, namely entertainment, humor and youth. You can see that entertainment has declined most, and it was only just our largest segment. Both Humor and Youth have both shown double digit growth. Quarterly revenue changes demonstrate that the trading environment is variable, and our agility and ability to adapt to changes remains key to our business model and management style. Turning to our operating cash flows. Next slide.

24:00 Cash generation remains strong, and we see increased net operating inflows in H1 twenty twenty six. As we have done in previous years, we report the aggregate cash flows over the last two years to better understand underlying cash conversion, and I have done this again to be consistent. And this shows an aggregate cash conversion of 65%, reflecting our continued strong track record in cash collections in the context of continued investment in growth and other costs to underpin shareholder value. On this slide, we show cash utilization.

24:46 It summarizes how we have managed our cash reserves, which were NOK1.8 million at the start of the year and rose to NOK2 million at the 06/30/2025. We have used cash generation to restructure the business to improve contribution margins going forward, invest in growth acquisitions such as Film Chunky, and we have incurred minimum levels of tangible fixed asset purchases. We continue to hold significant cash reserves at the half year and are mindful of the need for robust working capital management so we can continue to invest in growth both acquisitively and organically. We continue to review receivable interest rates regularly to obtain competitive rates.

25:38 While a significant proportion of our revenues are around in US dollars, we convert US dollar funds to sterling every quarter to manage foreign currency exchange risk. And we use forward exchange contracts to reduce the impact of any foreign exchange rate volatility on the business. Onto our financial position. Our financial position continues to be strong, which puts us in a good position to exploit market opportunities for growth. Our largest asset category are the intangible assets, mainly arising on consolidation accounting of acquisitions. As mentioned, this value has been remeasured in line with international accounting standards.

26:30 We are not a capital intensive business, and that is seen in our low tangible fixed assets. Our deferred tax asset represents the highly likely recovery of tax losses in future trading periods, and this relief has been available to us effectively since 2025 onwards and will continue to benefit our effective rate of tax going forward. Our current net assets have increased and are healthy. This strong financial position has given us the opportunity to continue invest in shareholder value organically and acquisitively. Your Board will continue to focus on maximizing value through the expansion of the current model. We will continue to develop its business through launching new products and remain alive to acquisition and merger opportunities when they maximize shareholder value.

27:28 Okay. Thank you, Richard. So moving forward, so let's have a look at how we're gonna expand the business. We have expanded it, obviously, over the years since we've been listed, more than doubled its size and a lot more than that in terms of the number of brands. But we also recognize we need to go faster and continue to grow. So our mission is to establish an entertainment powerhouse through the diversification and expansion of our current model. There are five key initiatives, really, that we are gonna focus on as we move forwards from here.

28:14 So the current model remains robust in certain areas, but it needs other aspects applying to it. So scaling of our original video output is in place. As growth in consumer attention for short form video continues, we're gonna be pushing out more content there to satisfy audiences on the platforms. We need to grow our social footprints. We're up to over 30,000,000 followers within Meta in particular, but we need to continue to grow on platforms like TikTok. We also have an ambition to start to extract some value from the faster growing segment of the digital ad market, which is branded content solutions, and that will come through direct sales solutions.

29:15 In addition, the harnessing of AI efficiencies will become increasingly important to the business as we move forwards, helping us move to higher margins than we'd otherwise be able to deliver without these tools. And leverage of the strength of our brands is gonna be key. I mentioned earlier about trust. Being a trusted brand and a recognized brand is gonna help publishers get cut through with audiences as they move forwards. And how you use those will be dependent upon the publisher, but we think we have a real opportunity certainly to harness the strength of those brands alongside some creator activities.

30:06 So some of you may have read in the r and s that went out earlier that we have ambitions to build a creator network. And at the moment, we have over 200 creators in total signed up to work with DIGITALBOX, and it's on a revenue sharing model. So effectively, by offering creators the chance to work under the entertainment umbrella, as an example, with its two and a half million followers, affords them an opportunity to get much greater reach than they would have otherwise done, as we saw earlier from the example of Georgia Blue, who was writing about Love Island, etcetera, with her 2,000 followers.

30:52 She should get much more from what she produces if she was to publish through a channel with two and a half million followers. So we have this in play. We've recruited a number across what we're calling the entertainment network, which is around TV, entertainment daily, TV guide, and associated products in that area. And we also have a large number of students who are very keen to publish video content within the TikTok world in the youth space. So that, we hope to result in over 500 original pieces of video content going out within the next month or so. Moving towards a branded content cell, we're gonna have multifaceted solutions.

31:44 That's for sure. So article content will become increasingly important to brands as they try to increase their indexing levels within the large language models. Video content, again, increasingly important, and social solutions. We've got a full range of tools now to offer, and we aim to recruit a direct sales team and start to deliver branded content solutions moving forwards. Programmatic is becoming continually important to or becoming more important in the sense that it will diversify. At the moment, the majority of our programmatic revenues are coming from on from website delivery.

32:31 But increasingly, it will spread to on platform, which it has done over the last year or two. But on platform monetization of video as well as we're publishing more content on the platforms. So three levels, really, of new activities, creator network, branded content, and programmatic, which will be feeding off the creator output, will result in us diversifying our revenue sources increasingly from historically what has been 80% or 90% of our income from website activities towards platform activities as well, but increasingly important for us to spread our efforts and output across both areas of platforms and websites.

33:19 So Jim will take you through how we're gonna execute moving forwards. Thanks, James. Yes. So firstly, in terms of portfolio execution, so whether we're looking at traditional article content or increasingly video output, there are sort of key strengths that help DIGITALBOX generate revenue and really underpin the way we operate creatively. So on this slide here, the dark blue elements are the stages or factors in the news content cycle, and the light blue are the skills or attributes that we believe we are able to bring to bear at the relevant stage. And so at the top, number one, there's a news event. So the new Strictly Come Dancing hosts debut on the show, or Jack Loudoun's rumored to have been chosen as the new James Bond, or Ed Sheeran's tour goes into meltdown.

34:12 And and at that stage, we need to decide the significance of that moment for our audience. And that's where we need to deploy our data that we've used from prior story performance. But crucially, it's the subject expertise of our editorial teams who are immersed in this world to instantly determine whether there's gonna be something here that our audience will engage with. Obviously, if there is, everyone else is probably trying to cover the same story, so we need an angle to on our reporting and often multiple angles to enable us to revisit the same key story. So that's where subject expertise meets creativity, and they combine to offer our audiences something fresh. So we've got our story. We've got our angle. Then it's really about execution, whether that's a written article or a video or an engagement post.

35:03 And that's where creativity combines with platform skills. So because our creative teams are posting their material themselves rather than passing it off to a disconnected team. They're fully immersed in what actually works on each platform. When the content gets distributed and surfaced for users, it benefits from brand recognition, as James mentioned earlier. So even in a fraction of a second when the user's scrolling through their feed, that tiny logo that travels with the content rings a subconscious bell of familiarity, for the user. So, oh, I had a good experience the last time I engaged with content from the tab or the book or TV guide. The last time they spoke to me, I had a good experience. What have they got for me this time? And that recognition, that moment is enough for them to pause and begin to engage with the content.

35:54 That engagement that we generate, whether it's by longer comments or more shares or more dwell time, our content further amplification beyond our follower basis. And that's because the algorithms know that there's a good chance that our content will outperform something else that they could surface for any given user. And, obviously, the engagement with our content contributes to our on-site performance and our monetization there too. And, of course, while this process is going on, we're building all of this data is building and contributing further to our audience insight. So every stage of the process, every stage of this cycle, we're benefiting from subject expertise, creativity, platform skills, brand recognition, and audience insights to make our content more valuable.

36:46 Moving on to the next slide. As we James has mentioned, we have a creator network initiative, and that it's about significantly scaling our output. We have two key strands. And the first here is TAB's student creator network. So as you can see on the next slide, for anyone who may not be familiar with the brand, one of the strengths of the TAB is its existing network of student journalists at universities across the country. And they are mentored by the main HQ team in London, and they contribute hyper local news articles for the site. So we're shifting that from news articles into being a squarely video first proposition. So this original content is a mixture of on the ground reporting, Fox pops, personal opinion, and news reaction.

37:37 Obviously, the students have been away for the summer recently. But even during that period, they delivered coverage of a major fraud investigation at Manchester, the Jason R Day tragedy, uni guides, and, of course, they're now producing a whole raft of guides for freshers. We have more than 50 local TikTok and Instagram accounts to distribute this content, giving us great local relevance and really strong aggregated reach. So there's almost half a million followers just in the local network, and we have the option to promote videos with national relevance on the brand's main pages. For q four, we're ramping up across the universities, and we're pacing to be delivering our target of more than 300 videos per month, which is broadly in line with volume of flat articles that those teams used to produce.

38:25 So quite a lot of good progress there. Next, we have the entertainment content creator network. So this is the other live strand of the plan. So on the next slide, you can see what we're trying to do here is plug into the enormous appetite for screen based entertainment that has typically been been the lifeblood of Entertainment Daily, TV Guide, and our soap sites. So as James mentioned, we're onboarding a stable of creators with as much enthusiasm and passion as our existing team. And, crucially, by giving them access to our channels, we're giving them the opportunity to put their content in front of the group's 10,000,000 followers and beyond. So they're delivering show reactions, speculation, explainers, and commentary alongside our current team. So we think this combination of their authentic passion about the shows they love with our brand credibility and reach is a really powerful formula.

39:23 So we're on track to have 30 creators producing for us during q four, which should be delivering something around 20,000,000 video views per month. So that's the content side of the creator network. So now, as James mentioned, we also want to increase what we're doing in terms of direct sales. At the moment, the lion's share of our advertising revenue is programmatic, and we focus here because of the high margin profile. But we've been feel fielding an increasing number of inbound requests from clients who want to access our brand's credibility and the team's creativity. So we've already delivered campaigns, as you can see here, for Wrigley's, Adobe, and many more Because we and in delivering those campaigns, we've been building our reputation among those brands and the agencies that buy for them.

40:12 And we think the creator network that we're expanding really unlocks a significant opportunity for direct sales because what clients increasingly want is the authenticity they get from branded video fronted by creators, but they want the confidence that they get when they buy campaigns through a professional media owner that they can trust. So our direct sales operation, we think, is a key mechanism to drive value from the work we're doing to upscale video. By the end of this year, we aim to have our sales team in place ready to begin delivering campaigns through all of 2027. And then lastly from me, this is a brief look at how we're experimenting with AI tools with the first stage of our new proprietary tool called SignalForge.

41:00 There's a broader road map for this product which sees it become a fuller suite of publishing tools. But in this first incarnation, it's supporting our editorial teams in the entertainment group to become even more efficient. So this view here that you see is what an editor on Entertainment Daily may see when they open the talk, which is a ranked list of potential story opportunities that Signal Forge has surfaced. And then on this next slide, we see a bit more detail of how the system fits into the editorial workflow. So if we just go to the next slide, James. Thank you. Yeah. So on the diagram here, we've got the system layer at the top and the human layer underneath. So in there's a preparatory learning phase or step zero as we've called it, where we train the system on an archive of our own stories and associated data to give it a base of knowledge.

41:54 And then when we move into live production, step one, at the top there is seek. And based on the knowledge that has been given, it sweeps multiple sources, including news sites, press releases, soon to be social feeds, podcasts, and videos to seek out story ideas. Step two is where it ranks those ideas for the editors to select, which is what you saw on the previous slide. So using their knowledge, the editors will further sift, reject the stories that they don't want, and brief the system in terms of the specific angle of story they want it to draft. SignalForge then creates a draft of the story based on its knowledge and the brief, the relevant house style, and it will then also run its own compliance checks.

42:41 And then that piece goes back to the human editor critically, back to the human editor for review, a polish of the story, edits. And once approved, it goes live in the CMS. We're not using signal forge on all story types. We're getting better results on more straightforward use reporting, but we are using it. We're seeing research time reduced by around 75% at between 66 and a 100% increase in the volume of published stories. So a really big efficiency gain for the teams there. That's it from me. Thank you very much, Jim. So briefly, let's look at the future, what the future looks like for us.

43:32 We plan to continue the expansion of the portfolio. You can see here on this chart, we've moved in 2019 in the darker blue to 11 products by 2026, and acquiring and creating into the future will continue to form part of the strategy. Expanding the outputs and distribution points for our content is also key. So 200 creators delivering over 500 pieces of content by OctoberNovember absolutely will be part of how we deliver growth for the business in terms of reach, engagement opportunities within the walled gardens.

44:25 And diversifying our revenue streams is gonna be critical as well because more diversification will create a more robust model. Open web activity has been pretty strong for us. On platform activity has been growing over recent years, but moving into direct client contracting and sales will become much more important as we go forward. So three key focuses really in terms of revenue generation as we move forwards. Looking at the global ad spend going into 2030, you can see from 2026, it's gonna move from around 900 just over 900 and I think it's 920,000,000,000 to about 1,300,000,000 by 2030.

45:26 So I know there's various views on being ad funded, but there's no question it's a growth market and there will be more money flowing through 320,000,000,000 by extra by 2030 is the forecast. So in summary, we think we've had a resilient first half performance despite the significant audience headwinds. I mean, it has there's no question it's been challenging, but I think we've contended with those challenges pretty well. The advertising strength within the business continued throughout the first half as we grew our values by 20%.

46:13 And the expansion of the business through a creator network and revenue diversification will certainly strengthen it as we move forwards. And in addition to that, we continue to have cash in the bank at around £2,000,000, and that's forecast to grow towards the year end, which leaves us ready to move and ready to focus on additive opportunities as they may come out. So we're only being very we're being we're being selective in the sense that we've only want to to execute around opportunities that were clearly gonna bring a financial benefit to the business in the short to medium term. And we'll continue to deploy a very, very focused, thorough DD model in order to ensure that.

47:07 So momentum continues to 2027 as we will grow the business into the next year. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you, guys, for updating those investors today. Could I please remind investors to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen? And for your reference, a recording of today's presentation will be available in the InvestoMe company platform shortly after the meeting has ended. Guys, as you can see, we we have received a number of questions during today's presentation. So, James, if I could just hand back to you at this point to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Yeah. I'm not sure if the first one, I'll read it out, but it says thanks for the update to investors and for always answering even the tough questions.

47:53 It might be worth informing investors that DIGITALBOX shares can now be purchased via trading two twelve without broker fees. I'm not sure if that's an advert for trading two twelve or what, but there you are. It doesn't really deserve an answer to that one, but it's a bit of information. I think the the next question really, Richard, is for you. How should we think about the long term margin profile of the business once the current audience disruption has stabilized and the cost reductions are fully reflected? I'll I'll link this to the second question about margin as well. So the cost reduction exercise, unfortunately, we had to deal with towards the end of h two, is intended to get us back to the normalized level of contribution margins that we've historically seen.

48:55 The the the the the analysis shown in one of the questions is looking at the full year margin. So what we've taken into account is that the h one margin and the h two margins are quite different. We've tried to get ourselves back on track. However, that won't necessarily resolve the the the contribute contribution shortfall that's happened in the year to date. Okay. Thank you. The next question, I think 8% full year EBITDA margin on h two revenue down a similar percentage change, and a gross margin to h one implies you need to make around $200 in admin cost savings in h two versus h one.

49:51 Where will these savings come from, and will there be nonrecurring costs associated with these? Well, we've we've made savings across the business, which we executed on in in June, strike July. And we trimmed in areas where we felt it wouldn't make a significant difference to our ongoing performance. And those areas included where we're gaining efficiencies from AI. So some editorial output increases on the Entertainment Daily Group resulted in possibly fewer staff in that area.

50:38 We've also been utilizing AI a lot as far as our tech development is concerned. We lost some resource there. And we've managed to trim around 20 to £25,000 a month from our cost base. So moving forwards, that would equate to the kind of figures that you're that was being suggested in the question. Looking at the next question. This is now the second time an algorithm change has unexpectedly hit the business requiring business model adaption. Will this always be a risk to the business?

51:27 I think it's a reality for all publishers. I think algorithm changes have existed for significant algorithm changes have existed for ten, fifteen years, whether it's Google, whether it's Meta. We have had disruption from it on or notable disruption from it on two or three occasions. But if you're close to these things, you could see how the algorithms are being tweaked on a month by month basis. I mean, we we monitor things daily, we can see meta's changes taking place since April, and the result for that is an increased level of performance since September 1 in terms of our non follower reach.

52:18 As we imagine, the the creator play that they put into place in April hasn't fully played out as they might have expected. So there's a refocus there around changing of their algorithm. You'll see other algorithmic changes within YouTube sort of switching away from subs driven distribution towards performance level metrics ranking content, which is obviously what you're seeing very heavily at play in sites like TikTok. So it's a continued part of the media market. I don't think you can get away from algorithm changes. There's a question about what relationship do we have with the new largest shareholder.

53:12 I have spoken with Cecil Hetherington. We've met and exchanged views on on the broader media market and the opportunities that exist within it. And I think we're quite aligned in our thinking. Cecil is also a shareholder in Reach PLC and other media assets in The UK. So I think his experience within, well, as far as building an Internet based business is concerned will be very valuable, but we continue to have conversations with all shareholders as far as we can without disclosing any insider information.

54:04 I think that's all of the questions answered. Perfect. Thank you guys for updating investors today. Just before we ask investors to share their feedback, which I know is particularly important to the company, James, can I please just ask you for some closing comments? Yeah. It's I mean, clearly, the first half of twenty twenty six was tough, but I think we've handled it well. I really do, given the circumstances. 60% of our audience has been sourced over the years from Meta. And to take such a significant hit where we saw about 75% of our reach removed, I think, is is is a fairly strong performance reflecting on that in the first half of the year. But more notably, looking forwards and looking at the data we have in front of us right now, I think the next quarter and moving into next year is gonna be much stronger.

55:03 Certainly, we've remodeled the business to be match fit for 2027, and we're seeing some very positive results as we look at things today. So thank you for coming along. We'll keep you updated between now and the year end. Perfect. Thank you, James, Jim, and Richard for the update today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback? On behalf of the management team of DIGITALBOX PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.