Next 15 Group plc

It's very nice to meet you all again. My name is Sam Knights. I am the new CEO here at Next50. My background comes from the world of Procter & Gamble for my sins, where I spent much of my early career working up through the business and marketing program with a lot of my time spent running marketing for Gillette in Western Europe. The past 12 years of my career have been spent building a global entity today. And along that journey, we were acquired by Next15. And I've spent the last four years of my career working within the group. So I've seen it at its best, and I've also seen it challenged too. And it's with great pride that I take this role, following on from Tim, We want to set out how we've performed in the first half of fiscal year 26, specifically the decisive actions that we've taken already to start to reshape the group and how we're positioning Next 15 for its next chapter. So we'll begin with an overview of our performance and the actions taken in the first 100 days. Mickey will then cover the financials in detail before I return to summarise. performance for the first half. So let's start with a look at the group's overall performance and the themes that define the first half. We'll dive into each of these headlines in more detail in the coming slides, but as a summary, here are the key headlines. Our first 100 days have been about decisive action. We've addressed legacy issues in the group, we've and we clarified the direction. Trading has been resilient with strong growth in consumer, government and digital transformation, offsetting some weaknesses that we've seen in technology clients. We've maintained strong margin discipline and operating margins edged up despite slightly lower revenues. Our balance sheet remains strong, net debt is down and we'll maintain our dividends. Perhaps most importantly, we are sharpening our strategic clarity. We're focusing on the businesses that we believe have the greatest long-term opportunity. And whilst we will not go into that detail today, we will be announcing much more detail on that in a shareholder event in the coming months. So let's look at the details. This is the market context and performance. And I should say at this point, all the results in this presentation are adjusted to exclude MAC 49 on the basis that it will be treated as a discontinued operation and its results will be reported separately for the full year. Context of the market remains mixed. We've seen economic uncertainty and tariffs that have hit discretionary marketing spend. And also we've seen technology clients continue to shift their investments away from marketing towards CapEx for things like AI development. As a result of that, we've actually seen technology revenues down for our group by just over 12 million, 12.1 million, around 15% year on year. But at the same time, our growth markets are performing strongly. So consumer and retail revenues grew 9% by 6 million. And actually for the first time, they now represent the largest spend in our group, 31% of group revenues. And we're actually seeing the marketing mix change. We're seeing more clients investing in channels that can be targeted through first party data and that can be measured through closed loop measurability. And we're also seeing an increase In fact, Transform, which is our digital consultancy, grew more than 50% through government work. Crucially, our simplification programme is well underway with consolidation and disposals delivering efficiencies across the board, and I'll come on to talk more about that in just a minute. So as a result of all of this, our net revenue was down slightly, 3.6% to 230.8 million, but our margin edged up, through our discipline cost control, and as a result, our PBT was broadly flat at 30.9 million. So all in all, a robust performance despite some tricky market conditions that we're operating in. Nikki will come on to talk in more detail about many of the measures that are highlighted in this summary slide. However, the important takeaway that I want to give you is that we're in strong financial health. with an improving EPS, a reduction in net debt, down to 45.3 million from 74.8 million a year ago. And that's leverage at just 0.5 times EBITDA. And working capital has materially improved too. So we're able to maintain our dividend at 4.75p, which is supported by the strength of our balance sheet. So a business that is in strong financial health. So what have we been doing? Well, I say I'm the new CEO. I don't know whether I can still claim that. It's just over 100 days into the job. And what we've been doing in those 100 days, and it fits under three big headings, resolve, simplify, and clarify. Let's break these down independently. So under resolve, we've taken decisive action on some of the legacy issues that we discovered. specifically map 49, which is now being wound down and will be treated as discontinued operation by year end. Mickey will talk to this a little bit more detail later in the deck. Arbitration continues, but does not change our financial guidance. And we've also done a lot of work in enhancing our governance following an internal review. Under simplify, we've divested beyond and played We've integrated Savanta and Plink. We've begun integrating House and Elvis. And we've brought together four B2B agencies under Project Goose. So in total, in the last 100 days, we've reduced the portfolio from 22 different businesses down to 12. We've also had a firm hand on cost control. We've reduced headcount by 8%. And we've also looked at our board as well and our more focused group. And then finally, under clarify, we've had a really good look at our business. We're doing a full portfolio review and we're shaping our business under what will become three pillars of data technology and activation. This will help us to determine who Next15 is today, but actually crucially what we want Next15 to be in the future and what makes the Next15 business and what doesn't. This will be the framework for the next chapter. And whilst we're not going to this today, we'll be announcing much more detail about that in the coming months. So a lot of work has happened in the last 100 days. But the result is that we are moving towards a simpler, leaner, more focused Next 15 that's ready to grow into the next chapter. And actually, despite some of the challenges that it's faced, Next 15 is really strong at its core. It has strong strengths that we're building on. We're really data rich for our size. We've got proprietary data sets like brand view and plan apps, which track over 4,000 brands and over a billion pounds of media spend. We're agile at scale. We're large enough to compete globally, but we're also small enough to move quickly as you can see in the last hundred days. Whilst others are talking about AI, we're actually helping our clients to deliver it through proprietary products like synthetic personas, a product called Delve and Maestro, which are out there in market today and helping our clients as I'll come on to talk in the next slide. Crucially, we have exposure to high growth markets like retail media, data and analytics, and digital transformation. All of these markets are growing at a KU of over 10%, double digits. And finally, what struck me the most in the last 100 days is working throughout the group is that our culture and our talent remain a defining strength. Our retention and engagement are ahead of industry norms. And all of these core assets give us is going to be incredibly competitive. Perhaps we have been guilty of not sharing enough of the work that we're doing. And actually, when you look across the group, these strengths are really translating into real outcomes. So to bring this to life for you, for HMRC, the Transform team have automated the windsor framework to cover 120 million parcels a year with record accuracy over 80 percent with boots smg's plan apps has activated first party data from their advantage card lifting roas for clients by around 30 percent and improving supply spend by 20 to 30 percent too with nat west savanta is about to bespoke communication testing platform tested over 300 high-risk communications, helping to avoid regulatory fines and saving over a million pounds in service costs. And with iManage, Project Goose, which is the four B2B marketing agencies that we're putting together, have delivered an integrated campaign, doubling initial revenue and unlocking long-term growth. These are really clear examples of where we're really strong and where our model is in action, which delivers impact and efficiency and compliance for our clients. And we've also, as a result of this type of work, increased our confidence in our pipeline, including some good strategic client wins, which, because of the nature of what we do right now, I can't talk to them here as much as I'd like to, but it gives us great confidence for the future too. So in summary, before I hand over to Mickey, we've acted really decisively. We've resolved some legacy issues. We've simplified the portfolio. We've clarified our direction. Our trading has been resilient. Margins have held firm. Cash flow has improved. Balance sheet remains strong. Dividend is maintained. Most importantly, we're creating a simpler, more focused next 15, which we'll be able to unveil to you in more detail at another event later this year. I'll hand over to Mickey.

met all of you. But I'm also very new. I'm as new as Sam, I've been in the role now over just over three months. But good news is that a lot of the things that we're doing, most of the things that we're doing are very, very familiar to me. I've been in the industry debt, roughly the same size as Next 15 and very, very similar. And then prior to that, I was also in a very similar role as CFO for M&C Saatchi. And so hence a lot of the elements of this business are so very familiar to me. If we look at the results now and the P&L, we think it's a good set of results for the first half of the year. That decline was down to a number of factors, including a somewhat weaker US dollar. There were clearly global economic challenges that have lingered, continued. There have been policy shifts in the US. We've seen tariff uncertainty in the US. And there has been a continued effect of reduced tech client spend. Now, all of that has been somewhat partially including Transform, SMG and Mbooz and we'll talk about those in a bit more detail in a second. At the operating profit level it was pretty much flat year on year 32.7 versus 33.7 and then most notably perhaps here is the fact that our margins marginally, very cost restructuring last year that fed into this year, and we continue to focus on cost management this year. PBT was also flat, 31 versus 31, and our diluted EPS also improved. The primary driver for that was the reduction in our minorities as a result of the buyout of one of our companies, Agent 3, last year. This slide looks at our revenue um the big the big thing to really focus on is the um organic revenue which declined at a constant currency basis by 5.3 percent and the chart there's two charts here the chart at the bottom really is maybe one to to focus on because there were two two components to it up and down um we had several businesses that grew we talked about transform smg and mbooth uh transforming last year. We did, however, have some declines that was spread across across a number of businesses, including marker, including our b2b marketing businesses, and also our creative business house 337. Here we look at margins pretty much flat slightly slightly up and that margin improvement was due to restructuring from last year and strong cost management carrying on this year. So we saw the full year we're beginning to see the full year benefits this year of FY25 savings and we're also seeing productivity improvements coming through this year. Last year, we had an average of just over 4,000 heads. This year, our average is just over 3,700. Onto the segments, we continue to report the same four segments for H126 as we've always done, but we will move to a new segmental reporting format when we come to year end. into the business based on these four segments. But if we take each of these in turn and start with business transformation, this was the one that grew by 31%, and that was down to the growth in Transform. That grew by 51%. That's our government and public sector transformation agency. And not only did it grow, but it also had stronger margins as well. Customer Insight declined by 6% and the main reason for that was the decline in our Savanta business, but that business actually had improved operating margins so that you see margins improving in that business due to cost cutting. Customer delivery declined by 8%. There are a number of factors here. We had relatively weak trading in activate, which was down fairly sizably by 20%. That was partially offset by growth in our SMG business, which grew by 14%. SMG incurred some investment spend this year. So despite growing in revenue, as it was growing in revenue, it also spent. And then we saw some negative operational leverage effects taking place in Activate. Customer engagement, our last segment declined by 10%. On to what our customer base looks like. This is a slightly different picture to one from previous halves. For the first time now, our consumer and retail segment is our largest segment. And that's fueled by expansion in the retail media business that we've been talking about, as well as influence of marketing. Technology, which was our largest segment, is now our second largest segment. That's now 30% of our total revenue. It was 34% a year ago. And it's well written, it's well documented across the board that tech clients have reduced their spend on the kind of products and services that we and our peers deliver. And then public sectors worth noting is our fastest growing vertical, and that's all through transform, focused on government, public sector spend. And that's grown now to 13.5% of our total versus 9% a year ago. On cash flow, we think it's a pretty good picture on cash and net debt. There's two slides to come. Net inflows from trading were 30 million. Now, those were offset, understandably, by significant outflows for earn-out payments of 26 million. Within our cash flow, it is important to recognise It predates me, but it's continuing now, whereby our operating cash flow grew or strengthened by 4.3 million of working capital inflows. And that compares to a 32 million outflow this time last year. So that's a significant swing. Onto leverage and liquidity. Our net debt is at 45 million. It was 38 million a year ago. Our net debt EBITDA ratio is a half of EBITDA. We have a covenant limit of two and a half times. So we're well, well within that. We really are focused on managing this as a priority item for us, and it will continue to be. And then even, and we'll come on to talk about MAC 49. in a minute and the MAC 49 provision for earn out, even if we include that in our calculation, even if we were to pay that out, our net debt EBITDA ratio is still one and a half times EBITDA, well, well within the government limit. Talking of earn outs, this just gives a picture of what that earn out ago they were at 37 million six months ago they were 44 million they're now down to 19 million and of that 19 million we've we've already paid down about five or so million so that's come down tremendously over over the period we do refer in this in this chart to the mac 49 liability and we'll talk about that in a bit more detail on the coming slides this looks at our adjusted PBT versus our statutory PBT. Our adjusted PBT is 30.9, coming down to a statutory PBT of 2.8. There's probably just two big areas to sort of talk about here. There's a number of items here, but the two that I'll focus on are number one, the goodwill impairment and the intangibles right of, that's 10 million. All of that relates to goodwill and intangibles in MAC 49. All of that's been written down to zero. We also have an item that is normal and appears regularly, which is the acquisition accounting related costs. These relate to the amount of 12 million. These relate to the amortization of acquired intangibles, the continued charges for employment linked acquisition payments, and the movement in the value of our earn out liabilities. We have, as you can see, we have a very, very solid balance sheet. We've got a good level of cash. We've got a minimal amount of debt. We feel we're in a very, very healthy position to be able to announce an interim dividend of 4.75 pence, which we're maintaining the same level from by year. And this comes at a cost of 4.75 million pounds. Onto MAC 49, there's probably three points to mention on this. Number one, we've mentioned this once already, but we will be treating MAC 49 as a discontinued operation by the end of this financial year. And so its results will be presented separately in the financial statements to our ordinary results. There are a number of costs associated with MAC 49. We had an operating loss in the first half of the year of £2.9 million and we expect further losses in the second half of the year. We've also incurred legal fees and associated fees in the first half of the year And as I mentioned, we've taken some write downs in Goodwill, 9.1 million. And we've written off the intangible in Mac49, nearly a million. And then also, we have an earn out viability that we've retained our position on the balance sheet of 60 million. Based on the evidence that we've received to date, we maintain our position regarding the non-payment of that earn-out. However, for prudence, for this half year at least, we're keeping that £60 million on the balance sheet. Finally for me, just the outlook for the rest of this year. The first half was in line with our projections and the first couple of months of H2 are also performing just as we expected. The phasing of revenue and of profit, adjusted operating profit, is consistent with previous years. results to be in line with market expectations.

Back to you, Sam. Thanks, Mickey. So in summary, these are the headlines that we touched on at the very start of the day. The X15 is a really strong core. We've got good data for our size. We're agile at scale. We're early practitioners in AI. We have businesses that are really exciting in strong growth markets, leading those markets in some cases, and we have really strong culture people. Mickey and myself and the team worked incredibly hard to resolve some of the legacy issues quickly and decisively in the first 100 days to simplify the group and to clarify our future. So now you can be confident that we're in control. We're executing with discipline. And we're positioning the group for sustainable growth into the future.