Reach announces half year results

Reach plc report as follows:

Piers North, chief executive: “Today marks the beginning of a new chapter for our business, as we launch the priorities that will fuel our growth. These include initiatives to reach new audiences, increase our video content and accelerate our tech and AI capabilities. Crucially, we’ll do more work to diversify our revenues, putting a serious focus on adding subscriptions to our revenue mix.

“Over the past six months we have performed well. Our audience growth has been driven by our innovative content and distribution hubs, our in-house recommender tools, and our US expansion. Digital revenue continues to grow, supported by reliable print revenues, despite a challenging market and set against a strong events comparator.

“With our market leading scale, editorial impact at both national and local levels, and strong operating profit margin, we are confident that our priorities will set us up for future success.”

• Revenue declined 3.4% to £256.0m, Print revenue of £194.1m (HY24: £204.0m) was down 4.8%, while digital revenue continued to grow to £61.1m (HY24: £60.0m), up 1.8%.
• Both print circulation revenue £144.3m (HY24: £149.9m) and print advertising revenue £27.7m (HY24: £32.7m) outperformed the volume decline, which remains broadly in line with historical trends.
• Adjusted operating profit of £44.8m was slightly ahead of the prior year with an improved operating profit margin of 17.5% (HY24: 16.8%).
• Year-on-year page views, a measure for on-platform audience volumes, were up 6% with the scaling of our content hub driving improved levels of productivity and more effective distribution.
• Within digital, Direct revenues declined 7.9%, reflecting the tough comparative and weaker market backdrop especially for our local business. Indirect digital revenues grew 9.2% supported by the growth in page views and off-platform revenues including social.
• The Group continues to efficiently manage costs and cash: operating costs declined 4.2% to £212.4m (HY24 £221.8m) with overheads well controlled.
• The Group generated an adjusted operating cash flow of £45.8m (HY24: £57.7m), strong levels of cash conversion of 102% (HY24: 130%) and closing net debt of £(26.0)m (FY24: £(14.2)m).
• Interim dividend maintained at 2.88p.

Our three priorities for growth will see us build on past successes while also introducing new initiatives.

• Attracting new audiences, on and off platform
• Driving deeper levels of engagement
• Putting video and audio content at the centre of our newsrooms
• Differentiating our brands with target audiences

• Upgrading our data platform
• Progressing our advertising cohort strategy
• Innovating with AI
• Scaling B2B tools

• Developing and rolling out digital subscriptions
• Driving continued growth in affiliates and ecommerce
• Increasing commercialisation of video content

These will be underpinned by efficient cost and cash management, including an ongoing reduction of operating costs, simplification of the organisation, and further optimisation of the print business.

We remain confident about our future, with strong fundamentals and three clear priorities for growth. The macroeconomic environment remains uncertain and we are mindful of the dynamic referrer environment and impacts from a changing regulatory landscape. Managing change is not new to us and our experienced teams will continue to navigate these challenges to deliver digital revenue growth and optimise Print. With our focus on efficiently managing our cost base, we expect to meet our 4-5% adjusted operating costs saving target, in line with previous guidance. Whilst July’s referral volumes were impacted by Google's recent core update, we remain confident in delivering market expectations for the full year.

Group revenue declined just 3.1%, within this Digital revenue grew 2.1% in Q2 25 with improved momentum, despite the strong comparative period activity around key events including the Men's European football championship and the Taylor Swift tour. Indirect revenues continue to perform strongly, supported by growing audience numbers, which increased 4%. Direct revenues were impacted by the macroeconomic backdrop, which was felt most acutely across our local markets. We remain focused on growing revenues outside our core advertising model, with diversified revenues growing 10% driven by ecommerce and affiliates.

In Print, circulation revenues remain a reliable revenue stream, supported by our strong promotional activity. We also continue to see additional revenue from standalone printed products with the football souvenir specials proving popular. Headline growth Print advertising revenue performance has been impacted by the strong comparative.

To read the report in full click here.

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