Audioboom Stock

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Audioboom Group plc Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll.

I'd now like to hand you over to Stuart Last, CEO. Good afternoon, sir.

Thank you, Lily. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining the Audioboom Q3 investor presentation today. It was a fantastic quarter for Audioboom. So we're pleased to walk you through some of the numbers involved and report on the progress that we've made. over the last three months. A short session today, 30 minutes, we're going to focus on the numbers. So for those of you that are new to Audioboom, we'll give a quick overview of the company and do some brief introductions. But for those of you that know us well, I think a deeper dive into the numbers and the performance metrics from Q3 will be super helpful for you. It really was a great quarter. So very pleased to be with you today to talk you through that.

My name is Stuart Last. I'm the CEO of Audioboom and I have been with the company since 2014. And a little bit, you'll hear from Brad Clarke, our CFO, and he'll walk you through in greater deal some of the financial numbers there, too.

But for those of you that are new to Audioboom, just as a quick background, Audioboom is a platform that supports independent podcast creators. We operate in a very fast-growing area of the media. Primarily, we operate in the U.S. and the U.K. and the U.S. is our biggest territory. That's where I'm based in New York City and the vast majority of our revenue is coming out of the U.S. podcast industry, which is the most mature podcast industry in the world. We are the fifth largest podcast company in the U.S.

Our platform is -- and our tech platform is kind of very straightforward. It does one important thing, which is to connect content with advertisers and with audience, and we do all three of those things at scale that allows us to monetize the content on behalf of our creator partners through our relationships and with advertisers and our monetization engine. So that's just a quick background on the business. Obviously, you can ask us any questions and go deeper on that.

But today, we really are going to focus on the numbers. And as I said, it was a fantastic Q3 of 2026. So I'll walk you through those numbers. In terms of revenue, we delivered $23.8 million of revenue in Q3, up 17% versus Q3 of last year. And importantly, the majority of this quarter was organic growth. Obviously, we acquired Adelicious in July of 2025. So I think it is important just to kind of state here that the majority of this quarter is really like-for-like and the most of that growth, that revenue growth is organic. So very, very pleased with the progress we made on the revenue side. That led us to $5.6 million of gross profit, up 30% versus Q3 of 2025 and an adjusted EBITDA of $2.2 million, that is fantastic, 89% growth versus Q3 of last year. So really, you're starting to see in there the gearing effect of this business model that we have, each particular metric growing faster than the previous one as that revenue flows through the business.

And that's come from something we've talked about a lot over the last couple of years. The first one being that focus on the higher-quality of revenue that we have within the business. So that really kind of comes from two areas. One, showcase our advertising marketplace that has a higher gross margin attached to that advertising product. It's very efficient. It's ad tech-based. And as we'll show you on upcoming slides, showcase performed very, very well in Q3 and is now a much larger part of our business, a larger contributor to that revenue than previously was. So that's helping to improve that gross margin.

And then secondly, our contracts with podcasters. So we work with independent podcasters. Part of that contract is a revenue share with the podcaster, and we continue to make improvements to those podcaster contracts, making them more favorable to Audioboom, retaining more of that revenue within the business. Obviously, the podcaster gets paid for the creation of that content and for the audience that they build for that podcast. So we have to support the podcasters. We support independent creators, but we are doing a better job of making sure that those contracts are more favorable to Audioboom. And that's led us to a good gross margin in Q3 of 23%, a little over 23% compared to 21% a year ago. So you can see those improvements in revenue quality through Showcase and stronger podcaster contracts improving that gross margin pretty significantly in just a year.

And then the second part of that gearing effect in the business is driving EBITDA, and that really comes from those platform economics that we have, the consistent OpEx. We don't need to invest heavily into the platform for that platform to house more advertising inventory, more downloads, more distribution, and that drives -- that keeps the OpEx very consistent. Brad will show you this in more detail on an upcoming slide. And then the second part, in particular, for this last quarter was the final pieces of the Adelicious integration. We bought them a year ago. We focused the early part of the integration on making sure that we are driving maximum revenue. This most recent part of the integration has been around efficiencies. We've taken headcount back from 52 post acquisition of Adelicious back down to 42. Again, that shows off the strength of this platform for making acquisitions and seeing the synergies of those acquisitions.

Consistent OpEx, that's driven $2.2 million of EBITDA and an EBITDA margin of 9% for the quarter versus 6% a year ago. So everything you can see here from these positive results, you get a deep understanding, I think, of why that's happening and why our platform model and the focus on that higher-quality revenue has been so important to drive those strong Q3 results.

You're seeing the same mechanism, I think, in the year-to-date performance numbers, so $69.5 million of revenue for the nine months to the end of September, up 25% year-on-year. Gross profit, $15.5 million, up 32% year-on-year and then adjusted EBITDA of $5.5 million, up 84% year-on-year. So again, in those growth metrics, you're seeing that same flow through the business, and we're retaining more of the money. Just looking again, I think just stepping back a second for Q3, I think one important point is just the gearing -- on that gearing effect is we delivered $3.5 million more of gross revenue and $1 million more of adjusted EBITDA. So you're seeing more than 25% of that incremental revenue flowing to EBITDA, and that's an important part of not just I think, this last quarter, but how we expect things to go as we move forward and in the future. We do expect that incremental revenue from this point forward will drive significant EBITDA.

And then we've included just the last 12 months performance just at the bottom of this slide. I won't walk you through that, but I think that just gives you a snapshot of where this business is today. And obviously, as we go into Q4 and the stronger season for Audioboom, we expect this business to kind of keep moving forward and to have a strong end to 2026.

The key parts, I think I mentioned a little of this before, but just to go in a bit more depth on those performance drivers for Q3. The first one is kind of a very obvious one, and this is our global distribution metric. This is the number of downloads to podcasts or views to the video versions of podcasts that come through the platform. And we've seen significant growth on this metric over the past year. A year ago, Q3 of '25, the distribution number was 130 million per month following the acquisition of Adelicious back in July of last year. And we've built that distribution pretty quickly ever since. So 190 million, up 47% on the year on the distribution metric. That's come from continued signing of the biggest and best podcast creators in the world. It's come from the organic growth of the shows already in the network, and it's come from the expansion of video podcasting, which has become a fast-growing and more important part of podcasting, that consumption of podcasts in video format, primarily on YouTube.

And all of that new distribution, that growth in distribution, that's really a proxy for the advertising inventory that we get to sell. So on average, between 8 and 10 advertising slots per episode, we get to monetize in each of those podcasts. And so the growth of that distribution number means more advertising inventory to sell. And generally, whatever we throw our monetization engine, the more inventory we put into that monetization engine, that monetization engine is very dynamic, and it will monetize that content. So -- the more we throw in there, the more revenue we drive. And that's obviously the area for us of focus is continuing to increase that distribution. So we can increase that distribution in the future through organic means. So that's just signing new creators to the network or growing those creators that are already in the network. So that's the organic part.

And then as we'll talk about later on, we can acquire other businesses. This industry is very fragmented. We have a platform that can supercharge them. So just like with the proof-of-concept Adelicious acquisition, we can buy other businesses, put them into the platform, put them into the monetization engine, grow that distribution number, grow the inventory and then grow the revenue attached to those shows. So in Q3, our distribution grew significantly and is driving that revenue strongly.

The other key driver, I think, in Q3 is the performance of Showcase. So Showcase is, as I mentioned earlier, is our ad tech-based marketplace. So it's very efficient. Everything runs through the ad tech. It matches the supply of advertising inventory on the Audioboom side to a network of advertising agencies, buyers, programmatic platforms, a whole ecosystem of advertising demand. And it does it very efficiently and has a higher gross margin than our other revenue lines in the business. So as you can see from this chart here, a year ago, Showcase was contributing 35% of our revenue. And in the first nine months of this year, it's contributing 41% of that revenue. So that's really helping to not just grow the revenue overall, but to improve the margin attached to that revenue. Premium is our higher price point advertising unit, and it has grown on a dollar basis. It's grown pretty well over the last year, obviously, as a contribution to the overall revenue because of Showcase's fast growth. We've seen the premium contribution dip slightly there, but still in a very healthy place and will grow on a dollar basis going forward.

So I think that the company is in a great place in terms of driving that revenue. Showcase, I think, definitely has seen -- is the area where we have seen the first impact of the U.S. midterm election spending. We see that through Showcase and saw that in September. So September was a particularly good month for Showcase. So higher pricing in there, higher fill rates in that advertising marketplace has helped drive Showcase revenue, and we expect to see that high demand from the U.S. midterm election advertising continuing into October.

So I'll hand you over to Brad now to go a little deeper on the numbers, Brad.

Perfect. Thanks, Stuart. Hi, everyone. I hope you're all doing well. Yes, let's go through some of the key financial metrics that we look at here at Audioboom over the next few slides. And thanks for the questions that have come in already through the session and actually quite a few of them we're going to answer as we go through the next few slides. So questions on cash generation on gross margin expansion, adjusted EBITDA. So yes, as we go through the next few slides, we're going to answer a lot of those questions anyway as we go through, as you'd expect.

But yes, these slides reflect a record Q3, record nine months for the company. And really, I'll reiterate what I said three months ago at the half year in July. The slides and the performance reflect a company that's financially stable, self-sustainable, growing, profitable and generating cash and prime for future growth. I said that in June, and these numbers are now backing that up, and we're well set to execute on our targets for the full year.

On the previous slide, Stuart gave you those insights to those three different revenue products that we have and the contributions that they have and how they've changed over the last year. The one we didn't call out there was Sonic, which is our platform for brands, which helps advertisers develop and execute campaigns across the podcast landscape and gross margin on that is typically 15% agency-based model, so lower gross margin versus the other two advertising products that we have here at Audioboom.

In terms of year-to-date performance, let's go into that. So as we can see, premium revenues contributed majority of revenue historically continues to do so. Good growth, 18% or $5.1 million year-on-year for the first nine months of the year, and that reached $34.9 million for the first nine months of the year. Showcase continues to increase. As we've said, that contribution is increasing to 41% and the revenue increased by 44% to $28.2 million for the first nine months of the year. Sonic also recorded 4% growth to $6.1 million for the first nine months of the year. And again, because of that increase in overall revenue, increased contribution of Showcase revenue at a higher gross margin, we've seen an increase in both gross profit, which has grown to 32% to $15.5 million for the nine months of the year, and that gross margin has ticked up from 21% to 23%.

Will we see that expand through Q4? That's the target for the rest of the year, and we'll come through to the seasonality of the revenue as well. We're seasonally weighted towards the second half of the year. We have seasonality in there, which means that we -- in the first half of the year, we have minimum guarantees. We meet those minimum guarantees in the first half of the year, but because we've got seasonally stronger revenue in the second half of the year, we recoup on those MG's, and we see that coming through in terms of a stronger gross margin. We'll see that on the next slide as well.

Looking forward into Q4 in terms of revenue, we saw an increase in revenue from Q3 to Q4 last year. Why? Well, Adelicious was fully plugged in and optimized in the Audioboom network in Q4 of last year. So we saw that step up. Sonic also delivered a good Q4 last year as well. In Q4 this year, Adelicious inventory well established now, be comparable year-on-year. Sonic, I'm expecting to generate around $0.4 million less revenue in Q4 this year. But the Audioboom business will more than make up for that gap. And importantly, it's going to be at that higher gross margin, which takes us back to that core principle of focusing on higher gross margin revenue here at Audioboom.

So in terms of improvements in gross margin, reaching 23% in Q3 of this year. That's a good improvement year-on-year due to that continued contract work to improve our revenue retention. And again, that seasonality point is very important when you're looking at these numbers. So H1 is seasonally quieter. We've got over 30 minimum guarantee contracts in the business that we have to satisfy. And typically, those are on a straight-line basis as well. So when you've got that seasonally quieter H1, we have to utilize more of our gross margin to satisfy those contracts. Now we're into H2. And specifically from August onwards, revenue is seasonally stronger, able to recoup on those MG's that we trued up in H1, and you can really see that positive impact in the gross margin chart. And yes, again, expect that to continue into Q4, so we could see that tick up slightly again as we go into Q4 before we see that seasonal drop on gross margin into Q1 of '27, and that matches up to what we've seen over the last couple of years. So a key takeaway from this slide, revenue is growing well, higher gross margin product and showcase contributing more leads to a higher gross profit and gross margin expansion.

Next slide shows our OpEx in the business and our adjusted EBITDA, very straightforward P&L. We've dealt with billings to advertisers i.e., our gross revenue, payments to podcasters, which is our cost of goods sold, audience revenue retention or our gross profit or our net revenue, if you like. A very, very simplistic OpEx base within the company, 60% relates to salaries and commissions, 25% relates to technology costs to run the platform and deliver the ads. The remainder of costs are being listed company, a small bit of marketing and a bit of T&E in there as well. But very, very simple.

Main point is OpEx continues to remain stable, very, very tightly controlled within the company. Final parts of the Adelicious integration have been complete in the year, meaning our OpEx base continues to be relatively fixed and stable. We've seen headcount reduced from 52 last September to 42 this September. Quarter-on-quarter, if you looking at Q3, costs have increased by $0.2 million. Those tech costs of running the platform serving ad impressions and bandwidth, they've increased by $0.1 million. Commission costs for the higher revenue were $0.1 million due to that increase in revenue recognized. So again, really important and exciting bit about the business model is that with that relatively fixed OpEx base, it's pleasing to see that adjusted EBITDA really showing progression, really starting to gear $3.5 million of additional revenue, throwing off $1 million of extra EBITDA, incremental increase of over 25%. These are all really good positive metrics for the company and hopefully give you confidence as investors.

Minimal cash cost below the EBITDA line. There's a question about the adjusted EBITDA. There's minimal costs below the EBITDA line. If you look back at our historical reporting interims annual statements, you'll see those costs below the EBITDA line. We'll continue to report adjusted EBITDA going forward because we do have a few costs which are outside of interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, one of which is a noncash share-based payment charge. We do put any restructuring costs through there immaterial restructuring costs, I should say, any immaterial costs of corporate work that we do such as the strategic review earlier on this year. But simplistically, our expectation is that EBITDA is a proxy for cash generation going forward because there's immaterial cash cost below that adjusted EBITDA line. Key takeaway, we'll continue to focus on high-quality revenue. We'll control the MG's that we have in the business. Gross profit will continue to increase, combined with a tightly controlled OpEx base that will gear to adjusted EBITDA and to cash generation.

And then the cash slide. So that cash position continues to progress very, very positively. We continue to operate a very efficient company, enables us to be virtually certain of our collections and working capital cycle. We can see in the chart on the left-hand side, the challenge on cash of dealing with onerous contracts that we had through '24 and '25. We're fully through that period now.

The cash number now backs up our EBITDA growth and not just in cash at bank either. If you look at free cash of the company, i.e., cash plus aged receivables, less aged payables, that metric continues to increase as well. So free cash has increased from $7.2 million at the end of March $8.7 billion at the end of June, $10.8 million at the end of September. So again, that's really pleasing. And in the actual cash number that we report today of $6.7 million, we've only seen part of the impact of a strong Q3, i.e., we generated 77% of our Q3 EBITDA in August and September, but we largely haven't collected on that yet as our debtor day figure rests around the 80- to 90-day mark. So that's another positive indicator for cash as well is that, that will land with us over the coming weeks and before the end of the year.

I guess finally from me on cash, it's great to have the support of our partners at HSBC to have that overdraft that we have for any working capital requirements, plus also the $10 million RCF as well, which will enable us to execute that disciplined M&A plan, which we've referenced again today.

So yes, as I said, start these slides, they reflect a record first nine months of the year for the company. All metrics are very, very positive. We are financially stable, self-sustainable, growing, profitable, generating cash, prime for future growth. We'll keep pushing through Q4. Look forward to speaking to you in January.

But for now, back to Stuart.

Thank you, Brad. That was all very positive, very encouraging and great to see in that level of detail. So look, as we look forward and just the last slide from me, I think we're in Q4 now, as Brad has already said, seasonally very strong in terms of revenue. The reason being it's the Thanksgiving Black Friday season in the U.S., NFL and Premier League soccer drives advertising revenue for us and then obviously, the Christmas season also. So we expect it again to be a strong season for us. And obviously, this time we have the midterm elections in the U.S. that I said, we are already seeing some positive benefit from, which will continue through October. So the rest of 2026 is looking good.

Martin W, I think, asked the question here about our bookings level so far. So we're just over $90 million of booked revenue at this moment with 10 weeks or so of the year to go. So we're in a great position to deliver everything. And as you'll have seen today, the guidance, the market expectation for the year was upgraded to $7.7 million as we obviously are trading ahead of that through the first nine months of the year. So outlook for the rest of 2026 looking very positive.

And then I think just to restate our focus for 2027 onwards, the longer-term goal for this company is to continue to focus growth through our M&A strategy. So we had a successful proof of concept with the Adelicious acquisition, added 50% revenue to the Adelicious content slate just by plugging it into the Audioboom platform. And then as we've shown today, meaningful synergies on the cost side as well. So it's a great proof of concept at a low level for what our platform can do through M&A. And we can expect to kind of continue that focus over the coming years with a goal to hit a revenue number above $200 million and an EBITDA number above $40 million in 2030. We think that's going to take between three and four meaningful transactions. And as Brad said earlier, we have the commitment for a revolving credit facility of $10 million to support that growth path and that strategy.

The podcast industry is very fragmented. We do think there's an opportunity to be the consolidator. Our platform business is perfect, as I said before, to pick up podcast networks, podcast studios, podcast platforms of other types, put them on top of our platform, supercharge them and drive that distribution and inventory number that I showed you earlier to maximize revenue growth. We see a lot of businesses out there in this podcast space that hit something of a ceiling around the $15 million revenue mark. They don't own and operate their own technology. They struggle to scale beyond that $15 million number. So that's the kind of the ballpark that we're looking in that level of business. We'll be disciplined. We'll make sure that we are buying and looking to buy the right ones that they're accretive to this business and they fit our acquisition. strategy well. So that's the goal for us. That's what we're signing up for as a management team to take this business towards that $200 million and $40 million EBITDA number through that acquisition goal.

So that's the long term, the short term, the future looks bright for Q4 2026. The company is in the best ever position that it's been in. We have a model that works, a model that gears heavily to EBITDA and then to cash, and we continue to grow very strongly. So thank you for joining us today. Thank you for the questions that we've answered a few of those as we've gone along. Audioboom and the Audioboom team have done an incredible job over the last three months, and we'll continue to do so for the rest of the year. So good to see you all, and we'll have some more news for you in the coming months. Thank you.

That's great. Thank you for updating investors today. I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This may take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company.

On behalf of the management team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Audioboom Group plc investor presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll to hand you over to Stuart Last, CEO. Good afternoon, sir.

Thank you, Charlie. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Audioboom's H1 update. You're joining me in our Audioboom Studios in New York, Brad is in London, and we are just, I think, very pleased to be back with you. First time we've been able to talk directly with you for almost a year, and there's lots to tell you about. It's been a period of exceptional performance. So excited to be able to walk through that with you today. Just a little kind of running order, I think, here.

We'll kick off and just talk through the business model a little for those of you that are new to Audioboom. Talk about the H1 performance, which, as I said, has been exceptional. Brad will go a little deeper on some of the finances. And then we'll get to some of the parts I know you're interested in hearing about. We'll talk about the strategic review, and we'll kind of push forward and tell you about the future plans and the strategy going forward. But we'll guide straight in, and you can ask questions. We'll pick those as we go across this 45-minute session. And as I said, just very happy to be back with you and to tell you more about everything that's been happening at Audioboom.

So many of you may be new to the company, and I'll just walk you through the business model, but it's pretty straightforward. And it's a pretty strong, efficient and scalable model that we have here at Audioboom. What the platform does and it's a scaled, global, efficient platform as it sits between three very important elements of the podcast industry and connects those three elements together. So the platform is connecting podcasts and the podcast content together with audience and together with brands and advertisers. And pulling those three things together is creating significant value at a strong global scale. And the platform does this very efficiently. There's a lot of automation built into the technology platform, and that's driving the growth of the Audioboom business.

So on the publisher side, on the podcaster side, our platform allows those creators to upload their content, to distribute their content to all of the listening and viewing apps out there, so their content can be listened to and viewed as widely as possible. It allows those podcasters to get insight into their content and the consumption of that content through our data platform and our analytics platform. And it really does give them all the tools necessary to distribute and to publish that content so they can focus on the core element of the content production.

Then on the audience side, as I said, there's one-click distribution of that content out to all of the major listening and viewing apps like Spotify, Apple, Pandora, iHeartMedia, wherever you can hear and view podcasts, our platform allows that content to be delivered to. And again, tremendous scale going through that part of the platform. So you'll see it in some later slides, but we now deliver more than 180 million downloads or video views per month on average, which, again, is really moving quickly and growing the network very quickly. And we reach more than 50 million unique listeners or viewers every single month as well. So a big audience. And then the third element of this platform is to connect that audience and that content with advertisers.

So once we have the audience, once we have the content, we then bring in advertisers. We work with more than 10,000 brands those advertisers through 2 or 3 advertising products can monetize that content and that drives a lot of value back to the creators and back to the podcasters. So that's the basics of the business model. Any questions on that, we can look at afterwards, and you can always drop Brad and myself a line and we can go deeper on that. But for anyone new to Audioboom, I think that's just a quick snapshot of what the platform does, how it achieves that scale and the kind of valuable and very important role that we play in the podcast industry.

So as I said earlier, a tremendously pleasing H1 of 2026, a real exceptional performance and super proud of the Audioboom team here. It's a small team. That's very important to our model here. But it's a very small team that builds things very -- in a very kind of sustainable approach, very disciplined approach and has had a tremendous amount of success in the first half of 2026. So we'll walk through those numbers, talk a little bit about some of the drivers behind those and give you a little insight into how we got here.

So first up, H1 2026, we delivered $45.7 million of revenue, and that's up 30% versus the same period of last year. So we have a slide coming up on the drivers for this one. So I won't go too in depth now. But effectively, it's inventory levels, the building of that network and then the pricing and demand levels on the advertising side that are driving that revenue figure.

I think what you can kind of see here across these three metrics, and we'll get to that in a moment, is just the gearing effect of our business model. So while revenue is up 30%, our gross profit is up 33%, $9.9 million for the first half of the year. That's up at a higher level than revenue because we have that focus that we've talked about over the last couple of years on quality of revenue. So higher-margin revenue is being delivered there. That means that we are focused on just bringing that revenue through Showcase that has a higher gross margin and through contracts with our podcast partners that has a more favorable revenue share to Audioboom, and that's where the focus has been improving that over the last couple of years. And that gross margin is now up to 22% and was in the high teens just a couple of years ago. So significant improvements over the years on that gross margin point, which is driving the gross profit number at a higher rate than revenue.

And then through to adjusted EBITDA, so $3.2 million of adjusted EBITDA in this period, that's up 80% versus last year. So again, you can see that gearing effect of the business model. It's that focus on higher revenue quality, which is driving a higher gross margin. And then as Brad will get to in some greater depth soon, that consistent OpEx that we have in the business hasn't really changed over the last few years, very efficient platform, very automated platform that we have. So we don't need to increase those operating costs greatly to drive this revenue. And that means that we're seeing that gearing effect and that flow of that revenue through to adjusted EBITDA with that strong 80% growth in the first half of this year.

So a fantastic, I think, set of metrics for the company here. I think worth pointing out as well is again, that we see a stronger gearing effect in the second half of the year as well. So -- and the reason we do that and the reason we will expect that EBITDA margin, which was 7% in the first half to be even greater than that in the second half is because of the seasonality that's in the business. So many of our podcast partners get paid at a flat monthly rate across the year, but our revenue is weighted significantly into the second half of the year in general. So that means that we pay podcasters at the same rate, but we're seeing more revenue coming into the business. That means that EBITDA margin will be above 7% in the second half of the year and will drive an even stronger adjusted EBITDA in H2.

So just a little note on that and the seasonality that we do have in the business. But back to the top three metrics, I think a great performance in H1. And very pleasing. It just shows off the performance of this business model and the gearing effect that it has as that revenue grows. I mentioned it on the last slide, but the key drivers of that revenue performance are all here, right? So we start off with advertising inventory, which is a product of the amount of distribution that we have going through the platform. So I mentioned earlier, 183 million downloads and video views per month across our network in Q2 of 2026. And we're seeing tremendous growth on that metric. So a year ago, we had just around 100 million downloads and views, and that's grown 83% or 84% I should say, year-on-year. How have we got that? Well, the first of the drivers there is that acquisition that we made of Adelicious in July of last year. So that added just around 25 million downloads and video views to the size of the network through that acquisition in July.

Second of all, the rise of video podcasting. So a lot of video view growth in this period as audiences are finding podcasts through Netflix and other video channels, and that's driven a lot of distribution growth over that time. And then thirdly, we continue to make signings to the network of some of the biggest creators, top-tier creators, top-tier podcasters in the world. Two great examples of that in Q1 with the signing of Crooked Media, a large political network and RedHanded, a large true crime show. Those between them bring more than 20 million downloads and video views to the platform. So you can see we've marked it on the chart there, just that growth of the distribution across our network. And obviously, each one of those video views, each one of those podcast audio downloads has a level of advertising inventory for us to sell within it. So as the download number goes up, the amount of advertising inventory that we can sell goes up significantly as well, and that's obviously driving revenue as we sell it in a more optimal way each and every period. The two parts of that advertising growth that I want to look at really is, first of all, is Showcase. So Showcase for those of you that are perhaps new to Audioboom is our global advertising marketplace. It's built and delivered through our advertising technology stack. It's very efficient, very scalable. It allows advertisers and brand partners to target advertising against demographics, against geo targets within -- anywhere within the world. Whatever their targeting parameters are, Showcase can deliver that for them. So again, very efficient and a very strong way for advertisers to reach their target audiences. And Showcase just continues to grow very, very strongly for us, up 60% in this first half of the year versus last year, following on from 25% a year ago. So just continuing very strong growth in Showcase as we bring in more and more demand sources, more advertising sources into that marketplace, out there talking to brands, talking to ad networks, talking to programmatic partners and bringing them in and connecting them to that marketplace so they can advertise very efficiently in podcasting through Showcase.

So that higher level of advertising inventory combined with the Showcase growth is really pushing revenue. And then the bottom chart on the right here is our ad demand model. And this is really a view on how well we are selling all of those ad impressions. So the number you'll see here is the dollar value that we receive for every 1,000 ad impressions that we make available or we create through the platform to sell. And you'll see good growth here, 8% growth. That's a combination of the price that we sell those advertising impressions for and then our fill rate, how many of those we're able to sell, and that's coming through and growing strongly. So revenue being driven this year by stronger downloads, which equals stronger advertising inventory. Showcase doing a great job of monetizing that advertising inventory and then the ad demand, how efficient and how optimal our monetization engine is growing very strongly as well. And those things coming together. Those are the things that we're focused on building behind the scenes here and the key drivers of that revenue now and also going forward.

So I'll hand over to Brad. Brad is going to go a little deeper on some of the financial metrics, and I'll be back with you in a few minutes to talk strategic review and forward-looking strategy.

Perfect. Thanks, Stuart. Hi, everyone. Good to speak to you again for those hearing me for the first time, CFO here at Audioboom. -- obviously, I've been here for over 8 years, having started in March 2018 many years and experience in other media companies, but it's really pleasing to put these numbers out to the market today. So the next few slides, we've got information on revenue, gross margin, minimum guarantees, OpEx, EBITDA and cash. These slides reflect a record first half of the year for the company. We also reflect the company that is financially stable, self-sustainable, growing, profitable, generating cash and absolutely prime for future growth, and we're well set to execute our plans in the second half of the year. So -- we've probably got some new followers and listeners here today. Let's go through the basics of the revenue streams first.

Stuart has given you that overview of Showcase just now. But in terms of the other revenue lines we've got here at Audioboom, we've got three revenue lines. So first one being premium revenue that's generated from our high-value ad model in which the host of the podcast endorses products directly to their highly engaged audience. Gross margin here, typically around 20%. And by gross margin, I mean what are Audioboom retaining from the advertising revenue generated. We enter into revenue share agreements with our podcast partners where Audioboom will retain 20% to 30% of ad revenue generated, the 20% gross margin on this revenue line of premium. That's because that revenue is mainly generated from the top 200 shows that we work with where we have to give up a little bit more of that gross margin to work with them because of the scale of some of these podcasts that we're working with.

That's the first one, premium Showcase is our highly automated marketplace, which Stuart is giving you a bit more detail on just now. Gross margin, typically 25% higher than the gross margin on premium. That revenue is generated across our entire roster of shows where revenue share moves more in favor of Audioboom. And then our third revenue product, Sonic is our platform for brands, which helps advertisers develop and execute campaigns across the podcast landscape. Gross margin here, typically 15% as it's an agency-based model. So that gross margin is -- so where were we in the first half of this year? Well, historically, premium revenue has contributed the majority of our revenue. It still does. We've seen really good growth on that revenue line of 14% or $2.8 million in the first half of the year. So good growth on premium through the first half of the year. What we've seen over the last 2 years and again in the first half of this year is that significant increase in Showcase revenue, which Stuart showed you just now, success of our marketplace offering. We've seen that grow again in the first half of this year, revenue contribution increasing by 24% to 41% revenue contribution, Showcase revenue increasing by 60% year-on-year to $18.6 million. So what we're seeing is because of that increase in overall revenue increased contribution of Showcase revenue at higher gross margin, we see an increase in gross profit, which has grown by 33% to $9.9 million. We've seen a slight uptick in gross margin from 21% to 22% in the first half of the year year-on-year. So a key takeaway from this slide, revenue is growing well, high gross margin products, Showcase is contributing more, which leads to a higher gross profit.

Okay. So on this next slide, we can see details of revenue, gross profit growth over the last few fiscals, along with the gross margin recognized historically. You can all see that revenue growth, very, very pleasing. The key takeaway for me is that over the last 5 years from 2019 to 2025, we've recognized 45% of our annual revenue in the first half of the year, 55% of the revenue in the second half of the year with 30% typically coming in the fourth quarter of the year. So seasonally weighted into the second half of the year and particularly into the last quarter of the year on the festive period, Thanksgiving. And also, we have those U.S. midterm elections with our impressive slate of political content as well to take advantage of that.

And then on to the next slide. We can see here OpEx and adjusted EBITDA, my favorite slide to be honest in the entire deck. We have a really simple P&L here, Audioboom we have the revenue to advertisers. Then we have cost of goods sold, which is payments to our podcast partners received our gross profit, Audioboom retention of revenue. And then we have a simple OpEx base, 60% of that is salaries and commissions, 25% is technology costs to run the platform and deliver the ads, remainder of costs, the cost of being listed entity, small bit of marketing, a bit of T&E. -- overall, very, very straightforward P&L, nothing complex. I wouldn't be here if it was complex. So very, very simple in terms of how you view this P&L. One thing to note before we move on to the OpEx and EBITDA is just to talk you through minimum guarantees. So we offer minimum guarantees to around 30 of our podcast partners. We offer these to remain competitive to secure our revenue growth as part of doing business in the U.S. We did disclose a couple of onerous contracts a couple of years ago in 2023, just to confirm the last of these finished in December 2025. We continue to have a very disciplined process of offering minimum guaranteed contracts. We monitor the performance of those very, very closely. We do utilize some of our gross margin to satisfy all minimum guarantee commitments with the impact of this being higher in the first half of the year than we'll see in the second half of the year because that's when we reach our seasonally stronger revenue period.

Adjusted EBITDA showing really good progression, now starting to gear, as Stuart said. The only cash cost that we have below EBITDA is a $200,000 a year lease for our New York office plus any one-off restructuring costs. So you'll see $0.2 million in these results today due to the restructure we completed in May. We also have $1.1 million of corporate transaction costs as well in relation to the strategic review, neither of which of those are material to the business. One question we've had is to confirm the costs relating to the strategic review. We've confirmed today immaterial $0.2 million with fees being linked to a transaction occurring. Nothing happened, obviously. So we're not lumbered with a cost hangover. So we move on with a relatively low cost incurred for that process, which is good. So we continuously monitor the company EBITDA as a proxy for cash generation, always exactly the same. It's always likely to be something not in the normal course of business that we put below that EBITDA line. But I'm not expecting anything material below going forward. Therefore, the proxy of the cash generation holds. So why does EBITDA here? For me, the key takeaway point, one of the main points from this presentation as we communicate how this company works, if you're new to this company is that with a relatively fixed and stable OpEx base that Stuart mentioned earlier, we don't have to scale OpEx in order to capture growth. OpEx did increase post Adelicious acquisition in the summer of last year. Headcount increased from 42 to 53. But following the restructure in May, we're back down now to 44 heads. Going forward, I don't expect that OpEx base to grow materially. It remains stable. The savings from the restructure recognized due to lower headcount. Those will be partially offset by higher sales commissions due to the higher revenue and which run around 1.3% of revenue -- sales commissions and also increased downloads and impressions will incur marginally increased costs and with our tech cost line. But the main point is that's not going to grow significantly. So key takeaway is that, that focus on higher quality revenue with a controlled focus on MGs, gross profit will increase. Combine that with a well-controlled OpEx base, EBITDA and cash will grow as we go forward.

And then on this next slide, we can really see that cash progression within the company over the last couple of years. Simplistically, it's increasing as we thought it would do. When you look at the fundamentals of the business model, that backs up our message that EBITDA will be a proxy for cash generation going forward. We're a small company in terms of headcount, which means that internal processes for putting inventory and advertising billing and payment to our partners have to be market-leading, I believe it is. And we're utilizing automation capabilities within Salesforce and NetSuite really well to ensure that cycle works as efficiently as it can be. We've got a proven track record that when we build something, we're going to collect it. As always, our message is the question I saw earlier from, I think it was in terms of why doesn't cash equal EBITDA yet. Well, we've got that timing difference, which is important to realize in terms of paying our leading podcast partners typically on 30-day terms and collecting on average in the first half of this year, more than double that of 72 in the first half of this year. So there's a timing difference before we see that EBITDA drop through to cash generation. So not an immediate drop through does take a little bit of time. But given write-offs within the company are really immaterial, it's a case of when, not if that cash generation occurs. So as I say, debtor day of 72 in the first half of the year, that's good. I do expect that to pick up into the 80s by the time the year-end rolls around, again, because we're seasonally weighted in revenue in terms of the second half of the year, which will collect Q4 revenue in the first quarter of next year. So I expect that debtor day to increase slightly back into the 80s, but not materially so. As I say, once we bill it, we're going to collect a bit of time for that EBITDA to drop through to that cash number.

So final couple of points from me is that to support that working capital cycle in the business, it's great that we have access to both the HSBC overdraft that we've got working capital shortfalls that we may have due to slower debtors paying and also the addition of the imminent RCF facility from HSBC as well to help support that plan that we have. So really good endorsement from partners at HSBC. We're just going through the legal process on the RCF now just to get the finalized in place, which we should have over the next couple of weeks. So I say hopefully, that's given you a good insight into the key financial metrics of the company, as I say, financially stable, self-sustainable, growing, profitable, generating cash, prime for future growth. So we're looking forward to keep pushing on. Any questions that you have as some of you do, please e-mail me. I can't always answer all of them directly because we listed company. If I can, I will get back to you for now. Back to you Stuart.

Thank you, Brad. It was a great in-depth look, I think, at just how healthy and how primed for future growth this business is. So let's move on. Let's talk strategic review. I know it's the one thing we've had the most questions on. So we'll cover as much of those as we can. But I think let's walk you through it. It's been the thing that's kind of prevented us talking directly to you over the last 12 months. And it really kind of began, I think, in Q3 of 2025. And I think the key part here is that it was kind of designed, I think, as a private, slow and steady process. We were not trying to auction off a struggling business here. This was a business growing very quickly and in a strong position. And the process that was designed here was to explore opportunities in a private, slow and steady way across a number of months. But there was a leak, a press leak, which forced us to make a public declaration of a strategic review, pushed us to move faster than perhaps we would have somewhat liked to, pushed us to do some of this in the kind of the public spotlight, and that wasn't ideal for that process. But I guess I think that probably gives you a sense of why it perhaps took a little longer than you all would have hoped to conclude. But I think it was important that we kind of remain steady and slow in that process. Like I said, it was the way it was designed pre-leak. I think it was the right time to test the market. We're growing quickly. We had the Adelicious proof-of-concept acquisition. I think that was a good time to do that. And during the process, we spoke to and engaged with more than 30 companies in the U.S., in Europe, both strategic media companies, private equity, pretty much anyone you can think of. We will -- we did engage with and many others that you probably can't think of. So we really did test the market. This was broad and I think well kind of carried out. The result of that piece of work was 3 nonbinding proposals that kind of came in, in the first -- towards the end of the first quarter of this year. And I think all the way along, the valuation part here was the most challenging element, right? We were already trading across that time, across that strategic review time on a 20 to 25x EBITDA multiple. And it was the valuation piece that was most challenging in those three nonbinding proposals. And so as a result, I think that while they were at a premium to that share price, they were just not taking into account and were not justifying the strong growth that we are seeing in the first half that you've seen today than we've talked about today. So we've moved on from those. We remain independent and management can now focus on the M&A growth plan, which we laid out to you back in, I think, Q3 or Q4 of last year. So being able to refocus, I think, on that and build significant value through that M&A growth plan and through the organic operational growth of this business is very exciting for us. So I think let's go through that again. Let's talk about it again because it is where Brad and my focus is. We've set out, I think, some very clear targets with our growth plan. We believe we can build this business to being more than $200 million of revenue and $40 million plus of EBITDA by 2030. And that growth plan involves, obviously, the organic growth combined with accelerated growth through M&A. And the Adelicious acquisition that we made in July of last year is a great proof of concept for that. So in terms of what that did for us, you can kind of see -- helped us achieve. You can see some of that in the metrics that we've laid out here. We've gone from $35 million without Adelicious to $45.7 million in this H1 with $1.8 million of adjusted EBITDA to $3.2 million. So that organic growth plus acquisition is really pushing this business forward. And we believe, I think, that the industry is primed for consolidation. So more than 75% of industry advertising revenue is controlled by a large group of independent publishers, independent studios, independent networks. Our platform is primed to supercharge those. So we pick them up, we put them on top of our platform, allow them to do what they do best, which is to create content, curate content, provide them with a monetization engine and a platform that can really drive them forward. And that's exactly what we did with Adelicious, where we had a very smooth integration. Within 2 months, they were fully into our platform. We saw immediate revenue upside. So within a month of buying Adelicious, putting them into our monetization engine, we saw a 40% plus uptick in the revenue coming through that Adelicious slate of podcasts. So extremely effective platform for supercharging revenue of those networks and publishers that we're able to bring on to it. And then as Brad mentioned earlier, with the Adelicious acquisition, very strong synergies as well. So immediately post acquisition, our headcount went up to 53. Now following the full integration and the restructuring of that business, that headcount comes down to 44, just 2 more than pre-transaction. And as he said, and as he showed off, the majority of our OpEx is connected to headcount. So being able to realize those synergies is an important part of this M&A growth strategy.

So we will focus on building. And I think those numbers that we talked about, the $200 million of revenue and $40 million of EBITDA, I think you can see here on the chart at the bottom right that they are very achievable based on what we've delivered in the last year. So the annual growth needed to get to those numbers is very comparable to and I guess, in some ways, very conservative versus what we achieved in the last year. So we believe 4 to 5 acquisitions over the coming 4 or 5 years will take us to those numbers. And just like the Adelicious acquisition, those targets will need to be immediately accretive to Audioboom. They'll be focused around key areas, market expansion, so moving into new territories that we don't currently operate in, adding market share as we did with Adalicious. That's the most straightforward way to do this. So with Adalicious, we immediately added market share in the U.K. and moved our position up to the #2 podcast network in the U.K. through that acquisition.

We'll be focused on adding production capabilities and IP ownership of content through M&A and adding platform capabilities as well to where we can see the opportunities to improve our platform, to improve the monetization engine that we have through those technology capabilities, those will be targets as well. So I think there's a very kind of clear pathway to those numbers. There's a very clear rationale behind this. And as Brad said, we are very close to confirming a $10 million revolving credit facility that we can use to support this growth. So that $10 million, combined with the ever-increasing cash position of the business means that we can target acquisitions larger than the Adelicious acquisition. We'll continue to be disciplined. Like I said, everything needs to be accretive, and that will be a core kind of element of anything that we do make a move on. But we now have that cash support through that RCF at $10 million and our increasing cash position to do that. So that's where our focus is. That's where we believe this platform that we have built the next phase of growth is very connected to this accelerated growth strategy, and we're excited to focus on the delivery of that over the next 4 to 5 years.

And then finally from us, and we'll kind of leave you with this one as we head towards that 40-minute mark is what the outlook is for the rest of this year and beyond. So Brad mentioned it earlier, but short term, we expect to deliver you a record year for Audioboom and very focused on achieving and going beyond those market expectations for revenue and EBITDA. And key to that is the second half of the year revenue performance. So as Brad already said, 45 -- historically, 45% of our revenue happens in H1 and 55% of our revenue happens in H2. It's pretty simple math this year because our H1 revenue was $45.7 million. So you can all do the math on what that looks like for H2 and where that could get us to. I'll let you do that. I'm sorry for sounding really American then it sometimes flips out. But yes, you can work that out for yourselves, but it looks like we have a solid second half of the year ahead of us given the historical weighting of that revenue. And the reasons for that are sports seasons, a lot of our advertising revenue is connected to the NFL season in the U.S., the Premier League season in the U.K. and of course, this year, it is the U.S. midterms and political season in the U.S. always drives pricing and demand in the advertising space. So we expect to see an uptick in pricing and demand as we get into the second half of the year because of those midterms. And I think it's worth noting that we are really well positioned to make the most of that political ad spend because of the size of our politics network that we've built out at Audioboom. So we make more than 500 million monthly ad impressions available in the politics and news verticals. We work with some of the biggest political podcast and independent podcasts and networks out there. At the start of this year, we signed a deal with Crooked Media. They are the leading politics network -- independent politics network in podcasting in the U.S. We also work with the Bulwark, another very, very large political podcast work with Associated Press as a news outlet and a host of other independent politics podcasts.

So we probably have the largest political and news vertical in podcasting in the world, and we're very well positioned to really make the most of that political ad spend in the second half of the year. So like I said, we really do expect to deliver against those 2026 guidance numbers that are out there. Medium term, there’s a question, I think from [ Marion ] that came in earlier about the platform deals that we announced with Spotify and Apple earlier in the year and when we would see upside from those. So just to kind of step back on those. This is a medium-term growth area for us, and it's connected to the continuing growth of video podcasting.

In Q1 of this year, we announced new partnerships with Spotify and Apple to integrate with their technology to enable video distribution through their platforms and to add in a commercial partnership as well, allowing us to sell and distribute advertising -- video advertising through those platforms as well. So where we are with those is very much in a technology integration phase. So following the signing of those partnerships, we're integrating with those platforms. Our tech and platform team here are working with those platforms to integrate the tech. We expect that work to be finished and live close to, I think, the fourth quarter of this year. And then we will start to see revenue uplift realistically from early 2027 and onwards in a meaningful way. Once the technology piece is done and in place, we then have to deliver and build the same video sales engine and video monetization engine that we currently have in audio. So a lot of opportunity there, I think, as video continues to be a big piece of podcasting. And AI, too, we have -- we integrated with a platform called Sounder just around a year ago, and we're starting to see more commercial opportunity coming through with Sounder and Adaptive Ads, another AI-focused advertising platform that we integrated with in 2025. So those are medium-term opportunities for us. The work -- the technical work is either being done on the AI side or being done on the video side and the kind of commercial uplift from those will really kick in, I think, in 2027 onwards.

And then long term, we just walked through the M&A growth strategy, building towards those 2030 targets. It is exciting. I think it shows where this business and where this platform can go, and we're very happy to be refocused on delivering those as an independent company once again. So the outlook is great for Audioboom in the short and medium and long term. I hope you agree that we're in a -- we've done a great job over the last year of delivering growth. We've built a platform that's ready to grow even faster, and we are ready, as I said, to deliver against that.

So thank you for joining us today. Thank you for your patience on a strategic review process that I know you felt was longer than it should have been, but hopefully, some of the context i have given you today helps you understand why that was so and why that was necessary. But I think the key part being that while that happened, there was no distraction in this business. We still deliver growth, and we've delivered some great numbers that we were able to announce today. So I hope to speak to you all again soon. Thank you for joining today. And Charlie, I'll hand back to you.

That’s great, guys. Thank you once again for your presentation this afternoon. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you’ll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team of Audioboom Group plc, we would like to thank you for attending today’s presentation, and good afternoon to all.