Press Releases
Interims Announcement
27/08/2008
Moneysupermarket.com Group PLC Interim Results announcement for the six months to 30th June 2008
Robust start to 2008 and dividend increased
Moneysupermarket.com Group PLC (“Moneysupermarket.com” or the “Company”), the UK’s leading price comparison site, is pleased to announce its interim results for the six months to 30 June 2008.
Proforma financial highlights
- Revenues increased by 27% to £99.4m (£78.5m). Internet revenues rose by 30% to £95.3m (£73.5m).
- Continued diversification across the internet business: Money and Insurance verticals now each represent at least 40% of Group revenues. Travel and Home Services verticals continuing to expand rapidly.
- Gross margins increased to 67% representing a modest improvement over H1 2007. Higher margin Direct to Site revenues continue to form the majority of internet revenues (and the lower margin intermediary business continuing to decline as a proportion of total revenues).
- Offline marketing costs held at approximately 12% of revenues, consistent with prior period.
- Adjusted EBITDA1 increased by 14% to £30.1m (£26.5m), underlying UK EBITDA improved by 23% to £32.3m.
- The Group has continued to strengthen its balance sheet, with a cash balance as at the end of June 2008 of £71.3m.
- The Group intends to implement an enhanced dividend policy increasing dividend payout ratio to approximately 50% of adjusted net profits.
- Pro forma basic earnings per share for the six months to June increased from 3.8 to 4.4 pence per share.
- Maiden interim dividend of 1.3 pence per ordinary share.
Operational highlights
- Visitors2 to the Group’s websites increased 39% to 62.0 million.
- Transactions on the Group’s websites increased 37% to 39.6 million.
- Online brand recognition increased from 74% in July 2007 to 78% in June 2008.
- 425 enhancements were made to the Group’s products, of which 60 delivered significant new functionality
Notes:
[1] Adjusted EBITDA is calculated by the directors following certain adjustments to the historical compensation levels of the Group Directors and Senior Managers. These adjustments reflect the Group Directors' and Senior Managers' profit share, discretionary bonus, and employers National Insurance Contributions from these historical compensation levels. Following the IPO these elements of compensation no longer applied at these levels to these individuals each of whom entered a new service contract. The charge for share based compensation relating to options issued pre-IPO has also been added back.
The Directors anticipate presenting financial information on a similar basis until the final results for the year ended 31 December 2010. Thereafter the need to present a pro forma Income Statement will not be required because the relevant comparator period will be consistent with the current period.
[2] As noted in the prospectus the Group's visitor numbers during the period between June 2006 and May 2007 were understated due to certain visitors not being assigned a unique global user ID. The issue was resolved in May 2007 and has not impacted visitor numbers in the Insurance vertical after May 2007. The Group has not been able to quantify the exact extent of the understatement.
The Group recorded a substantial increase in its reported visitor count from the end of April 2008 to the end of June 2008. A free update to the popular AVG anti-virus package was released in June 2008. The update included a feature which checked URL links in browser pages to make sure that they were safe. It achieved this by following the link and physically browsing the page. Any user therefore opening a page, with links to the Moneysupermarket.com websites was therefore recorded as a visitor even if they did not physically visit the website. This substantially increased the Groups visitor count. The KPIs presented have been adjusted to eliminate the estimated impact upon the reported visitor count. A number of other web based businesses have reported similar issues. On 9 July AVG released an update to their antivirus software to rectify the problems caused by its earlier release and made this available to the general public.
Simon Nixon, CEO said
“The results for the first half of the year demonstrate the resilience of our diversified business model. We have seen the Insurance, Travel and Home Services businesses continue to develop and grow quickly as consumers seek to maximise the buying power of their disposable income as economic conditions have worsened. We also expect to launch our Shopping Channel in the next few weeks.
“We’ve continued to strengthen our balance sheet and today we are able to announce our maiden interim dividend and an increase in our dividend policy.
“Our second half revenue growth will be solid, albeit slower than the first half. Overall, in the longer term price comparison remains a large and growing sector and we will continue to invest to enhance our leading and diversified market position.”
For further information, contact:
Paul Doughty, Chief Financial Officer,
moneysupermarket.com
Tel: 0207 353 4200
Ian Williams, Director of Communications,
moneysupermarket.com
Tel: 07515 329671 or
ian.williams@moneysupermarket.com
Susanna Voyle, Tulchan Group
Tel: 0207 353 4200
Lizzie Morgan, Tulchan Group
Tel: 0207 353 4200
View the full Interims Announcement in PDF format. (180KB)
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