S4 Capital plc (SFOR) Q2 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good afternoon from London, or good morning in New York, wherever you are. I'm joined in London by Radhika, CFO, Scott Spirit on my right, Chief Growth Officer, and John Benoit, Chief Operating Officer on the extreme left. We have Bruno Lambertini, who runs our marketing services business from Miami. I think he's still in Miami. Thanks for getting up relatively early this morning and for being with us on this call. And Wes Tahar is in Amsterdam. So we're going to cover the results. Radhika is going to cover the results for the first half of 2025. And Scott's going to talk a little bit about what we see going on in the market and with clients. Wes is going to cover artificial intelligence and its impact on our business currently and in the future. And then I'll just do a brief summary and outlook before we take any questions, if there are any. So, Radhika, over to you. Thank you, Martin. Good morning, good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. I will start with the financial headlines for 2025. Performance in the first half was impacted by volatile global macroeconomic conditions, tariff uncertainties, and larger tech clients, which represent almost half of our revenue, continuing to prioritize capital expenditure on expanding AI capacity. Net revenue was 328.2 million, down 10% on a like-for-like basis and 12.7% on a reported basis. Operational EBITDA was 20.8 million, delivering a 6.3% margin in the period. Adjusted operating profit was 16.4 million and adjusted earnings per share was 0.2 pence compared to 1.2 pence in the prior period. We closed the period with a net debt of £145.9 million compared to £182.9 million at 30 June 2024, an improvement of £37 million. The month-end average net debt for the period improved by £52 million, about 27%, from £196 mi...