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BRUNSWICK GROUP Moderator: Stephen Daintith 2-4-5/8:00 a.m. GMT Confirmation # 73033914 Page 1 BRUNSWICK GROUP Moderator: Stephen Daintith February 4, 2015 8:00 a.m. GMT Operator: Thank you for standing by and welcome to the DMGT First Quarter Trading Update conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session, during which if you wish to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that this conference is being recorded today, February 4th, 2015. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Stephen Daintith. Thank you. Please go ahead. Stephen Daintith: Yes. Thank you very much. Good morning everybody and welcome to the conference call covering our first quarter trading update. I’m Stephen Daintith, DMGT’s Finance Director, and I’m joined by Adam Webster, Head of Management Information and Investor Relations. Today’s conference call is a chance to pull together the key dynamics behind our trading over the first quarter of the financial year, to the end of December 2014. And as usual there will be an opportunity at the end of the call for you to ask any questions you may have. So overall, trading over the first three months of our financial year has been in line with our expectations. The revenue and profit outlook for the full year provided as guidance at our full year results in November remains unchanged. Group revenues for the period were up by one percent on an underlying basis, with reported revenues declining by one percent due to disposals completed in BRUNSWICK GROUP Moderator: Stephen Daintith 2-4-5/8:00 a.m. GMT Confirmation # 73033914 Page 2 the quarter. Overall our B2B companies have delivered a robust performance with underlying revenue growth of four percent in the quarter. There were good performances from dmg information and dmg events while RMS and Euromoney reported slight declines in underlying revenues. More detail on B2B dynamics to follow. Our reported B2B revenues have benefited from the strengthening U.S. dollar over the period. In summary for dmg media, underlying revenues were two percent lower in the first quarter with circulation declines in part offset by advertising growth. Portfolio management activity has continued in the new financial year with bolt-on acquisitions and investments for Genscape and Euromoney. Genscape increased its stake in Petrotranz to be a controlling shareholder and also acquired Energy Fundamentals, an analytics provider for the European power market. You will also seem Euromoney’s acquisition of a 15.5 percent strategic stake in Dealogic Holdings which will expand the scope of Euromoney’s activities in the global financial information and analytics sector. On the disposal side, we completed the sale of Jobsite and Lewtan in the quarter with resultant net proceeds from M&A in the period of £93 million. Last week we also announced the acquisition of Elite Daily, the news and entertainment website which we expect to strengthen MailOnline’s offering to U.S.-based advertising buyers. As usual at this time of the financial year, net debt rose and stood at £672 million, £69 million higher than at the start of the year. As well as the seasonal cash outflows which you’re all familiar with, there were outflows relating to payments into the group’s main pension scheme and a £40 million premium paid on the repurchase of outstanding bonds. The repurchase of £149 million of outstanding bonds in October continued our strategy of using surplus cash and bank borrowings from existing credit facilities to lower the overall cost of debt for DMGT. BRUNSWICK GROUP Moderator: Stephen Daintith 2-4-5/8:00 a.m. GMT Confirmation # 73033914 Page 3 In addition, with our continued balanced approach to capital allocation, we bought back £20 million of shares as part of our £100 million buyback program announced in September 2014 at an average cost of £7.59 per share. Now I’ll just give some more detail on each of our businesses. Within B2B, RMS’s underlying revenues declined by 1% whilst reported revenues increased by 2%. The dynamics of this performance are that the core business grew by an underlying 1% in the quarter, broadly in line with our expectations, though this was more than offset by lower consultancy revenues in the period relating to RMS(one). Just on RMS(one), the revised plan that we talked about in September and at the full year results is being implemented and the business is on track to deliver the staged program of incremental deliverables during 2015. We look forward to updating you further on RMS(one)’s progress at the half-year results in May. dmg information continues to deliver good underlying growth, with revenues up 6% in the period. Reported revenues were up 10%, reflecting acquisitions made in recent months. Genscape delivered double digit underlying growth with Hobsons and the property information companies generating mid-single digit growth. For those of you who remember that our guidance for the full year for underlying growth at dmgi is 10%, we do anticipate an acceleration in growth over the remainder of the year. Specifically we expect improvements in the growth of the U.K. property information businesses and of Hobsons and we remain confident in the full year guidance we provided in November. dmg events also continues to perform well with underlying revenues up 14% and reported revenues up 23%. The Big 5 Dubai and ADIPEC events, which took place in November, delivered strong double digit revenue growth. As you know ADIPEC moved to an annual cycle in November 2013 and so its strong performance is particularly encouraging given its more frequent BRUNSWICK GROUP Moderator: Stephen Daintith 2-4-5/8:00 a.m. GMT Confirmation # 73033914 Page 4 occurrence. The Global Petroleum show, one of our four large events is also moving from a biennial to an annual show in June of this year. Euromoney released their Q1 statement on the 29th of January, stating their underlying revenues declined by 1% with reported revenues down 4%. Trading conditions do remain challenging with pressures on the investment banking sector and on banks’ fixed income activities in particular, although the performance is in line with our expectations. Moving on to our consumer business – dmg media’s underlying revenues were down 2% in the period compared to last year, with positive advertising growth of 2%, partially offsetting the 4% decline in circulation revenues. The lower circulation revenues reflect declining sales volumes, a dynamic you are familiar with given the continued weak market conditions. Importantly however, the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday continue to increase their market shares. Looking at advertising – underlying revenues were up 2% in the quarter with newspapers down 6%. Companion websites which is mainly MailOnline, up 21%, and other digital advertising mainly Wowcher, up 36%. You will note that overall, the good performance of our digital consumer assets continued to more than offset the challenging print side. Print advertising continues to be relatively variable. After a fairly weak October and a strong November, print advertising was quite weak in December before picking up again in January. Looking at MailOnline, global monthly unique browses stood at a record 200 million in December 2014, up 38 million or 24% on last year and there were 12.3 million average global daily unique browses, an increase of 25% on last year. And just a word on Wowcher – revenue growth is very strong at 36%. The business continues to perform very well with a subscriber database standing at 6.3 million subscribers as of end of December 2014. BRUNSWICK GROUP Moderator: Stephen Daintith 2-4-5/8:00 a.m. GMT Confirmation # 73033914 Page 5 In terms of current trading for the five weeks since 28th December, total underlying advertising revenues for dmg media are up 4% on last year, adjusting for the fact that Metro did not publish in the first week of January this year, advertising revenues were up an underlying 5% in those five weeks. So, in conclusion, trading in the first quarter has been in line with our expectations and our full year revenue and profit guidance remains unchanged. I would now like to hand over to you for any questions you may have. Operator: We will now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, press the pound or hash key. Your first question comes from Nick Dempsey from Barclays. Please ask your question. Nick Dempsey: Good morning, Stephen. I’ve got three questions please. The first one, just with the euro weakening against sterling, does that have positive effects on your newsprint cost negotiation? Should we see a good reduction in those costs this year? Second question, just wondering whether oil price weakness could have a negative effect across your events business, clearly done well in the quarter, but I guess I’m thinking of global petroleum show especially. And the third question, just to get more maybe in terms of your confidence on dmgi and for growth to accelerate through the year. I mean, in terms of property must be somewhat related to transaction volume, so how is that easy to predict? Stephen Daintith: OK. I’ll going through those questions in order. So newsprint, the short answer is no, it won’t have a significant impact on newsprint pricing.