Pre-Close Trading Update and Notice of Results

Digitalbox PLC

09 January 2024

 

9 January 2024

Digitalbox plc

("Digitalbox" or the "Company")

Pre-Close Trading Update and Notice of Results

Digitalbox plc (AIM: DBOX), the mobile-first digital media business, which owns Entertainment Daily, The Daily Mash, The Tab, The Poke and TVGuide.co.uk, is pleased to provide the following trading update ahead of the publication of its results for the twelve months to 31 December 2023. The Company expects to announce its results on 26 March 2024.

Digitalbox expects to deliver results in line with full year market expectations. The challenges experienced in the year including a difficult UK advertising market and the major platforms restricting publisher traffic are easing. The restrictions placed on Entertainment Daily for Google-sourced traffic have been resolved with a return to more normal traffic levels from November 2023. Furthermore, the Company's most recent acquisition completed in October 2023, TVGuide.co.uk, is working well within the Digitalbox operating model and the Social Chain pages acquired in September 2023 are performing in line with expectations and providing ongoing audience amplification.

As a result, Digitalbox expects EBITDA* for the year ended 31 December 2023 to be in line with the most recent market expectations and to see a return to more positive trading in 2024. As at 31 December 2023 the Company had more than £1.9m in gross cash.

James Carter, CEO, Digitalbox, said: "2023 was a turbulent period. We faced a depressed advertising market driven by the macroeconomic environment and some algorithmic platform issues which have affected many publishers. These platform issues particularly impacted audience levels for our leading brands Entertainment Daily and The Tab. Despite these challenges, we continued our strategy by acquiring TVGuide.co.uk and focused on maximising the performance of our existing portfolio. This is evidenced by The Poke acquired in December 2022, which has repaid over half of its acquisition costs while trading well through a difficult year."

"Looking ahead, TVGuide.co.uk provides a major expansion opportunity in future years. After an extensive re-engineering process to bring the brand onto our Graphene platform, we are seeing encouraging traffic and revenue performance coming through. We are mindful of the continuing difficult economic conditions but we have confidence from the regaining of Entertainment Daily's Google audience and a steady return in the ad market as we move through 2024. From an audience perspective, the business has diversified its traffic sourcing to a point where it is now fundamentally more evenly balanced than at any point in the Company's history. "

*All EBITDA figures quoted are for Adjusted EBITDA, defined as the operating profit after adding back depreciation, amortisation, impairment, share based payments, acquisition costs, direct costs associated with business combinations and capital restructure costs.

Market abuse regulation: This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 as it forms part of UK domestic law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 ("MAR").

Enquiries:

Digitalbox	c/o SEC Newgate
James Carter, CEO
Panmure Gordon (Nominated Adviser, Financial Adviser & Joint Broker)	Tel: [phone]
James Sinclair-Ford / Ivo Macdonald
Rupert Dearden / Rauf Munir
Leander  Capital Partners (Joint Broker)	Tel: [phone]
Alex Davies
SEC Newgate (Financial Communications)	Tel: [phone]
Robin Tozer / Molly Gretton	[e-mail]

About Digitalbox plc

Based in the UK, Digitalbox is a 'pure-play' digital media business with the aim of profitable publishing at scale on mobile platforms.

Digitalbox operates the following trading brands, "Entertainment Daily", "The Daily Mash", "The Tab", and "The Poke", and "TVGuide.co.uk". Entertainment Daily produces and publishes online UK entertainment news covering TV, showbiz and celebrity news. The Daily Mash produces and publishes satirical news content. The Tab is the UK's biggest youth culture site fuelled by students. The Poke expertly curates and editorialises the funniest content from around the web and social media. TVGuide.co.uk is an established dedicated interactive UK TV listings brand.

Digitalbox generates revenue from the sale of advertising in and around the content it publishes. The Group's optimisation for mobile enables it to achieve revenues per session significantly ahead of market norms for publishers on mobile.

 

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