Yesterday, we held a ‘fireside chat’ for institutional investors with CEO Zillah Byng-Thorne, CFO Rachel Addison and CRO Zack Sullivan. No material new information was provided, but we summarise below what we see as the key points discussed.
A core part of the ecosystem
Future is playing an increasing role in helping to shape the landscape in digital advertising and eCommerce through partnerships with key players, including Amazon, Google, Facebook and Snap amongst others, in some cases being involved at both a strategic and testing level, with the role played in the Google Alpha Testing programme a key example. Future is now in a somewhat unique position, being both a media buyer as well as a publisher, through the acquisition of GoCo.
Key growth opportunities
The company flagged that the opportunities at TI Media continue to be vast in terms of its ability to address the female audience, with the most recent evidence the April 21st announcement of the eCommerce partnership between Marie Claire and Net-a-Porter. Barcroft is performing strongly, with increased (higher margin) AVOD content driving audiences across YouTube/Facebook/Snap/Tik Tok into the hundreds of millions, with continuing work being done on monetisation. At GoCo, we understand there have been no ‘nasty surprises’ since acquisition, with the right operating structure in place and integration on track. On the data front, Zack Sullivan (CRO) commented that early signs show that a larger percentage of advertising budgets are going to a smaller number of publishers; Future has been a beneficiary, having had early success with 1st party data solution, Aperture, with a mix of new-to-Future and existing clients on the platform.
Looking ahead
Whilst it is likely that bolt-on acquisitions will continue, the clear focus from Zillah is on delivering the value from the TI Media and GoCo acquisitions, with the management structure now in place to execute. We next hear from the company on 4th May at 2.30pm with a Webinar when they will introduce the GoCo team, ahead of interim results on the 19th. We make no changes to our estimates for this update. Future trades on an FY22e EV/EBITDA of 13.8x. Buy reiterated.
Whilst bolt-on acquisitions continue to be
