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25 March 2025

Digitalbox plc

("Digitalbox", the "Group" or the "Company")

Final Audited Results for the year ended 31 December 2024

Digitalbox plc, the mobile-first digital media business, which owns leading websites Entertainment Daily, The Daily Mash, The Poke, The Tab and TV Guide, today publishes its final audited results for the year ended 31 December 2024.

 Financial Highlights

(1)  Adjusted EBITDA is defined as the operating profit after adding back depreciation, amortisation, impairment, share-based payments, acquisition costs, costs related to one-off projects and new product development. There was no new product development cost in 2023.

Operational highlights:

James Carter, CEO, Digitalbox plc said: "We believe Digitalbox is well-positioned in the open advertising market, with the agility to adapt in real time while maintaining strong demand for its high-quality inventory. Global insights indicate a steady and measured market recovery throughout 2025, and we see no reason to question these forecasts at the current time. With improving conditions ahead, we are confident that the business is strategically placed to capitalise on the market's anticipated resurgence.

Our portfolio has been expanded and is now more diverse and balanced than at any time in the Company's history. This offers greater resilience and higher growth potential. Over the next 3 years we have an ambitious plan to at least double the size of the business. This will involve organically launching and expanding brands to build audiences in English language markets."

Investor Presentation

Digitalbox will also provide a live investor presentation through the Investor Meet Company platform today at 10.00am. The presentation is open to all existing and potential shareholders. Questions can be submitted at any time during the live presentation. Investors can sign up to Investor Meet Company for free and add to meet Digitalbox plc via

https://www.investormeetcompany.com/digitalbox-plc/register-investor .

Investors who have already registered and added to meet the Company will be automatically invited.

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:

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", "The Poke", "TV Guide", "Emmerdale Insider", "Royal Insider" and "Reality Shrine", 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. TV Guide serves as the definitive guide to what is on TV. Emmerdale Insider charts the twists and turns of this ever present British soap staple. Royal Insider provides the latest information for royal family fans the world over. Reality Shrine documents the latest twists and turns from the world's biggest reality TV shows.

Digitalbox primarily 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.

Chairman's Statement

2024 has been a pivotal year for Digitalbox plc, marked by strategic expansion, operational resilience and a return to growth despite a challenging macroeconomic environment. Our focus on delivering high-quality mobile-first media content has allowed us to navigate industry headwinds and position the company for future success.

The digital media landscape continues to evolve at pace, with shifting audience behaviours, platform algorithm changes, and economic pressures influencing market conditions. Against this backdrop, Digitalbox has demonstrated its ability to adapt, leveraging its proprietary technology and agile operating model to maintain engagement and drive revenue growth.

During the year, we successfully integrated and optimised our recent acquisitions, including tvguide.co.uk and the Media Chain Group assets. These strategic additions have significantly enhanced our reach, audience engagement, and revenue streams, reinforcing the strength of our buy-and-build strategy. Our portfolio, which now includes Entertainment Daily, The Daily Mash, The Tab, The Poke, TV Guide, Emmerdale Insider, Royal Insider and Reality Shrine is well-positioned to capitalise on the growing demand for mobile entertainment and news content.

Financially, we delivered full-year revenue of £3.6m, a 31% increase on 2023, Adjusted EBITDA* of £0.6m (2023: £20k), and an operating loss of £78k (2023: £6,773k) reflecting a significant improvement in profitability. This turnaround underscores the effectiveness of our cost efficiencies, operational discipline, and the inherent scalability of our business model. We ended the year with a strong balance sheet, increasing our gross cash position to £2.1m (2023: £1.9m), ensuring we remain well-equipped to seize further strategic opportunities as they arise.

The Board completed a Strategic Review in October. It highlighted that whilst we recognise that market volatility and platform dynamics will continue to present challenges, we are confident that our focus on our proven operating model, launching more specialist content sites, targeted revenue diversification and smart acquisitions will enable us to drive greater shareholder value in the years to come.

On behalf of the Board, I would like to extend my gratitude to our employees, partners, and shareholders for their continued support and dedication. I look forward to another year of growth and opportunity as we advance our mission to be a leader in mobile-first digital publishing.

Marcus Rich

Chairman

24 March 2025

* Adjusted EBITDA is defined as the operating profit after adding back depreciation, amortisation, impairment, share-based payments, acquisition costs, costs related to one-off projects and new product development. There was no new product development cost in 2023.

CHIEF EXECUTIVE'S STATEMENT

FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS

REVENUE                                    ADJUSTED EBITDA

£3.6m vs £2.8m in 2023               £0.62m vs £0.02m in 2023

ADJUSTED EBITDA MARGIN     ADJUSTED EBITDA PER SHARE

17.1% vs 0.7% in 2023                 0.53p vs 0.02p in 2023

* Adjusted EBITDA is defined as Operating loss after adding back depreciation, amortisation, impairment of goodwill and intangible assets, share-based payments, acquisition costs, costs related to one-off projects and new product development. There was no new product development cost in 2023.

2024 was another important year for Digitalbox, strengthening our assets and expanding the portfolio against a backdrop of changing market conditions.

The year started positively as the ad market boomed and we benefited from seeing Entertainment Daily re-surface in Google. As we moved through the year, economic uncertainty softened the ad market as the UK headed towards the general election, but advertiser confidence improved into Q4. Marketers favour mobile digital media due to the dominance of audience time spent on these devices, and there is further room for growth from what are considered the most accountable and relevant commercial solutions within the marketing mix.

Against this fast-changing market backdrop we have continued to develop our audience positions. We are now one of the most significant online publishers in UK entertainment space and will continue to benefit from the demand for quality mobile advertising inventory at scale.

A particular highlight - with the first full year of trading on TV Guide which we acquired in October 2023 - we can report the brand has already repaid 70% of the acquisition costs and is well positioned for further development. The tech solution we rolled out across both app and open web iterations has seen visibility within key audience channels increase and usage follow this. This is the latest example of our ability to identify, acquire and transform assets with potential into more profitable products.

Our strong year-end results, driven by a growing and profitable portfolio, reflect our expertise, focus, and agility in navigating challenges. By staying aligned with the positive macro trends in mobile advertising - an area we expect to outpace the broader market - we have positioned ourselves for continued growth.

Financial review

Full year revenue of £3.6m is 31% up on 2023, a result of steady organic growth and complementary bolt-on acquisitions with appealing payback timeframes that deliver an increasingly diversified portfolio bringing greater resilience and stability to our operations. We are also pleased to continue the trend of being consistently profitable since listing with Adjusted EBITDA* of £624k, up from £20k in 2023 and a return to target contribution margins in the second half of the year.

Cash generation is a key feature of this business and, despite some outlay on launches and acquisitions during the year, we are pleased to report the revenue growth of £0.8m resulted in an increase in net cash at year end. The business ended the year with gross cash at the bank of £2.1m, up from £1.9m for the previous reporting period and the cash is held ready to deploy for acquisitions and accelerated growth opportunities.

2024 shows an appealing return to revenue growth, strong margins and a robust balance sheet, with no impairment to the carrying value of the goodwill and intangibles.

Strategic direction

We began the year fully aware of the challenges affecting media companies in a time of significant change. As with nearly all media operations, we experienced plenty of turbulence as a result of changes on the major platforms (Google and Meta) as both changed their 'rules of engagement' responding to the threat of the disruptors (Open Ai and Tik Tok). We continue to observe an evolving landscape, but decided very early in 2024 that the business should diversify its portfolio and we embarked on our Verticals strategy.

The strategy is informed by our view that strong, relevant content will remain key to consumers and that it is how we reach our audiences that is changing the most. We made a decision to focus around our core strengths by expanding our existing model to establish a stronger market share in the entertainment space. Understanding the key platforms' preference and reader appetite for specialism we set about building our first organic launch, Emmerdale Insider, a highly focused product which paves the way for further niche launches.

Given the positive trading during 2024, and in recognition of some shareholders' sentiments, the Board felt October was an appropriate time to deliver a Strategic Review, which may have included a possible sale of the Company, with the objective of maximising shareholder value. Having carefully considered the outputs of the review, the Board concluded that seeking to crystallise value through a sale of the Company at that time was not in the best interests of all stakeholders and the Board resolved to focus on maximising value through the expansion of the Company's current model.

There were a number of key reasons behind the Board's conclusion; After a period of significant disruption for news media brands in general, the Company's underlying portfolio including Entertainment Daily, The Daily Mash, The Tab, The Poke and TV Guide continued to trade well alongside a positive outlook fuelled by forecast growth within the digital ad market; the Company had diversified its revenue sources and further expanded its portfolio over the past year, which it expects will continue to contribute to greater operational trading resilience in the future; the strengths contained within the current business enable a faster and lower-risk route to growth than a significant pivot of the business to an alternative unexplored model at this stage of the Company's development. That said, in addition to the development of specific new products, the Board has also agreed to invest further in 2025 on Research & Development to identify ways emerging technology and AI can benefit the portfolio.

The completion of the Strategic Review marked a key milestone for Digitalbox. We made significant strides in expanding and diversifying our portfolio, reinforcing the strength and adaptability of our mobile-first digital media business. This review gave us a clear, in-depth evaluation of our opportunities and reaffirmed the Board's confidence in our current strategy and operating model.

With a solid foundation in place, we are well-positioned to drive growth through both organic expansion and further strategic acquisitions. Looking ahead, we will stay focused on innovation and expansion while maintaining the agility to capitalise on emerging market opportunities through the delivery of our core operating model.

Operating review

Digitalbox currently owns and operates eight trading brands - Entertainment Daily, The Daily Mash, The Tab, The Poke, TV Guide, Emmerdale Insider, Royal Insider and Reality Shrine, with the final two having been launched in 2025, subsequent to this reporting period. Entertainment Daily produces and publishes online UK entertainment news covering TV, showbiz and celebrities. The Tab is the UK's leading student and youth culture site fuelled by a London-based core team and a national network of local university sites. The Daily Mash delivers online satirical news articles in its own distinctive style and The Poke expertly curates the funniest content from around the web and social media. TV Guide delivers the latest information to UK consumers about what to watch and when, ensuring they don't miss out. Emmerdale Insider is a dedicated fan website delivering the latest news, spoilers, and exclusive insights about the popular ITV soap Emmerdale. Royal Insider delivers the latest news and facts about the British royal family and Reality Shrine provides the go-to destination for the latest news, gossip, and insights on the biggest reality TV shows. All eight brands generate revenue from advertising in and around the content they publish and on platform engagement revenue, whilst The Daily Mash also has a paid subscription model. The acquisition of the five assets from GRV and Walford News have been successfully incorporated into the portfolio and will strengthen the launches we deliver in 2025.

Whilst 2024 was still a year of relative uncertainty, it further demonstrated the effectiveness of the digital advertising medium as its share stood at 67% of global ad spend. Media trends continued to evolve as the major platforms continued jostling for share whilst e-commerce grew globally by more than 8% via the most personal of channels, the mobile device, which fuelled demand for quality inventory.

With Digitalbox's lean operating model, we are well positioned to push forward with our strategy and the Board believes we are well placed to benefit from the forecasted growth in mobile ad spending over coming years. Above and beyond the macro conditions that were impacting most industries in 2024, Digitalbox did well to navigate the algorithmic challenges presented by the major platforms. Our publishing operations for the year saw our audience volumes grow 10% to 264m website visits.

As well as successfully re-platforming TV Guide and integrating it with the app experience, we established some very strong engagement across the Group via the Media Chain assets that we acquired in August 2023 and these contributed to our pleasing audience growth. Furthermore, there was underlying commercial success as we saw significant year-on-year growth in the Poke session values over the year, and the portfolio as a whole performed ahead of the UK digital ad market index.

Compelling content is at the heart of our offering, crafted by skilled teams with a deep understanding of their audiences' needs. Recognising the growing importance of this in website rankings, we have enhanced our teams' visibility through more detailed author profiles on our sites. We combine the expertise of our valued staff with our proprietary mobile-first delivery platform, named Graphene. Inspired by the ultra-fast, lightweight, and highly conductive material, Graphene is designed to deliver an optimal user experience with the fastest and most efficient page load speeds on mobile.

Alongside this highly optimised, low-friction content delivery, the commercial element of the Graphene set-up, the Graphene Ad Stack (GAS) now powers the advertising monetisation of Entertainment Daily, The Daily Mash, The Tab, The Poke, TV Guide, Emmerdale Insider, Royal Insider and Reality Shrine. We are seeing value creation here across all sites as we tracked ahead of market averages during 2024. As our portfolio expands, GAS's role in optimising revenue performance across the business and speeding the route to enhanced profitability for acquired properties is a key driver of the Company's performance.

The Tab and The Poke have proved to be great successes since their acquisition and both fully paid back their purchase costs within the first two years, and TV Guide is tracking to deliver the same.

We continue to evaluate further acquisitions, and the recent purchase of Walford News shows our intent to secure assets that can also bring us on-platform benefits. We remain ready to move quickly where we can realise the appropriate value. We maintained the scale of the Digitalbox team during a turbulent 2023, which meant we were well positioned to deliver our expansion in 2024 whilst operational efficiencies remained strong.

Verticals strategy

Digitalbox's Verticals strategy focuses on building and monetising highly engaging, mobile-first digital media brands within niche content categories or "verticals". Instead of operating with broadly pitched media propositions where authority is harder to establish, Digitalbox's organic launch expansion will focus on publishing brands that have the strongest audience loyalty and engagement across all platforms as these attributes are favoured by both Google and Meta when they rank sites.

The Verticals sites are designed to create highly loyal and engaged readers who return regularly to sites that provide content they are highly invested in consuming. We aim to grow the business through our Verticals strategy and deliver more launches as we move through 2025, 2026 and beyond.

A mobile-first business

Our strategy to create a mobile-first business has helped position us as a leader in the market for both audience engagement and monetisation. Push media skills remain critical and our brands continue to engage consumers at scale through this channel with 90% of our audience across the portfolio visiting on mobile devices. With an average of 22m monthly user visits to our sites, we present truly significant user scale to the market especially when combined with our capacity to engage.

Mobile advertising spend grew well into Q1 of 2024 and we anticipate further growth as western economies emerge from the sustained period of slow growth. As part of our mobile-first strategy, we have built a single site template for our new brands which enables optimisations to be rapidly applied across the portfolio. As previously noted, our GAS set up on The Poke and TV Guide quickly contributed to their profitability and we are seeing positive signs on the new Vertical site launches. This will give Digitalbox an advantage as we look to further optimise our existing portfolio, complete more acquisitions, build new sites and benefit from the forecast growth in the digital ad market.

PROJECTED GLOBAL DIGITAL MOBILE AD SPEND

The projections indicate a steady increase in both total digital advertising spend and the proportion allocated to mobile advertising, reflecting the growing dominance of mobile platforms in the digital advertising landscape.

*Source: Statista - Digital ad spend growth worldwide 2022-2028, November 2024.

Portfolio growth

Television soap site Walford News is the most recent addition to the Digitalbox portfolio, with the acquisition of assets completing in December 2024. We feel the offering is an excellent stablemate to Entertainment Daily with a distinct proposition and relationship with our regular EastEnders show editorial output. It brings over 450k followers that can be used to enhance our Verticals strategy.

Immediately prior to the Walford News transaction we completed on the assets of the GRV entertainment portfolio in November 2024. The assets acquired bring a content archive and social pages which we feel are highly complementary to the Group, supporting the launches of Reality Shrine and Royal Insider (both outside the reporting period). We're pleased that the majority of the GRV team have chosen to join Digitalbox full time and are now contributing across our portfolio.

TV Guide was acquired in October 2023 and had a strong first full year of trading, benefiting significantly from its re-platforming. With a vastly improved user experience delivered in Q4, we were able to move forwards and flow this solution into our app experience on both IOS and Android. These changes delivered a very strong year for the brand with over 51m sessions and it tracking to fully repay its purchase price within 24 months.

Entertainment Daily saw an overall reduction in sessions (visits) of 21% year-on-year as a result of Google algorithms drastically reducing its appearance in their search and Discover feeds. Facebook performed well across the year contributing significantly to our performance since they decided to move to commercially favour the most engaged audience groups. The editorial team continued to cover all the TV and showbiz stories as the news broke, maximising traffic and social engagement around moments that caught the nation's imagination. This year also saw the launch of Emmerdale Insider from this editorial group as we responded to the changes being made by Google.

The Tab continues to perform on strategy delivering consistent positive contribution growth. The year saw the site have strong traffic growth of 15% year-on-year, bucking market trends. Editorial campaigning for key issues connecting with the student demographic continued to produce national media pick-ups, alongside its established output of entertainment and culture coverage. Whilst the site had to ride out the challenge of the Facebook strike, this has now been resolved. We continue to leverage the existing Tab portfolio of Facebook pages, the Media Chain acquired page helped push its social follower base beyond 14m, delivering much greater reach and audience delivery over the year.

The Poke, which was acquired at the end of 2022, also had another strong year. We benefited from the interest around the elections on both sides of the Atlantic, whilst growing session values by 34%. Traffic was 22% up as we invested in greater output to grow the site and we quickly achieved full repayment on the acquisition costs for this site early in the year.

The Daily Mash had a positive year as we progressed our consumer-revenues strategy. Subscriptions grew, to over 4000 and readers accepted a 50% increase in subscription costs as we looked to optimise our service behind the pay wall. The brand also delivered a return to print and paper with its licensed book 'A Field Guide to Being British' hitting the shops in Q4 in 2024.

Culture and people

At Digitalbox, we are committed to fostering a culture where talented individuals can thrive. Long before the global health emergency that started in 2020, we prioritised flexibility and agility over rigid office traditions or a one-size-fits-all approach. Today, we continue to blend office-based and remote roles, full-time and part-time positions, as well as staff and freelance agreements - ensuring our business needs align with those of our people. Our hybrid working model, which balances home and office environments, has proven to be the most effective.

Clear communication and inclusivity are at the heart of our culture. We keep our teams informed with monthly Company-wide updates, host weekly leadership sessions, and maintain daily team meetings. Additionally, we bring everyone together for two annual all-staff events-this year's summer gathering featured a pre-Olympics tour of Paris, while our Christmas celebration embraced a musical theme in London's Fitzrovia.

Attracting and retaining top talent is central to our success. New staff work closely with experienced managers as they develop their skills, while ongoing training and development opportunities support career growth for senior staff. The Daily Mash and The Poke have welcomed new contributors, and The Tab remains dedicated to offering free, high-quality training for its network of student journalists.

We believe in fairly rewarding our people and providing them with opportunities to grow within the business. All employees benefit from life assurance and pension schemes, along with a comprehensive wellbeing and support programme. This includes personalised nutrition and fitness plans, mental health resources, legal and medical advice, and strategies to prevent burnout. Additionally, a share options scheme is available for senior staff.

I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to the entire Digitalbox team for their dedication, resilience, and enthusiasm throughout a challenging year. Their contributions have been instrumental in laying the foundation for future growth. As we continue to expand our portfolio, it's a privilege to work alongside such a talented and committed team.

Business outlook

Since listing on the AIM market with a single brand in 2019, Digitalbox has continued to develop as a profitable UK digital media business positioned squarely in the mobile space and focused on the entertainment sector.

The evolving media landscape of 2024 reinforced the consensus from publishers that audiences will be delivered through increased diversification. A focus on engagement through the most effective channels will be key, whilst global digital advertising spend is forecast to grow by more than 30% in the next three years.

The UK digital ad market continues to lead the world with the greatest share of total ad spend allocated to this medium whilst we are second only to the US in digital ad spend per capita. These forces will help Digitalbox, by pushing the business to the forefront as mobile devices' share is also forecast to grow from 67% of all digital ad spend in 2024 to 73% in 2027 and our content and tech teams continue to strengthen delivery through this channel.

Beyond the advertising market, TV continues to be highly competitive with the battle for share pushing all participants towards higher quality content. The streamers' optimum operating models have yet to settle as they also explore hybrid ad-funded subscription models. Whilst the traditional channels face the pressure of this changing landscape, the quality of the output continues to grow to benefit our audiences and fuel the demand for the information they crave from publishers like Digitalbox. The increasingly competitive entertainment market stimulates our various audiences leading to big shows like Married At First Sight and I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here delivering strong engagement across our platforms in 2024.

Since listing on AIM, we have successfully completed seven acquisitions-The Daily Mash, The Tab, The Poke, Media Chain, GRV, Walford News and TV Guide - each demonstrating the strength of our model. These successes reinforce our confidence in driving further growth within our portfolio and pursuing additional acquisitions when the right opportunities arise.

2024 saw Digitalbox deliver a strong recovery from the areas of the market that hit many publishers hard in 2023, and our decision to stick to our plan has set the business up well for expansion. Whilst we recognise there is room for economic confidence to improve, we believe it will have a direct impact on marketing budgets when it does.

We believe Digitalbox is well-positioned in the open advertising market, with the agility to adapt in real time while maintaining strong demand for its high-quality inventory. Global insights indicate a steady and measured market recovery throughout 2025, and we see no reason to question these optimistic forecasts. With improving conditions ahead, we are confident that the business is strategically placed to capitalise on the market's anticipated resurgence.

Our portfolio has been expanded and is now more diverse and balanced than at any time in the Company's history. This offers greater resilience and higher growth potential. Over the next three years we have an ambitious plan to at least double the size of the business. This will involve organically launching and expanding brands to build audiences in English language markets. In order to drive this expansion, we are committing c.£0.6m of incremental investment in 2025. We expect revenues to build through the plan period (2025-2027) driving profitability and scale.

We enter 2025 with an expanded portfolio, primed for future growth alongside a returning economy and a confident digital advertising sector expected to increase its share of global ad spend over coming years.

James Carter

Chief Executive      

24 March 2025

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME

FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2024

¹Adjusted EBITDA is defined as Operating loss after adding back depreciation, amortisation, impairment of goodwill and intangible assets, share-based payments, acquisition costs, costs related to one-off projects and new product development. There was no new product development cost in 2023.