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(Alliance News) - DigitalBox PLC on Tuesday said it expects to deliver its full-year results in line with market expectations, and expects to return "more positive trading in 2024".
DigitalBox shares surged 19% to 3.98 pence each on Tuesday in London.
The Bath-based digital media and owner of brands such as Daily Mash, The Poke, The Tab and TVGuide.co.uk said it anticipates that adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation will meet market consensus.
Back in September, the firm said it expects to deliver positive Ebitda for the full year, while last year, it posted adjusted Ebitda of GBP1.1 million.
The firm said it faced challenges in 2023, including a difficult UK advertising market and a restriction on publisher traffic from major platforms.
Also during the period, DigitalBox acquired TVGuide.co.uk, which it said is "working well within the Digitalbox operating model".
At December 31, the firm said it had gross cash of GBP1.9 million.
Chief Executive James Carter 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."
The company will post its full-year results on March 26.
By Harvey Dorset, Alliance News reporter
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