Future holds guidance as interim earnings fall on hit to advertising

(Alliance News) - Future PLC on Thursday reported lower earnings for the first half, and backed its recently lower full year guidance against a "challenging backdrop".

The Bath, England-based magazine publisher and owner of price comparison website Go Compare said pretax profit sank 67% to GBP18.4 million in the six months to the end of March from GBP56.6 million a year prior. Diluted earnings per share were down 66% at 12.9 pence from 38.0p.

Revenue fell 7.7% to GBP349.1 million from GBP378.4 million.

Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation retreated 24% to GBP83.3 million from GBP109.8 million, as the margin narrowed to 24% from 29%.

Future said the decrease in adjusted Ebitda was largely driven by revenue mix, due to the impact of lower programmatic and ecommerce affiliate high-margin revenue.

Adjusted diluted EPS fell 22% to 46.4p from 59.7p.

"I am encouraged by the strategic progress we have made in the half-year despite the challenging backdrop, which impacted trading in programmatic advertising and eCommerce," said Chief Executive Kevin Li Ying.

"We are focused on continuing to progress our brand and content strategy to become brand destinations to drive renewed organic growth, ensuring we amplify our significant audience reach and diversify into faster growing segments. With our innovative and growth mindset we create new monetisable products and deploy them across our brands, whilst continuing to optimise legacy revenue streams."

Future said it will "look to unlock value" from brands and assets that "don't deliver the platform effect.

The CEO added: "There is much more to come and we are confident that our strategy will return Future to sustainable growth."

Looking ahead, Future said its outlook is unchanged and in line with the current market consensus.

It expects a mid to low single-digit organic revenue decline in financial 2026, with an adjusted Ebitda margin between 25% and 27%.

The current company compiled consensus is for revenue of GBP710 million and adjusted Ebitda of GBP183 million. This would represent a fall from financial 2025, when Future reported revenue of GBP739.2 million, with adjusted Ebitda of GBP223.4 million.

In March, Future said the expected continued shifts in the audience derived from Google search have been more pronounced than anticipated.

This is driving lower year-on-year sessions, negatively impacting higher-margin programmatic advertising and ecommerce revenues and has also led to PPC cost inflation across the industry, it said. As a result, it lowered its first half Ebitda margin guidance to between 24% and 25%.

No half-year dividend was declared, unchanged year-on-year.

Shares in Future were up 1.1% at 292.41 pence on Thursday morning in London.

By Michael Hennessey, Alliance News reporter

Comments and questions to newsroom@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2026 Alliance News Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Future