Operator : Good afternoon, and welcome to the Team Internet Group PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged to be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Please simply type in your questions and press send. Before we begin, I would like to make the following call. Then I will hand you over to the management team. Michael, good afternoon, sir.
Michael Riedl : Good afternoon. Good afternoon to everyone, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Michael Riedl, Group CEO of Team Internet Group, and with me is Billy Green, our Group CFO. Let me start with the headline of today's presentation because it is a simple one. These results contain no surprises. Everything you see today was set out earlier this year and delivered. Trust me when I say we would like no surprises to become a habit at Team Internet. You can see the agenda on the screen, and it is also the story of the company right now in five chapters. First, what we said and what we delivered, and we will hold ourselves to our own words. Then the results by segment, followed by the balance sheet and financing, and I know this is where some of you have questions, and we will take them head on. Then we proceed to the strategic review and other sources of value, and finally, we will look into the outlook. We will see enough time for your questions, as many of you will have a few. Let us jump straight in, what we said and what we delivered. This slide is a scorecard, and it is deliberately the first thing we show to you. On the left, you will see the commitments that we made publicly, each one dated and sourced. You can look every one of them up yourselves. On the right, what actually happened. First, we said H1 trading would be in line with consensus. It was. In line with consensus, EBITDA ahead of the second half of last year, and the group operating profit finally back in the black. Second, we promised that we would build Comparison. At our full-year results in June, we told you Comparison would continue to broaden and grow strongly, and it did. It grew net revenue 38%, profits 56%, and it opened a substantial new customer acquisition channel, which will feed into further growth in future periods. It is now becoming the second earnings pillar of this group. Third, we said, and we had guided this through all of 2025, that Search would complete its transition and return to profitability. It did exactly that. Profitable in June with real EBITDA and AdSense for Domains is not a thing anymore. All of our revenues now come from RSOC and other products that we have built around that. Fourth, we said we would strengthen the balance sheet. As you have seen earlier this year, the facilities were amended, covenant headroom was materially widened, and the full refinancing is advancing. Billy will give you a bit more color on this. Two of the rows on this slide carry arrows rather than ticks because they are in motion. First, net debt, which we reaffirmed today, will be broadly in line with market consensus by year-end. Secondly, the strategic review, where we gave you an update this morning, and I'll come back to it properly in chapter four. When I said in line with consensus, the headline numbers and the slide title is the summary. In line with consensus, ahead of the second half of 2025, and with a step up in the quality of earnings. Let me take the six boxes below very briefly. First, gross revenue, $179 million, admittedly down 1/3 year-on-year. But I want to be very direct about that number. This decline was totally expected. It's the impact of the Search transition that we've guided you through for the last 18 months and which is now complete. Every other number on the slide tells you what the transition has brought. Second, net revenue is now $61 million. The gross margin is up from 28% to 34%, a total pick up of 6 percentage points. That's the step up in quality. A richer mix and more of every revenue dollar that stays with us and doesn't go to third parties. Third, adjusted EBITDA of $9.5 million, which is below the first half of last year as reflected, but ahead of the second half of 2025, which means the trough is behind us. The second half of our, is systematically stronger than our first half of all years, and we'll expect the same pattern for this year. Then, the operating profit, $3 million. That is the group's first half-year operating profit since the first half of 2024. At the end of the biggest transition in this company's history, we returned to making money. On the bottom line, adjusted EPS, profits after all deductions, amortization, etc. The net debt is now sitting at $117 million, but Billy will give you some more flavor about that and how it's going to come down over the next couple of quarters. When I say the quality of earnings has increased, I'm also referring to the revenue mix. In the first half of this year, 87% of the net revenue was sitting in DIS and Comparison, and both are growing. So expect that pattern to maybe become even stronger. The shape of the group is very different. DIS is a subscription business, and Comparison, as I will lay out to you later, pretty much the end game in online discovery. A product that we are very proud of and that we have very high hopes in, but let's wait for the specific slide. The revenue only fell where it was expected, which is Search, where there was simply no way to compensate in the given time the massive amount of revenue of AdSense for Domains, the product that Google has sunset in April this year. But already today, we are making very solid revenues with RSOC and other substitute products. Let's now go into the three segments each by themselves. DIS, the title says it keeps compounding and we have a value discipline with time on our side. The net revenue is up by 8% against both halves of last year. The profit is up 28% with a margin of 34% on net revenue. Our value-added services like registry services, SSL certificates, trustee services, and software now make up almost 19% of our revenue, compared to only slightly north of 17%. So the diversification, or the addition of additional services on top of our super resilient domain renewal revenue streams is working. You will notice from the information in the RNS today that the domain volumes are slightly down, and that is deliberate. We've traded volume for quality. We ended relationships where customers did not pay the price or did not leave us the margin that was required to process the internal cost that engaging with them required. We are seeing both the gross margin going up and the EBITDA conversion, that's the figure how we measure EBITDA as a percentage of net revenue, is also going down because this has also been helping us streamlining our processes. We are now largely done with this process, so expect that, at the latest in 2027, we will then again see growth on all three numbers and not only on net revenue and the EBITDA. While we have an additional slide on the strategic review later, what's important to see here is this is a growing asset, and there's absolutely no need to accept any discounts for urgency. Every month that we own this business throws off good cash, and the business only becomes more valuable as longer as we hold onto it. Coming to Comparison. Comparison, which is now the second earnings pillar, and which is compounding revenue internationally. I want to spend real time here because this is the heart of what the equity story would be after a potential sale of DIS. Let's start with how we make money, because it's unusual and this is the whole point. We are paid only when someone completes a purchase at one of our e-commerce partners. Not per click, not per view. We take all the conversion risk, and we are rewarded for taking it. Because for the merchant, it doesn't get any better than this. They pay for the results and only for the results. Doing this well is super hard and only few can, and we are very happy that we are the leader in this business model in the largest market in Europe. How does this translate into figures? Net revenue up 38%, profits up 56%, and 68% conversion of net revenue in EBITDA. Profits growing faster than revenue. That's the operational leverage that we've built in this business. The growth that's driving this has three drivers in order. The revenue grows against a largely fixed content and technology base. So we have all the resources in-house to drive the growth engine. We are going for deeper monetization. We are layering manufacturer commissions on top of retailer commissions, which means that out of every sale that we refer to a merchant, we are generating more value for us. Also internationalization is progressing. You see that the percentage of international sales has gone up from 5%-5.2%, but this is first against the backdrop of a very strongly growing German business. Secondly, in the first half of 2026, given that we have a promise to keep, which is to trade in line with expectations, we have put most of the investment in the already profitable international markets and less investment into the international markets that still need to become profitable. In particular, France is super meaningful and has multiplied by a low to mid-single digit integral multiple. That is a market where we now are slowly becoming a proper powerhouse. What we have also done in the first half of the year is developing new conversion funnels, which open a substantial new acquisition channel alongside classical Search. Those who have seen early presentations where we had the screenshots of what we do, they will know that a lot of the traffic comes from classical Google Search text ads, which is the easiest to convert traffic. However, we have also built new conversion funnels that help us converting shopping ads, and in the future, also help us engage with customers on social media, vastly expanding the universe of customers which we can work together. So over that, we basically have the hat trick of growing and diversifying internationally, in each market addressing new customer bases that are not coming through search engines. Last but not least, working with e-commerce partners and the merchants alike to extract the value that we create for our customers, and transform it into financial success for us. Coming on to Search, the transition is complete. As I said before, the business has finally gone into its first monthly profit in June. The margins are maturing and the move away from AdSense is complete. AdSense was already negligible in the first half of this year, and it will be zero in the second half of the year. Next generation monetization, including RSOC and other formats that we have recently built, is now 90% of the segment revenue. A year ago it was only 24%, so you see how profound the transformation has been. So what do we mean with the years of journey optimization on the right-hand side? The transition that our demand-side partner, Google, is requiring is something that we always said is something we embrace and think is something useful. The speed at which it happens is more challenging. But today we are talking about daily revenues, which are in the same order of magnitude as the revenues that we had with AdSense for Domains at the time that we acquired the business at the end of 2019. We are seeing margins, I am talking about gross margins maturing. This is one of the businesses where we have not only applied generative AI, which is something that is very important in all our business. But one of the features which has helped us to stay in the business and turn profitable again is a very consequential application of agentic AI. The level of automation that we have now built into this business is quite unbelievable. I could not have imagined something like this two years ago. But this also means that we are still afloat, whereas an estimated half of our former peers in the market have shut the shop. But who knows Team Internet knows we never give up, and we just work until we have found a solution to the challenge. Here it seems we found it. That was it on the trading picture. Next, chapter three, balance sheet and financing, cash flow, net debt, leverage, and the refinancing. I will hand this part over to Billy who knows all the details about it. Thank you.
Billy Green : Drilling in more detail into a couple of the factors relating to the cash flow for the period. Taking them in the order that they are presented on the page here, on the right-hand side of the page you will see, as forecast, as anticipated, and as accrued at the time, we settled the final tax liabilities in respect of fiscal years 2022 and 2023. Just to go into sufficient detail in respect of, and everybody asks this, why tax liabilities in respect of fiscal year 2022 and 2023 are payable several years hence? There is a number of jurisdictions in which we operate where the final tax liability for the year is subject to a final assessment by the tax authorities. You then owe the final tax bill once that has been assessed, and for us, it is mainly Germany. We estimated and accrued at the time, as appropriate, the correct amount of tax in respect of 2021, 2022, 2023, and profits for every year. And our estimation process for accruing those taxes has been very good. We knew in a forecast that at some point, the final assessment would take place. The final assessment of fiscal years 2022 and 2023 closed in the second half of last year, of 2025. We were issued the final tax bill, we started paying the liability in very late 2025, and then that has finally been completely concluded in 2026. So that is why you have a material tax cash outflow in the first half of 2026, despite the fact that current profits are at a lower level than they were back then. We continue to accrue the appropriate amount of tax for each period, and even at the level of profitability we are at now, there is some tax that is due in respect of 2025 and 2026. But that again, will likewise wait until those years are assessed. So the most peak years of our profitability have now been tax assessed, and that is why we have a material cash outflow in the first half of 2026. The other factor that is perhaps less visible in the financials, you will see within the first line of the cash flow statement there, we have a net cash outflow from operations. I would not want anybody to think that in the first half of the year, the underlying core generation of cash from the business was negative. You've actually got within there, continuing strong cash generation from the business, offset with the non-recurring impact of one particular registry customer within the DIS business whose account was not renewed. That has a one-off negative impact on working capital. So the impact of that is an outflow of funds in the first half of the year. But now that that's behind us, the future working capital needs of both the DIS business and all of our businesses look very secure and have no further very unusual impacts like that. We're looking forward to in the second half of the year, cash generation returning to the very strong net levels that we've enjoyed in the past, and that's why we're targeting and expect to see net debt decrease back down through the end of the year, which we'll now come onto in the ensuing slides. The next slide shows exactly what I'm referring to. You've got a visual representation of closing year-end net debt of $87.6 million. It's worth bearing in mind that we overachieved rather in terms of operational cash conversion, in terms of we had a higher than usual cash holding at the end of 2025. We then experienced the corporation tax and the registry deteriorations in the first half of 2026, which leads us to $117.6 million net debt as of June 30. But we're still targeting a decrease in net debt to around $100 million by the end of the year. Absent the non-recurring factors that I referred to, it's important that we continue to focus on deleverage, and net debt at the year-end. It will certainly be significantly lower than where it is today. Whether it gets down as low as the $94 million that was in the consensus of the analysts who follow us on Friday, or whether it's somewhere between $94 million and $100 million, really every little counts. There are a lot of actions that we'll take within the second half of the year to ensure that net debt lands in the region of around $100 million, close to the consensus of $94 million as it was on Friday. There's a lot that we can do to influence net debt being significantly lower by the end of the year. Net debt is, of course, not only important in respect of financial reporting to the equity markets, but also for the purposes of our regular covenant reporting to the lenders with whom we enjoy a continued very good relationship, and continuation of the facilities agreement. We just thought we should point out and we'll continue to talk about over the ensuing months and quarters, there is a difference between the basis under which leverage is calculated for accounting purposes and for facilities agreement purposes. For accounting purposes, you can calculate the level of leverage from what's available in the financial statements. The net debt figure is a figure that we, of course, disclose and describe in as much detail as appropriate as to what the component parts of that net debt figure is. Likewise, the adjusted EBITDA that we used, it's been a very consistently applied metric over the last several years. I can't recall the last time we made a change to the presentation of adjusted EBITDA. It still fulfills the function that it had when I joined the group in 2019, stripping out non-recurring or non-trading costs, so that we get a true underlying view of the real genuine underlying profitability of the business, and that's what adjusted EBITDA fulfills for us. We naturally disclose both adjusted EBITDA and GAAP IFRS operating profit, but for leverage purposes, we use adjusted EBITDA. That's what leads you to the 3.1 that we use to track. There are differences between that accounting basis that you could calculate based on the available information in the financial statements and the basis that's used for the covenant calculation for our lender group. Those differences fall into two categories, and those of you who work with covenants on a regular basis will recognize that these are reasonably standard adjustments that are usually made in many covenant situations. Firstly, in terms of the net debt definition, covenants in terms of external lending often include items that are correctly presented off balance sheet under IFRS. Letters of credit is one example. That's where we have commitments with our bankers that we've enjoyed continuity of, again, since before I joined the group in 2019. We've had some millions of dollars of letters of credit that are available to us. They are added to the potential debt for the bank leverage covenant calculation. Likewise, the EBITDA definition. Definitions of EBITDA vary for different uses. There are various customary standard add backs in respect of. One example that will be familiar to people who deal with covenants regularly is rent, normal office rent and rates, or property taxes more broadly, that are levied on lease contracts. Under IFRS, they're excluded from the P&L and from EBITDA. They're capitalized and amortized. But for covenant purposes, those rent costs are added back as they are a cash flow of the business. There are differences as well in the EBITDA definition. But overall, as long as we can give the correct level of understanding to the market about the distinction between the different leverage calculations, there's nothing in there, I believe, that people won't have seen and experienced elsewhere, and nothing that tends to create any significant confusion. The final point that I'll make in respect of cash flow and balance sheet, and it's moving more onto the balance sheet side of things and looking prospectively, strategically at where the liquidity of the business is going. As we announced in June and then we reiterated in July and we're saying it again today, the revision, the amendment that was made to our facilities agreement in June meant that we enjoy a less restrictive level of headroom on our bank covenants. We aligned the maturities of that facility so that no lender within the facility needs to be repaid out of that facility until October of next year. While we continue refinancing discussions in the background in case the strategic review doesn't lead to the full liquidity event that we anticipate, in case that doesn't happen, there are refinancing options that are executable that we can turn to in advance of that facilities agreement maturity in October of 2027. Our balance sheet doesn't depend on a transaction arising from a strategic review. We feel as a company that the likely outcomes of that strategic review, which Michael will go into in a bit more detail in a minute, we believe that they are the most appropriate for the company, but liquidity-wise, the company doesn't need those. It is something that is within our optionality to execute. There are various paths to deleverage, as Michael alluded to within the income statement section of the presentation. There is plenty in terms of ongoing profitability that enables us to deleverage on an ongoing monthly and quarterly basis. Now that we are through the couple of non-recurring cash outflows in the first half of the year, we look forward to deleveraging in the second half of the year. There is a lot that we can still influence that enable us to pick up the pace on that. I will now pass back over to Michael to talk about the strategic review and other value-adding factors in a little more detail.
Michael Riedl : Thank you, Billy. Yes, as we say, chapter four, strategic review and value, the review itself, the damages claims, and what happens with that capital afterwards. First, strategic review. Where we are in this morning's exact words, the review is at an advanced stage. Discussions are ongoing with a view to reaching a transaction in the near term, and we remain engaged with multiple parties interested in all or parts of the division. The board has also today reaffirmed its expectation that the value would materially exceed $160 million. Just to come back where, what is the genesis of this word? It was the market cap as the day when we first announced the transaction. So that guidance was set in November. It has now been reaffirmed four times, including this morning, and any agreed transaction is expected to complete around the year-end. As we must say, of course, the boilerplate language, there cannot be certainty that a transaction will be agreed. But I would like to add two sentences of my own on top of what was written and printed this morning. You saw on the DIS slide why we negotiate without urgency. The asset grows while we talk, and nothing on the balance sheet forces our hand, as Billy has just presented. So for the record, here is my commitment. We will conclude this review on terms that reflect the full fair value of what we have built, and we are not managing towards a specific calendar date. We only own one DIS. We can only sell it once, and it will be at the right terms and conditions. Moving on to the damages claims. So, us having suffered competitive disadvantage and corresponding damages has been established by final regulatory decisions. Courts in several jurisdictions have been ruling favorably for other claimants in comparable proceedings. The number only, this is the only fact that changes from one read out of this slide to the other. Our own recovery process is well underway. It is self-funded, which the board has assessed as the economical superior route. Also, to reconfirm again, a successful outcome would be material in the context of our current market cap. However, the outcome, the timing, and the exact amounts remain uncertain, and therefore the company can also, at this stage, not recognize an asset on the balance sheet. What is important, though, is this claim runs on its own track. It is independent of all the other things that we are doing. Anything that comes out here is additive to any outcome of decision review or any of the improvements to the current trading. Independent valuation, but not a trade-off to anything else that we are doing. The question then is, given that both events would lead to an inflow of material financial resources, what happens with the capital? The sequence is a quite logical one. However, the amount and the timing are yet to be set by the board once we get to the stage that we have got binding agreements. First, retire the debt. An appropriate balance sheet precedes every other use of capital. We will not let leverage constrain this company's flexibility again. We learned our lessons from the past. Second, return of excess capital. A distribution following any disposal or a major award from the antitrust claims. The method is yet to be determined. We tend to offer a buyback, a special dividend. We will decide on that at the time the money becomes available to us. I really mean it when I say we are generally interested in your preferences between those. Anyone who wants to provide any feedback this week is a good time to tell us. Third, we will reinstantiate the dividend policy, which we suspended in 2025 based on the events around Search. We only suspended it. It was never canceled. With a materially de-leveraged company and a highly profitable Comparison and, as we expect, also profitable Search division, both of which also have great cash conversion, all conditions to be a dividend-paying company would be fulfilled. M&A would only be an addition to it for a long period of time, in particular 2018 through the end of 2022. M&A has almost been the [Non-English content] for CentralNic Group, as we called ourselves back then. While we still see M&A as an important strategic tool, we will be much more selective in our future approach to this topic. What is on the outlook? First, we are executing the 2026 plan across the group. We will further grow DIS, broaden Comparison, and grow into new customer groups and new countries. We will manage Search for profitability based on its new monetization products. We will continue the strategic review and keep you up to date whenever there is anything meaningful to report. A sentence that I would like to leave with you, our earnings are traditionally, and not only traditionally, I should say, structurally weighted to the second half, and that does not change just because the Search division is now of less scale than it was, for example, in 2023. But it applies to both Comparison and Search, that Q4 is simply the peak activity of e-commerce, whether in the U.S. with Thanksgiving or in Europe with Christmas. Even in China, Q4 is the strongest season in e-commerce. So we expect the pattern to hold true, and that's why we're confident that we will see a stronger second half of the year and continue the trend of year-on-year earnings growth in the second half of 2026. Thank you for now. Happy to go into your questions now. Great. Well, we've been hurrying a bit to have sufficient time. Not sure whether we can get through all of the questions on screen. Management noted at the last meeting that Search was profitable in June. Can the board confirm whether the profitability has continued month-to-month through July and August, and whether the profitability is broad based across partners or concentrated in specific relationships?
Billy Green : Shall I start with that first one, Michael?
Michael Riedl : Yeah.
Billy Green : Yeah, July and August have continued in a very similar vein in Search to where we ended up in June. So it was pleasing that June we saw the start of a reversal of some consecutive months of loss making within Search. July and August have continued very similarly to June. So we wouldn't claim that June, July, August are stellar in terms of performance, but the difference between being a drain on profitability and cash, as Search was in January through May, and actually contributing has been significant. August results are, we don't have the final results yet, and I would fully expect seasonally, August tends to be a relatively weak month as opposed to Q4, for example. October, November, December, before you even get into the e-commerce industry and the Comparison segment, the advertising industry, Q4, is absolutely flying, whereas August, I wouldn't be surprised if August is, say, lower than July and June. But the business is still operating in a much better position than it was earlier in the year. We've started the second half of the year in Search significantly better than we started the first half of the year, and also in a significantly better spot than we ended last year. It's contributing rather than holding us back now, which is where we had hoped to get to following a period of transition in the first half of the year. To answer the second part of the question, whether the profitability is broad based across partners or concentrated in specific relationships, it will continue to be the case within our Search business that there will be certain valued partnerships that we must focus on extracting the maximum amount of revenue from. If we were to believe that we can somehow operate that business while navigating around the larger ad technology and search players, then that wouldn't be the best outcome. There is still a concentration of an amount of the revenue with certain revenue partners, but that's because we've shown in the past that we can win and generate huge profits with those partners. There is still some concentration there, but there's a broader mix of partners than used to be the case when AdSense for Domains was at its peak in 2022 and 2023. But we're very happy with the balance between different sizes of partners, and we'll continue to hopefully take all available partnerships forward.
Michael Riedl : Thanks, Billy. Second question. Comparison delivered exceptional percentage EBITDA growth in H1, materially ahead of both revenue and net revenue growth. Can the board break down the main drivers of that operational leverage, specifically whether it reflects changes in client mix, vertical mix or geographic mix. In particular, is Comparison now benefiting from a U.S. footprint, and if so, can the board comment on how scalable the U.S. opportunity is and how meaningful it could become for the future? First, we've seen similar growth in the German-speaking core markets as we've seen internationally. As I mentioned, our investment focus in internationalization was France, where we are the most advanced. France materially outgrew the German-speaking core markets. But materially, it comes from us doing smarter business, getting higher conversion rates, getting higher basket sizes, getting higher commission rates from the transactions. These are the things that make that from similar, from slightly growing traffic numbers, we then go to more gross revenue, more net revenue. And finally, the EBITDA is a fact that with today's agentic AI, I am not talking about generative AI, which we have been using for many years in this division. With agentic AI, also needs to hire in line with growth is very much reduced, which then leads to revenue growing faster than traffic, net revenue growing faster than gross revenue, and EBITDA growing faster than the net revenue. On your specific question on the U.S., yes, we have launched our U.S. portal. And on purpose, we first wait a few months to let the website settle organically before we start running advertising campaigns for these sites, just like we have done it in France, which is now the best example of how to scale a market successfully. Currently, the U.S. revenues are still negligible in the total scheme of thing. And of course, the United States is the trophy prize for pretty much every industry, and we will invest in this business when the time is right. Generally, internationalization is a massive driver. The three predominantly German-speaking core markets, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, only represent 7% of the global e-commerce market. So theoretically, there is a 15x revenue expansion opportunity. It would, of course, be delusional to assume that we would have the same market share that we have in Germany in every country, but it just gives you a rough size of the opportunity. So even if you only extract 10% of the potential, that would already imply 150% growth of the business over the next couple of years. Next question: What is the main reason for delays in DIS sale? Is it because of valuation? If so, will you hold out for the valuation you previously expected, or will you accept current market conditions and conclude the sale swiftly? I think I answered that already. I have not been charged with getting rid of this business. I have been charged with extracting the maximum value for this business, and I think it looks good, but we are not quite there yet. I would like to gently push back on the word delay. Again, this is not a sprint, where the target is the shortest number of days to get to the outcome, but it is to get to the right outcome. And a transaction is, of course, much more than just a price tag. It is a carve-out plan. It is an integration plan on the other side. It is due diligence. It is all kinds of terms and conditions in an SPA, representations and warranties, withholding amounts, W&I insurance, and many other things that they need to be in line before two parties would be happy to put ink on the paper. And again, I made very explicit on the strategic review slide the deal will happen when we get the right value. We can sell DIS only once, and that is why the optimization, where we are optimizing for price and not for timeline. The next question, you now describe the strategic review as being at advanced stage with multiple parties interested in all or parts of DIS and the transaction targeted in the near term. Can you explain what has materially changed since July and whether the board is now evaluating firm proposals rather than expressions of interest? Yes, we are now on a much more firm level, and we are still exploring different options. Some people would want to own certain parts of DIS at very high valuations. We need to find, as a board, the best balance out of optimizing the value without stripping out certain parts of the business which might then make other bidders be less interested in the process. We are being advised in this process by Evercore, one of the leading investment banks for sales mandates. We are in good hands here, and every word in the RNS was carefully chosen, including the term Netron. Next question, we were previously guided the board expect the outcome strategic review, including any potential agreements to be announced in the first half of Q3. Yeah. It has not happened that way. But again, as I mentioned before, extracting the right value at the right terms and conditions with no risks of later clawbacks and other things, that is our main focus. If it takes a few more weeks, the board is happy to give the company and the buyers the few more weeks to understand the business so well that we can actually sell it for an all upfront price with no clawbacks. Sorry, please keep me genuine if I skip in the list of questions as,
Billy Green : Yeah, I think the next one is about the DIS sale again, about the period it is taking. Then there is a question about net debt, which I will take. Per today's update, the market has noted the increase in net debt. Shareholders were not updated as to increased tax payments. What is the current net debt position? Bit surprised because we have talked a lot about cash tax for some time now. It has been included in our forecasts, and we have guided all the analysts that follow us to include it in their forecasts. We knew that at some point the final tax bill in respect of those prior years, fiscal year 2022, fiscal year 2023 would come through. So it has been in our forecast and should have been expected by shareholders. The increase in net debt is something that we knew that in the quarter or in the half year in which those tax liabilities were paid off, net debt would increase. The current net debt position is exactly as stated in the deck, $117.6 million. But while August is seasonally a challenging month, the next couple of months, September, October, November, we always generate more cash and we always deleverage in the second half of the year. Absent any factors, as Mike referred to, absent any kind of strategic factors like M&A and dividends, that there is no cash payments to make this year. Net debt will be lower at year end, significantly lower. It is a challenge for me and the rest of the team in the business, whether we can get under $100 million. When we've had aspirational targets in the past, we've almost always hit them in terms of where we want to get to with net debt, so you can expect a much more pleasing position by the end of the year.
Michael Riedl : Thanks, Billy. I'm just trying to understand the next question, which is I think also around the DIS process. I think we've said all we can say on the DIS process already based on the other questions that we've seen. Next one I see is, could you please update as to progress with Google lawsuit and if any settlement talks are underway? First, we never disclose parties in which we are in litigation with and would also, under no circumstances, give any details about specific conversations that we would have with any party. But our case here is strong, and we see no reason to initiate any settlement talks with whoever the counterparty is from our side. We'll leave it to the process with the courts. Then Search OpEx. Is that the right question? Yeah. Search OpEx were around $10 million in H1 2026. Do you think $20 million is the new base OpEx for Search or will it decline further? I can clearly confirm that already today the run rate is materially lower, which would lead to a lower number than that annualized. There is no race in the finish line to make our businesses more efficient. Again, I mentioned before that this is a great case of what you can do not with generative AI, but with agentic AI. The very consequential application of agentic AI is basically what has allowed us to stay in this market, whereas many other companies had to close the shop. Talking about AI, could you address the threat of AI to the market's future revenues of TIG, given increasing sophisticated generation AI, or if OpenAI is to be believed per its latest model attaining full AGI? Thank you. Yes, that's a great topic. As you see from the figures, and we are now almost four years after the launch of ChatGPT, which I think was on the 8th of November 2022, and our traffic numbers are still showing upwards. Our conversion is showing upwards. So it seems our model is still very relevant even today. And why is that? Because we are beating the large language model vendors with their own weapons. What we do here is we know already in advance what customers are interested in, and we pre-build Comparison websites, admittedly hundreds of thousands of them, but this has a lot of advantages. First of all, our compute cost, and we are using the exact same models that these other companies building to generate content. But through our pre-built process, our compute cost is about 99% lower than it is for Anthropic or OpenAI. Many of you will have seen their financials in their preparation for an IPO. The cost base is clearly the weakness, the Achilles heel of these companies. Secondly, pre-built websites load much faster, which in e-commerce is super critical. Already after a one-second wait time, normal e-commerce shoppers start closing the browser. Whereas ChatGPT is still thinking, people have already looked at all the products on our website and maybe already clicked out to Amazon or one of our other partners while ChatGPT is still writing. It just not a good customer experience. Further, also pre-building them has two more advantages than just the speed of loading and the cost. It takes away the prompting skills of the user. Not everyone is a master prompt engineer, so we give them the best results without relying on how good somebody can prompt. Last but not least, this also allows overcoming some of the major vulnerabilities of large language models, namely hallucination and data decay. The pre-built website can be checked for accuracy, the live result cannot. That's four reasons why our model is more economical and secondly, the better customer experience, and that's why we thrive, whereas admittedly a lot of online publishing business out there are suffering materially. I think we still have two minutes. Let me see. Billy, would you recommend taking any specific one?
Billy Green : Yeah, I think the next question that I see that I particularly wanted to answer was Search lost $2.6 million in H1. It broke even in June, small profit in June, to be fair, signaling strong month-over-month growth in H1. Is that trend expected to continue through H2, and do you expect Search to become a meaningful profit contributor through 2027 and into 2028? Taking each stage as it comes, getting back from loss into modest profit in June, and continuing through today, we then anticipate that Search will continue to contribute in the second half of this year and will mop up as much as possible of the loss it generated in the first half of the year. The first gate really is can it get to enough of a profit in the second half to ensure that exceeds the loss for the first half and therefore it breaks even for the year. That's gate one. Gate two would be, can it actually contribute a meaningful amount of profit this year? That's obviously more challenging. Will it become a meaningful profit contributor through 2027 into 2028? Absolutely. Given the journey it's been on already this year and continues through the year-end now as a contributor, it must generate more meaningfully to profit in 2027 and 2028. Through a combination of the higher revenue, as Michael alluded to earlier, and the better margin and the lower OpEx, all those factors within the P&L all point towards 2027 being a much, much more stable, consistent growth year for the Search business. Better times continuing.
Michael Riedl : Thank you for that. I see this engagement in the Q&A has been stellar. We apologize that we will probably need at least another 15-20 minutes to go through the remainder of the questions in quality. But as it has been our commitment over the last few sessions, we will follow up with Investor Meet Company in order to make sure that all questions are addressed, either individual or at a minimum aggregated basis, given that there is a lot of questions, of course, aggregating around, accumulating around the strategic review. With that, I should say thank you for your questions, including the skeptical ones. Those are the ones worth asking. Let me close where I started. Today contained no surprise, and that was the point. What we told you earlier this year, we delivered, trading in line, Comparison growing into a second earnings pillar, Search profitable in June, the balance sheet strengthened, and the group's first half-year operating profit in two years. I should stop and close on this note. Thank you again, and speak to you soon.
Operator : Perfect. Thank you for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team of Team Internet Group PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.
