Mony Group H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
July 21, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Resilient H1 results with revenue up 1% to £225 m and profit up 2% to £75 m, helping UK households save an estimated £1.4 bn.
  • Positive Sentiment: SuperSafe Club membership grew past 1.5 m after adding 500 k members since February, and first purchase rewards are boosting loyalty and repeat transactions.
  • Positive Sentiment: Continued investment in the data and tech platform—including an AI-powered “agentic mesh”—is driving smarter personalization, new AI-enabled features and improved operational efficiency.
  • Negative Sentiment: Insurance revenue fell 2% to £118 m due to a 9% drop in car insurance switching, and home insurance growth may slow as high premiums and competitive deals persist.
  • Positive Sentiment: Capital return plan of £96 m for 2025 via a 1% higher interim dividend and a £30 m share buyback is supported by a robust balance sheet despite a 16% decline in operating cash flow.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Mony Group H1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

Skip to Participants
Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

Welcome to The Money Group half year results. I'm Peter Duffy, CEO, and later in the presentation, I'm gonna be joined by our chief financial officer, Nal McBride. So we've had a good start to the year, achieving both financial and strategic milestones, helping UK households save an estimated 1,400,000,000.0 in the first six months of twenty twenty five. That's as well as growing revenue by 1% to 225,000,000 and profit by 2% to 75,000,000. It's a resilient financial performance given the exceptional growth in motor insurance switching that we saw last year.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

Now we continue to grow both sides of our marketplace. In SuperSafe Club, we've welcomed half a million more members since February, bringing total members to over one and a half million. And we see plenty of further opportunity here, so we've been investing to drive growth by introducing first purchase rewards. I'll talk about that more a bit later. We've also continued to enhance our offering to providers whose products are listed on our sites with over a 100 now signed up to market boost.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

That's our data product. And 34 now using our enhanced b to b services. All of this has been doable because of the investment that has already been made in building out our data and tech platform, which serves our diverse product range. I'll be talking later about how this has also facilitated our new AI enabled features for customers. That's in insurance, credit cards, and energy, and it's also supported a revised life insurance offer on Money Supermarket and Home Compare Plus on Money Saving Expert.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

The platform is also allowing us to reset the cost base of a group, but importantly, it's this cadence of product improvement that is going to help us drive further organic growth. Now, we are very grateful to our people who make all this happen every day, but we're also grateful for their broader support for initiatives that sit outside the group. We're particularly proud of our ongoing relationship with the campaign against living miserably calm. And as just one example, I hosted our annual money talks event at the Houses Of Parliament in May, where we spotlight the financial the financial well-being as a mental health issue. Calm is a leading suicide prevention charity, and the Money Group's involvement in many activities supports the important work that they do.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

So we have a compelling growth outlook based on three building blocks. Significant headroom in our member based propositions, which will increase customer loyalty and customer lifetime value. Our innovative product development pipeline to improve the customer experience, boost conversion, and tap into new markets. And then the growth we're expecting in our end markets. This all adds up to a highly effective and resilient business well positioned to continue to deliver profitable growth.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

So, I'm going to be back shortly to provide more detail on our strategic and operational progress. But in the meantime, Niall, over to you.

Niall McBride
Niall McBride
CFO & Director at MONY Group

Thanks, Peter, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased with our progress in the first half. We enhanced our member and provider propositions, we launched new products, and generated resilient financial results. Group revenue was $225,000,000 up one percent year on year against an exceptionally strong prior period. Remember that insurance was up 14% in the first half of last year.

Niall McBride
Niall McBride
CFO & Director at MONY Group

This highlights the resilience that comes from the breadth of our brands and products. This was achieved through growth from home services and money alongside solid contributions from home life and travel insurance, mitigating lower demand for car insurance switching. Adjusted EBITDA reached £75,000,000, a 2% increase with EBITDA margin holding at 33%. This was helped by operating costs being 6% lower than last year. Adjusted basic earnings per share was up 4% to 9.3p.

Niall McBride
Niall McBride
CFO & Director at MONY Group

Cash flow of 44,000,000 was down 16% on last year, driven by the mix into areas where revenue takes longer to convert to cash, such as energy and life insurance. In 2025, we plan to return £96,000,000 to shareholders. This includes a 1% increase in the interim dividend and the ongoing £30,000,000 share buyback we began in February. I will now take you through the segment performance, the costs, cash, capital allocation, and finish with the outlook. In insurance, we generated revenue of £118,000,000, down 2% against a strong 2024 when there was record premium price inflation.

Niall McBride
Niall McBride
CFO & Director at MONY Group

In this half, car insurance remained soft as expected, with premiums falling 9%. In contrast, home insurance premiums grew four percent, providing some offset. To compensate, we increased focus on other insurance categories with home, life and travel insurance performing particularly well, supported by improvements such as our streamlined life insurance journey. With the car insurance inflation surge now behind us, we expect home insurance may face a slowdown with a lag of six to nine months. Although premiums have come down from last year's peak, they're still high, and many insurers are offering competitive deals to attract customers, with consumers still able to save up to £469 on their car insurance.

Niall McBride
Niall McBride
CFO & Director at MONY Group

Money delivered a good performance with revenue of £53,000,000, up 4%. Borrowing products led this growth with strong switching in credit cards and an improving trend in personal loans. By securing exclusive credit offers and optimizing our journeys, we capitalized on consumers seeking better deals. We boosted conversion in loans and credit cards by enhancing these journeys through personalized pre approval information and AI driven prompts. These improvements, plus the depth of our lender partnerships and exclusive deals, reinforce our competitive advantage in borrowing.

Niall McBride
Niall McBride
CFO & Director at MONY Group

In banking, performance was mixed. Savings activity was robust as we added providers to grow our panel by 33%, and consumers responded to attractive deposit rates. This helped to offset weaker current account switching, which saw fewer promotional bank offers. Home services revenue was £22,000,000, up 29% year over year, albeit from a low base. In energy, switching started to recover and further tariffs returned to the market, including several exclusive deals for us.

Niall McBride
Niall McBride
CFO & Director at MONY Group

The various price cap adjustments acted as a catalyst for consumers to seek better deals. Whilst this is encouraging, regulatory constraints such as the ban on acquisition only tariffs are still in place, and energy suppliers are being cautious about their customer acquisition plans. Providers are reentering the market selectively, so we don't have the continuous deal flow we experienced before 2021. We remain optimistic but realistic about the progress of the energy market. Broadband generated strong results.

Niall McBride
Niall McBride
CFO & Director at MONY Group

Switching demand remained high, and the pipeline of providers joining our platform keeps growing. We made improvements to the broadband switching journey, which led to better conversion rates in the first half. Customers can now switch to a broadband provider without leaving the site. Cashback was tougher. At £27,000,000, revenue was 3,000,000 lower than last year because of the difficult retail environment and weaker car insurance switching in our Quidco compare product.

Niall McBride
Niall McBride
CFO & Director at MONY Group

This was partially offset by a better performance from travel and cashback. Given this, we protected our margin by limiting certain incentives and by careful cost control. We improved the user experience with more personalization and introduced faster cashback for key retail merchants, which is showing encouraging results. Travel, which includes our Ice Lolly and travel supermarket brands and represents 5% of group revenue, delivered 11,000,000 in revenue, down 2%. Package holiday traffic was solid, but car hire was again affected by competition in that sector.

Niall McBride
Niall McBride
CFO & Director at MONY Group

The market remains competitive with sustained higher PPC costs, which we love to offset by diversifying our marketing mix into alternative sources such as social. SuperSave Club is a core part of our strategy and is about encouraging customers to come to us directly and more often. Since launch, club membership has grown rapidly, and we now have over 1,500,000 members. More importantly, these members transact more often and spend more with us, giving us the confidence that the club is increasing customer lifetime value. This is crucial because online customer acquisition costs, especially PPC, remain high.

Niall McBride
Niall McBride
CFO & Director at MONY Group

A large, loyal member base through the club gives us more control over customer engagement and will reduce reliance on paid marketing sources over time. We continue to invest in the club's growth and now incentivize new customers to make their first transaction through first purchase reward. This has an immediate drag on gross margin, but we believe it is worth it to create a stronger customer base over the longer term. The club's traction is already significant. About 14% of total sales now come through members.

Niall McBride
Niall McBride
CFO & Director at MONY Group

There's plenty of room to grow, and as we expand membership and refine the club, we expect an even greater contribution from Super SEA Club. Gross profit was down 3% to £148,000,000 and gross margin decreased from 68% to 66%. Margin was impacted by increased PPC costs and some product mix effects, including growth in B2B and the introduction of first purchase rewards in Super Safe Club. Despite that, we grew adjusted EBITDA by 2% to £75,000,000, and our adjusted EBITDA margin remained unchanged at 33. This was assisted by cost control and automation, resulting in a 6% reduction in operating costs.

Niall McBride
Niall McBride
CFO & Director at MONY Group

Distribution expenses were 1% lower than last year as we focused on improving acquisition efficiency, targeting higher return on investment areas. We also phased more of our brand marketing investment into the second half. Administrative expenses decreased by 7%. At the June, headcount was down 10% on the prior year, resulting in a 15% reduction in people costs. Moving now to cash flow.

Niall McBride
Niall McBride
CFO & Director at MONY Group

Operating cash flows of £44,000,000 are down 16% on last year, which is mainly due to timing and mix. In the first half of this year, we generated more revenue in areas like energy and life insurance, which have longer cash collection cycles. By contrast, last year's first half had a big contribution from car insurance, which converts to cash more quickly. Our £30,000,000 share buyback will be funded from free cash and is expected to complete in Q4 twenty twenty five. Looking ahead, our recent trading performance coupled with momentum in our strategic execution gives the board confidence that we will deliver adjusted EBITDA for 2025 within our current published consensus.

Niall McBride
Niall McBride
CFO & Director at MONY Group

MoneyGrip has an established and disciplined capital allocation policy focused on creating long term sustainable shareholder value through organic and acquisitive growth. In line with this, we launched our £30,000,000 share buyback in February, which continues to progress well with over 15,000,000 repurchased to date. Our robust balance sheet provides us with the capacity to pursue value accretive opportunities alongside our ongoing share buyback. In 2025, we'll deliver a package of shareholder returns equating to £96,000,000 through the share buyback combined with a one percent increase in the interim dividend, which builds on the 4% adjusted EPS growth we have already delivered, reinforcing our commitment to maximizing shareholder value. And with that, I'll now hand you back to Peter.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

Thanks for that, Niall. So let me start with a quick reminder of our strategy before giving more detail on operational progress and our plans for future growth. So you'll now be familiar with our two sided marketplace that describes how we are growing loyal and engaged members alongside supporting our extensive provider base that's helping them to become more successful businesses. We're transforming our customer base from users into longer term members, moving away from a reliance on expensive PPC advertising to attract customers. And by giving members great reasons to come to us directly time and time again, we're helping them save more, increase transaction volumes, build revenue per user, and in turn, reduce cost of sales.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

For our providers, by giving them even more reasons to use the money group, we're helping them improve their businesses because when they do well, we do well. So that includes helping them reach customers via our tailored tenancy slots and gain a competitive advantage by using our proprietary data insights like MarketBoost. Now the investment we have made in data and tech means we have a scalable platform for growth, but it's one that is also allowing us to leverage AI, expanding into new markets, innovating on existing journeys, and effectively helping us to manage cost. So let's get into some detail here, and there is no clearer demonstration of our strategy in action than the Super Save Club, which we launched in September 2023. Since then, we have actively built out the proposition, adding nearly all of our products over 18 later, the club now covers more than 95% of Money Supermarkets products sold by volume.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

So to briefly remind you, the club offers members a cash reward of up to £20 for every purchase, allowing them to earn up to a £130 each year, a guarantee that they get best prices, and then we make the customer experience simple by using their data to skip lengthy application forms. We offer free credit monitoring, selected cashback and retailer discounts, and increasingly, we're storing product and policy data which all encourage members to come back more frequently. We're pleased to have welcomed over half a million new members since we announced our full year results. And importantly, we're starting to see consistency in the trends as we build out the member base. In short, the club is achieving what we hoped because when we compare with the baseline traditional money supermarket users, we see that 40% more customers are coming to us directly for their second purchase, that members are then buying more from us with a threefold increase in renewals and a threefold increase in second purchases, And then they're also more engaged with a twofold increase in their propensity to interact with CRM and a fourfold increase in their preparedness to take up the money supermarket app.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

So while we're still in a phase where we're learning, it's clear that the club is growing customer loyalty, which in time is going to reduce our reliance on expensive third party paid marketing. We therefore extended the club membership in February to include people making their first purchase. We call that first purchase rewards because previously, you had to buy something to then join the club. And we've seen growth rates of members increase in line with the expectations since then. So just over a year and a half after launch, the club is now accounting for 14% of group sales, and we see much potential as we look into the medium term from here.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

Money Saving Expert is The UK's leading consumer finance platform. It has a highly engaged, loyal, and growing user base with over nine and a half million subscribers receiving Martin Lewis's weekly money saving email. We developed and launched the MSE app over two years ago and now have reached 2,200,000 downloads with more than half a million monthly active users. Over the last year, we've continued to enhance the MSE app by expanding personalization features and introduce introducing new tools, including scaling our MSC Compare Plus functionality into home insurance, and also most recently, the trial of an MSC savings hub. Now our growth plans for MSC going forward will focus on financial tools to expand the app, its functionality, its reach, and its engagement.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

Moving on to QuickCo, which despite a challenging retail backdrop, has still grown profitability. We continue to make QuickCo better with greater personalization and better comparison services and faster cashback with retailers, and we're also expanding cashback into the SuperSafe Club. Now, the other half of our strategy is the way we can support our providers become better businesses, and that's an area where we have delivered 11% growth in the half. By offering b to b switching to third party brands who want to offer comparison services, we enable them to monetize their digital traffic, and then we in turn extend our reach and attract new audiences at limited incremental cost of a group. We now offer b to b comparison across car, home, broadband, mobile, and energy, And we've expanded our partnerships and we're driving strong growth.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

Now another example is Market Boost, which uses our aggregated data to help providers better understand how well their products are performing versus their competition. It is now used by over a 100 providers. And then finally, tenancy. There are advertising slots by which providers can promote specific products to cohorts of customers, and it's available right across the group, including the SuperSafe Club. To drive growth, we are focusing on products for customers and providers that enhance customer journeys, that boost conversion, that tap into new markets.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

So initiatives in behalf of included simplifying renewal journeys across our main product categories. We're now using data to shorten question sets so customers only have to check and update, only completing questions when they are doing something new. This is industry leading. And we've also launched our new life insurance product on money supermarket. And as mentioned a moment ago, we've also scaled Compare Plus into home insurance on Money Saving Expert.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

They are both working well and helping mitigate the headwinds in car insurance. We've relaunched our Cheap Energy Club and our broadband services, again, both contributing to the strong growth we've seen in our home services channel. And then we're also trialing the MSC Savings Hub, which is gonna unlock opportunities to gain further depth in this channel. Now, the investment in the data and tech platform over the last few years has provided a strong foundation for our ambitions in AI, which is an area of enormous focus for the business and one where we are already seeing benefits. We touch briefly on our agentic mesh at full year results.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

That's a system architecture that allows multiple AI agents to collaborate. And it's core to our AI agenda, and it's also advancing rapidly, bringing together different datasets and tools to enhance users' experiences, whilst at the same time, further improving the efficiency of our core operations. Now looking forwards, we see three notable areas of near term opportunity for AI. First, the unimproved customer experience from smarter personalization to more intuitive journeys. A good example of this is our agent I capability, which is now working across money, insurance, and energy using internal and external data sources to provide more personalized recommendations.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

In turn, meaning better outcomes for customers. It's already live today, helping customers to better understand the cost of their car insurance premium, improving their product understanding of different energy deals, and in the case of credit cards, offering a much more personalized example of how a specific product would work for them. And in time, and that's not too much time, you should expect to see more of these type of experiences rolling out right across the site, which in turn will start to transform the user experience. Now moving on, secondly, operational efficiencies, streamlining internal processes and reducing manual efforts to free up resources to focus on areas that contribute to our strategic growth. Now you can already see some of the benefits coming through in terms of our cost base.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

A specific example here would be our contact center where AI now answers around 60% of customer contacts. And then thirdly, marketing optimization where thanks to our strengths in data, technology, and our existing relationships, we're ready to make the most of the changing search behaviors, including the rapidly evolving area of AI overviews. So the group is positioned for continued success because of our clear strategy, our strong brands, our differentiated propositions, and our data and tech platform that sets us apart in the market. We've achieved both financial and strategic milestones with our resilient financial performance reflecting our strength in breadth across the group. We see a compelling outlook for growth with significant headroom in our member based propositions, increasing loyalty and customer lifetime value, our continued focus on our innovative product development pipeline, that's both organic and acquisitive, that will complement and extend our capabilities, And then the elevated position of our scalable platform, enabling us to capitalize on AI, but also helping us to reach new markets and new audiences.

Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy
Director & CEO at MONY Group

Our disciplined approach to capital allocation, combined with our clean balance sheet, provides flexibility and also the capacity to deliver. And for our shareholders, we'll be returning 96,000,000 over 2025 through a package of returns, that's dividend and buyback, focused on maximizing shareholder value. Thank you for your time today, and we're looking forward to any questions you may have in the call at 09:30.

Analysts
    • Peter Duffy
      Director & CEO at MONY Group
    • Niall McBride
      CFO & Director at MONY Group
Powered by Quartr