The Future PLC Board is recommending a final dividend of 2.8p per share for the year ended 30 September 2021, payable on 9 February 2022 to all shareholders on the register at close of business on 14 January 2022.
Other financial highlights include:
● H1 momentum continued into H2 with full year revenue up 79% to £606.8m (FY 2020: £339.6m).
● Organic revenue grew 23% (H1: 21%, H2: 26%), or 15% average over a two-year period.
● US achieved organic revenue growth of 27%, demonstrating early momentum from the execution of their US strategy for TI Media; UK organic revenues grew by 17%, reflecting weighting towards events and magazines revenue.
● Improved quality of earnings, resulting from favourable revenue mix, scalability of the model and platform effect, drove adjusted operating profit margin of 32%, up 4ppt year-on-year (FY 2020: 28%); adjusted operating profit up 110% to £195.8m (FY 2020: £93.4m), and statutory operating profit up 127% to £115.3m (FY 2020: £50.7m).
● The Group remains highly cash generative with strong adjusted free cash flow of £199.3m (FY 2020: £96.0m), representing 102% of adjusted operating profit (FY 2020: 103%).
● Leverage of 0.8x (FY 2020: 0.6x) reflecting rapid de-levering of the Group following the acquisition of GoCo, resulting in net debt at the end of the year of £176.3m (FY 2020: £62.1m). Following the Dennis acquisition on 1 October (excluding other cash movements), leverage was 1.9x.
