Future is one of the companies with the biggest online presence. The company owns the majority of the top content websites you know of, or might have heard of — you can say they are one of the leaders in owning digital real estate through the number and size of the websites they have built and acquired. Their websites dominate the Google searches and receive millions of page views per month. A quick recap on some of the websites owned by Future include:
- TechRadar.com
- GamesRadar.com
- MusicRadar.com
- PCGamer.com
- Wallpaper.com
- GuitarWorld.com
- MarieClaire.com
- HomesandGardens.com
- TomsGuide.com
- Space.com
- Alphr.com
- AutoExpress.co.uk
- BuyaCar.co.uk
- TheWeek.co.uk
- Carbuyer.co.uk, etc.
These websites completely outrank other websites when it comes to SEO in their niches and in turn, they generate a massive audience size which makes them millions of dollars. In their 2021 financial report, Future PLC generated £422 000 000 in revenue from their online platforms only. They make this income mainly from ads, e-commerce, affiliate marketing for other e-commerce brands, digital licensing, and other online services.
Future also works with offline media in the magazine and printing business whereby they publish magazines which in turn generated them £184 000 000 in 2021, according to their financial report. This made the company’s earnings for 2021 round up to a whooping £606 800 000.
About Future PLC
Future is a global platform business for niche media content with diversified revenue streams. Its content reaches 50% of adults online in the UK and ⅓ of the adults in the USA.
Their media division’s high growth is backed up by complementary revenue streams from eCommerce for products and services, events, and digital advertising (including advertising within newsletters and video). Future PLC operates in a number of niches including:
- Technology
- Games & Entertainment
- Music
- Home & Gardens
- Sports,
- Tv & Film
- Real Life
- Knowledge
- Wealth & Savings
- Women's Lifestyle
- B2B
Its brands include:
- Tech Radar
- Pc Gamer
- Tom's Guide
- Android Central
- Truly, The Week
- Kiplinger
- Gocompare
- Digital Camera World
- Homebuilding & Renovating Show
- Gamesradar+
- The Photography Show
- Top Ten Reviews
- Marie Claire
- Live Science
- Guitar World
- MusicRadar
- Space.Com
- What To Watch
- Gardening
- Adventure
- Tom's Hardware
Future PLC’s Magazine division focuses on publishing specialist content, with a combined global circulation of over 3 million delivered through more than 131 magazines, and 735 bookazines published a year. The portfolio spans technology, knowledge, games & entertainment, sports, music, photography & design, homes & garden, country lifestyle, TV & Film, and B2B niches. Its titles include Country Life, Wallpaper*, Woman & Home, The Week, Classic Rock, Decanter, Guitar Player, FourFourTwo, Homebuilding & Renovating, Digital Camera, Guitarist, How It Works, Total Film, What Hi-Fi? and Music Week.
Future PLC’s Operational Strategies
Future is a worldwide platform for intent-driven niche media, powered by technology and data, and with several income sources. Their main operations are centered around driving organic growth for their online platforms and expanding their portfolio through making acquisitions. The company operates both in the UK and the USA and has significantly invested in people by building a team of over 1500 employees across editorial, technological, and management roles.
"We have a relentless focus on the sustainable execution of our aim — to be a leading global platform for intent-led specialist media underpinned by technology, enabled by data with scalable, diversified revenue streams. Our high-quality content is the fuel that drives our engine and we are focused on organic growth to drive long-term value through operating leverage. We also drive the benefits from acquisitions by deploying the Future operating model including our global approach to our content and our audience reach. Our strategy has continued to deliver in 2021.
Our strategy is centered around meeting our audience’s needs, ensuring we continue to be the trusted expert that helps them do the things they love, and make the decisions that matter most to them. As a result of our continued focus on creating the best quality content and experiences for our audiences, our overall audience has grown to 432 000 000 visitors (2020: 394m) underpinned by our online users, which have grown 8% year-on-year to 305m (2020: 282m), an average organic growth rate of 20% on a two-year basis."
Future PLC continuously invests in its operating and technology platforms, resulting in increased performance and capability that can be leveraged across the entire company. They have developed tech solutions like Aperture, a customer audience data platform, and made continuous improvements to Hawk, their eCommerce technology that they built to improve yields and conversions. The Hawk software alone has been able to generate Future PLC approximately $1 billion in e-commerce revenues.
Future Plc goes strong on acquiring other businesses that are aligned to their mode of business and they strive to create more value from these acquisitions. They acquired GoCo in Feb 2021, integrated it, and saw a strong overall performance in the websites GoCompare.com and MyVoucherCodes.
TI Media, another acquisition they made in April 2020; has been performing strongly with online user growth of 16% vs prior year expectations of 7%, with digital advertising and eCommerce revenue up 38% vs expectations. In October 2021, Future PLC completed the acquisition of Dennis, and the integration is underway.
We shall look further into the acquisitions they made in 2021 and how they position Future PLC for growth.
Here is what the CEO had to say about Future’s growth:
"We achieved strong organic growth alongside the acquisitions of CinemaBlend, Mozo, GoCo, Marie Claire US, and the recently completed acquisition of Dennis. This progress not only contributed to our record results but also ensured that Future is well placed for continued growth and success."
The team at Future expects their diversified strategy to continue to deliver and that they are well-positioned to continue to grow strongly.
Growth in 2021
In 2021, the company’s top executives say that they have realized impressive growth in their revenues, and to them, they believe the execution of their key business strategies helped them achieve these exceptional results. Part of their key growth points have been:
- Strong organic growth with Media up 27%, with robust performance in digital advertising and eCommerce. Their average growth over a two-year period was 25%.
- Anniversary impact of pandemic closures resulted in organic growth in Magazines of 4%, average organic revenue decline over a two-year period was (13)%.
- Continued growth in direct advertising campaigns bolstered digital advertising's organic growth by 27%. Average organic growth over a two-year period was 21%.
- E-commerce continues to perform well with a growth of 36%, with an improved commission rate and conversion rate in H2. Average organic growth over a two-year period was 47%.
"We expect growth to pick up in H2 FY 2022 as we start moving away from COVID-19 enhanced benchmarks. As a consequence of our platform impact driving more margin growth throughout the business, we are updating our full-year projection and now expect adjusted profits in FY 2022 to be considerably higher than current expectations.
Zillah Byng-Thorne, Future's CEO, said:
"I am pleased to announce another set of exceptional results, which builds on our long-term track record of growth. Our performance reflects the diversity of our revenue streams and our global reach and the operating leverage of our business model.
We generated 23% organic growth in the period, driven by the strength of our trusted content which continues to attract a high-value audience. The growth was accelerated in the US and we are confident about our ability to capitalize on the opportunity in North America, to further strengthen and diversify our revenue streams. Our strategy is accelerated through acquisition and in the year we continued to strengthen our proposition through the completed integration of GoCo Group, as well as the acquisition of Mozo, Marie Claire US, CinemaBlend, and, post-year end, Dennis.
Looking ahead, we expect our diversified strategy to continue to deliver and are well-positioned to continue to grow strongly. As we transition from the COVID-19 boosted comparators, we expect the growth to accelerate in H2 next year. We expect our operating model to drive enhanced scalability and operating leverage, leading to further margin expansion, and we are therefore upgrading our outlook for the full year and now expect adjusted results in FY 2022 to be materially above current expectations."
Assessing Future PLCs Growth
Central to Future’s strategy is driving organic growth. In the year 2021, the average organic revenue growth was 23%, with a growth of 21% in H1 and 26% in H2.
"Our world-class content is delivered by our editorial teams who have excelled in responding to audience demands for relevant, useful, and engaging content (both online and in print). This relevant content, delivering high-intent audiences at scale, together with our data and analytics capability has enabled us to respond to advertisers’ needs and capitalize on eCommerce demand.
Media grew organically by 27% during the year (on a two-year basis, the average organic growth was 25%). Organic Media revenue growth in the second half of 24% was driven by all the segments, with consistent growth in digital advertising, a slowdown in eCommerce driven by boosted prior year comparators and stock availability, offset by product enhancements and recovery in events."
Organic Revenue Growth
During the year, Future’s digital advertising revenue performed strongly, up 27% organically to £186 000 000 at the end of 2021. Their endemic brands and global scale coupled with their proprietary high-intent data has enabled Future to leverage the knowledge of their audience’s interests, preferences, and intent to deliver a strong fundamental offering for advertisers.
Future’s e-commerce revenue grew by 36% organically with a gross value of transactions increasing to £900 000 000, despite a slowdown in the second half due to boosted prior year comparators and industry-wide stock shortages. Future has continued to enhance its e-commerce tools to improve the user experience with optimized templates and creating quality content. With this, Future has seen an improved intent with click-through rates up to 75%.
Key Investments
A core part of Future’s strategy is ensuring that over the long term they continue to deliver profitable growth. Critical to enabling this is the continued investment in technology and people. During the year, Future PLC continued to invest in headcount, notably in editorial and technology areas which are both sources of competitive advantage.
Content is at the heart of what Future PLC does and therefore they continue to invest in new editorial resources, with an increase in headcount of 12% in 2021 to focus on new evergreen content and to ensure that our content is relevant and valuable for our audience.
"New hires are spread across verticals to deepen our content coverage across our brand portfolio on our legacy and newly acquired brands as well as to support new launches. During the year we invested over £85 000 000 in the creation of content, with editorial headcount nearly doubling year-on-year to over 1 200 (including teams from acquisitions), our biggest headcount cost."
Future PLC hired an additional 26 heads (an increase of 14%) to support their technology center of excellence to focus on enhancing Future’s capabilities such as Hawk which are leveraged across the Group. Future PLC has invested £8 000 000 in their technology center of excellence to drive improvement of their web platforms.
In 2021, they launched Kiosq, a new proprietary reusable paywall service for monetizing gated editorial content. They also made continued investments within their data science teams including the launch of Aperture, our customer audience data platform.
"Aperture, when combined with our scale and the high-intent of our audiences, positions us very well in an environment with increased focus on first party data and consumer privacy."
They also launched Eagle, their proprietary voucher technology, leveraging the capabilities acquired with GoCo. This has already been deployed on Real Homes and will be further deployed in 2022.
- Investing in work environments
Future also invested in our working environment with new offices in London and New York to create common, modern environments for our colleagues to meet as we return from working from home. These investments are leveraged across the business driving the Platform Effect.
Other Investment Areas
Future has been rapidly deploying new ad format functionality and eCommerce improvements to all of their sites to unlock further potential for their website brands focusing on better user experience and Search Engine Optimisation.
"Whilst continuing to invest in our business and our people, our scalable operating model and disciplined approach to the integration of our acquisitions has driven exceptional profit results. The cost synergies delivered through the recent acquisitions have enabled us to continue to invest organically, whether by hiring new editorial or tech employees, or launching organic brands such as The Money Edit."
Future PLC offices in the UK
Creating Value Through Investing in Acquisitions
Accelerating the execution of their strategy with value creative acquisitions is a key part of Future’s capital allocation. The company remains highly disciplined when it comes to acquisitions with 28 deals reviewed for each transaction they executed in 2021. This is because they wanted to ensure that acquisitions drive additional value creation.
List of Acquisitions Made by Future PLC in 2021
1. Acquisition of Mozo Pty Limited
On 2 February 2021, Future Publishing (Overseas) Limited (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Future plc) acquired 100% of the equity in Mozo Pty Limited (“Mozo”), a price comparison site focused on personal finance products, based in Australia. Total consideration was AUD$31 000 000 in cash, of which AUD$29 500 000 was paid on completion, with a further AUD$1 500 000 deferred consideration which was settled in May 2021.
The acquisition has further diversified the company Group’s revenues by expanding its price comparison offering and is attributable to the opportunities that exist to further monetize the company Group’s brands and extend its e-commerce proposition beyond products into services.
2. Acquisition of GoCo Group PLC
On 17 February 2021, Future PLC acquired 100% of the equity in GoCo Group PLC (“GoCo”), a provider of price comparison and auto-switching services. Consideration was £557 200 000, of which £142 100 000 was paid in cash, and £415 100 000 was settled via the issue of 22.6m equity shares in Future PLC.
The acquisition significantly strengthened the Group’s proposition of seeking to address the growing consumer demand for informed and value-driven purchasing decisions enabled by intent-driven content It has provided a unique opportunity to capitalize on the combination of the Group’s deep audience insight with GoCo’s expertise in price comparison and the proprietary technology of both Future and GoCo.
3. Acquisition of Marie Claire US
On 12 May 2021 Future US, Inc. acquired 100% of Marie Claire US, a former joint venture between Marie Claire Album S.A.S. ("MCA") and Hearst Magazines Media Inc. Future has entered into a five-year license agreement with MCA to operate in the US and Canada for consideration of £13 300 000.
The acquisition follows the enlarged Group’s acquisition of Marie Claire UK in 2020 and builds on the ongoing success of the MarieClaire.co.uk brand. It strengthens the Group's position in the Women's Lifestyle vertical in North America in line with the Group's strategy to achieve brand vertical leadership across English-speaking markets.
4. Acquisition of Dennis
On 16 August 2021 the Future PLC Group of companies announced the acquisition of Dennis (via the acquisition of 100% of the share capital and voting rights of Broadleaf Newco 2 Limited and its subsidiaries), a leading consumer media subscriptions business, which includes trusted Wealth, Knowledge and B2B technology specialist titles such as Kiplinger, MoneyWeek, The Week and IT Pro. Consideration of £300 000 000 was paid on completion on 1 October 2021.
The titles acquired by Future PLC from Dennis were:
- The Week UK
- The Week US
- The Week Junior UK
- The Week Junior US
- MoneyWeek
- Kiplinger
- Science & Nature
- IT Pro
- Computer Active
- PC Pro
- Minecraft World
- Coach
The acquisition will scale the Group's 'Wealth & Savings' vertical, further diversify the Group's revenue by materially increasing the Group's recurring revenues through subscriptions and extending the Group's reach in the North American market, deepen the Group's existing presence in the 'B2B Pro Technology' vertical and enhance the Group's 'Knowledge' vertical with high subscription rates and growth potential.
Conclusion
Future PLC was been able to generate £422 000 000 in revenue from their online platforms only.
The CEO of Future PLC had to say this about their strategy:
"Our strategy is centered around meeting our audience’s needs, ensuring we continue to be the trusted expert that helps them do the things they love, and make the decisions that matter most to them. As a result of our continued focus on creating the best quality content and experiences for our audiences, our overall audience has grown to 432 000 000 visitors in 2021, an average organic growth rate of 20% in the previous two years."
