Good morning, and welcome to Ascential's results presentation for the six months ended 30th of June 2023. I'm Rory Elliott, Ascential's Director of Investor Relations. Firstly, we'd be grateful if you could familiarize yourselves with this disclaimer, particularly as it relates to forward-looking statements. In a few moments, you'll hear from Duncan Painter, our CEO, Mandy Gradden, our CFO, and Phil Thomas, CEO of Ascential Intelligence and Events. They'll provide a summary of our results, the financials, detail on our events and digital commerce businesses, and an update on our strategic actions and outlook. Then you'll have the opportunity to ask questions, either here in the room or in writing via the webcast link. To begin with, however, we'd like to show you a short video of the highlights of the half. During the first half of 2023, Ascential delivered organic revenue growth of 16%, with strong performances across our four business segments. Let's take a closer look at each one in turn. Our marketing segment, composed of Lions and WARC, performed exceptionally well in the first half. Cannes Lions celebrated its 70th anniversary with revenue growth of 30%. Over 12,000 people attended the festival, a 9% increase from 2022, and almost 27,000 award entries were received, a 6% increase. Marketing's digital subscription base continues to expand, with WARC's revenue growing by 12% and renewal rates continuing to exceed 95%. Subscription revenues from Lions Membership and WARC also continued to grow, up by 8%. In August, we also welcomed Contagious, a multi-format creative insights business, whose set of complementary products helps further our position in the marketing industry. Retail and financial services saw strong growth in the first half of the year. In June, at Money20/20 Europe, over 8,500 attendees, representing more than 100 countries, joined us in Amsterdam. This record-breaking attendance, together with sponsorship, delivered overall revenue growth of 19% versus 2022. In October, we look forward to welcoming delegates back to Las Vegas for Money20/20 USA, and in April 2024, to launch Money20/20 Asia in Bangkok. Our digital commerce customers achieved revenues that significantly outperformed the growth rates of the marketplaces, as we ensure that they continue to win during tough market conditions. Overall, digital commerce recorded revenue growth of 10%. We have made good progress on delivering our integrated operating platform, the Flywheel Commerce Cloud. This brings together our best-in-class solutions and products, initially for our enterprise customers. We are onboarding key customers in September, and we are launching our new single brand, Flywheel, in October. WGSN achieved retention rates of over 95%, while its growth continues to be driven by non-fashion products in line with our strategy. Overall, we saw 8% revenue growth versus the comparative period in 2022, with non-fashion products now making up almost 50% of the business. Additionally, we were pleased to see our fashion products growing, driven by Trend Curve+. We marked a significant milestone with the inaugural release of our sustainability report, which outlines our commitment and approach to this key area. Our work on diversity, equity, and inclusion continues, with the publishing of our gender pay gap report and ongoing activity of our various employee resource groups, including Ascential Pride, Black in Business, and the Empower Women's Network. Thank you, Rory, and good morning, everyone. Before I start the results presentation, I'd just like to start with a thanks to all of our colleagues in Ascential worldwide, for the amazing performance that they've given, particularly through this very difficult six-month period. The commitment they've made in the results, which you can all see, but also the amazing commitment to our strategic review and the other actions we're doing. Just I wanted to note it before we get into the results that they have given us the privilege to present. I'm pleased to report our first half of year results, you know, are in line with expectations, and we've seen strong growth across all four segments, with organic revenue growth of 16% to GBP 307 million and organic EBITDA growth of 17% to GBP 79 million. All four segments continue to deliver strong levels of organic revenue growth, and a particular highlight is the performance of our events business, comprising marketing and, and retail and financial services, which grew at 25% collectively. This is an outstanding result, especially when you consider that last year our events had already returned to pre-pandemic levels. Marketing grew at 28%, driven by an increase in Lions revenue of 30%, and within retail and financial services, Money20/20 continued to grow very strongly through its European event in June, which delivered record numbers of attendees and a substantial increase in sponsorship activity. Digital commerce grew 10%, despite a continuation of the challenging macro conditions seen in 2022, with continued key client wins and performance for our clients that significantly outpaced the underlying marketplace growth in the same period. Lastly, product design grew well, with growth of 8%. Turning to our priorities and progress, and our achievement against these. Our commitment to double down on a successful return of events last year has delivered striking results, with both Lions and Money20/20 now well ahead of 2019 revenues. This has been a superb achievement by an outstanding team. In digital commerce, we committed to create an integrated enterprise product, and I'm pleased to say that we have delivered this with the recent launch of Flywheel Commerce Cloud, our integrated operating platform, initially for enterprise customers earlier this month. We have also reorganized the digital commerce segment, creating a unitary structure under a single Flywheel brand, which will be launched in October. After a significant period of investment to create our single enterprise product and creation of the unitary organization, we are taking actions since the end of the first half to start to realize the first cost synergy benefits of these changes. In product design, we have focused on continuing to grow non-fashion products, which have grown by 13% and now account for almost half of our billings. Pleasingly, fashion products have also continued to grow, up by 2% in the half. And lastly, as I've said, the preparation for the separation of our businesses is well advanced, and we expect to update the market further before the end of the year on these strategic actions. In short, we have successfully delivered against all of our stated priorities, and I will now hand over to Mandy, who will take you through the detailed financials. Thank you, Duncan, and good morning, everybody. Let's move this along. I'd like to take you through the financial highlights of the half, focusing on our adjusted results. Overall, we're very pleased with the operational results that we've delivered for our shareholders this half, and as you've heard from Duncan, in the first half, we saw strong revenue growth across all of our businesses. Revenue in the half was GBP 307 million, up from GBP 261 million in the prior period, representing growth of GBP 46 million or 18% on a reported basis. On an organic basis, this translates to growth of 16%, driven by strong structural growth in our digital businesses, as well as further significant growth in our events businesses. We'll look at this performance more closely on the following slides. Our EBITDA for the year was GBP 79 million, equating to growth of 17% on an organic basis. As you follow down this slide, next you'll see that some of the cost elements below EBITDA have grown versus the prior period. Depreciation is up, reflecting higher CapEx for digital commerce product development. The higher associates loss reflects the restructuring of our investment in Hudson to a higher equity share. And thirdly, finance costs are higher due, of course, as we've mentioned in March, to the far higher interest rates we have seen in the second half of 2022 and into 2023. This results in adjusted profit before tax of GBP 49.8 million. Our adjusted effective tax rate for the year was, for the half, sorry, 31% or 25%, excluding the impact of associates' losses, on which we don't recognize a deferred tax asset. As a result of all of these elements, our EPS on continuing activities was GBP 0.077. In terms of cash generation in the year, we delivered 99% conversion of operating, of EBITDA into operating cashflow. We'll look at that in more detail shortly, but in summary, we finished the half with net debt of GBP 206 million, a 1.6x leverage ratio, which is of course a deleveraging of 0.3 turns since December. Let's look now at our operational performance at a segment level, and this slide here sets out the shape of our group. We've included both H1 and an annualized full year, last twelve months basis. As you'll remember, the profits and revenue of our group in total are very much weighted towards H1 due to the timing of our biggest events. Following the conclusions of our strategic review, we've grouped marketing and retail and financial services segments together on this chart to give you an overview of the shape of our events businesses. Starting with events, as you've heard from Duncan, they grew strongly, very strongly, resulting in H1 revenue growth of 25% on a combined basis. In profit terms, because of the seasonality, we should focus on the annualized figure on the right-hand side of the chart, a 40% margin prior to allocation of central PLC costs. Our largest segment, Digital Commerce, continued its strong growth trajectory with 10% organic growth in the period. Again, this is a business which normally has distinct margin seasonality, and it benefits us here to look at our last 12 months' performance, which is much more representative of our full year guidance in this important area, especially given the synergy actions that Duncan's already referred to. Finally, on this slide, Product Design also continued to perform well, with growth of 8% and Adjusted EBITDA margins of 48%. At this point, we thought it would be useful just to recap and reflect on the performance and shape of the events business over a slightly longer period, back to 2019, which is, of course, a benchmark that is widely used in the events industry as it, of course, predates the pandemic. We use here again, in that right-hand column, annualized figures. So you can now see that events on an LTM basis constitutes a business of over GBP 200 million of revenue, which has grown at a rate of 10% compound since 2019. In terms of our Adjusted EBITDA profits, these amounted to around GBP 85 million, which was a 40% margin, prior to applying an allocation of central costs. I think it's just worth noting that once you start to factor in some significant FX headwinds, which I know we've already spoken to some of the analysts about, together with that H2 investment in Money20/20 Asia, this does settle closer to that low-to-mid-30s EBITDA margin, in line with the medium-term guidance that we gave at our Capital Markets Day. That's after the application of those central costs. You can, however, see the clear positive trajectory of the events profile in absolute terms from 2019 to where we are today. Now, let's dive into each of our four reported segments in turn. Starting first with marketing. As has already been said, we demonstrated very strong growth, with revenues and profits up by 28% in this segment, and a remarkable achievement because that's on top of already fully recovered post-COVID numbers. Within the marketing segment, we have LIONS growing revenues by 30%, with all its revenue streams, as you can see from the slide, giving good levels of growth. The performance of sponsorship, in particular in Cannes Lions, stands out at 66% growth. This really reflects two things. Firstly, the big expansion of our customer base beyond our traditional customers. Secondly, our approach to acquiring more inventory within the city of Cannes, about which Phil will tell you more shortly. Marketing's largest subscription product, WARC, also grew well, with its revenue up 12% on the prior period. Now, let's turn to the second event segment, which is retail and financial services, where, as you all know, the biggest business and principal business is Money20/20. Importantly here, the prior year period includes the results of WARC, which we disposed of at the end of 2022, and taking that out, as you can see, is done on the charts on the right. The RFS segment grew overall by 17%, with profits growing by 15%. Like the marketing segment, this represents an excellent result, given that it had already recovered and comfortably exceeded pre-pandemic levels last year. Focusing on Money20/20 Europe, held in June, grew by 19%, with both revenue streams, delegates, and in particular, sponsorship, growing very well. Phil will give us more on the drivers of this performance shortly. Looking ahead to next month, the Money20/20 USA, held in October, continues to see good customer engagement. However, given the exceptional results of the Money20/20 USA last year, where growth was 60% higher, well, the level was 60% higher than the 2019 result, together with the end market funding disruption, we're not currently expecting significant growth for this year's edition, and instead, we are targeting revenues in US dollar terms to be flat to slightly down versus 2022. I should also mention, just for modeling purposes, that we do expect to see considerable FX headwinds in the second half, versus the US dollar, compared to last year. Recall that in the second half of 2022, particularly in October, the rate for the US dollar was around, well, got down to as low as 1.10, which compares to the rate, of 1.25-ish today. Lastly, within this segment, Money20/20 Asia, where trading is going well and in line with the trends seen in previous editions in the region. I will mention, as I did earlier, that we continue to obviously invest in Money20/20 Asia in 2023, ahead of recognizing any of the revenue until 2024. So now let's turn to the financial performance of our largest segment, Digital Commerce. This business grew revenue strongly in the half, 10% on an organic basis, or 11% on a pro forma basis. This continues to represent a strong performance, given the lower rates of growth that you'll be aware of in the e-commerce marketplaces, which we've seen for the last couple of years. You'll remember as well, that approximately half of our revenue comes from retainer and subscription, and half comes from share of retail, and mainly retail or media spend. And thus, in essence, our revenue is a variable share of our customers' activities on these marketplaces. So to have exceeded the underlying marketplace growth really does demonstrate the trading advantage that we bring to our customers. You'll see from the slide, in terms of our product types, our execution brands now represent just over 80%, 81% of the digital commerce business, which collectively- and they collectively grew by 14%. Nineteen percent of our revenues come from measurement and benchmarking products, where revenue was slightly down on the prior period. As I said earlier, H1 is always seasonally weaker for revenue and hence margin. In terms of our H1 profitability, having absorbed GBP 3.3 million of losses from newly acquired businesses that weren't in the results for the first half of 2022, digital commerce recorded a break-even performance, for profits in the first half, and this is as we near the end, this year of our two-year-long investment program to reorganize and integrate the business. As we said in March, we expect our second half margins to be higher. We have started to realize significant cost synergies, coming into the start of the second half, as the benefits of these investments and of the integration are realized, and we are continuing to target high single-digit margins for 2023, and mid-teens margins for 2024. You'll hear from Duncan shortly on the digital commerce business operational performance. Finally, let's look at our product design segment. The business grew revenue by 8%, with subscription billings growing by a solid 7%, which is in line with the longer-term trend of high single-digit growth seen in recent years. The growth was driven in the main by record levels of continued record levels of customer retention, and our retention rates remain very strong at over 95%. Looking deeper in terms of how this 7% billings is made up, 1% came from adding more customers, while 6% came from the average yields per customer, which is, of course, a mixture of selling more products and also of higher prices, where we get that natural benefit from our inflation-linked auto-renewal pricing mechanism. As you know, our strategy is to drive growth in segments outside of fashion, such as beauty, insight, food and drink, and consumer tech. These non-fashion products now represent just under half of our book of business and grew by 13% overall in the half, continuing to demonstrate the successful extension of the WGSN brand into these newer areas. We're also very pleased to see the fashion product continue its growth up 2%, driven by the success of TrendCurve+ product, which was launched last year. In terms of margin, product design margin was in line with last year's H1 of 48%. However, like last year, we continued to target full year margins of 45%-46%, giving us room to invest in new verticals in due course, which is a major part of our strategy. We'll now move to cash flow, looking here on this slide at an overview of our net debt movement in the half year. We started the year with leverage of 1.9x or net debt of GBP 217 million. You'll see from the first part of the chart that we had good conversion of EBITDA into cash, with very little impact from working capital. It's worth noting, though, it's not quite as positive as we saw in the prior period, as we did in the first half, reduce the amount that we drew down under our receivables, working capital facility, for media reimbursables within digital commerce. Our CapEx bill remains at 6-7% of revenue, which excludes the final elements of our ERP system implementation that's run over the last three years. And then, after non-trading costs of GBP 15 million, the majority of which relate to our strategic actions, interest costs, deferred consideration and investments, we closed the half with net debt of GBP 206 million, which was a closing leverage ratio of 1.6x and a deleveraging, as I've mentioned, of 0.3 times. I'd like to wrap up this financial section with my final slide by just a quick recap of the highlights of the period. We delivered revenue growth of 16% and profit adjusted EBITDA growth of 17%. We maintained strong levels of operating cash flow conversion of 99%, leaving net debt of 1.6x EBITDA at the end of the half. Importantly, all four segments contributed to this strong performance, which is really a notable achievement in light of the strategic review actions we have been undertaking at the same time. I'd now like to hand you over to Phil Thomas, to look at how this specific of performance was achieved in our events business. Phil? Thanks, Mandy. Thanks very much, Mandy. As you've heard, our events business, as you heard from both Duncan and Mandy, our events business delivered exceptional results in the first half of 2023. It's a testament really to the strength of our products, given that they had, as has been mentioned, already recovered fully to the pre-COVID levels last year. So I just wanna show you a bit more detail on our performance and the drivers behind it. Before I do, though, just a reminder of who we are. So those of you who attended the Capital Markets Day in June may recognize this slide. It's an overview of our events business. And our key strengths shown here are what we believe makes us an attractive investment proposition and what differentiates us from our competitors. As a reminder, we are market leaders because of the premium nature of our events, which is reflected, for example, in our delegate ticket pricing, the multiple product types, and hence different revenue streams that these brands deliver, and our reach, both in terms of geographical spread, but also the breadth and depth of our customer types. And while our events are the core of our business, we're also really pleased to have maintained, in the most recent period, strong growth of our non-event revenues, which represent roughly one-third of our business. And all of this sits alongside a very highly attractive financial profile. And critically, our levers for growth demonstrate a clear path for expansion through both inorganic and organic means across current and new markets, as well as using pricing opportunities and product innovation. I'll go on now to demonstrate how we've applied that in the first half of this year. Just building on what Mandy talked about, this slide shows our growth since 2012 through the COVID period, which you can see there and beyond. The quality of our events, products, and services is really demonstrated through this really clear long-term trajectory of growth. Our performance throughout COVID and into the present is a testament to the value that we create for our customers and the value that they place on our products and services that deliver for them. Last year, we swiftly matched and exceeded the 2019 revenue levels, and as you can see, we've continued to grow even further this year, despite the wider economic headwinds. So this means that on an annualized last twelve months basis, our revenue stands, as Mandy said, at more than GBP 200 million, with revenues that are 39% higher than our previous pre-COVID high in 2019, or, as Mandy said, a 10% compound growth. So I'll take you now through the performance of our segments in just a little bit more detail, talking about why we did so well. In our marketing segment, we delivered exceptional performance, and this includes both Lions and WARC. This year, Lions, in its 70th year, was bigger and better than ever before, and this is, of course, as I mentioned, after we'd already got to our pre-COVID level, levels last year. The key drivers, delegates, awards, and sponsorship, all grew strongly in this half. The Lions Awards, of course, sit at the very heart of our business, and this year we saw almost 27,000 entries, which was a 6% volume growth on the 2022 levels. For delegates, we grew attendance volumes by 9% to over 12,000, which was boosted partly in return... so a partial return from the Asian markets. As Mandy mentioned, sponsorship was a standout. We saw an increase in the average order value of over 40% to GBP 260,000 from more than 110 companies. There are two key drivers to this. Firstly, we continue to acquire more inventory in the city of Cannes every year to provide different creative solutions for our customers. Secondly, we continue to welcome a much broader range of customers to the event. Our nascent advisory business also grew strongly, more than doubling, more than doubling in H1 from H1 2022. Advisory relationships, it's not just the business that we generate, it's the relationships that we build, are a very important way for us to connect with our customers and introduce them to our wide range of product offerings. The other source of revenue, of course, is our subscription products, with our biggest brand, WARC, seeing retention rates of over 95%. Finally, the NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is a measure that we use for customer satisfaction, and we take it very seriously, and we're very pleased to say that we saw a growth of 13% in our NPS this year for Cannes Lions. As one senior attendee noted, it is the Olympics of creativity, which we feel explains what we do quite well. Going on to Retail and Financial Services, which is, to all intents and purposes, the Money20/20 brand. The European edition of Money20/20, which took place in Amsterdam, some of you were there, performed extremely strongly in the first half, building on last year's very strong post-COVID bounce back. Delegates and sponsorship revenue both grew strongly in this half. In terms of attendees, we saw an increase in volumes of 16% to more than 8,500, and the show attracted 2,300 companies from 100 countries. Sponsorship also grew strongly, with an average order value up more than 20% on last year's to GBP 47,000 from 390 companies. Again, on the NPS for Money20/20, we're very happy. It increased by 23% from the score we achieved last year, and our customers praised the networking opportunity that is, and I quote from our NPS, "Not matched by any other event in Europe." Delegates continue to attend Money20/20, primarily to do business and to network. And this is something we can measure because within the app that we provide the delegates, we create meetings for them, and this year we created 18,000 meetings. 18,000 were booked through our app, which is an increase of 24% year-on-year. New experiential innovations for the show this year that delivered extra value for the delegates and sponsors included the Money Beach. It's an outdoor networking space, which really represented a considerable increase in the footprint of the show to accommodate our growing number of delegates. I'll conclude this segment by saying that we're very much looking forward to Money20/20 in Las Vegas in October, in a few weeks' time, and we're particularly excited about the relaunch of our Asian show next April in Bangkok. So what does all this mean for the event's financial profile? You've already heard Mandy outline the key elements of the half, such as the exceptional growth rate of 25%, and you've also seen that we continue to achieve excellent levels of profitability, 40% EBITDA margin on an annualized basis, and again, before central costs. It's also worth noting that within this segment of Ascential, our high levels of cash flow conversion, which were 125%. This is remembering, of course, that H1 is seasonally stronger period, and our low capital needs, which are just or were just 2% of our revenues. Since these figures are based on our most recent performance, including the exceptional revenue growth, we also remind you here on the right-hand side of the medium-term guidance we supplied you in June, which we feel is compelling. In June, we did talk about how we would grow as a business going forward, and I want to conclude this section by returning to this important topic. To give you some examples of our achievements against our levers for growth. Firstly, market penetration. Both LIONS and Money20/20 saw strong growth in sponsorship this year. LIONS sponsorship grew more than 60%, Money20/20 by more than 20%. This demonstrates not only the value that we bring to our partners, but the capacity to grow one of our core revenue streams through attracting new customers and building new inventory. Next, expansion into new geographies. As you know, we are expanding back into Asia with Money20/20 in Bangkok next year, and preparations, as Mandy said, are going very well. Thirdly, our lever for growth is pricing. Because we constantly improve our products and services, this gives us headroom on pricing. In Lions, we saw an excellent growth in our Platinum Pass, for instance, which delivers enhanced value for customers through features such as a premium hotel room and networking space. Platinum passes were up 30% on 2022, and this demonstrates the value our customers place on a more bespoke festival experience. And in Money20/20, we saw an increase of more than 20% on the average spend of our sponsorship customers as they look to us to provide ever more creative ways of engaging with their customers. Product innovation is a constant focus for us. Two examples from Lions. Our newest Lion for Gaming award attracted over 600 submissions in its first year, and also we saw our advisory revenues more than double when compared to H1 last year. Cannes Curated, which is an advisory program at the festival, continued to grow very strongly. Then lastly, M&A. We will continue to evaluate strategic, targeted opportunities in markets that are, that are adjacent to marketing and financial technology. In terms of bolt-on acquisitions, in August this year, of course, we acquired Contagious, which is a multi-format creative insights business. Contagious has a strong and long-standing brand recognition and has been a key partner to Lions and WARC over the years... and it's a great combination now that we can offer our customers. Together, Lions WARC and Contagious provide events, subscription products, and advisory services that help marketers and their agency partners understand the marketing and creative strategies that they need to make an impact. The acquisition of Contagious is a blueprint for our future growth and our future built on acquisitions, as we continue to seek out companies that support our divisional ambitions. Thank you for listening. Look forward to answering any questions you have later, but now I will hand over to Duncan to take you through the rest of the business. Duncan? Thanks, Phil. Thank you, Phil. As you can see, the event segment is set well for the future. We've already mentioned a number of the digital commerce highlights during our presentation today, so I will keep this brief. Digital commerce is on track and performing well as we continue to redefine the industry on our journey to become the real-time platform that powers global digital commerce. As we saw from our full year results in March, the digital commerce business has evolved at pace through the scaling of both our enterprise and challenger customer segments. This has continued in the first half of this year, again, principally driven by the continued strong customer demand for our execution products. As you can see, these customer segments, Enterprise, Challenger, and China, now represent 72%, 19%, and 9% of digital commerce revenues, respectively. Meanwhile, our execution products are now 81% of our revenues, up from 75% for 2022. Measurement and benchmarking is now just under 20% of revenues and is being further integrated into our enterprise and China customer products to drive both an improved customer experience as well as efficiencies for us. Turning to our execution business, our performance was again led by the growth of our execution products, where we continued to see the highest demand, where revenues grew by 14% on a pro forma basis. As you can see from the chart, the relevant execution business lines continued to grow much faster than the relevant revenue lines within Amazon, thanks to the strength of our product and service offering, which delivers immediate impact and return on investment for customers through visible growth, which in turn also drives high customer loyalty. Whilst the previous slide shows how our business revenues are growing faster than Amazon, this slide shows how we enable our customers to grow ahead of the marketplace growth. A sales increase of 5x compared to the Amazon average of 2x in their categories. This highlights the competitive edge and added value that our services deliver for brands trading on the major marketplaces, and why they choose to be a partner with us. The development of the digital commerce segment is moving ahead at pace, with a two-year, for us, with a two-year investment program coming to fruition. We have continued to win key clients and deliver outstanding benefits for those clients, helping them grow substantially ahead of the rate of marketplace growth. We added over 150 gross new enterprise customers and over 1,100 new challenger brand customers in the period. We also grew net revenue retention, which for the customers brought forward at June 2022, was over 100% for the first half year, representing good growth compared to the 95% retention rate recorded in 2022. The creation of an integrated operating platform was a critical focus for the business in H1, and earlier this month, we launched Flywheel Commerce Cloud in a closed beta environment, with key early-stage customers migrating to the platform before a wider rollout later this year and into 2024. Flywheel Commerce Cloud brings together our best-in-class solutions and products, starting with our Flywheel, OneSpace, Whyte Spyder, and Edge products into a single experience, all leveraging the same aggregated data. Initially, for our enterprise clients, the Flywheel Commerce Cloud will expand laterally into the challenger customers. Flywheel Commerce Cloud is a key enabler to release both the economic and operational benefits of the integration of the digital commerce business. In addition, we have also been aggressively rolling out new capabilities for our marketplace partners to maximize our ability to optimize for our clients' business on a real-time basis, and have successfully launched integrated products in the half with partners such as Amazon, Walmart, Target, Instacart, and Uber. A critical part of our efforts has been to simplify and streamline the business, and as such, we have reorganized the business to create a unitary organization structure with all elements of the operating model migrating to a single Flywheel brand next month. As our clients experience a fully integrated global platform, they will also have a simplified engagement experience with us under a single team. This also sets us up, sets us up well for the separation. Finally, we have implemented a number of synergy actions in August and September to drive the second half and full-year margin and cash flow. As a result of these actions and our investments, we are now able to benefit from this integrated business and organizational restructuring, and are targeting a high single-digit margin for 2023, and mid-teens margins for 2024. Turning to strategic actions and outlook. Our preparations are well advanced for the separation of our three businesses, and we expect to update the market further on our progress by the end of the year. While executing our strategic actions is of the utmost importance, it's also very, very important for us to maintain strong operational trading through the process, and you can see that our H2 operation priorities are: deliver a successful edition of Money20/20 USA, following the outstanding result we delivered in 2022. Prepare for the launch of Money20/20 Asia in 2024. Complete the successful launch and rollout of Flywheel Commerce Cloud. Deliver on integration synergies to drive digital commerce margins. And continue to drive our non-fashion products in WGSN. After our seasonally stronger first half, we've had a solid start to the second half. Despite continued macro uncertainty impacting the industries we serve and currency headwinds, our businesses remain well set for the year, supported by multiple growth levers. The structural long-term growth in our end markets and the success of our marquee events underpins the board's confidence in the prospects of our business in the future. With that, Mandy, Phil, and I would be delighted to now take any questions. Mandy, do you want to facilitate- Yes, of course. Of course. So if you're on the webcast, please type your questions in, and they magically appear on our screen, and I'll fish them out of this end. Otherwise, do we have questions in the room? Nick, you were first, I think. Yeah, morning. Nick Dempsey from Barclays. I've got a few questions. So first of all, I guess we've been able to somewhat follow the WGSN process through press reports, but can you give us any indications at all about the processes you've been through, discussions you've had about listing digital commerce in the U.S.? And isn't it just a really difficult environment to do that? Second question: we're seeing a tough comp effect for Money20/20 USA, which had a really strong year from Cannes Lions. I don't want to be a party pooper, but should we worry about a tough comp effect for Cannes Lions next year, especially as the agencies are seeing their growth rolling off? Third question: yeah, you're showing us the Ascential execution products, as you describe them, are up 23%, while execution overall is up 14%, which leads me to try and do some maths. The other parts that aren't ben- measurement and benchmarking are ASR, Intrepid, Sellics, Duozhun, and Intellibrand. Are they, in aggregate, declining? If so, is that all about ASR, where we know there's some problems? 'Cause it looks like a big gap between the 14% and the 23%. Just a final one to sneak in: I guess our analyst, another analyst, has Amazon growing faster in the second half of 2023 than the first half. If we just keep things simple, shouldn't that mean that digital commerce should just grow more in the second half than first half? That's- Are we there, Nick? I'm all out, so. Any, any more to go, or... Okay, great. So why don't I take number one- I'll take- ... number three and four, and you take number two, Mandy? Yep, that's fine. So look, on the, on the process, look, we're not gonna be providing particularly a great deal of detail. I think what we would genuinely say is we don't really recognize much of what is written in the press. So, you know, you, you it's interesting how it plays out, but it's, it's not something we recognize. So, you know, we, all I would refer you back to is the transcript of our half year- our end of year results, which of course, you can all lovingly use, where we made it very clear we expected the process to run through the year and complete the back end of the second half or into Q1, I think it was, 2024, as we commented. And from our perspective, nothing's changed. Okay. Do you want to take comps? Yeah, absolutely. So yes, the... You're right, Nick. It is a very strong comp that we're going up against in respect of 2022 for Money20/20 USA. Part of the reason when our advisors first looked at these results, their opening question to me was: "Aren't you being a bit conservative in your growth rates, your sort of mid- to high-single-digit growth rates?" And the answer is, the reason that we are doing this is to basically say, we're not expecting to grow every year, of course, at the sort of 25%, but we do think over the medium term, that sort of mid- to high-single-digit growth for the events business is the right place to pitch this at. We're very conscious, as we look into next year, about both the funding environment for Money20/20 and the health of the end markets within marketing. That's very much weighing on our sort of guidance as we will start to formulate it as we get towards the end of this year. But I think I would, just in respect of Cannes Lions, one of the things I would probably mention is the very strong expansion of our customer base outside of what has been, of course, and still is a very important agency customer base. So when you look at that growth, that 66% growth, that's really coming from very large technology players and who are, of course, the new media owners. That we're already seeing strong bookings already in that part of the business. Yeah, we are cautious as we look forward into 2024, but I think there is that level of protection against negativity in those two industries, and obviously, we'll provide further guidance as we get towards the end of the year and in the full year results. Then turning to the execution product. Yeah, I think principally, the majority of that, Nicky, is ASR, which is the deprecation of the publisher product by Amazon. That had a big hit in the first half, as we expected. But what I would actually say is, interestingly, as we've come through the half and the new products that they've introduced to brands, I think we're through the worst of that, and in fact, we seem to be coming out the other side now on ASR. So, yeah, but I would say that combined with, China being pretty muted still at the moment, growth rate's low, you know, media particularly, you know, brands or platforms like Alibaba, as you know, have lost sort of nearly 17% market share in the last 12 months to things like, TikTok. So, yeah, it's the combination of that, but principally it's ASR. And then for second half growth, well, you know, market expectations are out there for our second half growth, where we do expect digital commerce to grow faster than it did in the first half. So I think it would be fair to say that we still remain of a mind of that. Thanks, Duncan. Gareth? Morning, Gareth Davies from Numis. One follow-up on Cannes initially, which is you saw 40% sponsorship growth. You called out kind of picking up more inventory around the city. I suppose there are two aspects to that. Is there any one-off in there that will drop out, that you can't take forward? Is there scope to push that harder as we look forward? And then a couple on Money20/20. Can you give us any feel for what you think a good result for Asia would be in its first year, in terms of, I don't know, even the other scale of the show, in terms of delegates or, or the sort of vague aspirations in terms of revenue? And then I was interested on the growth slide. You called out product innovation for Cannes, but you didn't mention anything for Money20/20. Should that give us faith that there's kind of a lot to go at on the innovation side as we look forward, or is it, I mean, to me, it feels more natural that you'd be putting innovation into Money20/20 Europe, given that it's a much younger show? Yeah. Phil, do you want to take the first and the third- Yeah, exactly. I'll do Asia. Exactly, yeah. So on the inventory, Gareth, specifically this year, we moved into onto into some of the big hotels in Cannes. There are still many big hotels left for us to do deals with, to start to sell their inventory, and in fact, we're starting from a relatively low base. So there is outside of the area that we control at Cannes, there is still a lot to go for in terms of inventory, including beaches and hotels and other areas as well. So we're pretty confident that we can find new offerings for customers who wanna do something different in Cannes, and in fact, we're having conversations already about next year, acquiring extra inventory in order to drive that sponsorship revenue. So we're fairly comfortable there. There is growth to be had, I think, within the city of Cannes. And then you're absolutely right on Money20/20. I think, I think the issue there is that you've got to remember, Cannes Lions is 70 years old, and therefore, much of the growth of the last 10 years has come from the innovation that we've brought to the business. There's no doubt that Money20/20, being much more immature as a business, has kind of grown much more organically. However, as it matures as a business, we will be instituting the kinds of innovations that we constantly do at Cannes, and there is a lot to go for on all of our editions at Money20/20. We will definitely be doubling down on the internal innovations and creativity that we can bring to the brand as it matures and as its natural growth starts to mature. So yes is the answer, short answer to that one. In terms of ambitions for Asia, it's obviously a higher risk revenue line because we're A, so far out, and B, it's a brand-new proposition, a new city and country. I guess we will measure it ourselves against what we achieved in Singapore in 2018 and 2019 before we were stopped from doing the 2020 edition by the pandemic. We achieved around GBP 6 million of revenue in both of those years. So we'll measure ourselves against that. But as I said, it's not specific guidance as such because we're too early, and it's too high a risk. I think it is worth saying, just in profitability profile, we wouldn't expect significant profits to come in the 2024 year. We'd expect sort of, you know, low to sort of slightly profitable in 2024, and before going into the sort of teens-ish types of margins in 2025 onwards, depending, of course, on revenue profile... but we have really put a lot of resources into the region to try and make it as local a show as possible. So it does feel like a good, like it's having a good start. Thanks, Gareth. Are there any other questions in the room? I'll just check. No questions online. In which- Oh! Go for it. Nick, Nick, come back. Just, just a question on digital commerce. So if we are putting more of the businesses under the Flywheel brand or consolidating some of the brands there, is there a risk that some of the people that were fans of the other brands, Whyte Spyder, et cetera, that you lose some of them? So therefore, you get some benefit on the margin, but you have some impact on the revenue growth going forward. Look, it's a great question, actually, but what I would say, Nick, is that the dynamic there is sort of slightly less around the individual brands and more around the customer's mindset about their multi marketplace activities that they wish to do. And so, our expectation is that they will welcome the integration because they, you know, they want to optimize their business where they're looking at it across multiple channels to market, not necessarily looking at it on, you know, I'm looking through Whyte Spyder at Walmart, now I've got to look through Flywheel for Amazon. Now I've got to... You know. So we don't anticipate that, but inevitably, when you go through these changes, there's always that risk. Gareth? Oh. We should have let you sit closer together. Yeah. Just one follow-up on Hudson. You put a fair bit of detail into the statement, but- Yeah ... could you just kind of summarize where Hudson's at, what your views are, and is it going to consume more capital as we look forward? Just talk about the business, sort of? Yeah, look, I think again, you know, we've said this in the past, you know, Hudson is a private company. You know, we provided as much disclosure as we can around our investment into Hudson. You know, the business, you know, obviously we don't... You know, we are a minority owner of the business. You know, it has a majority owner, but I would say overall, you know, the investment was a significant investment by a new third party. They've made that investment because they feel confident in the business. You know, and so we're happy, as a long-term investor there to be partnering with them on the go forward, Gareth. I just, you know, the business is not yet at cash break-even, obviously, given the losses that you can see in the statement. And yeah, we would probably expect to follow our money pro rata in future fundraisings in respect of Hudson. Yeah. You know, there's no doubt in that mix that the, you know, this movement of major consumer brands taking more and more of their digital purchasing in-house is a, is a very, very good wind in the sales of Hudson. Dan? Good morning. Dan Cowan from HSBC. Boring question from me on cash flow and, and stuff like that. Yeah. Cash costs for the strategic review in the second half, please? Sure. Um- Oh, go on. Yeah. Sort of roughly where you think net debt would be at year-end? Yeah ... with deferred consideration and everything else that you think might be happening. Okay. So in terms of H1, we spent 23 million pounds on the costs associated with our strategic review and actions. And it's - I would expect it to be somewhat less than that in the second half, but it's that sort of order of magnitude. From a deferred consideration perspective, we will be paying out about GBP 14 million in the second half, in respect of deferred consideration obligations, and in our - and obviously there's GBP 65 million on our balance sheet in total at the moment in respect to those. And the consensus for net debt at the end of next year is about 225-ish million of net debt. With those cash costs, those, that strategic review costs going out, I would probably move that up to a number that starts around GBP 240-ish rather than GBP 220-ish. Yes, that's our sort of expectation for the end of the year's cash. Anything online, Annie? Nothing online. We have been testing, so it is functional, I'm told. Okay. Thank you, Nina. Very good. In which case, dead on the hour. Thank you so much for attending. Thank you very much for your time, everyone. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.