IG GROUP HOLDINGS PLC (IGG) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning and welcome to the Investor and Analyst Call for IG Group's Half Year 2026 Results presentation. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Further instructions will follow at that time. I would like to remind all participants that this call is being recorded. I will now hand over to Brianne Cucoran, CEO, to begin the presentation. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you for joining us. I'm here with Clifford Abrahams, our CFO.

You'll see the agenda we have on the screen. We will take questions at the end.

This has been a strong first half. Broad-based growth and clear evidence that the strategy we set out in July 2024 is working. Starting with customer acquisition, we delivered a sixth consecutive quarter of sequential growth in active customers, the single best indicator of the health of the business. Organic active customers up 13 percent organic first trades up 74 percent second growth was broad based across every product faster product velocity discipline marketing and supportive market conditions resulted in organic total revenue of 17 and 20 organic net trading revenue growth as set out in may our upgraded outlook targets organic total revenue growth of at least 10 percent a year beyond 2026. Third, we sustained strong margins. The first half EBITDA margin was 44 percent with continued investment in our propositions, higher marketing spend and costs associated with the strategic review partly offset by a lower cost to serve. Fourth, underdog transforms our future growth. The acquisition opens up the large fast-growing U.S. daily fantasy sports and prediction markets it transforms our u.s footprint and accelerates standalone revenue and eps growth fifth the strategic review we announced in march is now substantively complete this month we set out plans to redomissile to jersey and a refreshed organizational model we've also announced the acquisition of underdog our listing venue will remain unchanged as a result of the strategic review we continue to explore future growth and efficiency initiatives and we'll present a refreshed strategy and a strategy update on the 22nd of October. Let me hand over to Clifford for the financials.

Thank you, Brienne, and good morning. You've seen the headline numbers, growth across our key measures. The first half confirms that our investment in product, marketing and people is translating into stronger financial performance. Growth was broad-based, marketing generated attracted returns and margins remained strong as we invested for growth and absorb the costs of the strategic review. Starting with the headlines. Total revenue was £643 million, up 18% and up 17% on an organic, continuing operations basis. The EBITDA margin was 43.9% against 49.6% in the first half of 25, reflecting consolidation effects, strategic review costs and a deliberate choice to keep investing behind growth. I'll come back to cost shortly. Adjusted EPS was up 21% and 22% organically, supported by share buybacks. In line with our progressive dividend policy, the Board has proposed an interim dividend of 14.46 pence per share, 30% of the prior year full-year dividend, on the group's old 31st May year-end basis. Turning now to customer metrics. Growth accelerated through the half. Organic first trades, our lead indicator of future growth, were up 74%. Active customers were up 13%, accelerating to 15% in the second quarter. The sixth consecutive quarter of sequential growth that Brian mentioned. On a reported basis, growth is higher again, reflecting free trade and independent reserve. Next, onto platform assets under administration and flows, an increasingly important driver for the business. We are pleased to see that assets under administration on the IG platform reached £21.5 billion, up 34%, driven by sustained net inflows across our stock trading and investments proposition including free trade. The standout is our UK direct-to-consumer platform. platform. First half net flows were equivalent to around half of our opening assets under administration, roughly six times the pace of the market, with IGE now capturing an estimated 8% of UK market net inflows. We're building a genuine challenger position in UK investments, we've broadened the proposition, customers are looking for better value than the encumbered offer and we'll keep investing behind it. Turning to the P&L, net trading revenue was £589 million, up 21% with growth across every product line, reflecting both higher revenue per customer and a larger active customer base. This reflects the hard work of our teams, delivering more product to more customers much faster. Net interest income was down 10% as higher High customer cash balances were more than offset by lower rates and greater pass through to customers. Total revenue was £643 million, up 18%. Operating costs before depreciation and amortisation were £362 million, up 30% reported and around 25% organically, reflecting higher marketing, continued investment in product technology and non-recurring strategic review costs. EBITDA was £282m, up 4% and up 7% on an organic, continuing operations basis. Below EBITDA, other net losses reflect two key items. First, a £19m revaluation of the payward stock received as part of the small exchange disposal last year. Second, an impairment relating to independent reserve, partially offset by a release of deferred consideration given more challenging cyclical conditions in digital asset markets. Adjusted EPS, which strips out non-recurring and non-underlying items, was up 21% to 68.9 pence. Next, performance by product in the first half of 2026. Growth was broad based across every product. That breadth matters. It shows our growth isn't reliant on any single product and it reflects the work we've done to broaden our propositions, widen our appeal and deliver more consistent, sustainable growth. It's the same picture by division. Organic revenue growth everywhere, which is really encouraging. UK and Ireland net trading revenue was up 22% organically, APAC and Middle East up 27%, the US was up 18% and Europe up 10%. A broad base of growth not reliant on any single market. Moving now to costs. Total operating costs increased 26% or 19% organically. Marketing was up 51% to £75m driving a 107% increase in first trades with paybacks under 6 months and lifetime value around 4x acquisition costs. fixed remuneration was up 15% driven by the consolidation of free trade and independent reserve and including £6 million of restructuring under our refreshed operating model alongside inflationary salary increases. On an organic basis headcount was down 10% even as revenue grew 17% reflecting our focus on a lower fixed cost to serve and on automation. Legal and professional costs increased reflecting the non-recurring costs of the re-domicile, restructuring associated with our refreshed organisational model together with the strategic review and technology consulting to build our product engineering capability. This slide breaks out the cost movements in more detail. Strip-out acquisitions and non-recurring items and underlying costs were up 12% while behind our revenue and active customer growth. The larger driver was marketing. We increased spend as planned and we're seeing strong returns. The rest of our organic business as usual cost base grew 6%, mainly reflecting inflationary salary increases, continued investment technology and higher market data and revenue-related costs. Beyond that, the remaining movement is acquisitions and strategic review costs, a full six months of free trade this year against three last year, independent reserve from the end of January, and non-recurring costs, which I mentioned earlier. On capital, our position remains strong. Solvency sinks comfortably above the top end of our long-term target range, and we expect to return within it by the end of 2026, pro forma for the underdog acquisition. As Brian mentioned, on July 8, we announced plans to set up a new Jersey Incorporated holding company. Around two-thirds of group revenue is now generated outside the UK, so a Jersey holding company better reflects our international footprint and gives us a simpler, more efficient structure with gator strategic and financial flexibility. Following completion, we keep our London listing, our eligibility for the FTSE UK indices and our UK tax residency. There is no change for customers or employees and no change to operations from the re-domicile. The re-domicile will be implemented by a scheme of arrangement subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals with completion targeted for the fourth quarter. The Shareholder Circular was published on 16 July and the EGM takes place on 3 September. With that, let me hand back to Brian to cover our strategic progress.

Thank you. Back in July 2024, we set out what we believed was needed to fix across product, culture and efficiency. this is where we are now two years later on product we've closed the priority gaps across our markets including stock trading and crypto and our unified proposition is on track to launch early in half two starting in the UK market on culture our refreshed organizational model reduces complexity and sharpens focus and it's already delivered a step change of product velocity on efficiency we've lowered our fixed cost to serve through digital survey servicing and and lifted customer income retention. The outcome is in the metrics. Organic active customers up, revenue per customer up sharply, and cost to serve down materially versus two years ago. Now to product velocity, which is critical in this industry. We've made good progress on competitiveness. In the first half alone, we brought almost as many new products and features to market as we did in the whole of 2025. Here's what this looks like. I'm encouraged by the wide range of product enhancements delivered in the first half. In the UK, we materially upgraded our investing proposition, a much broader range of global stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, fixed income, tax wrappers plus fractional shares. In crypto, Spot Trading is now live on our FCA licensed platform with over 150 coins alongside perpetual futures, crypto swaps, transfers and advanced charting. trading. We also rolled out spot crypto trading in France and completed the acquisition of independent reserve in Asia Pacific. In the US, TastyTrade recently launched prediction markets. Following the removal of the pattern day trading rule in June, it also saw an encouraging pick up in options activity from customers previously constrained by that rule. Staying with product, the biggest unlock this year is our unified proposition, launching initially in the uk in the coming weeks it brings trading investing and crypto together on a single platform and is built to allow the addition of new products quickly it expands our addressable market improves acquisition effectiveness and speeds of product delivery multi-product adoption in the uk is already up strongly year on year and the unified proposition will put more of our products in front of more of our customers turning next to culture we streamlined from five divisions to three IG consumer IG securities our platform technology institutional business and IG North America including tasty trade dedicated commercial products and compliance teams stay embedded in each division so we keep our customer focus while taking out of there of complexity that was slowing us down turning now to efficiency I'm pleased that we've made further progress on cost to serve, with organic fixed cost to serve per funded account down a further 15% in the half. That's funded higher marketing spend at attractive returns. There's more to do, but these returns support continued investment. This brings me to the strategic review we launched in March. It's now substantively complete and has delivered three key outcomes. The proposed redomicile, a refreshed organisational model and the acquisition of underdog together these set the group's direction for the next phase of growth we continue to explore incremental growth and efficiency initiatives and we'll set out our refresh strategy guidance and capital allocation framework at the rest strategic review on the 22nd of october let me turn to underdog we launched our strategic review in march which prioritized acquisitions aligned with our m a framework we've looked at very many opportunities prioritizing growth and innovation and underdogs stood out we're clear-eyed about the risks including the fast-moving regulatory environment and underdogs product and leadership team are well placed to win and we've structured the transaction around performance underdog is a leading u.s prediction markets operator spanning both daily fantasy sports and prediction markets This is a landmark deal for IG. It establishes us as a leader in US prediction markets, one of the most significant opportunities across trading, investing and entertainment. It gives us entry into a high growth adjacent category, initially in sports and then later into financial markets, culture and politics. Underdog brings nearly a million mobile first monthly active users. It has strong brand equity in sport and a fully integrated licensed stack spanning brokerage, exchange, clearing and market making. This gives it full control over product, economics and risk. Underdog is growing rapidly with significant potential in a large and fast growing market. Net revenues for the 12 months to June 2026 was $466 million of 21%. That continues a strong trajectory from $9 million in 2021 to $441 million in 2025, growth of 63% in that final year. Monthly active users reached nearly 1 million, up 39%. Daily fantasy sports has been in the engine of underdog's growth, but as a game of skill, it's limited to around a third of what customers want. Prediction markets change that. Simple, addressable format for customers used to sports gaming. Prediction markets have grown very quickly, with sports by far the largest and fastest growing part. With more than 50 million US sports betters and daily fantasy players already comfortable with this style of risk-taking that's a pre-converted pool underdog is well placed to capture turning now to how underdog fits with ig strategy this deal is firmly aligned with ig's strategic focus on product culture and efficiency on product it closes a gap in a high growth category and broadens our appeal to a younger demographic on culture it brings a share obsession with customers and product velocity and a strong culture of ownership on efficiency it's a vertically integrated scalable platform with attractive marketing payback together we unlock a large mobile first user base we can scale underdogs product through tasty trade in the US and over time through IG's unified proposition globally as one business we can grow it faster and generate more value than either of could alone. With that I'll hand over to Clifford.

Thanks Brian. The acquisition of Underdog doubles IG's US revenue and increases our US active customers more than tenfold. On a performer basis in 2025 the US would have accounted for around 40% of group revenue against around 22% stand alone. The acquisition diversifies our growth drivers by product. Prediction markets in DFS would have represented around 25% of combined group revenue. It also transforms our demographic profile. Over 60% of Underdog customers are under 30 and over 80% are under the age of 40, lowering IG's average customer age from around 42 to 34 on a pro forma basis. Strategically, Underdog delivers the vision from our strategic review, positioning IG at the centre of the convergence across trading, investing and entertainment with a category leadership position in a structural growth market. Financially, our standalone revenue guidance which we upgraded in May is unchanged. At least 10% organic total revenue growth a year. An underdog growing faster is expected to lift the combined group above that level. The deal is broadly neutral to adjusted EPS in year one and double-digit accretive by year three with return on invested capital exceeding our cost of capital by year three. We are maintaining our progressive dividend policy and we intend to pause our current share buyback. We expect to be in a position to consider resuming this in 2027 following completion of the re-domicile and subject to share price performance and other demands and capital. The consideration aligns a meaningful share of value with future performance through the earn out and the management incentive plan and Underdog will continue to operate as a commercially standalone business, mitigating integration risk. With that, back to Brian for some concluding remarks.

Thank you Clifford. We delivered strong first-off results with growth across every key metric, revenue, customers and returns, momentum building through the period. The strategy we set out in july 2024 has delivered a step change in performance including stronger customer acquisition broad-based revenue growth and sustained margins as we invest and with underdog we've announced the transformational acquisition that will drive our revenue and earnings growth in the future the strategic review we announced in march is now substantially complete we continue to explore incremental growth and efficiency initiatives across the group and we look forward to presenting a refreshed strategy capital allocation framework and guidance and a strategic review on the 22nd of october thank you we'll now take your questions thank you we will now start the q a if you are

dialed into the call and wish to ask a question please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your zoom screen our first question is from ben barthurs from barbc please unmute your line and ask your question morning hopefully you can hear me okay uh questions in a couple of areas if i may just starting on costs i just wondered uh do you have any visibility on the non-recurring costs that you expect to incur in the second half of 2026 um and if so could you give a guide on what level that might be uh and then secondly just moving on to underdog uh on the call last night i think again earlier you you mentioned that you've entered into the deal clear-eyed as to the regulatory risk can you just share briefly what you see the key risks as being there and how you've gotten comfortable over over those risks and in in doing the deal and then also on underdog you referenced a million underdog users i just wondered what proportion are currently using the prediction market product versus the daily fantasy sports product of that of that one million users and what do you see as being the more important lever for growth in the short term is it increasing the prediction market penetration of that one million customers or is it about adding new customers all together thank you so thanks ben uh you we highlighted the non-recurring

costs on page 13 for the first half i'm not going to guide for non-recurring costs for the uh for the second half but as you know today we reconfirmed our guidance that we set out in early July in terms of growth, we're comfortable with consensus and we've stuck with our guidance of mid-40s EBITDA margins.

Thanks Clifford and thank you Ben. Clear-eyed might be one of those phrases that I'll have to listen to for a while. If I point you at page 31 in the appendix on the underdog deck it kind of goes to some of the regulatory matters but there's a shift from state by state licensing of daily fantasy sports sports betting gaming towards a federal CFTC licensing structure that shift is well underway and the CFTC has a clear mandate to regulate event contracts prediction markets in particular some of the states are defensive about their heritage in licensing and one might opine that that could be about tax protection or that could be something as philosophical as the state's right matter in the united states so there is regulatory uncertainty here and with uncertainty i guess comes some risk when we say that we went into this clear-eyed or open-eyed about the outcomes i think i'd ask investors to focus on the fact that Today we're buying 100% of a business that is a market beating team. It's a product led company. It has quickly and in a capital efficient way built a brand that resonates and is relevant to several million customers in a competitive market in the United States. And these customers on a daily basis express opinions around sports and increasingly do that through CFTC prediction market rails. Much of that is synergistic, strategically synergistic and capability synergistic to what we do at Tasty Trade, where we have a deep expertise-led business that in truth has slightly struggled with relevance for a broader customer base. So I think in the medium term, as we see more convergence of trading and betting, or more convergence of people expressing opinions in high engagement markets, I think a team that's product-led that has built a contemporary dynamic brand fits very well with the expertise and competency and compliance capability that we have in Chicago at Tasty. And that's kind of why we're excited about this deal irrespective of the regulatory end state. To your question about the mix on prediction markets, and I think we talked a little bit about this on the call last night, We're expecting over time that what underdog have done is they pivoted from the daily fantasy model. They skipped online sports betting and are now moving to prediction market rails. They did that first with calcium with crypto.com. But they're now moving to their own fully own licensing stack. I'm sure we'll come into some of the detail on that later over the coming days. But on slide 30 of the underdog deck from last night, there's an indication of the handle. So the volume going, the notion of volume going through the different models. And whilst it's only a tiny amount now on their own prediction rails, I mean, that literally is, now is the point of explosion. And that is literally a traffic that has started to move through their rails in the last two weeks. And we're very, very excited about how that growth will explode from here on out. But we're not giving guidance on customer numbers. We don't have that visibility as yet. But what I think we have here is a monetization mechanic for people who currently express opinions on sports. And I think in due course will allow us to monetize how people express opinions on financial markets as well.

Thank you. Our next question is from Hal Potter from Bank of America. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Good morning, gents. Just three from me. One of them is on marketing efficiency. So you've mentioned the six month payback and the LTV to CAC ratio at four to one. That's the same as we had at 2025. I think they're rounded figures. can you give us any comfort around your marketing becoming more or less difficult in the face of heightened competition? And then on capital allocation, what can we read into your shift from what I suppose is a dependable buyback into M&A in a relatively volatile space with that regulatory overhang? How are we supposed to think about capital allocation going forward?

And then a little bit on capital allocation even further, regarding the re-domicile, are we expecting a bit of excess capital to be unlocked and how would that feed into your policy going forward thanks if you don't mind take the redome and the capital questions um on the marketing efficiency i don't love these numbers um in that they're rounded and very summary in nature and at using different levers in different geographies with different competitive dynamics. So there are times when product does more of the work, product releases does more of the work and you've seen the progress you've made on that and just even in the UK over the last couple of years. But there are other times when marketing does more of the work and even within that there's the mix between brand spender out of home for example and performance marketing online. So this the number is there to give investors comfort that we're still in the same ballpark. Sometimes it feels a bit better. Sometimes it feels a bit worse. But it is a very aggregate number. And I think in truth going to any much to going to much more detail would not be helpful. We call it I think we stress it appropriately. We call it the six sequential quarters of active growth in actives. And I think that's the number that one should look at. And in the round we will spend we will increase marketing as we run the business more efficiently. We've said that we think we're underspending rather to a lot of the competition. We've increased marketing spend dramatically but I think there's opportunity to spend more and to fund more spending from the business growth and from continuing to run the business more efficiently but I think directionally that number is to give investors comfort that the story is largely intact rather than to encourage much more specificity around either geographies or a short sample of time. I can't remember the question. Capital allocations, I'll pick that up no sorry about the buyback just before on the buyback look some customer some shareholders have talked about the importance of the buyback in the investment model and we understand that i think we've bought back since the beginning of calendar 24 some 550 million quid worth of stock so we and the board have shown evidence commitment to buying back uh when the time is right but as stewards of this business in the long term the relevance of this business and these brands to our customers and the long term matters as well and the history of IG in recent years has been as you know to lose market share in a number of our territories and the purpose behind this acquisition is to back a team that have grown their customer base in a capital efficient way largely through product led growth and I think as we can bring that DNA into more of the IG businesses I hope that that would be transformation in the years to come.

Yes. To build on that in July last year we set out our capital allocation framework and M&A inorganic was very clearly part of that. We talked about regulatory capital requirements. We have our target range regular distributions inorganic and then after that additional distributions. We also set out our M&A framework and underdog is very consistent within our capital allocation framework in terms of disciplined deployment of capital inorganically and it fits our M&A criteria we set out in the pack but in particular we expect the acquisition to deliver the returns that are comfortably in our M&A criteria. So expect inorganic to be a continuing feature of how we grow the business and as you know we announced in March our strategic review and acquisitions was very much part of that. We're mindful of returns and buybacks and we said today that we would expect to resume buybacks next year subject to all the usual caveats. We announced the proposed redomiciliation to Jersey and we talked about capital flexibility. There are a number of other financials listed here and elsewhere that have such sort of top-coast structures. So, by all means, look at that. We have our strategic review update after the summer in October and I'll be happy to give an update at that point.

Thanks very much. thank you our next question is from ian white from autonomous research please unmute your line and ask your question thanks for uh thanks for taking my questions and three from my side please um firstly how would you compare and contrast uh the underdog acquisition with ig's previous acquisition of tasty trade um i'm wondering if there are perhaps some similarities in that you've bought a, I guess what I'd describe as a scale challenger in a fast-growing market where I think the main part of the sort of value proposition here is access to an attractive market where organic entry would have taken too long or been too risky. But maybe you can just help us to think about how this deal is kind of similar and also different, please. And secondly, what assumptions underpin your conviction in ROIC exceeding WAC by year three? I'm thinking revenues would probably need to double from 2025 levels of underdog. And I'm wondering if you see that being market growth, market share, cross selling or greater wallet share with the group's existing client base. Help us with some of the thinking around that, please. That's question two. And just finally, what sort of investment might be needed to achieve your goals with Underdog over the coming years? Is there anything on technology that needs to be revised and on marketing? How would you assess Underdog's capabilities? Can you just scale up marketing spend, for example? or is there a period of kind of recalibration as you've had with IG? That's my final question. Thank you.

Do you want to take the middle one? I guess there are some similarities to the Tasty Deal. It's a fast-growing US-based asset. I think we're, I wasn't around at the time of the Tasty Deal, So I think we're particularly excited here by the quality of the team, the evidence of progress they've made and the opportunity, the nascent opportunity in the prediction market space in particular. And I think as people have a chance to read more into Underdog, the fact that they're monetizing a few million customers already as effectively as they are already in a short period of time and by some definitions third in the market after calcium Robin hood is quite encouraging the tasty business is one that I have a lot of time for but is unfortunately a little bit more niche than we would like and as we focus our attention on growth and sustainability for this business in the medium term I think backing a team investing in a business that has more mass market appeal is mobile first is a younger customer base with high engagement is that's an attractive place to deploy capital I'll pass over to Clifford on the on the second question but on the on your third question Ian the business has been capital that the other business has been capital efficient today I would expect that to continue to be the case we're excited by the deal structure, because effectively, aside from the relatively small earn out at the end of this financial year, this calendar year, the team is very motivated to hit EBITDA targets in 28 and 29, and they will do that through marketing spend. I would expect marketing spend to increase from where it is currently, but they will do that through product-led growth primarily, which is how they've grown this business so and when it's not just that we've seen what they plan to do over over that it's not just that over the last few months we've seen what they plan to do in their ambitions in product this is a business I've known well for quite a while and that we've been talking about IG for probably over a year now so seeing how they've grown their business and how efficiently and quickly their their product for how impressive the product velocity is I think that will continue to drive a lot of growth in the coming years as they attempt to maximise the value of that incentive plan.

Thanks Ian for your question which is really around sort of how we expect to deliver that guidance in terms of delivery of returns in excess of ROIC. I think there's a bunch of backup in the presentation of yesterday at the appendix which will give you some of those drivers. we're not giving a you know guidance on revenue beyond saying sort of strong double digits I think there are a few things that give us confidence about revenue and that revenue dropping to the to the bottom line so if you look historically the businesses has delivered revenue through its position is as number two in the daily fantasy sports business so that's half a billion of revenue if you like from the heritage business as Brian said the business has has transitioned to prediction rails over the past year but only just recently has been able to drive that volume through its own predictions exchange and that will very much assist in monetisation in terms of ability to deliver gross margins from that flow. We also see as the transition of the business model takes place from DFS to prediction models there's a liberation from some of the restrictions in terms of the format of propositions that Underdog offers its customers. And so that, we believe, will drive the handle or the dollars wagered significantly up for Underdog, closer to some of the existing players in the market. So all of that gives us confidence in revenue growth, in the predictions market itself growing strongly but broadening the proposition, and that dropping through in terms of gross margin and monetisation. And then finally, you've got the operating leverage of a scale business that has the infrastructure in place, that's already spending quite a bit on marketing. But as the business grows strongly, we expect EBITDA margins to match that and pick up from here. And that will drop to the bottom line and give us that healthy ROIC that we've guided to.

OK, thanks for that.

Thank you. As a gentle reminder, if you are dialed into the call and wish to ask a question, please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Our next question comes from Alex Bowers from KPW. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Morning. Just three from me, if I may. Just firstly on the finance costs from the 950 million bridging facility. Can you confirm how much that would be and also whether that will be included in your adjusted EPS metric? Secondly, just on the buyback, I know a question already been asked on this, but just in terms of being in a position to resume in 2027, can you just get a bit more clarity on that? Are you like intending to potentially reinstate a buyback at the 26 results for 27? Or is this something that will come later on in 27 once you've kind of been through the redominsighting process, et cetera? And then thirdly, just on a metric you kind of mentioned in previous results, the OTC customer revenue retention metric, which I think was like 83% at FY25. Has there been any improvement on this in H126? And is there any guidance you can give in terms of further revenue growth from this metric in H2 and in FY27?

Yeah, so I'll pick up those questions. Look, we're not going to guide to finance costs in particular. What I'd note is that sum, that 950 you referred to, is essentially a committed facility. So we wanted to announce the transaction with a facility to draw on to execute the transaction. We have other opportunities to deliver that cash over time, to refinance that bridge facility, to move cash around the group. So we'll obviously seek to optimise that. The adjusted EPS would be after the cost of funding, which itself would depend on how much we needed for, for example, the earn-out. So we've got flexibility and our guidance that we've talked about reflects all of that. In terms of buybacks, we're not going to give a commitment, as you'd expect, on timing of buybacks. We will update our thinking around capital at the October strategy review update and obviously at the full year and ongoing as we do at every reported period. What I'd note is we do expect the redomicillium to Jersey to take place around the end of the year, hopefully during this calendar year, subject to regulatory approval and we've guided to when we expect this transaction closing. So, some of those elements will have been much clearer by the end of the calendar year. I think around retention, look, we're comfortable with retention, it's volatile, so it's, you know, the team are delivering as expected but we don't report quarter on quarter. I think in terms of the expectations for steady improvement there, we're encouraged by in particular our new head of IG Securities Andy Biggs and he's he's he's he's building his team he he arrived during the period and that itself sort of underpins our long-term confidence in this area.

Thank you our next question comes from Julian Roberts from Jefferies please unmute your line and ask your question.

Thanks very much I've got a couple on the regulatory front First, are you able to tell us what proportion of underdogs, customers or handle come from American states where sports betting is presently not allowed? And given that some states are challenging the rules around prediction markets, what do you think is the level of risk of that being referred to the Supreme Court and there being a negative outcome from underdogs point of view?

The inference behind the first question is correctly that there is specificity on a state basis and some of the states for prediction markets have grown have not had a history of legalized sports betting or daily fantasy. We're not going to be drawn on individual state makes at this stage partly because it it changes. The point behind the second question I think it's largely expected that there will be um there's a there's a growing expectation that this will go to the supreme court in the united states and commentators there's a quite a broad variance in when that might happen um but so i so i'm not going to i mean my guess is no better than anyone else's and actually less well informed than than many um but i think this ultimately will go this may ultimately go to the Supreme Court in the United States for a resolution. And for those that aren't as close to the detail, the decision will be whether this should be regulated, whether sports in particular should be regulated by individual states, or whether the CFTC has the right on a federal basis to regulate contracts, event contracts, which currently are seen to include sports. So I think in the long term we will get clarity around that, possibly even in the medium term we get clarity around that and then at the end of this transaction we will own a brand and a product that allows young a younger demographic of customers to express opinions on sports that's kind of the core legacy of the underdog brand as Clifford mentioned earlier some four or five hundred million dollars in revenues a year we also own a full a relatively rare, full stack, an FCM, a DCM and a DCO, which allows us to take regulated event contract bets through the CFTC rules on sports and other things. And we kind of have a bet now on prediction markets in sports and ultimately on prediction markets on other types of events as well. So the backstop here is the brand and the product and the team and the demand across all of the United States for from customers to express opinions on sports. The upside is you know the extreme upside is a CFTC federal regulation for all of these contracts that liberates customers from some of the limitations that previous state licensing held that will play out over the coming years. I'm very confident that we have had a thoughtful investment in that space and that our deal structure protects our shareholders, rewards our colleagues very generously if they deliver the heroic growth expectations they've signed up to in 28 and 29, but protects our shareholders in the event of, protects our shareholders given the regulatory uncertainty over the coming years. thank you there are no further questions I want to hand back to Brian for closing remarks thank you all for joining us this morning we've delivered a strong first half and we look forward to updating you on the next phase of growth at our strategy update in October Martin Clifford and I and the rest of the team are available to take questions over the coming days and we look forward to chatting with many of you thank you again