The Reach plc share price fell 19% to 47.72p on results day and has now lost 42% over the past year, after half-year figures revealed a 55% year-on-year collapse in Google referral traffic that is reshaping the publisher’s business model.
Reach (LSE: RCH), the UK and Ireland’s largest commercial news publisher and owner of the Mirror, Express and Daily Star, reported revenue of £232.9m for the six months ended 30 June 2026, down 9% on the prior period. Adjusted operating profit fell 4.1% to £43m.
Statutory losses and a halved dividend reflect the scale of disruption
The statutory picture was worse. Reach posted a statutory operating loss of £43.5m and a statutory loss before tax of £45.3m for the half, against an adjusted profit before tax of £40.3m, according to the half-year report filed on the exchange. The difference reflects charges from print site closures and restructuring.
The board cut the interim dividend in half to 1.44p per share, payable on 14 September 2026 to shareholders on the register on 31 July 2026. The prior-year interim dividend was 2.88p.
Digital revenues fell 11.4% to £54.2m, according to Yahoo Finance. On-platform page views dropped around 40% as AI-generated search summaries and algorithm changes at Google reduced traffic to Reach’s websites.
Reach plc share price: cost cuts cushion the blow, but the structural question remains
Management’s response to falling volumes was aggressive cost control. Restructuring and print site rationalisation delivered a 10.3% reduction in adjusted operating costs, ahead of the company’s own 5-6% target. The adjusted operating margin actually widened to 18.5%, and adjusted earnings per share edged up to 11.1p despite lower sales.
Adjusted EBITDA came in at £50.1m, down from £54.5m in the equivalent period of 2025. Adjusted operating cash flow improved to £48.8m from £45.8m, with a profit-to-cash conversion ratio of 113%, up from 102% in the prior-year period, per the exchange filing.
One partial offset to the traffic decline: revenue per thousand page views rose 49% in H1 2026, according to ppc.land, as Reach extracted more value from each remaining visit. That gain, however, could not fully compensate for losing more than half its search-driven audience.
The company is pursuing AI licensing deals, expanding video content and building off-platform audiences on social media. Whether those efforts replace lost advertising revenue fast enough is the central uncertainty investors are pricing.
Full-year outlook and valuation
Reach said it remains on track to meet full-year market expectations. The FY2026 consensus for adjusted operating profit stands at £95.9m, per Yahoo Finance. That would represent a step down from the £99.1m consensus for FY2025 cited in Reach’s own January 2026 trading update, though the company at the time said it expected to deliver ahead of that figure. For the full year ended 31 December 2025, Reach plc reported statutory revenue of £256.0m and adjusted basic EPS of 10.7p, per the H1 2026 filing’s comparative disclosures.
The company also said industry headwinds and steeper circulation declines are expected to persist into 2027, per Yahoo Finance.
At the current share price, the stock trades on a price-to-earnings ratio of 1.67 times, using the snippet’s figure. That multiple reflects genuine investor concern rather than a straightforward mispricing: a publisher losing more than half its search traffic faces an asymmetric set of outcomes.
The cost discipline is real and cash conversion is healthy. But the Google referral collapse is not a short-cycle headwind. The FY2026 consensus of £95.9m adjusted operating profit is the number to watch: if Reach delivers at or above that level when it reports full-year results, it would test whether today’s price has already discounted the worst.
