Barclays has downgraded Future PLC (LSE:FUTR), the digital media and magazine publisher, from 'overweight' to 'equal weight' and cut its price target by 55% to 285p from 640p, after a profit warning triggered sweeping reductions to earnings forecasts stretching out to 2028.
Shares in Future were off 7% in late morning trading at 276p and have fallen 36% in the past week.
The note, written by analyst Nick Dempsey, follows a trading update in which management flagged that declining web traffic is hitting two revenue streams, digital advertising and e-commerce commissions, which together account for approximately 16% of group revenue but carry high margins and therefore have an outsized impact on profit.
Barclays cut its FY26 adjusted earnings per share estimate by 20% and its FY28 estimate by 36%, with the EBITDA margin forecast for FY26 falling to 26% from a previous estimate of nearly 30%.
The broker now models organic revenue growth of -4.3% for FY26, worsening from an earlier forecast of -0.4%, with declines continuing through FY27 and FY28 as the affected revenue streams are assumed to keep deteriorating.
Dempsey identified two structural forces driving the deterioration: changes to Google's search algorithms, including the expansion of AI-generated summaries that push organic results further down the page, and broader shifts in how consumers discover content online.
Management had anticipated some stabilisation in traffic trends from February as the business moved past easier comparable periods, but the expected improvement has not materialised, and a new Google algorithm update is now compounding the uncertainty.
The broker noted that Future trades on just four times its calendar 2027 earnings estimate and approximately 30% free cash flow yield on current forecasts, which is well below other structurally challenged media peers, but argued that these apparently cheap valuation metrics were unlikely to attract buyers until a new settled earnings track record can be established.
Barclays retained its 15% weighted average cost of capital, the highest in its European media coverage, reflecting the elevated risk embedded in the investment case.
The broker said that while cost reduction efforts and an accelerated share buyback programme would offer some support, it was hard to build confidence in the numbers after the recent warning.