Activeops (LSE:AOM) — Results for the six months ended 30 September 2025

0:01 Good morning, and welcome to the ACTIVEOPS PLC Interim Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and they can be submitted at any time using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review your questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now

0:32 like to hand you over to Executive Chairman, Richard Jeffrey. Good morning to you. Good morning, and thank you, and welcome, everyone, to this half year results from ACTIVEOPS. As usual, we try and make it as interesting and colorful for the business, but we do welcome questions as well. So do either put them online and or pick them up at the end as appropriate. We've got a quite a strong message, I think, to convey today. The headlines are very good for the business and there's a lot to be excited about. So in the course, the next sort of half an hour of actual deliveries that where MRI will talk through effectively the headlines of our positioning. We'll talk about the actual financial results and I'll finish up with our sort of fundamental strategy and some of the ambition in the coming time. So off we go. I think what I want to start with today is highlighting the fact that just recently and many people on the call may have actually attended, we we did a Capital Markets Day and that was something about really unlocking the the full aspiration of ACTIVEOPS.

1:34 This is not something we've we've done before, but it's but in that day, we put our our our sense now of where we're heading as an organization and that's in the in financial terms heading towards the achieving a 100,000,000 of ARR and a 25% EBITDA company. And for reasons I can go into but there's much more available on the on the investor website on that day, We think that's a kind of logical progression of where we are. So the whole underpinning of the sort of velocity of that is reflected in our half year results which we'll spend more time on today. So for those of you who are unfamiliar with ACTIVEOPS, I'll spend a bit of time just explaining where we fit in the sort of ecosystem of SaaS software. Our customers are large banks, insurance companies or other organizations with lots of administration and by consequence lots of different things that people are doing in different teams, different products, different functions, banks, insurance companies with thousands of people but thousands of people doing different things in different teams. And they have systems that again you may have heard of like workflow tools such as Appian or Salesforce and systems of record of people like Workday or people and SuccessFactors.

2:47 And and those are kind of different universities where you have the work going on and you have the people doing the doing. And ACTIVEOPS sits at the intersection of those two types of organization two types of computer software where organizations have needs to stitch it all together. So how much peep how much time have people got? How much work can be done? And and whether it's a team leader this week, next week, or a a department or indeed the the strategic operation of the business in terms of how they configure the business, what the future looks like. And really that's the act that's the sort of secret source of ACTIVEOPS. We give people control. We give them visibility of the data, but we process it and we present it in a form that supports that decision intelligence that they so critically need.

3:34 Now the interesting thing for ACTIVEOPS right now is that's becoming more of a sort of companies are becoming more self aware. The impact for us of AI, of robotic process automation, process mining, these are all labels that our customers are wrestling with and trying to implement value from is is making their world more complicated to run. And that speaks directly to the tooling and the support ACTIVEOPS provides. So with our support, with our technologies, organizations are not only able to perform better, but they're also more able to exploit and be certain about those really expensive investments they're also making in their own transformation. So ACTIVEOPS is that fundamental control tool to accelerate and augment their business transformation, which is, as you can imagine right now, with all the sort of need for agility and customer expectation, a big issue for a lot of our customers.

4:26 Now in terms of an organization, we think we have a number of sort of key strengths and some of those are on the slides there. At a financial level, ACTIVEOPS is a really simple business. We sell SaaS software, it's built annually in advance based on our user base and that gives, and Emerald come back to this, a really nice financial model where the business can grow out of its own cash, it's 90 gross margin and fundamentally it's also rollers, rolls over. So as we go into any given year, typically about 90% of our forthcoming revenues are already essentially sold. And in each year, we're just adding to that as we sell new customers, we're doing new implementations and that rolls through. So it's a very, very secure and sound business model. We sit in a very interesting space that I've described and it's an area which we're quite differentiated in particularly with the new acquisition this year which I'll come on to. We properly represent the leading authorities in this space.

5:23 There is to my to our experience, no other organization has focused on that particular world of workforce optimization in the complex world of back office anywhere on the planet. And we and we've we operate now globally and that's seen and sort of success and the truth of that is seen in the fact that we have customers in Australia and South Africa and Canada and all over the world who use our stuff to leverage and solve this particular complicated problem. The very nature of our business means our customers are blue chip, all sorts of implications of that makes sales larger, probably more protracted, but also in our history I think technically we've never actually had a bad debt. So we operate to a very, very sort of secure audience in that respect.

6:09 But then coming to the sort of forward look of the business and it comes in a key stat for us, is net revenue retention, we have huge expansion potential in our existing customer base. So so although we we we're now hitting around the 40,000,000 of annual recurring revenue, we can see at least a 130,000,000 of accessible revenue from customers to whom we've already sold to. So think about that. We don't there's no sales cost in terms of new customer acquisition. If we just keep that NRR, net revenue retention, so we're growing every year, there's a 130,000,000 of accessible ARR for us to sell to. And of course, we're not just doing that because we are selling. We're selling new customers who see the need for our stuff. And we've had the best half the best year ever last year and the pace of that new customer acquisition is continuing to grow this year. So this expanding opportunity is very large for business And the business has been on the path and in many ways, the half year results is just the start of what we think is the consequence of some sort of sequence of investments we've been making. About six years ago, we completely replatformed our technology which is now being fully deployed on our customer base. So we're now deploying better and better product at incremental revenue. Our series is generating more more revenue because we're offering more value to our customers.

7:27 And that is, if you like, creating this huge momentum to accelerate growth. And our next phase is really to sell more of what we've got. So we've made some strategic investments in our sales capacity in the course of the last year, which genuinely, you know, is leading some significant results as as seen as through the figures. So from our point of view, an awful lot of very healthy momentum. But just to bring that to life a little bit, there's a slide here on the screen which just tells a story about one particular customer. This is CIBC Mellon which is a trade, the sort of a joint venture in Canada that handles fund investment accounting for CIBC and BNY Mellon, two of the largest banks for BNY Mellon's one of the biggest custodians in the planet. CIBC is a huge Canadian

8:13 bank. And it's a classic example where a lot of people spending a lot of days trying to do that daily can fund accounting reflecting people's investment values, which was operates to a very tight tight cycle and with an awful lot of data. And an incoming manager found it was very hard to run. They had very little visibility over work requirements, skills, but also just productivity performance and they knew they wanted to grow, they needed to expand their product set but no real operational data on which to make that kind of decisions about where to put people and how to grow the business. And ACTIVEOPS has comprehensively solved that. Catherine Tusher who was keynote at our conferences this year, one of our conferences It was the COO there, and she will tell you all through the stats that are here how it's it's enabled the business to accelerate in in all sorts of ways that the sense of safety and control of the operational staff from being in a better managed environment where they knew what they had to do and they could feel successful. But also from her perspective, her ability to flex the business and just as an example, open up another center in Vancouver to look after to to give advantage of a of a a three hour time shift between Toronto. It's just a brilliant example of how strategic operationally and tactically they are enhanced by having the value of ACTIVEOPS systems in place. Really great little story and there's lots more on our website about equal stories like that. So that's the type of experience customers have by introducing ACTIVEOPS software

9:43 and the methodology for managing operations that comes with it. So then let's just move on to the actual results for the half year which Emera will come on to the detail of but from my point of view as the Executive Chairman, it really feels like a business which is humming. The core growth engine is delivering new sales. So we've had five and a half year and we've already had another three in the in subsequent to September and come and compare that to last year where we had nine in total over the full year and nine itself was three times the rate of the previous year. So the new customer acquisition is really really going well and speaking to both the product set we have and the market demand. But the other side of this business is that net revenue retention.

10:32 Software, if it does its job, actually reduces the number of people people need. It improves the efficiency of the business. So we're not doing our job and we do if we don't enable that acceleration in productivity. But if you so then if you like naturally, the business is is in its heads, which we would and and using our software. But on on top of that, with our product, our net revenue retention last year was a 116%. So every single dollar of revenue last year, we're getting a 116¢ on the for for the current year. I mean, that's that's phenomenal. And and it's phenomenal in any any SaaS context. So we're very excited about that because it's the manifestation of the product investments we've been making over the last few years. So if you if you compound that going into each year where a 100 you know, you'll get a 100 you know, a 16% growth in the in the book each year, plus, of course, we're adding in our new customers each year, you begin to see why we think why we came out with the path to 100,000,000 ARR business is pretty clear for us right now.

11:32 The other facet of our confidence is coming from our expanding target addressable market. ACTIVEOPS has been very focused on a certain type of work, That sort of complex administrative work. But of course organizations have a lot of people doing a lot of things. And what we're doing in our decision intelligence suite with the product is extending that. So in a typical bank now we can offer a suite of software which is not just in the administration but it's in the branch, it's in the relationship directors, in relationship managers, there's people more customer facing. So we're actually significantly enhancing the addressable community within that customer community and of course to our other potential customers. And the final component of our success this year I think is the acquisition of Enlighten.

12:18 So Enlighten was a very similar company in a sense it very ops centric probably more consulting led but consulting with a tool attached organization. We've worked, you know, again and in Australia in particular over many years and we were delighted to have the opportunity to acquire them this year. Because with that comes firstly a body of knowledge and experience which incredibly augments our own. Secondly, it extends our regional strength so we are by now the completely dominant player in Australia But also, it's introduced us and brought with it some really new 22 new customers, of which six or seven are very large enterprise organizations, we will will enhance our our presence in The US. But but probably more significantly, it gives us a huge amount of additional sort of a target addressable that we can go at.

13:11 So that revenue, which, of course, we we can leverage the the infrastructure because we don't need two management teams. We don't need new development centers. There's a whole load of associated cost efficiencies, which we can bring on top of what was the $8,500,000 of additional annual recurring revenue coming to the books. So a very good and we'll come to some details, but fundamentally, we're just as excited about having made the deal in here we sit in November as we were when we did it back at the end of July, which, you know, is not always the case. I think a final word for me is then about that line along the bottom. This isn't a kind of regional sort of regional pulse. What you can see there is all the different regions of business in various ways have had a very good half year. South Africa is a very high percentage. It all depends on the base of course. But SA is a great strength but then other regions are much larger so a percentage increase is in that sense slightly harder to achieve. But the key thing, this is a very global group with a lot of global success.

14:14 So that's the sort of headlines. Emma, perhaps I'll hand over you to pick up some of the actual numbers. Well, super. Thank you very much, Richard. So we've had a very strong start to FY '26. Even without the value add acquisition of Enlighten, our underlying metrics are solid for the first half of the year. It is worth just highlighting that the numbers that we're presenting for h one only includes three months of the financial performance of Enlighten as opposed to six months. We acquired the business on the June 27. And so for the h two, you'll see a full six months of trade included in the h two numbers. In terms of the financial highlights to share with you, so our organic SaaS revenue growth apologies about the light. And our SaaS revenue growth increased by 22% year on year, which is supported by the acquisition of new logos that we've had in the year and also the underlying NRR rates, which I'll come into shortly.

15:09 We've reported just under 41,000,000 of ARR at the end of h one, of which includes 8,100,000 coming directly from the recent acquisition of Enlighten. Even with even if you strip out the impact of the acquisition of Enlighten, we are still reporting an organic ARR year on year growth rate of 27%. From an adjusted EBITDA margin point of view, we've reported 9%. For the same period last year, we reported 7%, and that's despite the investment we've done in our sales and marketing in the first half of this year. And and then finally, the cash position. So we've reported a cash position of 13,300,000 versus the previous year, it's 13.4. So it's broadly in line. However, that is despite the fact that during the first half of this year, we've paid out £5,800,000 of cash for the initial acquisition, the initial consideration payment for an item.

16:02 And one of the other things to highlight on here is the and I revenue recognition. So consistently over the last few halves, we've reported 1,300,000 versus the first half of this year when we reported 3,400,000. That is a 145% increase on a constant currency basis on an organic basis. One of the main drivers behind this is the new logo acquisition that Richard has already spoken to. So last year, we we onboarded nine new customers. And so far, this financially in the first half of the year, we've onboarded five. So you're really starting to see that momentum pull through, which ultimately drives the professional services revenue for us. What we're typically typically going to see is return to normal levels. So if you look at the pre COVID professional services revenue level levels, we are currently on track to return to those previous historic levels compared to what we've seen in the last few years.

16:55 In terms of some of the other p and l performance metrics, so from a gross margin, we've maintained an 84% gross margin. We've delivered that rate consistently for the last few years. You do see a little bit of mix on the gross margin, and so you do have mix between a SaaS margin and a t and I margin. Our SaaS margin for the first half of the year was 90%, which was a slight improvement that we saw in the first half of the previous year, which is driven by some restructuring within the server hosting environment to make that even more commercially additive to us. From a t and I margin perspective, these do fluctuate depending on whether we're installing to an existing customer or a new logo. The margins typically that you'd expect to see for the t and I margins for us is anywhere between 5060%.

17:42 The operating cost, you'll see that it's gone from 11.1 to 15,600,000, which which is a huge increase. But, actually, that is mainly driven by the consolidation of the enlightened OpEx and and then also the sales investment that we've we've previously mentioned. We've we're talking a lot on here about adjusted PBT and adjusted EPS. The reason why we've put the numbers on here as adjusted is we've removed the impact of the deal fee fee fees relating to the acquisition of the. So we did incur £1,400,000 of deal fees in the first half of the year, so the EPS and the PBT number shown on the screen have excluded that. We've seen an increase in the adjusted EBITDA, so we went from 1,000,000 for the first half last year to 2,000,000. So we've doubled the adjusted EBITDA performance in the first half of the year.

18:30 One of the things that we've talked about for a number of years is around starting to see the operational leverage come through from our business model, and we are really starting to see that. So if you look at what the incremental revenue is half year on half year and then compare that as a margin against the increase in the the EBITDA that we performed in the first half of the year. Every pound of new revenue going through is worth more to us than what we previously have. So the EBIT the adjusted EBITDA margin on new revenue going through is 15% versus the combined average group, which is 9%. So you really start to see that leverage come through in the in the business model.

19:08 In terms of this strength of the SaaS model, so one of the things we've done here is that chart in the middle is what we've done is we've split out where the growth of the ARR has come in from. So we're talking about we're seeing a 27% increase in ARR year on year on organic constant currency basis. So what we're seeing here is the impact of the new logo momentum really pulling through. So while that 27%, 11% has come from new logo ARR growth, which comes from the new logos that we won in the back half of last year plus the five that we've already this financial year. But, also, the other number on here, which is impressive, is the NRR rate. So on a constant currency basis, we're reporting a 116% NRR, which very much talks to the expansion that we've done within the existing accounts, but also the upsell of the series, which I'll come into shortly in a second.

20:00 One of the things that we talked about, so if I just continue on the theme of the NRR. So what really supported by the NRR rate is the customer expansion that you see within our existing portfolio. So for some of you that followed us for a while, you will have seen a similar chart to this before. So we shared a UK tier one bank last year. This year, we're sharing a African tier one bank. This particular customer has been with us for over ten years. However, just for presentation purposes, we've just included the last seven years on here. And this is quite typical for what we see. So quite often, we will go into a particular into a new logo and we'll go into particular division to try and solve a particular problem. What we then often will do is from the return on investment that that particular division sees it very quickly, we will we will scale through the organization, and that is exactly what's happened here.

20:48 So in FY twenty three, we went into a new area, which was the central office within this particular bank. And then in FY twenty four, they continue to expand their user base, but also then put then they moved across to series three. So just to give you a bit of flavor on that, so Control IQ, our core product, our cornerstone product is fitted to series. So every time that we do a bundle of new releases of new features, we will basically call that series and we'll commercialize that. So with this particular bank, they moved to

21:19 series three, which actually to us increased their their ARR by a 100%. The following year, we actually then upsold them to series four, which increased their ARR by a further 50%. And then more recently, we've been able to cross sell work ranking, which then has increased their ARR by a further 67%. One of the really interesting things is within the series that we have is we have a number of customers that are still on series 2.5. So we've got 35 customers still on series 2.5, which give it gives us a great opportunity to continue that acceleration in that ARR growth. We've also got 26 customers on series three. And just more recently, we released series four at the start of this calendar year, and we've got 11 customers on that series at the moment. There's a huge expansion potential within our existing customer base even just within the Control IQ series releases.

22:13 Then that's not to mention the cross sell opportunity with Casework IQ and then also the expansion of Work IQ. K. So in terms of the TAM and the achievable total addressable markets that we have ahead of us. And so what we've got here is the achievable TAM, and what do we mean by by that? So as an organization at the end of September, our ARR was just under £41,000,000. If you look at the existing customer base that we have today and we look at the series of left across our opportunities that we have, we believe that we could grow the ARR within the existing customer base by a 130,000,000. If you then also look into the our target top two fifty accounts, we can increase that ARR again by 900,000,000.

22:59 So one of the things that's worth highlighting is that with the 41,000,000 that we have today, we're actually only addressing 4% of the immediately achievable time that we have ahead of us. If you actually look to cross the sectors in which we operate in and beyond the target two fifty accounts, we're actually addressing less than 1% of the available market that we have. So there's a huge opportunity to continue, number one, pushing that NRR. The rates that we've seen recently continue to deliver similar rates that we've we've seen in the last year. But then also, there's a huge opportunity to to onboard new logos, which is what we're really seeing that momentum come through at the moment.

23:36 Just to quickly touch on the enlightened integration. And so when we initially acquired enlightened, we we shared with the market our plan of an eighteen month integration plan, which we are well into. So we're five months into that eighteen month integration plan. The one thing I can say is we're on track to deliver that eighteen month integration plan and make cost synergies that we've identified at the point of the acquisition. We are in the process of executing and are we are realizing it as we work through that process at the moment. We have combined the operational activity of the organization within our own op structure already. And then the other thing really to highlight is we talked around the acquisition being EPS accretive from FY twenty seven, which we're very much on track to still deliver.

24:26 It is worth pointing at this point. We the initial consideration from that we funded through our own cash reserves. So we didn't bring any any debt as part of the acquisition, and the balance sheet still remains strong despite the the acquisition. So just from a capital allocation perspective, so in terms of our order prioritization, so as an organization, we we remain an organic growth business as our third priority. So we will continue to invest in our sales and marketing. We will continue to invest in the partner channel, which we've just started on that journey very recently, and we'll continue to invest in our product as well. We will continue to look for m and a opportunities provided that's the right opportunity for the organization.

25:13 And then finally, as the third part in order of prioritization, we would look to return any additional funds available back to shareholders as and when appropriate. So then finally, just a few takeaways from me. So firstly, we do expect to remain a double digit ARR growth business for FY '26 and beyond. We do have a fair strategy to drive growth within the organization. There's huge opportunity ahead of us, and then also to continue driving operational leverage within the business. And we we still have a very strong balance sheet. We have no debt. We are highly cash generative. And then finally, as Richard's already mentioned, our ambition to become a 100,000,000 ARR business in the medium term is absolutely achievable.

26:00 We believe it is achievable and is what we are currently working towards. Very good. Thanks, Emma. So just moving on then in terms of some more substance about that, how the growth sort of strategy. I think if there's one anchoring point I want to make is that this is essentially about continuing to improve on things we're already doing. So this isn't about a sort of magic left turn or a big pivot. We we have a a powerful product which people are buying quite well. As such the agenda is moving from, product development and actually marketing to much more about the selling. And then to that extent what we have is a proven engine we're just going to scale it. It's just. But there's so much about that.

26:46 It's resilient. What do mean by resilient? We're global. So we're not subject to the vagrices of individual, if you like, you know. Regional economies go up and down. And what we're we've seen over the years the value of currency. So in other words, because we have Australian dollars, we have New Zealand currency, we have U. S, we have Canadian and all coming back to The UK, that makes the business also very, very resilient. There's lots of aspects of our business model, which means we tactically deploy sales in particular regions to, if you like, capture opportunities. The NRR, I know we've mentioned that a lot, but you really can't underestimate that the value of that core growth engine where your existing customers are buying more from you in at the level they currently are. That that's a huge growth lever for us.

27:37 And because and and what we've done in this year, we've increased our sales capacity. So as of September this year, we had 16 quota carriers, and that would have compared with April the prior year of just eight. So imagine that working through the system, becoming ramped, different the vacancies of different sales in different areas. As you can imagine, the fundamental of the sales capacity of this organization is very, very different from what it would have been a year ago. But also want to augment that and to focus it. I've just appointed Steven Teasdale as our new chief revenue officer. And his role, because we operate quite a globally diverse model, is to pull that sales structure into a coherent proposition and give us the platform from which to scale. So as we hire the next tranche of five, six, who knows, sales team, they're stepping into a well structured, well disciplined environment.

28:24 Ditto's expansion about existing customers, the importance of account management, as you can imagine, and identifying what part of the organizations would value from ACTIVEOPS' software is a critical part of expansion selling. So Stephen's come in to augment our capabilities in that area. And of course, underneath all that, the value of our IP, the value of our intellectual property, we have fifteen years of underpinning our AI tools now. And that's our kind of uniqueness. We can bring some specific capabilities at the desktop that others just can't do. That's part of our moat if you like. And of course we're simplifying how we make our products work in terms of for our customers. Instead of a a team leader or operational leader looking at a set of numbers, however well structured, they can now tap a query into the into this ACTIVEOPS software and say, what should I worry about? And it'll come up with a considered view of all the different things that they might want to get their attention to. So lots and lots of really interesting capabilities on which to sell that platform. So that is the anchor of our growth, is doing what we do better and at larger scale, but it is what we already do.

29:30 And just by way of example, some of the tooling that's now in beta for our customers, I won't go into much and again much more on the website if you wanna hear more information. But it's it's a combination of really practical stuff at the coalface to help organizations simply exploit and do better what today that would be a productivity boost with being tested with our customers. But we're also going into different domains like case analysis and process mining is a huge issue for our customers and we're providing tools to do that just as a byproduct of using our software rather than having to get extra software or additional experts or consultancies in to do it. Right through to one of the most troublesome issue for organizations is benefit measurement as they deploy technology and we're giving them transformation tracker as a tool so they can essentially score keep themselves not just within operations but across the whole enterprise as they deploy and they manage different tools.

30:25 So that makes ACTIVEOPS the kind of meter of value of those projects and processes they're looking to change which in a world of so much moving parts is is is is is data beyond the, you know, it's it's worth a lot. Let's put it that way. So lots of exciting things to to to talk about. The other thing that I think is really notable in terms of the last half is just the level of interest. We've always taken a pride in in in networking our customers and building this community around professionalizing operations management. And there's some stats on the screen there. We we we have our customer events, one in Toronto, one in Melbourne, and and in London. And this year, we were exceptionally pleased with the with the turnout. Huge number of customers and also a huge number of potential customers who, frankly coming to our events gives them a sort of a it's very much an experience they they they realize they wanna be part of. Very powerful as a as a business accelerator tool.

31:19 But also this particular year, I think almost all the enlightened customers came to capacity events. And that's really had its impact in terms of them seeing that becoming part of the ACTIVEOPS community is gonna augment and and and, you know, add a huge amount of value. So we're already seeing cross selling opportunities and accelerated demand to move on to the ACTIVEOPS platform from the Enlighten customers, which again will help to improve the pace at which we can achieve operational gearing. It will help expand the target addressable market because some of those customers are really quite large as well. So an awful lot from our infrastructure, again, which is just driving extra value but at very little incremental cost. The second pillar though, beyond the sort of doing what we do better and larger, is now starting to focus around different ways of going to market through channels.

32:09 ACTIVEOPS has a relationship with many, many organizations because of the nature of who we work with. But I we we we we've we've recruited ahead of group partnering because we see there's a huge opportunity to take our product to work with some of those other big institutional systems like Workday, like ServiceNow. So we're not rather than going direct to those core system owners and their own ecosystem, we're working with the partners, the people who have responsibility to and a and a business model requires selling more software to those infrastructures. The the example at the moment is a is a is a healthy relationship building with a company called rulesware in The US, which is a very big Pega partner, Pega being a workflow tool, where we are working with them to deploy ACTIVEOPS in the environments that they have with their customers, but also develop a kind of niche product fit to that specific environment, which we can only do with their help. Because we see that opportunity for us is in terms of business development where those those environments, those software platforms have particular features which we can sell to. So I think it's our partner strategy is something we'll be working on in the course of this year. I think by the end of this year, we'll have a very clear view and some prototypes working like the rules of our relationship.

33:18 But I hope within three years, we'll be looking at the introductions and the co sales from our partner network being incredibly accretive and additive to what's truly fundamentally an organic direct sales growth engine. So it's it all adds together to really a hugely positive outlook for this business. It does feel like a number of threads are coming together. We have had a in terms of the outlook, the second half is continued in the same vein. So lots of things to talk about in due course of next results show. I'm pretty confident to be reporting positive things. But fundamentally, we've already had three new customers after the half year, so that's eight cumulatively for the year. As Emma said, the Enlighten acquisition is bedding in nicely with absolutely confidence around the cost savings, but also the capability enhancement, I think, that we're looking for.

34:14 And that the impact of the investments in those the the sales structures and the like really starting to kick through. So overall, that ends up with a a management team that's feeling confident about the outlook, but also returning to that 100,000,000 ARR thing. You know, that that's that's of course, it's not gonna be easy and it's not it but it it feels like a logical progression of the rate of velocity of this business right now rather than a sort of a a sort of moonshot big hairy gold activity. So so a lot that we are we'll have to work on. But as as ever, it's it's it's an interesting space and and we're as excited about it as we we ever are. So that's the presentation deck, but I see a few questions have have popped up on the on the for the q and a here. So Do you want me to jump in with the with one on deferred income? You go for it. Okay. Perfect. So there's a question around the deferred income fell from 16.7 to 13.9.

35:15 The main driver behind this is the time of So the first half most of our renewals take place in the second half of the year. So actually the highest was on deferred income is in H2. So if you look over the history, you will see that at the end of H1 there is a natural dip in deferred income. So it is not a signal of slowing building momentum. From James, how much of the casework ARR came from cross selling rather than new logos and can this pace continue? I think to answer the last bit first, yes, definitely. But interestingly, most of the casework is expansion. So it's customers who absolutely know the value of ACTIVEOPS, but the value of the casework product to extend it to a more complex type of work. Interestingly though, all the almost all the new logos took a blend. So from the get go, there was both the Control IQ and the Casework IQ. So I don't think we've had a single pure play new Casework sale.

36:12 I might check myself on that one. But but to the point, it's it's certainly complementing the portfolio and and it's a very big expansion lever. Should we expect further mergers and acquisitions to drive the next phase of growth? Or has the strategy shifted to purely organic? No. I think what we're saying there is with the I mean ACTIVEOPS has the capacity to achieve its targets through organic growth. But as the Enlighten acquisition I think is demonstrating, it's a very useful accelerator both in terms of client prospects and also just fundamental revenues. So it absolutely is part of our activity. And in fact, with the return of our share price to what you might sort of certainly where we in excess of where we floated, of course, that gives us greater access to capital and the potential of doing M and As through that raise, which sort of where we some of you may know the history, but shortly after we floated, we had an opportunity. But with the market context, it won't be able to the deal, which is frustrating at the time, but I think that's in a much better place today. So no, we will absolutely do a selective acquisitions if the opportunity is there. And and we have a we have a very clear sort of set of criteria against which we would we would be doing that.

37:32 In terms of the time frame attached to the 100,000,000 ARR, so we haven't gone out with this on deadline or a time frame as such. What we have said on that is in the medium term. What do we mean by that? It's been anywhere between three to five years. It's probably the problem. Yes. Market speak for that sort of time frame, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And outside of share buyback, any thoughts on potential timing or financial achievements to trigger a shareholder dividend? Yes. I mean, it is third on the list of capital allocation. This is primarily growth stock. And I think for most of the people who've invested in the stock, it's a growth agenda. However, there is an element of sort of financial maturity around dividend. And as a significant as a founder and shareholder myself, you know, that that would that is a factor to consider. But but fundamentally, with the the level of opportunity we see in front of us, I think I think it is it's it's a it's a growth investment. You know, we would invest for growth.

38:34 We'll take that under advisement. I mean, at the moment, I think the answer is not. We just recognize that there is potential for that. Should the cash pile grow and we haven't got the obvious opportunities in terms of M and A And for EBITDA reasons, we want to maintain our profitability and so on, you get to that place that share buybacks or possibly dividends will become the logical next step. That's great, Richard. Emma, if I may just jump back in there and thank you for addressing all those questions from investors today. Of And course, the company can review all questions submitted today and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Me company platform. But Richard, before I redirect investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments? Thank you.

39:21 ACTIVEOPS is on a really strong role. We've got a fantastic NRR. We've got a growing client base that's a, you know, new customer client base. And and so as I hope it's come through today, I think it it's it's it's a business which has got a long way to run. The only other point, I think, is we are, I think, enjoying being on the public market. And I think the the ACTIVEOPS sort of part of participation and AIM is certainly a very good place for us to be right now. And for that reason, I'm grateful for anybody on this call who's taken the interest in the stock. So thank you all. Fantastic, Richard. Emma, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the Board can better understand your views and expectations.

40:06 This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of ACTIVEOPS PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.