Activeops (LSE:AOM) — Results for the year ended 31 March 2024

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the ACTIVEOPS PLC Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time by the Q and A tab situated in 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 it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all the questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Richard Jeffrey, CEO. Good morning to you, sir. Good morning, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for making the time to speak with us or listen to us this morning. We've got quite a bit to get through, and we're gonna try and whisk through what I hope is a reasonable summary of what for ACTIVEOPS has been a really great year, and the financial results have been strong as well. So I wanna sort of take us through a few things. And and also conscious that many of you may not have heard Emma or I talk before, and then and we'll we'll start with a bit of a context for the the company and and about what we do. And and particularly, I'm focusing on that because I think it also will give you some idea about

1:02 why we're so excited at the moment about some of the things that are going on in the world that makes our product particularly relevant. In summary, ACTIVEOPS. So we are a software company. We're a SaaS software company, which means we get very strong recurrent revenues. We get good visibility of our of the money we're going to get in the course of any given year because our contracts are long term with with very blue chip companies. Alongside that SaaS revenue, we also have a certain amount of trade what we call train training and implementation revenues. And that that can vary quite a bit, but that, again, is is is very, very revenue generative. It's it's highly profitable, but it depends a bit on the projects we do from one year to the next and how much our companies take on ourselves. So that revenue varies a bit, which means our total revenues top line can vary from year to year. But the underlying strength of the business is very much to do with that SaaS revenue.

1:50 So in this current year, as you'll see on the screen there, we're looking at about 25,000,000 of SaaS revenue, and that's broadly spread across our region. So we have excellent customer base in Australia, which we've had for many years, where we are really the dominant player in most of the banks there. We have excellent penetration now in North America, particularly Canada, and Canada is one of the strengths of the year where we are now pretty much as predominant in use of our software by the Canadian banks as we are in Australia. And then EMEA, EMEA is the largest part of the group where we are, again, used across a wide range of banks, insurers, and indeed, outsourcers. You can see some of the logos on the screen there. And and in terms of what we do, the the the industry has a has a challenge. It it it and, essentially, it's defined by one word, which is complexity.

2:37 If you're a major financial institution, you have so many things your people are doing, and they're doing them in so many different places. So if you think about it from the point of view of operating, you know, managing that cost quality triangle, you have a huge issue with the right number of people at the right places, and you have teams. And within each of those teams, they have a different and a very variable amount of work. And so from the point of view of optimization, managing the productivity, and productivity is a very current word for a lot of organizations right now, that's really quite a challenge. Because as we all know, in any given sphere of life, work expands to fill the available time. And ACTIVEOPS provides the tooling that enables them to manage the sort of the complexity of that that word. You you can see on the screen there some of the some of the challenges, the way that our customers describe their, you know, the problems. How many people do I need is the simplest way of doing it, but who can do what? Will I meet my service levels?

3:30 My my my overtime bills are too great. These are the kind of world of managing ops that that is such a challenging one. And and the interesting piece, and this is this is why we're particularly mobilizing a certain direction of the business, is those challenges are getting harder than ever. If you imagine, we hear a lot about, for example, financial crime and the the regulatory oversight to making sure banks are checking the right people are being paid or indeed the wrong people aren't being paid and so on. We hear a lot about operational risk, but the the impact of COVID is still echoing through the industry in terms of big events that suddenly create these seismic changes, which means organizations don't have to just be better in control. They have to show people that they're in control. There's an awful lot of stakeholders. We all know as consumers the the the consequences on a very practical level if if our credit cards don't work or our the ATM don't work. All of those things are creating a context where the world of work is becoming harder to manage.

4:28 Working from home is is the really interesting one because a lot of organizations through the challenges of moving back from COVID are realizing they have to know things now. They have to know things about how productive are their teams, not only just in the office, but when they're working from home. Can they allow people to work from home? Are they are they better, or do we need to, you know, have the discussion about bringing people back in the office? These are very current issues that are probably more in people's mind than than they've ever been. And so ACTIVEOPS provides a structure around which managing that, and and there's a picture on the screen here which shows it. But in very simple terms, what we do is we enable our organizations, our customers to consolidate that single point of view so that all those different types of work across all their products, they have a single point of view that says, this is how much work we've got. This is the time we have, which then immediately unlocks the potential to better manage their capacity between teams and ultimately reduce their costs or also improve the service levels because they can move people between teams more easily. And, again, without over sort of over dwelling on it right now, the challenge to do that is just getting harder.

5:33 And so the ACTIVEOPS intelligence software to support people making those decisions, the need for that is just getting better. So ACTIVEOPS is a standard across many, many banks, and that makes a huge value to them because we can provide them from benchmarking context and and the like. We can show them how good their supply is. If you have an outsourcer providing services, how good is that outsourcer at at at managing your work relative to how good you are internally? So how much work do you want to do internally or outsource? Can you prove to an external customer regulator how good you are in control and so on and so on? This is what ACTIVEOPS brings to our customers. And probably with a poignancy and sharpness, those kind of issues are probably more in their mind at a c suite level than they've probably ever been before. Our products really boil down to software, as I said, in terms of three areas. We have the desktop analytics pack program, which essentially has visibility of the of the use of applications, what people are doing on their desktops, which is is particularly valuable, for example, when you're rolling out new technologies. They're putting in place robots and and and new means of processing, and they need to be able to see if a if their staff are taking up or what applications they're using, which bits of the functionality they're not using very well, which is hugely impactful.

6:46 Well-being, being able to show that they are people are not working extended hours back to the working from home. It just provides that decision intelligence to make better visibility, better use of of time and work. The other products there, which we've expanded the scope of ACTIVEOPS' reach in terms of bringing that level of visibility and control, CaseWeb IQ is is a latest addition. It massively extends the application of ACTIVEOPS to more complex work. With the automation agenda taking away a lot of the simple work, more and more staff are employed to resolve an inconsistencies or exceptions. That's that's work that takes time. It may need different lengths of time. In our casework IQ, one of our customers and I got it across 3,000 people doing financial crime remediation work. You know, that's a huge addition to to their control over the work that's doing.

7:38 And then the core product of of Control IQ, which is really the engine room of ACTIVEOPS. It's the one that provides the actual real detail of how to manage and support our customers optimize the use of their capacity. Now what's really sort of building now is then the application of machine learning in particular. Our our software has always provided structure. It helps you and I as operational leaders make better decisions. What's so extraordinary now is with the power of machine learning, and and we make big use of Azure and some of the Microsoft environments, you can now bring the fact that we have our own proprietary data, and we've been at this game now for over fifteen years on the cloud. And we've got that data. We have the standard ACTIVEOPS methodology, which shows structure around how things work, which means now the application of that machine learning is now able to not only predict but be prescriptive about what we can do. So, for example, things that I might have had to do manually, like do a plan for next week, our software does that for you. It does it for everybody, and we all, therefore, can trust the numbers better. And guess what? We make better decisions because I'm, therefore, less likely to be sandbagging my plan and all the other kind of things that goes on. So our technology is is is both automating what managers need to do, but also predictively and prescriptively helping them make the right decision. And just to give you a little anecdote, a customer I was recently introduced to smart planning, and they haven't picked up in operations a a change to the environment and the work they were processing. The smart planning tool identified

9:08 the fact that that work was no longer coming in, flagged it up, had reduced the plan, and ultimately, it gave the business hugely great greater visibility over the benefits other projects were bringing in, which for them was a really great example of how ACTIVEOPS decision intelligence not only helped them manage that result better, but gave them confidence about other things they were doing. Another little example, we did a proof of we're doing a proof of value down in South Africa for a customer. They they they recently, because they didn't have the data, required to cut their staff to come back into the office. Not popular, lots of minibuses, lots of work in Johannesburg, not the greatest environment. You know, consequence, low morale. They introduced ACTIVEOPSIS data, and within four weeks, not only did they have the visibility over how people were working, but they also were then able to say, actually, people are better at home.

9:56 They gave the control. They could make choices about what and when. And more important and and as a consequence then, the productivity of the unit went up, the customer experience went up, the management's manager's blood pressure probably dropped, and overall morale has just been through the roof. And that was just four weeks, but it beautifully illustrated the the limitations of the data they had before and then the value of the ACTIVEOPS data. And that's before they start bringing in all the value of being able to use that data to better planning. Just a really simple example. So all of which couples with lots of outcomes for customers. You use that time to reduce cost maybe, but it's more often used for better use of that time. And so on the screen there again, you've got some good examples of of what the outcomes of that that is. So as I sort of look forward to the sort of the competitive environment, ACTIVEOPS has always had a very clear position about giving control. And whilst there's lots of other things people can do in the contact centers or in in in in sort of spreadsheets equivalent to this, the more and more we have that sort of compelling differentiation of, if you like, we put the work into the time.

10:56 You know, we can really match and align that work to give our customers the decision intelligence to to make better choices. So what does that mean then in terms of our year? Well, really, as I've sort of you can tell from my tone, really, I think there's just so much to talk about and so much specific progress. Firstly, you've got that market context, which I talked about. But but in response to that, the the the r and d team, part of ACTIVEOPS has been pushing examples. I've given you a couple there of this machine learning and AI into our technology to reduce the effort, improves the efficacy, and ultimately make our product much, much more effective, easier to assimilate, and scalable. We we we do our software addresses more types of work. It's easier to use. The UI is better. The aggregation across the cloud is hugely better. And then with our sort of benchmarking, you know, there's there's a huge amount of opportunity to to consolidate ourselves with, for example, one of the various e rp, you know, resource planning tools out there like Workday or or SAP or perhaps Pega as a processing engine. It's our ability to synthesize that data, which is just going off the scale.

12:02 One of the things for the company, because we've been going since 2005 on the cloud, has been also taking our customers with us as a broad on our on our on the on the technologies. And we've been migrating our customers from the old sort of work what used to be called the work work product onto Control IQ. And, as a seminal year, we've done that. We've now got the situation where all our big customers in fact, pretty much all our customers now are on this new technology. And as Emma will show you in a minute, the impact of that is to unlock huge amounts of revenue growth opportunity.

12:32 We've been working hard on our marketing. If any of you are really interested in what we do, please do go to our website. What you'll find hopefully there is of some really great videos by customers talking at different in the different levels of their organization about the impact ACTIVEOPS has had on their their work, their ability to to deliver their strategy, but also at the operational level, feel good about the organization they work with, which matches a great deal to us. Now on behind that, firstly, the product revolution, the marketing investment, my next agenda is moving to sales. Because this organization, whilst we have an amazing track record of incremental growth because people use us and expand, the land of expand is our signature, the truth is we need now to really accelerate our new logos. Logo acquisition is always a challenging one for us because, essentially, you're selling to very big organizations with all the protocols and associated complexities.

13:23 But with a combination of the curb appeal, the really clever stuff, we do some things that, frankly, are pretty unique, Matt. And second, in the market context where people are more sensitive to some of the problems we fix, we really have a golden opportunity. So you will see maybe in the press, we've appointed a new group managing director, James Bauer, he's the tip of the spear in terms of this new sales effort. But but all regions are showing a lot of opportunity, so we'll be placing in the coming year sales resources in a variety of places. So an awful lot of of both potential platform market and capability really come into bear. But all of that obviously has to translate into some numbers. So I think and in fairness thing, I'll I'll hand over to Emma to to talk a little about the finances of the year. Perfect. Thank you, Richard. So I'm pleased to share a solid set of numbers for year end '24 with total revenues of 26,800,000 given a year on year growth rate of 9% on a constant currency basis.

14:16 The group have achieved a really exciting milestone this year with profit before tax of a million pounds, which is a robust performance against the prior year, which was a 200 k loss. We expect this to continue as the group benefits from the operational leverage within the business model. The group remains well capitalized with 17,600,000 in the bank. As earlier as mentioned earlier, the operational cash generation of 4,200,000 is supported by the annual in advanced cash cycle, which typically means we receive cash upfront. The adjusted EBITDA of 2,400,000 gives us an EBITDA margin of 9%, which at the half year point was 6% and in March 23 was 3%. So we can really start to see that momentum build within the operational leverage of the business.

15:03 Looking at the detail looking at the p and l in a little bit more detail, there are a couple of numbers which are worth pulling out. So as Richard mentioned at the start, we we have seen a slight change in the revenue mix this year. It is worth pointing out that the t and r revenue does vary year on year and is very much driven behind the mix between new logo and existing logo rollout. In terms of the margin, we've seen an increase in the margin from 82% to 84%. It is worth pointing out that underlying, we've seen an in an improvement in the SaaS margin from 85% to 87%, which was supported by the restructuring of the host environment environment, which delivered an underlying cost savings for group. The other number that which is worth pulling out on here as well is the operational expense, which you'll see year on year has remained the same at 20,000,000.

15:51 In year end '23, we benefited from an FX favorable movement of 700 k, which is a comparison to year end '24 was less than 50 k. We've also capitalized more in FY '24 with capitalizing 1,300,000 versus the prior year of 900 k. So what does that mean? If we strip both of those adjustments out of that number, underlying year on year, we see a reduction in the operational expense by about one and a half percent. Breaking that down into a little more detail, the main thing really to pull out here is year on year that cost saving has come from a change in the sales and marketing spend. Towards the back end of year end twenty three, we rightsized the North America sales and marketing capacity. Shortly, we are going to talk around planned investment in year end twenty five in sales, which is more focused on global and enterprise and sales resources as opposed to a concentration in the North American market.

16:51 One of the things that we talk a lot about is our land and expand success. So what we are trying to do here is to show what does that mean towards as a business. So our annual recurring revenue has increased year on year by 14% on a constant currency basis. This is supported by net revenue retention of a 110%, which we have consistently maintained for the last few years. What I'd like to do here is draw your attention to the chart in the middle. So of the customers that we retained last year, 82% of those customers either increased or maintained ARR. And what's more impressive is of the customers we retained, 27% actually increased their ARR by 20% or more. And as you can see from the chart, we are building momentum in that land and expand.

17:38 On the right hand side, and you'll see a breakdown of our customers and the makeup with our ARR, you'll notice that our biggest customer is 14% of our ARR with the top two customers both being over 10%. It is worth pointing out that both of these customers have been with us for over eight years and both continue to deliver strong growth year on year.

17:58 The other thing I'd like to pull out here is the customer number. We have consistently reported for the last few years a customer account number of 81. This year, that has dropped down to 74. And as Richard mentioned, we have introduced three new logos during the year, which gives an underlying lost logo number of 10, which may seem high. However, when you look at what that equates to in terms of ARR, those 10 customers would equate it to less than 3% of our brought forward ARR. So while the customer number may seem high in terms of a loss, actually, the impact was as a group is is fairly immaterial. One particular statistic is one of those customers who've been with us for quite some time, their annual contract was worth £6,000. So actually, this was an opportunity to trim off some of those smaller accounts so we can ensure that we're focused on the larger enterprise accounts where there's a lot of opportunity to land and expand.

18:54 Just keeping on the theme around landing and expanding. And so here, what we have is an example of one of our UK tier one banking customers. And what this chart is showing you is the growth in ARR over the last eight years. So we originally onboarded this customer back in f y seventeen where we went into one particular department in one particular country, and very quickly, we we we grew the ARR five times over the first three years as we expanded across geographies and departments. Now what's really impressive is what we've been able to do as well in the last few years. So between f y twenty two and f y twenty three, we were able to successfully cross sell CaseworkIQ, which grew the ARR again by over 50%. And then more recently, we've actually been able to upsell series three, and we've seen a 25% increase in ARR.

19:44 Now this story doesn't stop here. With the rollout of series four, which is expected by the end of this financial year, that will give us another opportunity to continue further upselling within this account. Also, we are not at full penetration with this particular customer, so there is still the opportunity to continue to expand in terms of licenses. Now what's really exciting here is this model can be easily replicated across a number of our existing 70 plus customers. The majority of our customers are more to the left hand side of this chart, so this gives us a huge opportunity to really exploit the total addressable market within our existing customers, which we currently value to around 90,000,000 in terms of ARR growth.

20:27 Just to finish off on on the financials, just to summarize, we as a business, we've got a healthy balance sheet. We've got net assets of just below 9,000,000. In the prior year, that was just below 8,000,000. We've got no debt in the business. We've got high levels of cash. Our total revenue, 89% of that is recurring revenue. We're strongly cash generative, and we all we are also now delivering sustainable profits, which puts us in a really good position to help support and invest back into the business to support growth in the coming years. Thank you. Very good. Thank you, Emma. So in the next phase, what I thought we'd do is just look at sort of a bit more of the outlook around where we're where we're heading in terms of the strategy and opportunity. Now as I've touched on already, I think the key thing here is really putting the reality into the need for AI to support this.

21:21 This is one of those areas where we hear a lot in the press about the impact of artificial intelligence and the like. And and working just straight down that slide on the left there, you can see how AI will actually automate an awful lot of activities that, if you like, processes, people, and a very busy technology that in the service industries we operate. But what that does then mean is, as a consequence of that, that the precision and data that that leaders need to have to support their own control of that is going up by that order order of magnitude. So they're gonna need that smart, accurate, and highly prescriptive and predictive information to control better. And and ACTIVEOPS has put itself in a in a great place for that. We are established as a as a provider of systems of control, and now our technology, as Emma saw, it it showed you in that kind of uplift in the right hand side there, is really translating into value. So for example, anybody using our planning, if we implement planning, introduce smart planning, it is worth about 7% improvement in productivity, a directly quantifiable benefit.

22:18 So for our sales teams and our relationship managers, that's a very clear articulation of value based on something where we're already a trusted provider. And that's just one example of of the type of activity we're doing. In terms of the, the the different, elements of that, just, again, to give you a flavor of it, one of the big challenges of organizations is being reliable. It's it's we all know the impact of unreliability in our suppliers. So service level prediction, knowing that your teams are going to deliver what they promise in some areas which are highly variable. Like, we don't know when the solicitor's gonna reply on some of the inquiries for that mortgage. So in a portfolio of of 10 or 20,000 activities at any one time, having confidence in what level of outcomes you're gonna achieve as a as an organization has a huge effect, not only on the customer experience, but also how your teams will feel about it. So service indicators using AI and our transaction flows to predict that has just transformed the visibility of some organizations about what they're going to do, not just how bad was yesterday last week or whatever. Moving from, you know, retrospective to predictive forward has a huge effect on their their confidence and their capability.

23:22 Skills. This this, again, is a is a huge issue for so many organizations. One of the reasons you have to have local management who really know the team, know the work, is because they are the ones who carry that information in their heads about what the capabilities and and skills of those team members are. And that's fine and and and useful, but it's very difficult to aggregate that. ACTIVEOPS' latest generation of smart skilling means that across the activities that you or I'm doing, which are in the ACTIVEOPS software already, our AI will now effectively determine and be able to work out the normal learning curves, and therefore, where I or Emma or anybody else is actually on that curve on that journey. Also, interestingly, when if I don't do a certain task for a length of time, how quickly are my skills in that will degrade? Which means, again, that information can be pushed to a leader or to other you know, the HR department to really actively manage that skill space. So we've gone from a kind of buried inherent skills capability in people's heads to a systemic source of data on which to base that decision intelligence.

24:21 And it really will be transformational to the world of sort of orchestration and management because the unstructured data turns into a readily accessible, aggregatable data. The next stage, we're now releasing in the in the to the first first turn of the wheel here is essentially this copilot, the copilot for this activity, where through Teams rather than through the software, senior leaders, middle man different roles will get notified of things that matter, or even they'll be able to inquire. So using equivalent of a large language model like chat GPT, literally, you might say, what do I need to worry about today? Or what what what's the areas of greater stress on my business? And our Copilot will return the fact that, you know, team x has had three people off sick, and team y can help, and they may not necessarily have known that. So that whole sort of, again, pushing the decision making into the technology and helping leaders make the right choices, the impact on their efficient use of time and the outcomes they achieve is really quite exciting. Now these are features which are not just sort of theory. Our series three is already released, and that's generated that uplift you saw in terms of the smart planning and other features.

25:22 New features we're gonna be releasing in the course of this year includes the the virtual

25:26 coach. So a massive step forward in our in our our product proposition across the range. I've touched earlier, but importantly as well, is our marketing. So so, again, if any of you have been tracking our website, you will see a change of note around the whole decision intelligence. But behind that, a much clearer way through to what does it actually do and the voice of the customer. And what that does mean and what we're seeing now is a real change of gear in terms of our inbound. So so the the the inbound leads have increased. So you can see on the screen there, 19% increase year on year. But what's really interesting is the quality of them. We all know how much research we do now in any, you know, in any context before we contact a potential sort of customer or supplier. So for people who do an awful lot more research on the website, customer which means that when they actually contact us, they've got a much clearer sense of what they want from us. So rather than our sales cycle being elongated by education, there's much more focus on, you have a solution I think I might need, Show me.

26:26 And that has a huge effect on the velocity of the sales pipeline. Still talking about big enterprises, but entering with a sense of need is really important. Translating that into an overall improvement in our lead generation as it so shows there. So our all sources have gone up by twenty seven percent. And then, of course, that then filters through to that that all important pipeline of real opportunities as we as we look ahead. As I say, one of the key measures for me is is is taking that new logo acquisition. Emma's Emma's mentioned our net revenue retention of a 110. Just to be completely clear about that, what that tells you is for every pound of revenue last year we got from our customer base, consistently, we get £1.10 next year. So there's that underlying growth driver.

27:11 Now if we can then add in the opportunities to expand from that graph, because most of our customers are at the left hand side of Emma's picture earlier on about the need to take control of the the the more advanced features, that's a revenue kick. And then you overlay that with moving from three to five to 12 to bigger numbers of new logos, which, of course, doesn't kick in the current year, but will will will accumulate as we go through the next year, you start to see the opportunity for that compounding revenue increase. So really good stuff. In terms of the change of our sort of capital allocation this year, there's a question relating to that. I'll come back to this. But essentially, what we are doing is within the general fiscal rules of keeping our EBITDA and our PBT comfortably at right side of the wire, which we're pleased about this year, we're now going to be expanding that sales team. It's not a it's of the order of five enterprise sales across the regions, South Africa, Australia, North America, particularly US now and and and The UK, and all of whom are gearing towards that kind of the type of enterprise customers we're we're talking about there. So that, in the context of the timeliness, the way it works will mean that that won't necessarily affect the revenues this year, but we're confident about the impact as we go into next year, full year 20 starting 2526 of of that increased capacity to service the pipeline which has been building.

28:33 Now that is something which, based on the evidence, obviously, if we really get the bait take up, we have the cash to actually expand that more rapidly. So that's the that's a very that's the nice situation we're in. Similarly, around product, we have the capacity, the the the the cash in the bank to focus around certain aspects of our product road map if we get a certain traction with either certain integrations with with one one or two platforms or or other areas. Now this is a very comp this is a business which is just well capitalized to the level of trading we're doing. So lots of interesting stuff going on there. And and overall, what that means is we we we're confident that we can continue to both farm our and develop our relationships with our existing customer base, but really get into that bigger and wider 900,000,000 ARR that's that's out there. And and again, the crucial bit for me as much as our capability is the market sensitivity. I mean, we all know because we read the papers, the sort of headlines around CEOs demanding their people back in the office and all that. You know, that's when the sharpness of the or rather the lack of precision about their their data on things like capacity and work really come into focus, which is a great great place for us to play off.

29:45 So looking forward, as we look at the sort of the current trading, we're obviously a quarter into our year. Essentially, the way of these things, I can confirm we are comfortably we are in line with board expectations. So so whilst, you know, all all the the figures will come out at the half year, the current update is we've had good levels of expansion, including one new client, a particular one this early this this quarter. The road map releases are on track, I've alluded to. And I think I think that just gives a level of confidence in not just around the board table, but actually in the business, actually. That's that's the key thing about how people feel around the world. ACTIVEOPS is a very diversified business with people around Australia and, you know, the The US, India, and The UK. And and the mood music, because of the type of stuff we've we've been talking about, it is is really very positive.

30:34 So lots of lots of reasons to be cheerful. But I think at that point, I'll stop talking and and perhaps take a few questions. Perfect. Rich, Dana, thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q and A tab, which is situated on the top right hand corner of your screen. But just while the company take a few moments to view some of the questions that have been submitted today, I'd like to remind you that the recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides on the published Q and A can be accessed via your investor dashboard. As you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. If I could just hand back to you just to read out the questions and give responses where it's appropriate to do so, I'll pick up from you both at the end.

31:10 Thank you. So from James, with a substantial cash position, how do you see the utilization of capital between organic growth through the expanding sales team and acquisitions? Good question. The context really come out of the other way. I think you've heard me say about sales, and that's a good lever to be to be pressing, and we do have the means. I think the the interesting one is acquisitions. Now one of benefit of being on public markets is it is obviously the ability to to to raise capital for acquisitions. But with the recent state of the market, that hasn't hasn't effectively been possible. Public market valuations versus private seem to have this sort of have had big delta. I think that's changing. And ACTIVEOPS' general position, we have we have done three

31:52 acquisitions over our history to know, into good success, particularly notable the last one. And I think that is something which we continue to look at. We are primarily an organic growth company. We have the means of growth, however, in our own within our own hands that I've already spoken to. But I think I think having that sort of that capability will become increasingly important. And we might make we might be looking for acquisitions for regions of of of product enhancements, something adjacent, but it also and then as has been the past, is a way of assessing new markets. When you look at our acquisition of Open Connect back in 2016, 2017, that was really gave us hugely enhanced position with The U. S. Health care market. And that's been a fantastic source of growth and opportunity for us. So I think the balance is there, but I think we should, again, stick to our primary core source of growth, which is through our own means and organic growth.

32:46 Which geographies are you most excited about? Interesting question. You saw, we made a management appointment to a new regional general manager in Australia. Australia has been a huge strength of this business, but it's actually been quite static for perhaps the last four or five years. I think there's been a total change of gear there. They they're an important part of that technology refresh. All the big Australian banks are now on our latest platform and through that process have really engaged with the new functionality. So I'm I'm very excited about the growth in Australia, both in terms of expansion and new logo. Canada, I touched on that at the beginning. Canada has been the real success story of 2324 with now a fairly strong position, if not dominant in the Canadian banking market. We have that's, however, at the early stage of the growth cycle. So in other words, we're placed in there with lots of opportunity for expansion.

33:41 So I'm very excited about Canadian market. In EMEA terms, which includes because we we organize around time zones, South Africa. South Africa is also a real point of growth. We we were last week down in in s an essay presenting in the context of a very large enterprise about a much more all expansive use of our software across their enterprise, including not just the the sort of service operations, but the contact center and and the branches to provide that kind of clean, consistent data across the whole of their enterprise. And that as a solution is broadly applicable of all of our a lot of organizations. So so there's a lot you know, in a sense, there's there's the lovely thing about the geographic split, it gives us currency hedging, but it also gives us a lot of different response to different markets. But but but reflecting where we are at the moment, I think the the the consequence and and the and the applicability of our technology is actually pretty universal.

34:38 Can you expand on the Microsoft Azure partnership? I was under the impression some level employee productivity monitoring came as standard with Microsoft Teams. That's interesting. So so we enjoy a really strong relationship with Microsoft. They have been the sort of point of endorsement on a number of big pursuits. We had some success with RFPs this year where our our product was they unusually, companies three companies came out with substantial request for proposals in our space very clearly, and we won all three. And we won all three because of our road map and our technology. Obviously, as part of that, you you need the endorsement of of, let's say, other people to say, yes. They're a big player. This is the right software in the context of an organization like ourselves, and Microsoft provided that role. So that that's hugely helpful.

35:24 But addressing specifically the question around Teams, Teams have and and the sort of Microsoft environment are providing this with Viva. They specifically and deliberately avoid, if you like, anything associated with managing output. So they will give visibility over meetings and your screen time and the like, but there's a very conscious and deliberate policy that that supports that. So in other words, ACTIVEOPS is a very natural enhancement to where they are going strategically, and that's a that's that's quite a clear policy. So although sometimes and this is makes the point, productivity can be misused as a label. The in sense, if if people really want the sort of information that we provide, they won't get that from the from the the Veeva product any anytime soon. But, equally, it's very complementary to that.

36:14 How does your platform work sit against enterprise own ERP systems, Microsoft Dynamics or other data? How often does it refresh itself from those disparate data sources? How work incentive is it to keep the platform updated from those other sources of truth? Again, great question. Really, if you think about the we call them ERP systems. They are systems of record for your staff. A good example, and it's a bit of a a a trite line is is, again, Workday or SAP, but sticking with Workday. Workday, however, rather personally, we put the work into Workday because work Workday doesn't measure work. It measures time. So there's a really nice fit with ERP systems. The the value we have now, if you take one of our big customers, they take their skills, they take their information on staffing from Workday. They feed it up into ACTIVEOPS as part of our planning. And our planning process, which is much more about run, is used then to to plan and manage the team. But importantly, the our data gets back into Workday better and cleaner because it's more precise and accurate pertaining to what's actually happening. So there's a really nice piece of symbiosis there around sort of using that data.

37:18 So to the specific questions, what our new technology is is ultimately in the vernacular, and then it's wholly API driven. So what that means in practice is if there's a source of architectural technology inside a company around it to staffing, for example, then then that we can draw that in. But just as much importantly, our data source, our consolidation of information from lots of sources, which then becomes valuable, is pushed out to Tableau or ClipView or whatever the the, you know, the reporting engine might be. So again, it's all about finding your place in the in the ecosystem of a large enterprise's technology stack. And our secret sauce is that combination of work into something that can be consolidated in time, and that is, you know, pretty special. Are you seeing any customers pause spending as they're unsure or confused about the overlap and future for technologies such as Gen eight or RPA?

38:12 The short answer is no because it it making the point, there's so much talk about the impact of that stuff, but what actually companies need to see is the reality of how it can help. And I hope as I brought to life some very practical example like the skilling and then and the and the and the planning, ACTIVEOPS' technology is is is is beautifully based to to show that. It's not about the concept of AI. It's about the reality of AI. So so just like the manager interaction, these tools are interfaces. But behind that, you have to have something that does something useful, and then you can apply the power of technology. So so specifically to us, no. Not that. Generally, and particularly in The US, enterprises are becoming more careful about you know? And this was why you need to establish a real need. You know, the procurement process are not getting shorter.

39:00 One of the reasons we have we, you know, we are the the logo acquisition last year was lower than we historically have is just because the procurement process are getting longer. But systemically, the problems of complexity are beginning to overwhelm a lot of companies, which means, therefore, technical technologies like ours become a bit of a life a life best in the in in stormy seas. Just taking a pause to see if there any more questions. Anything there, Emma? No. I think we've delivered them on. Perfect. Rich, then I might jump in and thank you for answering those questions from investors. Of course, the company can review all the questions submitted today and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet company platform. But just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which know is particularly important to the company, Richard, could I just ask you for a few closing comments?

39:51 Well, I'd be at risk of repeating myself. I mean, what we've got here is a is a business that's really well positioned. We've got a really exciting product set. You know, the the actual sort of custom base we support, we clearly have the credibility because we do work for the largest companies in the world. And so therefore, really, the opportunity for us is to capitalize on that with new tech, better marketing, and and real sales focus. So, yeah, an awful lot of good stuff in there. Perfect. Rich, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session? As you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, and the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will then take a few moments to complete, but some should be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of ACTIVEOPS PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.