Ebiquity (LSE:EBQ) — Final results for the financial year ended 31 December 2025

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the EBIQUITY PLC investor presentation. Throughout today's recorded presentation, attendees will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted via the q and a tab situated on the right hand side of your screen. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll, which I kindly ask you submit your responses to. I'd now like to hand over to the management team. Ruben, good morning.

0:24 Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for EBIQUITY's full year twenty twenty five results presentation. I am Ruben Scherz, group chief executive officer, and I am joined today by Kate Herrity, our chief financial officer. A brief word on us. I was appointed CEO in November 2024, having joined EBQITY in 2020 following the acquisition of Digital Decisions, a company that I founded in 2017. Before assuming the CEO role, I have served as chief strategy officer and chief product officer of the group. I hold approximately 7% of EBQITY's issued share capital, making me the company's largest private shareholder. I say that not as a biographical detail, but as a statement of alignment.

1:09 My financial interests are directly aligned with yours. Kate joined us as CFO in March 2025, bringing deep financial leadership experience from senior roles at TalkTalk, Cantor, Informa, Liberty Global, and Sky. She has been instrumental in building the financial and operational discipline that underpins the actions and results that we will describe today. We have structured the presentation into four parts. I will begin with an honest assessment of 2025 and our market positioning. Kate will then take you through the financial results in detail. I will return to cover what differentiates us, the progress we have made across the business, and our priorities for 2026, and we will then open for questions.

2:00 Let me begin with 2025. The headline is straightforward. Our financial performance was disappointing. Revenue of £73,400,000, adjusted operating profit of £4,600,000, an adjusted operating margin of 6.3%, and a statutory operating loss of £8,600,000. These are not the numbers we set out to deliver, and our share price has reflected that. As the company's largest private shareholder, I feel the weight of that directly. What drove this shortfall? Three things we want to highlight. First, North America. Tariff uncertainty leading to client budget retrenchment, extended decision cycles and project deferrals combined to produce a significantly more challenging environment than we anticipated.

2:51 Our exposure to that market at 17% of group revenues meant the impact was material. Second, we entered the year carrying a cost base that was too large for the revenues that we were generating. And third, we lacked the right leadership in parts of the business and did not have sufficient discipline around sustained profitability. We have acted decisively. We restructured the cost base, removing 38 roles from the organization. We have appointed new leadership in North America and across several critical functions. We introduced rigorous cost and cash controls, and we continue to invest in our effectiveness and media performance capabilities because the long term competitive position of this business depends on it.

3:37 Kate will walk you through how these actions flow through to the financial statements. What I want to emphasize here is that every one of these changes is now embedded and operational. Before handing to Kate, I would like to reframe the broader context. EBQITY is the independent authority in marketing effectiveness. Marketing measurement and optimization is what we do day in, day out for more than 75 of the world's top 100 brand advertisers based on their global ad spend and over 500 scaled regional and local brands across 122 countries. We hold over 91,000,000,000 US dollars of transacted granular media data in our media data vault, a proprietary asset built over decades that will be exceptionally difficult to replicate.

4:28 We have embedded proprietary AI capability in our operating model and our integrated transform, govern, grow framework addresses the full advertising life cycle, enabling us to operate as one EBQITY. We enter 2026 with a remodeled cost base, strengthened leadership, proprietary technology that is deployed and delivering results, and a healthy pipeline. Kate will now take you through the numbers.

4:59 Good morning, everyone. So I'm going to take you through our full year '25 results, which are in line with what we disclosed in our January trading statement. I want to be clear about what drove the results and what we've done in response.

5:15 So starting with the key highlights. Revenue of GBP 73,400,000 was down 4% on the prior year and adjusted operating profit came in at GBP 4,600,000, down GBP 3,300,000 compared to the prior year, with operating profit margins at 6.3% versus 10.3% last year. These are numbers that fell short of where we wanted to be, and I will come on to what drove them. What is encouraging to see is the discipline we applied to costs, with project related costs reduced by 10% to GBP 6,600,000. And perhaps most positively, our disciplined focus on cash management has delivered real results. Adjusted cash from operations increased to £12,800,000 from £9,600,000 last year.

6:07 We returned to positive free cash flow of GBP 3,100,000 compared to an outflow of GBP 2,600,000 in 2024. And we reduced net debt by GBP 2,500,000 to GBP 13,100,000. I'll come back to each of these in more detail shortly. So this slide shows our income statement with our revenue of 73,400,000 against GBP 76,800,000 last year. Project related costs came down by GBP 700,000, which reflected in the renegotiated supplier terms beyond the reduction from lower revenue. On staff costs, these were broadly flat at GBP 49,300,000. In 2025, as Ruben mentioned, we ran a global restructuring program, which resulted in 38 roles leaving the business.

6:59 And we were also focused on reshaping the organization and rehiring into the capabilities and roles that will drive the business forward. Our approach to staff costs in 2026 will remain disciplined, whilst ensuring that our cost base is structured to support the direction in which EBQITY is looking to grow. Operating expenses increased slightly to GBP 12,900,000, reflecting higher investment in travel to support client relationships, in marketing to strengthen our market presence and investment in technology to build our capabilities for the future. Finance costs increased to GBP 3,500,000 compared to GBP 1,400,000 last year. The primary driver of the increase was a GBP 1,400,000 noncash foreign exchange loss on intercompany loans, mainly driven by the impact of the stronger euro and the weaker dollar.

7:56 Underlying interest costs were actually lower year on year, reflecting the benefit of lower average borrowings and lower interest interest rates on the facility. The statutory loss after tax of GBP 14,000,000 was driven by the GBP 10,000,000 goodwill impairment in North America, which I'll come to shortly. The adjusted loss after tax of GBP 1,900,000 compares to a profit of GBP 4,400,000 last year, reflecting both the operating profit decline and the higher noncash intercompany FX costs. So before we move on to the regional and service line detail, I think it's worth looking at how our revenue base is structured. On the right hand side of this slide is our geographic split. UK and Ireland is our largest market at 45% of revenue, Continental Europe at 28% and then we have North America at 17% and APAC at 10%.

8:53 North America, as you'll see in the numbers, is where the pressure came from in 2025. You can see that we serve global advertisers across all major regions, doing so through our own teams and where appropriate, through local partner networks. On the left is our segmentation of our service mix, and transform, govern, grow is the way that we now look at the product offerings that we bring to our clients. So to give you a translation back to how we've talked about these things before, transform maps to our media management service line, where we work with clients to help them select, appoint and manage their agency relationships and internal operating models. Govern maps to media performance and contract compliance and gives clients control and visibility over their advertising investments by benchmarking, tracking, and auditing, checking that their money is working hard and they're getting value for what they've invested.

9:53 And grow maps to our marketing effectiveness service line. It helps our clients to understand whether their marketing is driving business growth, which channels and campaigns are working and which are not, and how to allocate their budgets to maximize return. These charts illustrate that we've got genuine global reach, combined with deep and broad local expertise, and they set the context for the numbers which follow.

10:22 So this is our regional performance. UK and Ireland delivered five percent growth to GBP 33,000,000, driven by transform revenues, which were up 71% year on year. As our largest market, it's good to see the business performing very well. Continental Europe revenue was down 6% at GBP 19,800,000, driven by a combination of factors. Italy grew 35% under new management and Portugal also grew well, but there was softness in France and Germany offsetting those gains. APAC was flat at GBP 7,700,000 with strong growth in Transform revenues offset by lower government revenues in China. North America was down 23% to GBP 12,800,000.

11:09 Client losses, project deferrals and extended decision cycles all contributed with the context of a macro environment, which has been persistently more challenging than we anticipated. Excluding North America, the rest of the group saw a slight growth year on year. The performance shortfall is largely a North America story, which has given us a clear focus for where the recovery needs to come from. And we've already begun to take those steps with restructuring and leadership changes already implemented. So turning to the analysis of our service lines. Govern declined by 7% to GBP 54,800,000. Within Govern, media performance fell 9% to GBP 46,500,000, with GBP 3,500,000 of that downside in North America across benchmarking, value track and audit.

12:05 Outside of North America, media performance held up reasonably well. Also within Govern, Contract Compliance was a strong performer, up 7% globally, with particularly good growth in UK and Ireland, Germany, India and Australia. Transform grew 6% to GBP 8,400,000, with strong momentum in UK and Ireland, Australia and Singapore. Transform is an area of real strategic opportunity for us given the significant changes unfolding in the agency landscape and the trajectory here is encouraging. Our Grow offering was flat at GBP 10,200,000, impacted by a specific 2024 client loss. Significant new wins in UK and Ireland and North America towards the end of 2025 are indicative of good momentum into 2026.

12:59 Moving to the balance sheet. Our net assets decreased by GBP 11,800,000 to GBP 24,000,000. The primary driver is the noncash accounting adjustment impairing North American goodwill by GBP 10,000,000 following the underperformance in that market and other noncurrent assets reduced by GBP 1,700,000, driven by a GBP 1,200,000 derecognition of the North America deferred tax asset, consistent with the goodwill impairment. Net working capital reduced from GBP 10,600,000 to GBP 6,100,000, a GBP 4,500,000 improvement, which reflects billing and collections discipline and which feeds directly into our positive cash position. Contingent consideration is now nil.

13:46 The July 2025 settlement of $875,000 in cash and $218,000 in shares closed out all historical acquisition earn out obligations. With the last of those liabilities behind us, we can focus our attention on the reduction of our net debt. This cash flow slide is probably the slide I'm most pleased about. Adjusted cash from operations of GBP 12,800,000 compares to GBP 9,600,000 last year, a 279% conversion ratio against 122% in 2024. That improvement came almost entirely from working capital, where we moved from a GBP 2,000,000 outflow to a 4,700,000 inflow.

14:34 Highlighted cash items of GBP 2,500,000 were lower than the GBP 4,100,000 last year, and they comprise severance and reorganization costs and fees relating to the March 2025 refinancing. Positive free cash flow of GBP 3,100,000 compares to an outflow of GBP 2,600,000 in 2024, with the GBP 5,700,000 improvement being the result of the cash focus we applied across the whole business, including dialing up the discipline across billing terms, payment terms and cash collection across the group. And finally, net debt. Again, a good news slide. We ended the year at GBP 13,100,000, down from GBP 15,600,000, a GBP 2,500,000 reduction.

15:22 And in April 2026, we refinanced our revolving credit facility, reducing it to GBP 28,000,000 and extending it until October 2027, and we remain compliant with our covenants. So to close, 2025 was not an easy year and the numbers reflect that. But we've taken the right actions on cost, leadership, working capital and the balance sheet, which mean that we've gone into 2026 with a more focused business, with the right structure and the right capabilities in place to grow. North America represents a significant opportunity for us on market recovery. The momentum in Transform, new client wins in Grow at the end of last year and our improved cash discipline all give us a solid base to build from.

16:12 We look forward to sharing more detail at our upcoming Capital Markets Day. Thank you, and back over to Ruben. Thank you, Kate. So let me now turn to why we are confident in what lies ahead, starting with the market in which we operate. Marketing is a material expenditure for brand organizations with an average of 7.7% of total corporate revenues invested in it according to the most recent Gartner CMO spend survey. It is also the most important driver of their revenues and their growth. That combination, scale of investment, and criticality to commercial outcomes makes marketing central to the strategy of most companies that we target.

16:58 Within marketing, paid media accounts for more than 30% of the total investment, making it the largest single spend category ahead of marketing technology, labor costs, and agencies. Growth continues to be strong with double digit increases expected for 2026 and global media ad spend estimated to exceed 1,150,000,000,000 US dollars. EBQITY is the de facto expert and authority in paid media, and that position solidifies our highly differentiated role within the marketing effectiveness ecosystem.

17:36 Research we produced in partnership with Thinkbox, Game Theory, and the WPP media agencies published in our landmark profitability two study demonstrates the economic power of well optimized advertising. For every pound, euro, or dollar invested, the short term incremental profit return is 1.87 times. And the total term profit return, however, is 4.11 times. Those are compelling economics. Very few organizations are able to reliably measure and optimize this at scale, but EBQITY is one of them. Let me put the value of what we do into perspective. We regularly identify substantial areas of wastage or ineffective spend for our clients.

18:21 Take a single large advertiser where we identify $100,000,000 of wasted or misallocated spend. When we help them redirect that investment to highly effective channels and strategies, even taking a prudent view, let us say this then drives that average incremental profit return of $411,000,000. At an EV EBITDA multiple of 13 times, that translates to more than $5,000,000,000 of annualized equity value for the company. That makes the business case for partnership with EBQITY a very straightforward one. 13 times is not just a number grabbed out of thin air. It's the trading multiple, the current trading multiple of Unilever, and some of our clients like L'Oreal trade significantly higher at 19 times.

19:10 So let me be specific about what differentiates EBQITY. We analyze over 100,000,000,000 US dollars in media investments annually, about 10% of the entire market. We serve more than 75 of the global top 100 advertisers and more than 500 scaled regional and local brands across a 122 countries. Our media data vault built over decades of ingesting granular transacted media data gives us analytical depth that no competitor can match at scale. Management consultancies lack our data. Agency networks face inherent conflict of interest. Point solution technology vendors lack our breadth, and so we combine scale, independence, proprietary data, and deep expertise in a way that is genuinely differentiated.

20:05 That combination creates a compounding advantage. As we analyze more spend, our data grows richer, which delivers greater value to our clients and drives them to expand their engagements with us. The economics of our model improve with scale. Our scale and authority are fundamental to our position as exclusive strategic partner for effectiveness of the World Federation of Advertisers, the largest and highly influential global advertiser trade body. Our three service lines, transform, govern, and grow, address distinct stages of the advertising and marketing life cycle and are designed to work together. Clients who engage us for one service frequently expand into others, and the cross sell dynamic within this framework is meaningful as we prioritize long term strategic client relationships upstream with senior stakeholders.

21:02 In 2025, 19% of our revenues were delivered for clients that buy services across all of our service lines, underwriting the strategic and deeply embedded relationships that we build. Cross and upselling is a strategic priority for us. Transform is our marketing transformation and agency selection practice. In 2025, we delivered a 159 agency selection engagements globally. And in January 2026, three months ago, we appointed David Muldoon, who was previously at MediaLink and the Walgreens Boots Alliance. He is now serving as our global managing director of marketing transformation to further scale this offering.

21:48 This context is very important. The agency landscape is undergoing structural change, holding company consolidation, the rise of in housing, the integration of AI into media planning, marketing, and buying are creating fundamental questions for advertisers about their operating model and their agency partnerships. We are the independent adviser that they turn to when those decisions need to be made well.

22:14 In 2026, our priority is to convert larger multimarket transformation engagements. The demand pipeline has grown significantly, and David's appointment is designed to accelerate conversion.

22:29 Govern is our largest service line and the backbone of EBQITY. Through our data management platform, we analyze over $100,000,000,000 in advertising investments across a 122 markets every year. In 2025, a 112 clients adopted our digital media suite. Over 80 advertisers worked with Firm Decisions, which is our contract compliance and agency governance

22:54 business, And we expanded that offering into creative and influencer auditing. We launched the ERA curriculum, a structured framework for media buying guidelines that supports both human and human decision makers and the emerging generation of AI based media buying agencies agents. We became a founding member of ETCP, which is the open standard for agentic advertising, and we delivered our first total TV solution, addressing the convergence of linear and streaming TV. In 2026, our priorities are to roll out the ERA curriculum across skilled advertisers to expand our total TV solution in more markets and grow adoption of governance solutions across enterprise clients.

23:44 Each of these initiatives sits where the industry is heading and where we have a clear right to win. Grow is our marketing effectiveness practice and represents our most significant growth opportunity. In 2025, we deployed a new technology platform to improve partnership effectiveness and operations. In December alone, we secured marketing effectiveness engagements with an aggressive with an aggregate contract value exceeding £10,000,000 over their three year terms. We strengthened leadership with the appointment of doctor Nick Pugh, who has over twenty years of marketing effectiveness experience as group chief marketing effectiveness officer, and Steven Tobias as marketing effectiveness director for The Americas.

24:31 In 2026, we will build on that momentum to accelerate commercial growth across priority markets, including North America, and expand client adoption of our integrated metrics that matter offering.

24:45 The demand for independent marketing effectiveness expertise is increasing as advertisers face intensifying pressures to demonstrate return on investment. Let me now turn to the broader progress that we have made across the company. We have organized our progress around five pillars.

25:06 First, we unified the entire business around our core position as the independent authority in marketing effectiveness. That clarity of purpose has sharpened our go to market approach and strengthened how we communicate value to clients and prospects. Second, SPC, our proprietary staff cost to profit conversion metric. We deployed this globally in mid twenty twenty five as a primary measure of operating performance. It gives a it it gives every regional, local, and client leader a clear lens on whether their engagements generate sufficient margin to support continued investment. It has changed commercial behavior in scoping, pricing, utilization, and service mix, and it shaped our entire twenty twenty six budgeting process.

25:57 Third, our proprietary AI infrastructure. Over 90% of our workforce across the world is now using our AI tools daily, delivering measurable productivity gains and improving analytical quality. Fourth, leadership. We have a significantly strengthened leadership team and have united our global organization around our most local, most global philosophy and our ERA mission, effective and responsible advertising. Fifth, our transform, govern, grow framework. This integrated approach strengthens our position as a trusted adviser to the world's top advertisers and creates the cross sell dynamic that drives revenue growth.

26:43 I want to zoom in on the third point, as we are delivering outstanding results with our focus on proprietary technology development with highly effective and lean deployment with very limited CapEx. In 2025, we deployed Erobot, our proprietary agentic AI infrastructure across the entire organization. Erobot accesses our methodologies, our knowledge base, and our media data vault to surface insights faster and at greater depth. The result is better analysis, faster delivery, and more consistent quality for our clients. Beyond internal productivity, we launched direct client integrations and introduced the client facing AI solutions in the second half of twenty twenty five.

27:31 Our infrastructure now enables direct integration with client AI systems, which positions us for the next generation of consulting where inside delivery is argentic and continuous rather than episodic. We are building owned, governed infrastructure that makes our experts more productive and our client solutions more scalable without compromising the independence, security, or analytical rigor that our clients depend on. Our market presence strengthened materially in 2025. Inbound leads grew 111% year on year from a base that was already meaningful. Our net promoter score increased by 41%. PR features, so EBIQUITY in the press, grew by 57%, and we maintain strong industry partnerships and regularly release major research, most recently with TikTok.

28:27 In October 2025, we hosted ERA twenty six, our inaugural annual event bringing together over 200 senior marketing leaders to explore how advertisers can build more effective, trusted, and sustainable marketing investment strategies. We also established the EBQITY advisory board, comprising distinguished industry experts who both extend our reach and our credibility in the market. So what does 2026 look like? We are focused on four priorities. First, accelerating growth through leadership and integrated effectiveness. The market is moving towards holistic solutions that connect strategy, governance, and performance.

29:14 Our transform, govern, grow framework positions us to capture that demand. Second, building on the commercial foundation that we have established in North America. The macro environment remains uncertain, and we are clear eyed about that. But what has changed is the quality of leadership on the ground, a right sized cost base, and sales momentum that has built through q four twenty twenty five. We have appointed a high caliber head of growth for The Americas to drive that trajectory onwards. Third, using SPC as our primary metric for operating excellence. Every business unit is now managed against this metric, and it drives the commercial discipline that is required to build sustainable profitability And fourth, we are maintaining the focus on cash collection and working capital management that has helped us deliver strong results in FCF in 2025.

30:13 We will share more details on our strategic direction at our Capital Markets Day on June 29, which will be an opportunity to present our strategy and introduce our leadership team to current and prospective investors. To close, 2025 was a year of difficult but necessary change. The financial results fell short of what we set out to deliver, and we have been transparent about the causes and direct about the actions that we have taken. The leadership team is in place, aligned and focused on sustainable, profitable growth. We have applied rigorous cost and cash management. Our cost base has been restructured. AI and proprietary technology are embedded in both our operations and client offerings, and macroeconomic and geopolitical headwinds persist.

31:03 But we are realistic about that and are doing what we can to counteract that. But EBIQUITY occupies a differentiated position in a large and growing market. The structural dynamics of the advertising industry, rising spend, increasing complexity, growing demand for accountability play directly to our strengths. As the company's largest private shareholder, I remain personally committed to translating that position into increased shareholder value. I want to thank our clients for their continued trust, our global team for their commitment through a demanding year, and our shareholders for their patience and ongoing support. Thank you, and we will now take your questions.

31:50 That's great. Thank you both for your presentation this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions via the q and a tab on the right hand side of your screen. For your reference, a recording of today's presentation will be available on the Investor Meet company platform shortly after the meeting's ended. But for now, guys, as you can see, there are a number of questions which have been submitted. Could I just please ask you read out the questions and give your responses where appropriate to do so? And I'll pick up from you at the end. Thank you. The first question is have the management changes in The USA brought about significant volume growth and improved the prospects of real increased profits? Whilst we don't provide specific guidance at this stage on a market by market level beyond what we've guided in the note, in the RNS, which is that we're trading in line, we are seeing improved momentum as we've just highlighted and are confident that we will be able to return the North America region to profitable growth in 2026.

32:53 The next question, I see that the growth rate growth rate assumptions in the note on goodwill are 2% per annum. I appreciate that here, one has to be conservative. Can I go on the basis that you are being conservative and that you would not be in EBIQUITY if you thought that this is likely to be the growth? I'll give a brief answer before handing to Kate, and that is that the note, I think, the submitter of this question refers to is the Cavendish guidance, which obviously is the analyst's note that they put out. It's not a a guidance that we directly put out ourselves. I do believe that there is a lot of upside on the current consensus in market.

33:40 And, yeah, Kate, is there anything that you would like to add? Yeah. I I was going to say the the note, I think, that's being referred to on goodwill is looking at the perpetual growth rate of of 2% that we apply to cash flows beyond three years when we're looking at our complying with the calculations under IAS 36 for the goodwill calculation. It's very much an accounting rate. It's based on factors such as economists' sort of estimates of long term economic growth in the markets in which we operate. It's not a rate that reflects our our own kind of plans over the next few years. So I wouldn't conflate the the two.

34:28 Thank you, Kate. The next question is how much of the decline in operating margin do you view as structural versus cyclical? And what level of margin do you believe is realistically sustainable over the medium term? Do you want to answer it, Kate, or do you want me to take it? Why don't you go for it? I believe we are not in a perpetual cyclical system where margins will continue to go up and down, our ambition, and we are confident about that ambition, is to build sustainable, better profit margins into a growing organization by, for example, deploying and creating accountability around the SBC metric that we rally behind across all of our budget and incentive programs.

35:20 We are currently not providing guidance on what we believe a realistic sustainable margin will look like over the medium term. But as soon as we are able to provide more confident guidance on what that level could look like, we will. The next question is, the company has high cash and high debt. Does this reflect a favorable working capital position at year end? If so, what was the average net debt during the year? If not, what does the company why does the company have such an inefficient capital structure? I'll hand that to you, Kate. Yeah. Sure. So the high cash, high debt, at the year end, we've actually got a we've brought, as we said in the presentation, we've brought our net debt down by 2,500,000 over the course of the year.

36:13 And as I highlighted, a good chunk of that, 4,600,000 was working capital improvement. Now that is that is mainly from better billing billing terms, better payment terms, collecting cash that had stood outstanding for a while, old debts. So that is very much about an operational improvement in how we manage our working capital during the course of the year. So we are, as you can see in the year, we're very much trying to focus on driving positive free cash flow and getting our debt paid down where we can, and the improvement this year you can see.

37:00 Thank you, Kate. And now there are four questions, and I will take them one by one. The first question is you highlight encouraging momentum and new contract wins. Could you clarify how much of FY 2026 revenue is already secured or visible at this stage. We do not provide disclosure on those numbers, but we are confident about trading for this year, and we aim to provide a little bit more color around trading for 2026 at our Capital Markets Day when we have the first half year trading behind us and better visibility for the second half of the year. What we are very cautious about is that we do not fall into the trap of overpromising or being too early with overpromising and then having to under deliver.

37:47 So thank you for your question, and I hope that makes sense. The second question from this person is, you mentioned that updated strategy and KPIs will be presented at the Capital Markets Day. Could you give an indication today of the key financial and operational targets you are working towards over the next two to three years, e. G, revenue growth, margin, regional mix, etcetera? We will defer that to the Capital Markets Day where we will be presenting operational metrics that we don't just highlight on that day as a one off, but operational metrics and performance indicators that we are going to structurally report to provide better visibility into progress in the underlying business. The third question is what level of profitability do you believe is structurally achievable for EBQITY in a normalized environment?

38:38 It's a great question, and it's in line with the question earlier, so I defer back to that answer. But directionally, I see no reason for why EBIQUITY, once we have normalized trading and are back into our strengths, shouldn't or couldn't be trading at a 20 to 25% margin. Four, what tangible commercial impact have your AI and data investments had so far? And when should investors expect a me a measurable contribution to revenue growth or margins? I believe the impact of deploying our proprietary AI infrastructure through the CapEx investments that we've allocated is very meaningful. It has allowed us to more confidently execute the restructuring where we took 38 roles out of the business in this fourth quarter of last year, we aspire to provide more forensic guidance on the actual impact these investments are having on our operational efficiency, but also on the revenue growth of dedicated AI solutions or AI enhancements within our existing solutions.

39:52 Then the last question in the Q and A is what proportion of the decline in share price over the last five years can be attributed to increased issuance of shares? And then are there any plans for stock consolidation, e. G, 10 for one, to make this look less like a penny stock? Katie, you have an answer or position on that? I don't think we have any plans for for stock consolidation in terms of the decline in share price over the last five years. I mean, the the last, certainly, this this year, we there's been limited issuance of of shares. The the only shares issued was the the amounts I referred to for the settling of the deferred consideration on the on the historical acquisition.

40:48 So it's not something in the last couple of years that has been a significant factor, I would say. Yeah. I will just add to that that, obviously, in 2022, the company undertook under previous leadership two major acquisitions, parts of which were funded through capital placement. But after that, the issuance has been limited, and all of the planned issuance or issue events are based on LTIP schemes, which are obviously relying on the company meeting the performance objectives, which is to secure the interest of the shareholders and prevent nonaccretive dilution. Right. I think those were the questions. I want to thank everyone for joining today's investor meet company call with us, Kate and myself, to talk about EBQITY's results for 2025 and our priorities for 2026 and onwards.

41:46 And we hope to see many of you at the upcoming Capital Markets Day for which more information and details will be soon distributed. That's great. Thank you both once again. Ladies and gentlemen, could I ask that you don't close the session just yet as you'll now be automatically redirected to a page to give your feedback, which helps the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. I wish you a good morning.