MediaZest (LSE:MDZ) — Full year results for the year ended 30 September 2025

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the MEDIAZEST PLC Full Year 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. Just simply type in your questions and press send. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I would now like to hand you over to CEO, Jeff Robertson. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Alex. My name is Jeff Robertson. I'm the CEO of MDZEST, and today we're gonna be giving a bit of an update on our full year results for the twelve months ended 09/30/2025. It'll be myself talking and our new chairman, Keith Edelman.

0:45 So Keith joined us, last summer, around about June time, and he's gonna talk about some of the slides around, what we're doing in the coming year, the balance sheet, and and our strategy moving forwards. And I'm gonna talk through the results for this year and what we've been doing, in the last twelve months. So firstly, for those who may not be familiar with MEDIAZEST, we are a creative audio visual solutions provider. So we provide our clients with an end to end integrated service from sort of start to finish, from the beginning of a project all the way through to delivery and ongoing support and maintenance, all around delivering audio visual solutions. We're best known for innovative digital signage, and for audio systems, and we work mostly in three core areas. So that would be retail stores, automotive showrooms, and corporate offices.

1:37 And and we have fifty years experience, so, we acquired a business in 2005. That business is, an engineering business that's responsible for delivery of all of our projects, and it gives us, fifty years, as we said, of experience and really gives us a a deep understanding of what works with our clients, what they need to understand when they're doing construction, and how we fit into that. And that's, a really important part of our, our offering. In terms of the business proposition, as I mentioned, we deliver turnkey solutions. So our clients can come to us, and we'll give them everything they need around those audio visual solutions, whether that's design ideas, implementation, ongoing content, ongoing support. We generate revenue in two different ways.

2:23 So, we generate revenue from project fees, which include things like hardware, software installation. They can obviously be quite lumpy, and anyone who's worked in, retail or construction That shouldn't be happening. Let's give it a second. Hopefully, not a real fire. I think it's just the alarm going again. Apologies for that. Yeah. So we generate revenue in two different ways. So firstly, project fees, as I was saying, a hardware software installation, it can be quite lumpy. Some of these projects, as you can probably imagine, take months of planning. And if you've ever worked in retail or construction sectors, you know that it's very easy for things to slip, you know, two or three weeks, months, at a time. So difficult to predict, really important and nice big ticket items, but, you know, difficult to plan the business around that. So that gives us the, leads on to the second, where we make money, which is ongoing revenue streams. And that's super important for allowing us to be able to plan and predict our revenues.

3:21 And we make those, get those streams from things like service and maintenance contracts, so keeping the solutions up and running, content hosting, software licensing. So we we, do SaaS licensing where we can on software, and also content management, and also a bit of content creation as well. I'm gonna talk more in detail about, f y twenty five. It's been a really exciting year for us. I think, the financial numbers will speak for themselves, so let's dive straight into those. We saw strong growth in all of our key metrics, strong performance in revenue and in gross profit increasing 3547%, respectively. Sorry. We go, we broke the 4,000,000 barrier again for the for the first time in quite some time this year. So we're really pleased with that. A lot of that as we expanded upon in, some recent announcements was driven by the sort of last three, four months of the financial year, which will also carry on into f y twenty six.

4:18 But it was a substantial growth, obviously, for us on the revenue side. That's also flowed through nicely on the EBITDA. So we've moved to a profit of 331,000 for the year versus 14 the year before and swung back to net profit after taxation of just under 100,000, which obviously compares much better with the, the loss of $21.04 last year. And we're really pleased with the direction of growth, and we've seen that again in f y twenty five. And as I mentioned, we expect that further in f y twenty six, and we'll talk about that a little bit more in the later in the presentation. And but what we're seeing is a is a consistent pattern where we've gone from sort of 2.3 to 3.1 to 4,100,000, turnover and continue to grow. And as a result, the cash position improved.

5:04 So, again, just under 100,000 at period end, so roughly of about 50%. And that was actually after we repaid just under 200,000 of debt, which was, an invoice discount facility we managed to pay down and get rid of, during the year. And that's obviously gonna have, benefits to us, a, not only in strengthening the balance sheet, but also, reducing interest costs moving forwards. And what we're also seeing that isn't immediate obvious from these numbers, but it's it's super important for us, is the growth in the long term recurring revenue contracts. So as we do more and more business with more and more clients, we add those contracts on an ongoing basis, we're able to drive up the recurring, annual run rate. As of the thirtieth of September last year, the year end, we estimated that just over 1,200,000 versus point 9,000,000, the year before. So a substantial, you know, growth for the third.

5:56 And and, again, we're seeing that continue to grow in f y twenty six. So for us, that gives us, ongoing security around revenue and stability, and, obviously, it makes it much easier for us to predict, what our revenues are gonna be and and the direction of the business. So for those of you who may not be so familiar with some of the the clients that we work with and some of the highlights for the year, to take you through that. On the retail side of it, that remains our biggest sector. We started to roll out a major new contract with first rate exchange services during the year, which we announced in July. So we did a two or three months of that before the year end, and, obviously, the bulk of that will be in f y twenty six. And that was after a significant, unsuccessful pilot in 2024, which was around about 50 locations.

6:43 And we're now delivering over 1,200 locations, which we completed, probably by the end of September, certainly by the end of twenty twenty six. And that's obviously a huge project for us, a significant project where we've delivered nearly 500 of those sites already, and and there is a five year ongoing support and maintenance contract behind that. So, it's super, pleasing to see that. It's been going very well so far. That's been a, you know, a big big positive in the final quarter of the year, and, obviously, we'll be moving forwards. We work with pets at home. We have done over the last seven years. We provide digital signage solutions for them in their stores, not just in the main stores, but also with their vet practices in certain cases, which is a huge part of their business. They continue to grow with us in the year, and we added more stores. So we're now in over a 170 of their stores, and with more in the pipeline.

7:36 Moving on to some of our European installations. Lululemon's a client we've worked with, I think, for for over ten years now, and we did several new locations for them in Europe, our flagship stores in Regent Street in The UK, and also in Milan and Berlin. And on a similar line, Arc'teryx, we've worked with, slightly slightly less. That's a two or three year, engagement, but we've, managed to put new flagship stores in for them in Chamonix, Milan, Stockholm, Manchester, Ponderful, Austria, and Vista Village, in f y twenty five, and that's actually a photo of, of Milan. I think what those two brands have in common is obviously a super strong brands. You know, very much about lifestyle. I think the technology that we deliver quite often behind cash desks like this, they're having some incredible content that really tells their customers what they're about and, you know, really helps them to understand why they should engage with that brand and be in that store. And I think that really lends itself to some of these big LED walls we've been doing.

8:36 And for us, as a European, pan European business and being able to deliver from our European subsidiary, we can offer them a consistent service across Europe, to deliver to a really high standard and consistently across their stores. And so talking about international business, we also have a global consumer band we work with in duty free stores, and we're hoping to improve that grow their revenues as helping to grow our recurring revenue streams, excuse me, as we do more and more different airports around the globe. That covers, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and APAC. We cover Europe ourselves with The UK and our European subsidiary, and we have partners, in other parts of the world to help us. Moving on to the, automotive sector, we look after Hyundai UK's, dealer network, and that continues to grow and change.

9:25 We continue to add technology that helps us, helps them, sorry, explain to their customers some of their propositions around electric vehicles, you know, range, mileage, etcetera. We work with Kia as well across three European territories. That's Ireland, Slovakia, and significant in Netherlands, where we've continued to expand heavily in f y twenty five. And we continue to look after Porsche in Milan. We have a rock car Jaguar Land Rover dealership in Canary Wharf. And, also, we work with some of The UK dealer groups such as Lithia and Norton Way. And finally, it's a smaller sector for us, but still, we do get some significant projects. And we also do look after corporate offices. So we have meeting room deployments, things like booking systems. We are teams accredited, so a lot of those are Microsoft Teams rooms, which can be complicated to deploy, but we have, you know, deep expertise in.

10:16 And that led us to do a a refit and refurbishment for a major UK sorry. The UK office of a major global luxury brand in summer twenty five. So we do still get some significant projects in that arena as well. So post year end, we've been talking a lot about the balance sheet. I'm gonna hand over now to Keith, who's gonna talk us through that. Thanks very much. I joined MEDIAZEST in in June, July last year. And one of the first things that I I noticed was that we we had quite a lot of debt, and it was relatively lightly documented. So so we set about trying to restructure our debt, and we managed to convince the loan holders to write off over £500,000 of interest and leave a principal sum of £785,000, approximately 609, and we're repaying that over the next six years. What's good about that though is that we effectively have zero interest on on the outstanding balance.

11:17 So so effectively, we've written off a lot more than 500,000 because we're not going to pay any interest on that that 3 course million or so over the next over the next six years. In February, we raised £215,000 of, of of of funds at a price of point point o six for p. And there's a a very, very big shareholder, doctor Graham Cooney, who we'd like to to welcome as a shareholder of MEDIAZEST who has quite a big following. And so we did a a raise with him and a few associated current shareholders as well. And I think you've seen since we've done that raise, the share price has responded, and we've gone from circa point eight five of a p up to point one one, point one two of a p. So nearly 50% increase in the share price.

12:09 Strategy moving forward. So, I mean, Jeff's done a wonderful job of of getting some very, very big contracts. And, obviously, the fresh contract is a huge contract, which which does transform our profitability for the next few years. And I think we've now focused our efforts on targeting clients with opportunities who who can put in a huge number of units and sites. If you're going to put a lot of effort into the sales process, much better to do it with someone who can deploy two, three hundred sites than five or six sites. And we're focused on long term contractual revenues, in a diversified client base. So we we operate in different retail sectors, in the automotive sectors, and as Jeff said, a little bit in corporate as well.

12:56 We're collecting data as well to provide actual insights to our clients, and, obviously, this is a new way of working. And with AI, we'll we'll we'll absolutely, I think, accelerate into the future. And we have got this this this European network from our Dutch subsidiary, and we can deliver projects not only in The UK, but across the Europe as well. And the last bit of our strategy is adding scale via potential m and a activity unlocking shareholder value. So so I think that but what's really interesting about this marketplace is that is that there are a hell of a lot of companies in the 3 to £56,000,000 turnovers, only even smaller than three, but but there's a lot of companies in in in this sector.

13:43 And they tend to have very, very good contracts with very good customers, but they tend to be quite quite singular in that approach. So I think there is a huge opportunity for us to be able to acquire smaller companies, and and to grow our business. And looking at the whole addressable market, I mean, the whole market, the global professional division market expects to increase to a 113,000,000,000. I mean, very, very big numbers. And the global digital signage market is estimated at about 22,000,000,000 in '24. Is expected to grow at a rate of 8.4% per year to reach 30,000,000,000 by 2028. So this is a growing market. Clearly, with the with the with the evolution of digital signage, with the evolution of AI, it's gonna become forever more important. And therefore, we think there's a lot of opportunity for us to buy skilled companies who haven't got the access to capital that we have as with our quote, and to be for us to be able to bring them into the MEDIAZEST family and to grow our business, and to grow our company alongside theirs.

14:53 So just to to summarize, I guess, an outlook, summary for this year and the outlook for sort of moving forward. Obviously, we're we're aim listed. We're a creative audio visual solutions provider. As I said, for those who don't know us, the recurring run rate is up to over 1,200,000 now and continue to grow strongly. And we're seeing strong long term demand for the technologies we provide in all the core sectors that we work in. We've had a great f y twenty five, and we think that's just the start. F y twenty six is looking really good too. That's been driven by new business wins, including the first contract and ongoing contracts with well established clients, you know, expanding with us across multiple different directions. Those recurring revenue streams are so important because they provide greater predictability and stability.

15:38 As we sort of target to, you increasing our profitability, we expect to deliver further year on year growth in '26, and further increase in profitability. We're targeting over 5,000,000 in revenue top line and over $2.50 in net profit. And as Keith alluded to, you know, for great support from our shareholders in terms of restructuring the loans, which has been much appreciated, and that's gonna really help with the balance sheet. And then post year end, with more equity funds raised, again, further strengthening us, and, of course, in f y twenty five, repaying that invoice discounting facility. So I think both, p and l performance is is up and getting even better and expect to get better in the very near future as well. And, obviously, the balance sheet is, you know, is looking in a much better shape. So it's a really exciting time for us, and we think there's a lot more to come.

16:25 Thank you for listening, and for joining this webinar, and we look forward to answering your questions. That's great, Jeff, Keith. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the q and a tab situated on the top right corner of your screen. While the company take a few moments to read those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A can be accessed via our investor dashboard. Geoff, at this point, if I may hand over to you to run through the Q and A session, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Yeah. Sure. Thank you, Alex. So, yes, so, we touched on the m and a. What criteria are being used to select targets, which shows capability and the most value? I think that's a that's a really interesting question.

17:10 I think from our point of view, we really wanna we've got a very clear view on how we should be doing deals, and we want to try and move quickly. We think we're targeting companies who work with us, who continue to grow with us. So I think, obviously, the the business is growing very strongly at the minute. That means our resources, are very stretched, and, you know, everyone's working extremely hard around the clock to sort of get things get things moving. So we wanna bring people in to join that team and help us grow it together. So I think resource from a management level is great, but also bringing clients with them. So one of the, I guess, one of the key, characteristics we see across all the clients, whatever industry they're in, is quite often that we're we're dealing with lots of different touch points within an organization, which makes it, yeah, very difficult to to break into those and to get them to do lots of large scale rollouts. It makes the sales process sometimes quite slow, but it does make us very sticky.

18:07 And it means that if you've got a customer and you look after them very well, then generally you keep them. So I think if we can target businesses with good customers like that, with the ability for that customer to grow as well and some resource themselves that can help add to our team, those are sort of the ones we think are most value. I would say I think we're pretty open minded about it, though. I think if there's opportunities that arise that may be, you know, slightly different to where we're currently strong, but we think it can add value, we'd obviously look at that as well. We've got a question as well about directors shareholdings. I think there's probably a there's probably a misunderstanding, I think, probably in the market how that works sometimes. So the over time, I think a lot of the directors put a fair fair amount of money in. Sometimes that has been diluted down.

18:56 And unfortunately and that's obviously unfortunate for directors, and I would definitely include myself in that. And, you know, over the years, over the last twenty years, I've put, you know, most of my life savings into MEDIAZEST. And, obviously, that's not a huge holding at the minute, which is frustrating for me. But, obviously, I've allowed that to happen and been diluted for the the better good of all shareholders. So there's probably, yes, a misunderstanding in market, how that works. So happy to clear that up. If you go back through the, the r and s's, you can see that. Next question. Do you have to chase business? Does it come to you? Well, we we it's actually Paul, we've actually we've actually hired a a group of people who who have worked in the audio visual marketplace and who work for a large corporate to try and put together this kind of strategy, then they they didn't work for them anymore.

19:48 So they have great contracts in the marketplace, and they are bringing us a a large number of potential prospects for us to look at so we can we can really sift through that group very quickly without diverting our management resources to to looking at acquisitions and taking our eye off the board about running the business. So so we are looking for for very large a large number of companies. And I think the the the other two criteria is that we want to see they've got very good solid customer base, and they do have some recurring revenue. So those are the two things that we're really looking for. Yeah. Sorry. On the acquisition side. Yeah. Yeah. And then on, so the question next question was, do you have to chase business, or does it come to you? I think very much we have to work very hard on the business.

20:36 As Keith mentioned as well, we've been in the industry a long time, and we've talked to lots and lots of people. We have lots of great relationships with both manufacturers. So people like Samsung, LG, and they have customers that they need help with, you know, sometimes to deploy solutions to and also their manufacturing product. But, you know, we can get involved and help them deliver that for the customer, and also with agencies, in the creative sectors where, you know, they've got incredible ideas and strategies, but they need some execution as well. So we have partners that are fantastic in sort of introducing leads to us. We go out ourselves proactively. We did a lot of work last year on, on marketing. We had an event, for the fifty years, and we also had a sort of thought leadership event where we have people to speak as well, which is at, Samsung's, store in Cold Rock's Yard here in London.

21:27 If you if you will know that. So, yeah. So I think, we chase very hard. We've got multiple avenues where we get customers from. So thanks, Paul. Peter, with increased recurring revenue, how sticky are these contracts? And what's typical renewal or churn profiles? A really good point, Peter. I think on the, it is very sticky because we talk to lots of different people in an organization. So, for example, we might be talking to store format, store design team. We might be talking to marketing. We're definitely gonna be talking to IT. We're probably talking to finance. So what that does mean is it it is quite sticky if you do a good job. We work extremely hard, and we pride ourselves of being the top end of the market, to deliver that. So that means that churn is generally very low.

22:13 Occasionally, it does happen, but, yeah, we've been very lucky, I think, and and worked very hard to ensure that hasn't been an issue for us. What it does mean is when you put something in, the network tends to grow and renewals tend to follow. And if you think about that in in kind of physical context, if you look at a a company like pets at home, were they to move away from us, they'd have to get someone to go around to all their stores and take out all the screens, put in new screens, and it's quite a quite a big decision to do that. So as long as you're doing a good job and you keep the service levels up, they are very sticky contracts. Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. Graham, and what's your current cash position? So cash position, obviously, it fluctuates day to day, but it'll be several 100,000 now. Several, just to make sure I'm speaking clearly.

23:02 And that's obviously as a result of the improved, the improved performance. And like I said, last year, we were up to 99,000, but it's obviously improved since then. That includes paying off the loan the, sorry, the loans, the, invoice discounting facility. So, you know, we're seeing strong growth on the cash side of it. How will you finance the acquisitions? But I I think that that our our initial thoughts on on acquisitions is that we would we want to try and and structure them in a buyout format. So so put a small amount down as a as a as a first installment, and then pay over a birth two, three, or four year period depending on the kind of business and the the the the the aspirations of the owner of that business. A lot of these businesses will be owner managed, and and so therefore, you know, we've got to look at at at at that over over the period of time that suits their personal profile.

24:02 In terms of doing the acquisition, it makes it much easier because the due diligence process is much simpler because you haven't got to therefore put all your pound notes down on day one and hope that they are going to produce the profit, and you pay them on an exit PE, which is agreed upfront. So so hoping we will be able to do most of that within our existing cash flow. Thanks. Next question, how do you keep ahead of the hackers? That's a very good question. We have significantly invested in 25 in our cybersecurity side of things. So we are cyber cyber essentials, certified, and we've a very good score on that. But it's an ongoing basis, an ongoing battle, unfortunately, every day to make sure that all of our systems are secure.

24:52 We're seeing clients actually increasingly, wanting to put stuff not on the networks because they've had issues, and wanting to use sort of stand alone routers. And obviously, gives us an opportunity to sell more services in and data and ongoing data in terms of mobile data. But it's an it's an unfortunate state at first, but I think, you know, that's where we are. And, obviously, for us, a lot of what we're doing is, yeah, publishing to, an end customer for our clients, marketing material that's public domain anyway. So we're generally not dealing with sensitive material. We don't keep a lot of, customer data. It's not a lot of personal data. We're not keeping, you know, individuals, account details, anything like that. So that helps. But, yeah, we work very hard, the team on the IT side, to make sure that we, you know, we keep all those structures in place. And, actually, that's an increasing demand from our clients. They wanna see what we've got. The Cyber Essentials, I think, was a, you know, reaction to the the market wanting to see that we're taking that seriously, and we have the right checks and balances in place, to protect them and protect us.

25:56 That's great, Jeff. Keith, if I may just jump back in there, thank you for addressing all those questions from investors today. But, Jeff, before I redirect investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is very important to you and the company, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments? Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. I think, first of all, thank you again for listening. Thanks for joining this webinar. We think, you know, over the last few years, obviously, we've we've shown, you know, considerable improvement in performance. As I said, the improvement in the balance sheet, I think, is really significant to help us grow. We're delighted to have Keith on board to really help us drive that side of it, and we think there's a great opportunities in the market on the m and a side that we can manage, and grow significantly and really use and utilize the fact we're a PLC. So, yes, I think it's a really exciting time. Think f y twenty six is gonna be even better for us. We're really excited to see what we can deliver there and beyond.

26:48 Fantastic. Indeed for attending. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff Keith. Thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations? On behalf of the management team, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.