NAHL Group (LSE:NAH) — Interim Results for the half year ended 30 June 2025

0:00 Good afternoon, and welcome to the NAHL GROUP PLC Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and could be submitted at any time via the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to James Ceralis, CEO. Good afternoon, sir. Thank you, Lily, and good afternoon, everyone. I am James Ceralis. I'm CEO of NAHL GROUP, and I'd like to welcome you to NAHL's interim results presentation. This covers the six months to the 06/30/2025.

0:46 We released our interim results on the September 24, and we're gonna give you a bit of an overview of those results today and try and answer your questions. So with me here today is Chris Haim, the group's CFO, and we're going to work through the presentation, which should be on your screen now and is also available in the Investors section of our website. That's www.nahlgroupplc.co.uk. I'm going to take us through the highlights for the first six months of the year. And for those of you who are new to the business, I'll give you a short introduction into who we are and what we do. I'll then hand over to Chris to present more detail on our strong growth in profitability and cash generation. Then we'll dig into the results of each of our two trading businesses in more detail, and we'll finish with an outlook. There should be plenty of time for questions at the end and in fact, I can see that we've already had some questions come through. So if you do want to submit a question, then please do so and we'll try to answer as many as we can.

1:47 So without further ado, let's get started. So first of all, I'm pleased with NAHL's solid performance in the first half. The group's delivered a performance in line with the board's expectations with strong growth in profitability and cash generation as well as a reduction in net debt to a ten year low. Revenue for the group was in line with the previous year at 19,200,000, and profit before tax increased by 289% to GBP 1,900,000, which included an 89% increase in the operating profits for our Consumer Legal Services division. Basic earnings per share was up 3p sorry, was 3p, and that was up over 300% on last year.

2:34 And cash generation remained very strong, buoyed by the growth in cash from settlements in NAHL, with free cash flow up 119% at GBP 1,500,000. This allowed us to reduce our net debt to a ten year low of GBP 5,600,000, that was down from GBP 7,100,000 at the start of the year. If I look at the operational highlights for our two divisions. Well, in our Consumer Legal Services division, the turnaround of our personal injury business continues. And I'm pleased to report that lead generation has stabilized after a challenging year in 2024. I mentioned that underlying operating profit was up 89% to £1,600,000 and £1,400,000 of that came from our personal injury business, which was double what it did in the first half of twenty twenty four, having rebounded well in the year.

3:29 Our integrated law firm, National Accident Law or NAHL, is having a strong year. NAHL settled sixteen forty eight claims in H1, which generated £5,300,000 of cash. That was 33% more than last year. The business also delivered a 57% increase in average settlement values, which we'll talk more about later on. As I said earlier, the lead generation has stabilized after a challenging year last year, I and the team have effectively managed inquiry acquisition costs to under historical levels, saving £1,300,000 in marketing costs. In total, the business generated GBP 6,552 new inquiries and a total of 2,200 new inquiries were passed into NAHL, which we estimate will be worth GBP 2,900,000 in future revenues and cash by maturity.

4:25 Turning to our Critical Care division then. And revenues, operating profit and cash from operations all increased in the first half, and the business maintained its strong operating profit margins at 31.5%. I'm pleased to report that our expert witness services continued to experience high demand. And in case management services, well, the market has been more challenging, but the management team have taken several steps to address these challenges and we're monitoring progress with these closely. One of these initiatives that I'm particularly excited about is the launch of a new proposition called Bush and Co Kids, which is designed to deliver outstanding child focused support for our younger clients and I'll expand more on that later in the presentation. So those are the highlights so far in 2025.

5:17 And before I hand over to Chris to talk through the results in more detail, I thought I'd provide you with a brief recap of who we are and what we do, particularly for those of you who are new to our business. Well, NAHL is a leader in The UK consumer legal services and catastrophic injury markets. We help people who've had an accident or suffered medical negligence that wasn't their fault to get their lives back on track. In our thirty year history, we've helped over 1,000,000 customers access over a billion pounds in compensation by providing legal support and rehabilitation services. We provide services and products to individuals and businesses through our two divisions, which we call Consumer Legal Services and Critical Care. In Consumer Legal Services, we're one of The UK's leading providers of personal injury advice, services and support.

6:07 Now we have a strong heritage in this market, in fact, we've helped more people injured in accidents in The UK than anyone else. Through our trusted brands, National Accident Helpline and Underdog, we guide accident victims through the steps of making a personal injury claim. We triage those claims. And for those that we think have legal merit, we either process those claims in our own fully integrated law firm, National Accident Law, or we pass them to one of our panel of specialist third party law firms or to our joint venture, which is called your law for processing. Now distributing claims to the panel provides us with access to quick profit and cash flow with firms typically paid in thirty days. However, appetite for this service has declined over the past ten years due to regulatory pressures on law firms, which ultimately led to us launching our own law firm in 2019.

6:59 And if we process these claims ourselves in National Accident Law, then we achieve higher levels of profit, but with a longer working capital cycle as the claims take an average two to three years to process. And the joint venture helps us to balance those two extremes. Also in this division, we operate a small but profitable property searches business called Searches UK. Now in our other division, Critical Care, our Bush and Co business is a market leader in expert witness reports, immediate needs assessments and case management rehabilitation services in The UK. We support children, young people and adults following a catastrophic injury or clinical negligence. And Bush and Co deals with the most serious injuries often leading to life changing disabilities. And these include acquired brain injuries and spinal cord injuries with claim settlements exceeding £500,000 and usually into millions.

7:53 We also launched an award winning care proposition in 2021, which is growing rapidly and offers peace of mind for customers who directly employ nurses and carers. This happens generally after their claim is settled. So those are our two trading divisions. We also have a centralized shared services division, which provides strategic leadership and support with funding and governance. And over the years, we've built an inclusive and supportive culture with a strong focus on employee engagement, and that helps us to recruit and retain top talent across The UK. We're proud to have been recognized externally for this culture, having been awarded the gold standard by investors and people and included in Best Small Companies list in recent years. So hopefully, you should now have a good overview as to who we are and the progress that we've made so far this year.

8:44 And I'm now going to hand over to Chris, who's going to take you through a review of our financial results. Thank you, James. Starting with the P and L. Revenue was broadly flat with the first half of last year at GBP 19,200,000. We saw a 2% growth in Critical Care whilst Consumer Legal Services was 3% lower. And within that Consumer Legal Services number, personal injury revenues were 5% lower, and this was partially offset by a 7% increase in our searches business. In underlying profit terms, profit grew by over 70% to £3,200,000 with underlying operating profit margin improving from 9.6% to 16.5%. A key contributor to this was the Consumer Legal Services division, which grew operating profits by 89% to GBP 1,600,000 in the period. This was largely driven by cost savings alongside continued improvements within the law firm.

9:36 Operating profit in Critical Care was up 1% at GBP two point six million, and we saw GBP 500,000 reduction in amortization relating to business combinations following full amortization being reached in 2024. We incurred £200,000 in exceptional costs relating to the aborted sale process for Bush and Co, and this took statutory operating profit to $3,000,000 Profits attributed to noncontrolling interests was slightly lower than last year at $800,000 and net interest has fallen 50% to $200,000 in the period due to reduction in net debt. This resulted in an underlying operating PBT of GBP 2,100,000,287% higher than the 600,000 delivered in the first half of twenty twenty four. Statutory PBT was up 289% to 1,900,000. Moving on to cash. We enjoyed another strong period on cash generation.

10:29 Free cash flow, as James has already outlined, was 119% higher than last year at 1,500,000 Underlying cash generated from operations grew 33% to $3,200,000 and cash conversion was again strong at 102 percent. We continue to manage cash in the personal injury business with investment in new cases, and the business was again cash generative, delivering GBP 600,000 of cash after drawings made to the LLP members. This is in part driven by continued increase in cash collection from settlements, which were up again 32% to GBP 5,300,000 in the period. We generated £2,300,000 of cash in the Critical Care business. That was 7% higher year on year, and there were £400,000 in cash savings from the Shared Services division. Finally, the free cash flow, as James already outlined, meant our net debt reduced further to that ten year low at 5,600,000 and that compares to GBP 9,000,000 we saw at the end of the first half last year and the 7,100,000 we saw in December 2024.

11:23 And I'll pass back to James, who'll give an overview of the Consumer Legal Services division. Thanks, Chris. Turn to the next slide. So our strategy for growth in the personal injury market remains to build a sustainable integrated law firm, growing the value of claims that we process ourselves in NAHL to generate higher returns. And we're making good progress, but coming into the year, I felt like we could do even better. And for that reason, I made a number of changes to the leadership team in this business and established a new senior management team comprised of heads of the departments to help drive change in the business. And that team are focused on delivering seven strategic priorities.

12:13 This includes maximizing the return on our marketing spend. It includes developing more value from our book of claims in NAHL, realizing the full panel opportunity, and delivering exceptional service to our customers. And I'll give a more detailed update on these priorities with the final results. But I'm pleased to report that we're making good progress, and you can start to see that in the results that we're achieving. Now revenues in the first half decreased modestly to GBP 11,000,000. That was due to a 5% reduction in revenues from the PI business, whilst residential property revenues grew by 7%. But our underlying operating profit, as Chris said earlier on, increased 89% to GBP 1,600,000, with personal injury contributing GBP 1,400,000,000.

13:00 And after deducting the noncontrolling interest, which relate to our joint venture, the division generated profitable tax of 800,000 and both of our personal injury and residential property businesses were cash generative. Now I talked earlier in the year about challenges that the business faced in lead generation in 2024, and these were caused by a contracted market and really compounded with a series of major changes to Google search algorithms, including the launch of AIO. Now these had a really significant impact on the organic search results for firms across our sector, but also in fact across all sectors. And at NAH, while we fared relatively well through these changes and we held our search ranking positions, many of our competitors across the industry responded by aggressively investing in paid search and that led to a spike in costs for everyone. Now we were impacted by this in NAH and also through some of our partnerships and that resulted in inquiry acquisition costs increasing to levels that we've never seen before in our thirty year history. So that's a bit of a recap, I suppose, about some of the challenges that we've been facing in the last eighteen months.

14:19 Now we responded to this challenge and we've been augmenting that response further in the first half of this year And just to give you a bit of a flavor for for what we've been doing, we've invested in our internal marketing team. We've recruited a marketing director who started with us in January to help us develop our marketing strategy, and we recruited a head of CRO and SEO who started this month and further strengthened our paid search team. Secondly, we have developed a much more targeted approach to Google search focused on the quality of leads rather than quantity by tracking those through to claims and improving our understanding of the outcome of those claims so that we can create a feedback loop to prioritize our search criteria.

15:06 Thirdly, we've been investing in organic search and we've rewritten the content across our website, And we've started investing incrementally in brand with the relaunch of our underdog website, which will help us to drive more volume in 2026. And finally, we've developed a number of new partnerships that should help us to reduce the risk of disruption from Google changes in the future. So we've covered a lot lot of ground in the last twelve months, but there's certainly lots more work to be done in this area. Our focus in the first half was to stabilize and reduce acquisition cost. I'm pleased to say that Team's efforts have had a positive effect. And you can see on the chart on the bottom right of this page that acquisition costs peaked around September 2024 at a level that was around onethree higher than the historical trend.

15:55 And since then, through the steps that I just mentioned, we've managed to get that back down and we ended the period at around 5% lower than that historical average. With regards to volume, well, I've explained previously that the panel opportunity has reduced materially over the past ten years and it was that which led us to launch our own law firm in 2019. However, whilst fewer in number than before, we continued to work with several high quality third party law firms and we distributed over 2,700 inquiries to the panel in the first half of the year. Our demand was fairly consistent throughout the first half, but it was significantly lower than last year. So whilst we satisfied all of that demand we received, that was the main reason that the total inquiry numbers reduced in the chart on the top right of the page.

16:48 We continued to distribute work to LawTogether, LLP, our joint venture law firm, which is operated in partnership with HCC solicitors. And LawTogether performed really strongly in the period and we distributed over 1,600 inquiries in the firm that compared to over 1,900 in the equivalent period last year. And 2,200 new inquiries were passed into NAHL processing, which represented 34% of the total that compares to 27% last year. Now in overall, this was lower than the number of new inquiries placed into NAHL last year as but we had to try and manage the recovery in lead generation and balance that with short term profitability as well.

17:35 And finally, I'm pleased to say that because we are being more targeted in our search criteria, we're seeing an improvement in the quality of work that we're generating, which means that claims that we're generating are more valuable and this is better for our panel firms, better it's for all together and it's better for us in NAHL as well. So I'm now going to hand back to Chris, who's going to take us through the performance of the claims book in NAHL. Chris? Thank you, James. Yes. So once the inquiry passes across to or some of those inquiries, 2,200 of them passed across to NAHL in the first half of this year, we track the performance on those on a cohort basis. And I think just before I get into the chart, I think it's worth saying that we've witnessed further improvement within the case performance over the past six months. We've seen that across all cohorts. We've already trailed that a little in the 5,300,000 cash that we collected in the first half. We're also seeing the individual value of the claims that are settling deliver higher returns than we initially expected.

18:35 So the chart on the screen, I'll just spend a few minutes taking you through that, what it means regarding the book of cases that are being worked within NAHL. Some of you will be familiar with these charts already, but for those who haven't seen them before, I'll just explain what they're showing. So when we look at the case progression performance of the law firm, we do this by grouping the cases that have been taken in on a cohort basis, and the cohort is based on the year that the claim started. So in this case on the screen, it's all the inquiries that went into the law firm in 2019. So in that year, we placed 2,415 new inquiries into the law firm and we expected those successful claims we expected the successful claims from those cases when they settled to generate us $2,300,000 in future revenue and cash when they settled. And you can see that from the pink bar to the left hand side.

19:25 The gray bars, they show the amount of cash that's actually been collected. So James outlined earlier on that these cases have a long life cycle. Some of them can take many years to settle. So this tracks the kind of maturity of that cohort, if you like, when the cash came through. So, for example, GBP 200,000 in 2019 was the first year and GBP 900,000 in 2020 and so on. Now to date, we've collected GBP 3,200,000 of cash from twelve twenty five settled claims in this cohort. And you'll already realize that that's far surpassing the £2,300,000 initial expectation. We'd already seen this by the time we got to December's results and have previously uplifted our estimates by £1,000,000 on this cohort. But given there are still 136 claims ongoing and we continue to see strong underlying case values, we have uplisted the valuation expectation by a further £100,000 That takes the total revaluations on this cohort to £1,100,000 and the overall cohort value to 3,400,000 overall.

20:21 So those 136 ongoing claims need to generate us £200,000 in future cash to reach that new expectation of 3,400,000 I've also shown the 2020 cohort, just for context, really. It's a similar story that we're seeing with 2020. Volumes were slightly higher. We placed GBP 3,587 million into law firm in 2020 and expected those to generate GBP 3,800,000 in future revenue and cash. Since then, we've collected £4,700,000 so again, have surpassed the value of the initial estimate. And that's from over 1,700 settled places so far. And that included the £400 of cash collected in the first half of twenty twenty five. There's two thirty one claims still to settle, and the estimated outturn of that cohort has been uplifted by a further 400,000 in the period, taking the total revaluation to £1,200,000 overall, and that moves the total cohort value to GBP 5,000,000.

21:18 Now a similar sort of value still to come. So there's GBP 200,000 that we're still expecting to generate from this cohort from those remaining two thirty one claims. But again, really strong consistent performance that we've seen across both of those years. We've included the charts for the cohorts relating to twenty twenty one to 2024 in the appendices that you can look at at your leisure, but you'll see it's a fairly similar picture that's building across each of those, which is really pleasing. In terms of the overall picture, so this is consolidated view of the cases. So this chart tracks the expected value of the new claims when we take them on and then against the cash that we actually generated from settlements in those calendar years. So you'll recognize some of these figures already. In the 2019 secondtion, the £2,300,000 in 2019, the £3,800,000 in 2020 from the previous two slides, they were the initial expectations of those cohorts when we put the cases in.

22:14 In 2019, we generated £200,000 of cash. We generated £1,300,000 in 2020 and so on. And what you'll see is from the early years of the law firm, as we're investing in new cases, it took some time for the cash to come through, and the value of the new claims added was higher than the cash generated in those particular years. We saw that change last year, where cash collected exceeded the value of new cases added for the first time, and we've seen a similar trend in the first half of twenty twenty five. James already mentioned we added 2,200 new inquiries into the law firm, and we expect those successful cases from those inquiries to generate us $2,900,000 in future revenue and cash. At the same time, we've generated $5,300,000 of cash from settlements of older cases. I spoke about the increases to cohort expectations relating to 2019 and 2020, but we've seen a similar dynamic in all the other cohorts, and that's taken a revaluation in the period to $1,100,000 This has been driven by an improvement in case settlement values. We witnessed that improve 57% year on year. So that's a huge increase that we're seeing come through. And that's partly driven by increased litigation rates that we're seeing in the law firm. So we're becoming a lot more tactical in terms of how we're deploying that litigation.

23:27 So this has two impacts, really. It drives higher settlement values for our customers but equally drives higher revenues for the law firm. And the total revaluation that we've seen to date since the law firm started is now stands at £6,200,000 so it's really pleasing. At the end of the period, NAHL was processing 7,530 ongoing claims. That's around 11% lower than the figure in December 2024. And these claims have an expected embedded value of £13,100,000 of future cash to come and around £9,600,000 of future revenue yet to be recognized. Overall, it's really pleasing to see the performance metrics in the law firm continue to improve and the material impact that this is having on case revenues. As volumes have been lower in the past twelve to eighteen months, the number of open cases has fallen.

24:12 And to stop this falling further and for NAHL to reach its medium term potential, the business would require investment in a greater number of inquiries going forward. I'm going to pass back to James, who will cover off Critical Care. Thanks, Chris. So let's now turn our attention to our other operating division, which is Critical Care. Bush and Co had another six months of growth with revenues up 2%, operating profit up 1% and cash from operations up 7%. And just to remind you that much of this revenue, the revenue that's in the business is recurring revenue as we provide clients with case management and care services over a number of years. We deliver some of our services through self employed associates, we've had a continuous focus over the past few years in recruiting the best and more experienced associates in key specialisms across the country and I'm pleased to report we've had another successful six months of delivering against this.

25:15 At the end of June, we were working with two twenty six expert witness associates, 15% more than the start of the year and 142 associate case managers, which is 8% higher in the period. The business continued to experience high demand for its expert witness services with revenues for this service line growing 11% in the period. The number of expert witness reports completed and issued to customers increased by 13% to seven nineteen reports and we have a strong pipeline of future work with new instruction numbers for expert witness reports broadly level with last year at six sixty seven instructions. But the most important numbers on this page are the unbelievably strong customer advocacy scores with 98% of customers saying that they were satisfied with our work and a 100% of our customers saying that they wouldn't hesitate in instructing us again, which is really pleasing.

26:15 So clearly, the demand is there. It's fueling our growth and our services are highly valued by our customers. And that's why it's so important that we continue to grow our capacity by increasing the network of associate expert witnesses witnesses in key specialisms and we're going to continue to focus on that. In case management services, well, the market has been more challenging, but the management team have taken several steps to address these challenges and we're monitoring progress closely. Revenues were down 9%, and the business delivered two ten initial needs assessment reports or INAs in the period. Instruction numbers at two thirty seven were broadly unchanged from last year. And at June 30, the business was servicing eleven fifty seven ongoing case management clients. That was down from thirteen eighty eight a year prior.

27:09 Now that number is important as it's the ongoing clients that generate recurring revenue. Pleasingly, the team again delivered remarkably high satisfaction levels from our customers and 98% advocacy scores. Now just to dig a little bit deeper into case management for a minute, the reduction in case management revenues that we're experiencing was down to two factors. So firstly, we've experienced a gradual decline in new instructions over the past few years. And instructions drive INAs and the majority of these INAs go on to result in ongoing case management. So it's a key metric. Secondly, I referenced the recurring revenue stream earlier, but we've witnessed an increase in the rate of discharges from ongoing case management over the past couple of years, which reduces the number of cases that our case managers can work on and subsequently bill on.

28:05 Now our analysis suggests that new instructions from insurers in particular fell, that they fell by 28% which appears to be driving a lot of this trend and the work that we've been getting from insurers tends to be less complex which results in early discharges or a shorter recurring profile. Now the management team have taken several steps to address these challenges including the recruitment of a new account management role to better support our insurer customers. We've been providing them with the MI that they require, ensuring that we get on their panels, etc. And this should all help to increase instruction numbers. Also, I mentioned earlier that we're focused on growing the number of associate case managers, which has increased from 132 to 142 in the period and ensuring that we recruit the right individuals with the right experience and in the right regions to support our customers.

28:59 We've also implemented an improved triage process for matching associates to new inquiries and that's helped us to improve conversion rates from inquiry to instruction. But I think the most promising new initiative for me is the introduction of Bush and Co Kids proposition that was launched at the end of last year. And this service aims to deliver really outstanding child centred support for our clients that's safe and effective and gives the child or the young person a greater voice through their rehab. It's been designed to complement our partnership with the Child Brain Injury Trust where together we offer The UK's leading case management service focused solely on childhood acquired brain injury. And the reason that this focus on children and young people is strategically important is because these cases are generally more complex and require more specialized case management support for longer and this results in higher levels of monthly billing and longer case durations as well. Now Bush and Co have worked on children's cases for years, you've heard me talking about this previously, but we hope that pulling it all together as a more coherent proposition with increased focus and recruiting more people who specialize in this area should result in accelerated growth in this really important segment of the market.

30:18 And so far, the response from our customers has been quite encouraging. Finally, in critical care, Push and Co Care Solutions has also had a good first half and grew revenues by 26% to 400,000. The number of ongoing care packages, which resulted in monthly recurring revenues, they increased from 31 at the start of the period to 34. And the team continued to provide a great service and to build a great reputation in the marketplace. Just to remind you, they won the Support in the Industry award at the 2024 PI Awards. So that's a quick overview of the results for the first half.

31:06 If I turn to the outlook, well, we've been encouraged so far by the performance in the second half, and we remain confident in delivering on market expectations for the full year. So in July and August, while in Consumer Legal Services, we generated 2,452 new inquiries. That was 12% higher than the monthly average in the first half, and we did that at a lower inquiry acquisition cost. And NAHL collected cash from settlements of GBP 1,500,000 compared to GBP 1,400,000 in the same period last year. In Critical Care, we issued two thirty expert witness reports in July and August that compared to two thirty nine in the same period last year and 81 INA reports compared to 88 last year.

31:59 We've also further strengthened the Bush and Co management team with a new divisional finance director who supports our growth plan for case management. And at a group level, net debt has fallen further to £5,500,000 at August 31, that was down from £7,100,000 just to remind you at the start of the year. So that brings the formal presentation to an end. I'd like to thank you all for joining Chris and I for NAHL's interim results today. We've got some time to take questions, but for the moment, I'm gonna hand you back to Lily. James, Chris, thank you very much for your presentation this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd 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 your investor dashboard.

32:56 As you can see, we have received number of questions throughout today's presentation. But please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Okay. Thanks, Lily. We've received a number of questions, so thank you very much for those who have sent in questions. The first one says, could you please provide an update on the timeline for the ongoing strategic review and outline the options currently under consideration? Well, since the conclusion of the push and co sale process, the board's been working with its advisers to explore alternative options to accelerate value for shareholders. And in terms of those options, I'd say that nothing is off the table. I think we've got a number of strategic opportunities to add scale to our businesses, and we need to carefully consider the best place to deploy our capital.

33:52 I'd say good progress has been made in our personal injury business, which has returned to profitability. But as you saw from the charts that Chris talked you through earlier on about NAHL's book of claims. Over the past couple of years, we've been realizing more cash from the book than new claims going in, and NAHL would require higher levels of investment in new inquiries and case processing if it were to reach its medium term potential. And at the moment, we're balancing that ambition with selling work to the panel in order to maintain profitability and cash generation. So investing in accelerating our investment in more claims is something that we need to consider very carefully. And in Critical Care, while there's several exciting acquisition opportunities that have come across my desk, it's been quite hard to deliver in the past in this area as we've been capital constrained, but with net debt falling to the levels that we've talked about, I think this now opens up new possibilities.

34:49 We've also looked at divestments in the past as well. So some exciting opportunities. I'd like to thank all of our shareholders for their feedback. That's always welcome. Their input is always welcome. We're moving at pace on this, but we're not going to be rushed. It's an important piece of work, and I'm not going to put a date on it, but we'll update shareholders as soon as it's appropriate to do so. So the next question is about Bush and Co. The results of Bush and Co are not as strong as they were last year, and it looks like the market has turned more challenging. Do you think the sale process was a distraction for the team? Well, last year was a very strong year for Bush and Co, and I'm pleased that we're delivering growth again in 2025.

35:35 I think you're right to say the market's more challenging, particularly in case management, and I've heard that from a number of our competitors too. We've got some plans in place to try and turn those trends around. We talked about those moments ago, but we need a bit of time before we see some results. And with regards to the sale process, well, it was unfortunate that we were forced to announce that process so early, but we put a lot of effort into communicating with our people and reassuring them about the future. But whenever you're planning change, there's uncertainty. And I think I think that it's inevitable that uncertainty about the future of the business is gonna serve as a distraction to the team. But that's in the past now. We've been having some great conversations with the management team about the future of the business, and and I'm very excited about the future of of Bush and Co and prospects over the coming years. So hopefully, you can move past that now.

36:32 The next question is what's the growth potential of Bush and Co Kids and Care Solutions in the medium term? And how material could these become to group revenue? If I have a go with that, Chris, you can add in as you like. So I'd say Bush and Co Care Solutions, that's been growing at 25% to 30% growth rate since we launched it back in 2021. It did 400,000 in the first half. I think our immediate target is to get that up to a billion pounds, and I certainly hope to do that over the next twelve months. Bush and Co Kids, I think the opportunity there really remains to be seen, but we hope that that's going to lead to more INAs.

37:26 Those RNAs go on to hopefully convert into ongoing case management. And the benefit there is those cases are more complex, so we get more complex cases that we can build more for, and they last for a longer duration as well. So I think it's an exciting opportunity. That's what I'd say to that. Anything No. I think that's the key point, really. I think for me, it's the longevity of those cases, and the fact that gives us a predictability of revenue going out into the future. So definitely the right area for us be focusing on. Okay. The next question is for Martin. Given the mixed performance across the divisions, what are management's top priorities to ensure the delivery of full year expectations? Do you want to share your priorities, and Matt can maybe add in some as well?

38:11 Yes. More of the same, really, I guess. So we've seen a strong first half on cash. There's more to do. So I think the broker has an estimate. They want expectation out of around net debt coming down to about 3,000,000 at the end of the year. We think that's doable. Yeah. So we we continue to drive for the same metrics we had in the first half, really. It's it's push for cash. It's just getting many of those settlements through the law firm as quickly as we can. So we're trying to stop operational leakage wherever we possibly can, and that gives us a profit and cash benefit. And then in the critical care business, yeah, the expert witness side of things has been going really well in terms of the growth that we've seen each of the last couple of years. Case management, hopefully, with the help of Bush and Kids, we'll we'll start to unlock some of that. That's probably less of an impact on this year and more into the future. But, yeah, a lot of the I guess a lot of the initiatives are the the ones that we've already kind of trialed in this in this session.

39:03 Yeah. Absolutely. I think in in for me, in critical care, I think the focus has to be on expert witness, which is which is driving growth. I think I think that's something that we need to continue that that growth profile, particularly in the shorter term case management. I think it's gonna take a little while longer to see the benefit of those changes that we've made, but I'm I'm I'm confident they will come through. And in personal injury, it's it's it's what we've been doing, really, as Chris said. So keeping a strong grip on acquisition costs, incremental volume growth and making sure NAHL continues issuing and the sort of a more tactical approach to issuing claims settling claims as well. Thanks for the question.

39:50 The next question is around so it's what confidence do you have in sustaining earnings growth into FY 2026? Any comments on that, Chris, to start? Yes. So again, I guess a bit of a rinse and repeat of some of the earlier answers, really. So in the Bush and Co business, I think it continues to leverage the expert witness growth that we're seeing. There's a lot of demand for the work. It's making sure we've got the right experts in place to be able to fulfill that demand. Case management, the Bush and Co kids area, the extra investment we've put in the team to help unlock some of the case management growth becomes important. So that's that's what I guess they're the two key areas, I'd say, on the critical care side. On the personal injury side, it's a different slightly different dynamic on PI, I think. It's so we are we aren't putting as many inquiries into law firm at the moment as we have done in recent years. We are balancing that demand for profit alongside the cash investment that we need to make to grow that book for the longer term.

40:50 That said, there's still just there's still 7,500 ongoing claims that we're working. There's cash value of $13,000,000 there, profit value revenue value, sorry, of just under £10,000,000 And the law firm is performing really well in terms of the operational measures we're seeing. We're seeing higher values come out. We're seeing cases settle a bit quicker than we have done in the past as well. But the tipping point of that business is scale is our friend. There's a there's quite a big cost to being a law firm. You have a bigger regulatory cost and the back office cost that you need for being a regulated business. The more we can put in, the more we dilute that fixed fixed cost overhead that we have and the more we can grow the margin. So, yes, it comes back to a question of where do we deploy our capital really and should they go to the Bush and Co business or should they go to the personal injury business? And that, again, talks back to the strategy piece that James outlined earlier.

41:41 Yeah. I I I would agree with all that. And think in PI, in particular, you know, we at the moment, we do have a good grip on the cost of acquisition, and and and we've got some further plans to deploy incremental investments to derisk the Google the Google risk around that, around paid search. And in NAHL, the business is fairly consistent now in terms of the revenue it generates every month and the claims that settles every month and the cash that, that results in. The question for me is how much investment, how much do we invest in that business because we are gradually running down that book. And if we're to realize the potential in that business, we need to invest a bit more.

42:29 So that comes down to the decisions that we're taking at the moment, where do we deploy capital, how much to invest in that business and in critical care as well. Okay. Next question is about something different. It's about AI and automation. So how much incremental margin uplift could AI and automation deliver across NAHL's claim processing? Well, it's a great question. It's a very topical question. And in fact, we are already utilizing AI tools across the business in in certainly in pockets across the business, largely to automate repetitive tasks.

43:16 In marketing, we're using it enhance some of the copy that's in our website and social media posts. We are using it to compare our website with those of our competitors and identify opportunities to improve. We're using it to try and analyze and block fortunate clicks on our website to try and drive down the cost of acquisition. In IT, we are using it to deploy code to the website, a number of different areas. Actually, we've we've developed a FAQ chatbot in our custom service part of the business. We have developed an email data extraction tool to extract attachments from emails and file them with claims in our case management system. So there's lots of different pockets that we've been using it.

44:13 But what we want to do in the second half of the year is take a more strategic view to to AI, and we are doing a piece of work around that and and just trying to understand where the the bigger opportunities are. And so we need to do that work and and develop those use cases and and the business cases that sit alongside that. But I think it is a really exciting area to to develop. I think the legal processes are sort of right for this kind of thing, this kind of efficiency tool and I think we're all quite excited about the opportunity to do that. So that is something we're going to start looking at in the second half of the year in a more strategic sense. And the last question we've got at the moment is from Joshua.

45:02 Would potential acquisitions and investments in NAHL be paid for through cash flow or taking on further debt? So I think up to now, we've been making small investments across the business and we've been doing that through cash flow and through utilizing our revolving credit facility, which we have. But you would have seen through the slides that Chris put up with our net debt. I'll just bring that up, actually. You can see how we've successfully driven down our net debt over the past few years. You can see there the net debt to period end has been driven down. So I mean, we have quite a bit of debt capacity at the moment, I'd say, given the profitability of the business.

45:52 And think that could be utilized to either do potential acquisitions or organic investments. That's part of the conversation we're having at the moment about the future strategy. I think there's a number of opportunities that we've got, but I think whether we spread that capital across multiple parts of the business or we try and focus on one part of the business and have more impact, that's something else we need to consider. So that's very much the focus of what we're talking about at the moment. But we do have that capacity and there's lots of exciting opportunities, I think, we've got to deploy that capital. So that brings our questions to an end. We don't have any more questions, but thank you very much for those of you who did submit questions.

46:40 And I'm going hand back to Lily. James, Chris, thank you for answering all those questions you have from investors. And of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company, James, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments? Yes. I'm pleased with NAHL's solid first half performance. We delivered strong growth in profitability and cash generation, and we reduced net debt to a ten year low. The continued turnaround of our personal injury business and the stabilization of lead generation has been particularly pleasing. And in Critical Care, the division increased revenues, operating profit and cash from operations in the first half. I'm further encouraged by the group's performance so far in the second half, and I'm pleased to confirm that the Board remains confident in delivering on market expectations for the full year.

47:36 James, Chris, thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close the session and shall now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team could better understand your views and expectations? This may only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of NAHL GROUP PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.