accesso Technology Group plc (ACSO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to accesso Interim Results 2026. [Operator Instructions] I would like to remind all participants that this call is being recorded. I will now hand over to Lee Cowie, CEO, to start the presentation.

Thank you, everybody, for joining us today for the presentation of our Half 1 2026 results. I thought it would be useful just to start introducing myself. My name is Lee Cowie, and I am the Chief Executive Officer here at accesso. I've been CEO since May, and I'm very proud and privileged to have stepped into Steve Browns' shoes. And this is my first opportunity to talk to you about our results. You may know that I was previously COO here at accesso on where it was for about 18 months. But I have a long breadth and depth in the industry having served as Merlin's Chief Technology Officer, and I have a tail duration of Merlin with of about 7 years. So we're going to talk you through our interim results today and then a little bit later on, Matt, our Chief Financial Officer, will go through the numbers. First, I think, just to reacquaint ourselves with who we are. And I thought it would be useful to give you an overview of us as a business and the depth and breadth of capabilities that we are able to bring to market. We have, for a long time, been 1 of the largest providers of technology into a really exciting and interesting sector. And our technology such as location-based entertainment across attractions, so those would be your theme parks, zoos, cultural exhibits. We also have a very strong presence in ski in North America, in particular, and in live entertainment, which is your seated venues, your arenas or stadiums. And of course, now in hospitality with our products that do food and beverage. And we operate at quite some considerable scale, as you'll see from that. Our ecosystem, our set of technologies exist to monetize every interaction between a guest visiting an attraction and the operator, it removes friction from the purchase it enables the operator to better monetize the experience and it enables the visitors to have a friction-free better day. That's an attraction. And in the next slide, you'll see that we have some admirable customers scattered across the globe. And at this point, I thought it would be useful just to give you an overview of how we see the world around us developing and where we're seeing progress and upside and significant opportunity. As we start with North America, we see very strong traction for our products, particularly in ski, particularly with the introduction of our new capabilities in payments. Ski has traditionally been underserved by technology providers, and we're able to bring sophistication and cost scale to a market that has been left largely alone, particularly in the payment space. And we're seeing a lot of traction and a lot of interest in both our payments capabilities and our new intelligence platforms. And we have a very substantial installed base across some very large clients there. In general terms, we're seeing broadly static volumes on ticketing. We are seeing, in some areas, interesting increases in per cap spend inside attractions. And we're also seeing a lot of interest with our new capabilities that we're bringing to market for net new logos. Over into Europe now. And again, a similar story to the U.S., we're seeing broadly static attendance levels, but we are seeing some venues increase their revenue against a difficult economic backdrop. And again, we're seeing per caps increase. So a bit of a mixed big picture in Europe, but still getting some interesting incoming new opportunities. Middle East, despite the tensions in the region and the geopolitical problems that they have, we are still seeing good traction. We're seeing venues continue to talk to us about expansion and new openings. And we have some interesting conversations with large new logos over there that we don't yet have. So although it is a difficult and unpredictable market, at the minute, we are not seeing that being particularly impactful on us though. It does remain a watch item for us as we play out in the rest of the year. And then the story largely repeats across Asia Pacific and down into Australia, a similar theme to what we're seeing in other geographies. So on to our summary of the H1 results so far. So you're probably not surprised given the kind of market backdrop I've just given, we're largely trading as expected. But what we are seeing underneath the detail of that is growth in ticketing and our distribution capabilities, which have been masked a little bit by some of the contract changes that we previously communicated to the market at the end of last year. So whilst we're seeing growth in ticketing in that part of our business, it has been offset, which leaves us with broadly flat revenue in the half. Where we are seeing some benefit come through is the efficiency measures that we took earlier this year, where we substantially reduced cost and that has been flowing through into EBITDA. We're also starting now to see the payoff of some of the investment that we've made in AI capabilities. That has been an expense item for us through the year, but it is starting to show benefit in the form of us materially accelerating the development of road map features and functions, and in some cases, by up to 6 months. One of the early actions I've taken as new CEO is review our overall strategy and our leadership team. And I have put in place within the first 4 months, a new direction, a new philosophy on who we are, and I've refreshed the -- and reappointed the senior leadership team. And so we're looking forward to H2 and the years ahead with a new revitalized approach to accesso. I want to give you a high-level overview now of some of the key features of that strategy. We are continuing to work on this through the course of the year, and we'll be able to provide a lot more detail at our annual results. But I think it's useful for me to give you a flavor for how we're thinking about our world and how we're showing up in this market. Firstly, by way of a little bit of backdrop, a large number of our customers, both existing and prospective, are approaching us and talking to us about AI. And this is a theme running across pretty much all of the conversations that we're having. By and large, the attraction sector doesn't have access to large IT tech teams. And so they look for vendors like us to help them navigate technical change. And a lot of the conversations we're having are about them saying, are we AI ready, do we have the capabilities to help them navigate the uncertainty that AI is providing, is our infrastructure able to support them through a period of change that is quite hard to predict. And that's starting to weigh a little bit on decision-making cycles. It's not into slow some decision-making cycles down, and people are taking a little bit longer to evaluate technology. But the good news for us is that we can answer, yes, to every single 1 of those questions. And we can do that in a way that few of our competitors can because we have a very broad and capable embedded ecosystem in the core of the venues that we have been proactively enabling to become AI ready. And our ecosystem, which is how we're talking about our capabilities, which is on the next slide, is really how we bring that to market. So we aren't talking about ourselves as a set of products. We're talking about ourselves as a set of relevant capabilities that each and every one of our customers has nascent in their business and needs help with evolving and growing and navigating the AI future. We deploy capabilities in intelligence, and we did that through the execution of the exhibit transaction last year. We have capabilities in commerce. That's perhaps what we are most known for our ticketing platforms, are known for being very high conversion, able to maximize basket value and convert customers on websites far greater than the majority. In fact, I would say, all of our competitors. We have our capabilities inside the venue where we can help curate experiences, where we can have targeted messaging to people in venue where we can service their needs for queuing food and beverage for retail. And we can provide that over 1 unified operating infrastructure. Now, each of those capabilities we can deploy independently, but they become much more powerful when we deploy them in unison at a venue. And the next slide talks how we're exploiting our capabilities to drive that much more powerful value. So whereas previously, we've talked about products, we now talk about a software ecosystem, and there's a very clear reason why we do that. We have the ability to deploy our products at every point at which money changes hands inside a venue. Now, if they deploy a product, an element of the guest journey runs on our capabilities. But that also generates data and that generate -- that data generated into our excessive intelligence platform provides the venue with insight. It gives them the ability to learn more about what customers are doing, why they're doing it. Coupling that with external data allows menus to put that information in context and make assessments about what might be happening in the future, such as predicting attendance or understanding what demographics may or may not be visiting a venue and then understanding why that is and what they might be able to do about it. So it creates capabilities to allow venue used to be much more targeted in their marketing. Now of course, the more products venue takes from us the more data that is generated, the more we feed into the intelligence platform, which only serves to improve the intelligence and improves the accuracy of forecasting. It improves our understanding of what's going on in the venue, not just in the WIP journey, but also inside the journey and then perhaps in follow-up through CRM. And that sharper intelligence, of course, drives better outcomes for a venue, which allows them to improve their own revenue to attract more guests to be more effective at yields, to set better pricing, which would further encourage them to adopt more products from accesso. And, of course, with the way in which we price our products, the more a venue sells, the more we make to end up generating this really powerful revenue flywheel that genuinely creates a win-win capability for both venue and ourselves. And our ecosystem runs very deep, which we talk about in the next slide. We have deep capabilities across those 4 pillars that I talked about and guest experience, mobile app, virtual queuing, which we are seeing continued interest in. We have got some very interesting conversations underway with very large operators to expand our virtual queuing offering. So despite having some difficult news last year, the picture this year is very different. And we're seeing continued interest in the virtual queuing offering. Commerce, of course, you know us for ticketing, but we also at point of sale. We now handle payments through Adient, and we can distribute tickets to any OTA so we can allow a venue to be present in any sales channel. And one of the things we are seeing is a fragmentation of sales channels across online travel agents, across agenetic commerce, across booking portals, but we have the capabilities to ensure our venues remain relevant wherever somebody is buying. And then, of course, we've got the intelligence and the capability platforms, the AI, agenetic powered platform that we have in the form of excessive intelligence, and all backed by our deep and global capabilities to provide a level of service that our competitors are unable to achieve. Let me talk a little bit now about what we've been doing within H1 off the back of that ecosystem strategy that we're now pursuing. And I just want to dive in a little bit more detail on 2 signature components of that strategy that really brought it all together and enabled us to talk about ourselves in a different way, and first, being an intelligent platform. And I'm very proud of the capability we have here, but I'm even more proud of the way in which our organization has integrated this and brought them in. In the space of just a few months, we've completed an acquisition. We have integrated the team into our organizational structure. Angie, who was leading that team has exhibit, now is our Chief Data and Intelligence Officer reporting into me. And we've also scaled the team. So we've recruited and improved their capabilities. We've embedded them in the commercial proposition, and we are actively selling it. And we're going out to market and generating an awful lot of interest with this capability. Five, we've already converted. But as you see there, our pipeline is substantial and long. And it is genuinely a conversation opener. It is genuinely, as I showed you within that flywheel, a capability that allows the rest of our ecosystem to make sense. And because of that, we are very excited about the opportunity we have ahead of us for this, and we're very excited about it being the capstone on our strategy. It gives us something very relevant to talk to venues about, particularly in the AI era. The next area that we've been focusing on, again, this has been a rapid evolution and rapid deployment. We signed a contract with Adient in about March this year. We have onboarded the capabilities. We've onboarded the technology. We've made it live. We've onboarded our first customer. And so we are up and running with that, and we have been prospecting well across our existing customers that we have 3 -- 13 customers already signed on onboard, and we have many, many more in the pipeline that we have active conversations with. And this provides us with largely untapped revenue opportunity. We think about as being deployed across 1,100 venues, 600 customers. We have an opportunity to have a conversation with the majority of them. And we will make money from that in the form of improved margin on payments, but we will also simplify our pricing structure to our customers because we can now approach them with 1 single price that includes embedded margin from the payments capability. It simplifies the number of vendors they need to manage, but also simplifies our commercial offering. So we make money on every transaction, it becomes a very simple conversation to say, well, we've already agreed a price with you, we just need to enable capabilities, and we will further monetize those additional transactions that are throwing -- flowing through things like F&B or retail or our queuing platform. And this really does simplify our whole proposition. So again, I'm very pleased with the progress we've made on bringing that on board, adopting it, making it live and onboarding existing customers, and there's much more to come there through the rest of the year. The other piece I'd like to talk about, I referenced it a little bit at the beginning, is our investment in AI. So not only are we investing in the platform to deliver AI capabilities to our customers with investing in our own agenetic capability, in engineering, in products, in operations, in finance, in HR, we have a belief that AI will impact every knowledge work over the next 18 months. And we've leaned hard into that with investments to back it. And we are seeing material benefit. Some of the capabilities that we have previously scheduled to deliver next year, we've actually been able to deliver this year. And as we continue to learn and grow and increase our ambition on agentic capabilities, we will progressively see that improve, and I'm very excited about the prospect for us becoming 1 of the first AI-first companies in our sector. So before I hand over to Matt to do the financial review, I just want to provide you with a recap of what I've been up to in my first 90 days here as CEO. We've worked hard to simplify our proposition so that we avoid the confusion of multiple product logos that we talk about where we enable an attraction through an ecosystem. We've simplified that as well in pricing so that we don't talk about multi pages of pricing list. We talk about 1 price. We've onboarded, we've enabled, we've grown our intelligence team, our capability. We've onboarded, we've launched and we've set live our first customer on payments, and we continually increase our operational readiness through a new leadership structure, a new leadership team and new capabilities that we're building internally. In the months ahead, we'll continue to refine the strategy that I've outlined here. We'll provide you with more detail at the end of the year. But our focus is on pipeline conversion. We have a material improvement in our pipeline, and we'll be focusing hard on converting that. We have go-lives on payments, on intelligence, on new logo wins that will be coming soon. And we'll be working to sell into our existing base, the broader ecosystem, which currently has less penetration than I think we deserve. And I think having a simple, more simple pricing, a clear view of how we better help and attraction will help us increase the amount of cross-sells into our existing customer base. And so you can see that from some of the stats at the bottom, the Half 1 17 new venues won, a material increase in the number of those venues taking multi-products from us. And I think that's early proof point that the ecosystem strategy resonates, that people are buying into it, where we see customers taking more than 1 product from us, and in some cases, the entire ecosystem from us. That's a proof point that how we're positioning and how we're talking about is starting to resonate in work. So I'm going to hand over to Matt now to talk you through the financials.

Thank you, Lee. So Lee touched on these earlier in the first few slides. I will reiterate them now and give a bit more color. So on the slide here, you'll see the key financial highlights. So our cash EBITDA, so our principal operating metric was $7.6 million for the period, which was 50% -- almost 50% up on the prior period, pleasingly, so -- but our revenue remained flat, and he touched on the reasons for why and we are going into more detail on the next slide at $67.8 million. The revenue actually excluding the virtual curing product was actually up 7.1%. So a good turnout for the period. And the underlying admin costs were down 6.1% following that cost reorganization, restructuring that Lee had mentioned. And we ended the period on $7.3 million of net cash, and that was after 2 significant capital allocation events being the tender that we completed in March -- mid-March and the subsequent acquisition of the product at the end of that same month. You can see that we returned GBP 14.5 million as part of that tender. And I'll touch on that on a later slide. On the right-hand side of this slide, you'll see the composition of our revenue, and those of you that followed us for a while, be familiar with this. At this point, we're about 85% repeatable revenue and consistent period over period, you'll see there the major component of that repeatable revenue being transactionally led are a revenue share or $0.08 per ticket or per transaction in most cases. And I'll take you through that breakdown of revenue in a bit more detail on the next slide. So this slide here is showing you that the full composition of our revenue, the revenue by type at the top there, that you can see the breakdown of the transactional revenue being virtual queuing, ticketing and distribution. You can see there the virtual queuing revenue down 50% period-over-period, and that's due to those 2 major contract changes that we had in that product that were announced earlier this year in January. But pleasingly, you can see the ticketing revenue being very robust and up 8.3% period-over-period, and that's related to, again, a lot of those customers with a contractual change and resilient per capita in resilient tendencies throughout the portfolio that we have. The distribution product had relatively flat revenues period-over-period. And then the other component parts of our repeatable revenue. So you see there the maintenance and support the platform fees and the recurring license fees, again, positive momentum through the period. The maintenance and support and recurring license is really driving that at 15.3% and 56% up, respectively. That is predominantly through go-lives in the Middle East on the Horizon product that happened at the end of December '25, marine in the current period and both through the current period as well, and they progress through H2 at this point as well. The other component part of our revenue is the nonrepeatable piece that you see at the base there. You've got onetime licenses and professional services. The professional services fluctuates period over period depending on what projects are in flight. They see some movement there, but you do see a large uplift in the onetime licenses of 120 -- almost 123%. And again, that is due to those Middle Eastern venues being delivered and going live in the current period. The next slide takes you through our income statement. At the top there, we've spoken to revenue, and really the gross profit follows the revenue, so flat gross profit period-over-period, and the margin profile is staying pretty consistent to 77.8% in the current period versus 78.3% in the prior period. Really, the key talking point on this slide is the admin expenses that line there, and at a reported level, you can see pretty consistent period over period of 51.7% versus 51.8%, but the underlying admin expenses is beneath that, so stripping out the share-based payments, the amortization, the exceptional costs we fell 6.1% really controlling and tightly controlling our costs. As Lee touched on earlier, that was following adjustments that we made in January '26 this year. And we've been on a bit of a journey with our headcount. So at the end of December '24, we were on about 680 heads. December '25, we're about 655. And we ended June at the end of this period at about 617 heads, so we are progressively making change there. And that is inclusive of acquiring 10 heads from the exhibit transaction, who joined us in March. Outside of that, in the reported admin expenses, we also have about GBP 1.3 million of exceptional charges and onetime charges, primarily relating to that restructuring, but also inclusive of some acquisition and integration costs following that acquisition in March. Lastly, on this slide, you can see that the finance income and expenses have changed somewhat, so in the prior period, we had an FX gain on our finance income line. We have a U.S. dollar facility and a GBP entity, and then, again, didn't repeat in the current period. You see a drop off there in the finance income, and we had a slight increase in the finance expense. So as a result of those 2 capital allocation events, we were slightly more drawn on the facility throughout the period, which resulted in a 34% increase in the finance expense for the -- in the current period. Next slide is taking you through our principal operating metric. This is cash EBITDA, and the reconciliation between the operating profit and how we get to our cash EBITDA metric. So you can see there taking you through these line by line, we've spoken to the GBP 1.3 million exceptional charges and the nature of those in the year. Share-based payments are relatively flat period-over-period. And the other talking point here is the uplift in amortization, and the uplift in amortization really is reflective of the fact that we made an acquisition of intellectual property back in May 2025 of 1 risk, and then also, it takes a bit that was acquired in March of this year. And as those intangibles and intellectual property and other items are amortized, we get a slight uplift in amortization expense running through the P&L period over the period. And then last slide for me is really talking through the cash flow. So you can see here running top to bottom the key talking points are that our cash generated from operations was GBP 4.9 million for the current period, slightly lower than the GBP 7.7 million that we had in the prior comparative period. And really, that's a working capital swing driving that, and that's purely due to timing of collections. We have a seasonal cutoff in June seasonal peak, and it reverses in July and August. So you see that trend reversing by the end of the year. And the other component parts of the cash flow that we've had in the period, you see that the acquisition of is a GBP 5.4 million outflow. So that's the upfront consideration of GBP 7 million with the completion mechanic adjusted and net of cash acquired. And then lastly, we have the GBP 20.1 million of purchase of owned shares for cancellation. So that's reflected in the tender offer of GBP 14.5 million in March, and also, the tail end of the buyback that concluded in January 2026. And just to add more color to that, we've now canceled just shy of 20% to 18.6% of our shares in issue since April 2025, so making a significant dent into that number. And then finally, just to conclude, so we ended the period on GBP 7.3 million of net cash. That is reflected of gross cash of GBP 33.2 million and GBP 25.9 million of borrowings. And you can see there, we have an adjusted measure. So excluding pass-through cash that we hold some level of cash relating to collection of cash from OTAs and distributors and passing that to venues, but the adjusted cash was excluding that number was GBP 0.5 million of net debt versus GBP 2.3 million of net cash in the prior period to that swing of GBP 20-ish million really being reflective of the outflows that we had in the current period. And then just to finish on, pleasingly, we managed to refinance the HSBC revolving credit facility that we have for a further full year period. So that concluded at the end of August. It originally expired in May 2027, now runs out to August 2030 on slightly more flexible terms and improved pricing, which was a great result. And with that, I will hand back to Lee to take you through the outlook for the remainder of the year.

Thank you, Matt. So we are holding guidance against what we have previously informed the market, a $146 million revenue and approximately $20 million in EBITDA. What we've seen in the early parts of half 2 July and August has been broadly in line. And we, of course, still have quite a tale of peak period so to come, not least of which will be the Halloween period around October and then the early ski period at the end of the year. Within that, of course, there's still ongoing work in the Middle East with project delivery milestones still to come. And we'll maintain our discipline on costs throughout the rest of the year. Just touch a little bit on commercial momentum. We do have 2 very exciting opportunities that are close to closing. We have verbal agreement. And one of them is a substantial full ecosystem deployment. As we talked about earlier with our new strategy, this is, again, another piece of evidence that the ecosystem strategy is landing well. We've had some good and positive news with queuing, it isn't retreating. In fact, we have a major North American operator talking to us and extending the rollout of that capability even further. And the good news on payments, we are gaining a lot of traction. We have customers live. We are saving them money. It is making us money. And so we're confident about that. And then just to emphasize the validation we're looking at on the strategy, our multiproduct pipeline has doubled. We have improved our focus on the cross-sell opportunity, both into our existing estate and also new prospects. And the sales team and sales structure is now well incentivized around proving to life ecosystem vision. So thank you for listening to us today. We will look forward to providing more details at the end of the year.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Tintin Stormont from Deutsche Numis.

I hope you can hear me okay. I have 3 questions, if I'm allowed, I never know when it will come back to me. So the first 1 is on the statement, particularly the 1 you talked about in terms of the 2 opportunities, 1 of which being a full ecosystem deployment. Could you give us a bit more color in terms of geography, how long the sales cycle was, what they're currently using in terms of sort of -- are they using multiple products, et cetera, et cetera? That would be great. The second 1 is on accesso pay. I know it's early days, but can you give us a sense of what a successful take-up of accesso pay, it looks like in 2027, maybe in terms of gross profit? And then finally, if you could give us any updates on the Merlin ticketing renewal, that would be great.

All right. So first question on the multi ecosystem customers, that's North America, the geography of that one. We've been talking to them for 6 to 12 months. They are currently using a range of systems across their estate. Some we have been providing -- majority we haven't been providing for. But we've been talking to them about how we materially elevate and improve their business through the capabilities and the strategy that I articulated. And it's a very exciting prospect. For us, these are -- it's a large player, substantial presence in the U.S. market and really excited about that one. That's imminently due for signature, so we can't name them yet, but we will when we have signed to be able to make some more PR statements. And then, focus will be on onboarding them and getting them up and running as quickly as we can. Your second question, I think, was on accesso pay and what success looks like. So with those -- just in terms of scale, were those 13 customers that we have signed and contracted and are onboarding 1 of them is live, the rest will onboard shortly. That is total processing volume of about GBP 50 million in terms of the amount of payments that are going through the platform. And we take a margin on that, that the margin varies depending on the size and shape of the deal. I think it's between 40 and 100 basis points, I think, on -- across that. We see line of sight to that GBP 50 million becoming about GBP 300 million in relatively short order into next year. And we believe that our total TAM, if you like, for payments is in the billions, low GBP 1 billion in terms of total processing volume that I think we can push through that. So we see quite a lot of runway on that. The amount of margin we're able to take will depend on the scale and size of the deal and also what they are currently processing. But as you might imagine, that looks material for us, and we're certainly going to be pressing that very hard. And then your last question was on Merlin. We continue to enjoy a very healthy and positive relationship with Merlin. We are actively talking to them at a very regular interval. We have teams embedded with them and actively working alongside them. We are continuing to talk to them. And at this stage, that's the -- all I can really comment on. But the relationship is strong, and we are a very important part of their business, and the conversations are constructive and healthy.

Sorry, very greedy, but this very quick follow-up. Just on that new -- the 1 that's been verbally agreed, could I assume that, that also includes payments?

We are discussing payments with them, yes. That is 1 of the key components of our ecosystem. I think that kind of unifies the ecosystem. And yes, we are -- payments is very much on the table with that.

The next question is from Katie Cousins at Shore Capital.

Just a couple from me, please. Thinking about -- you mentioned in the statement about how AI has actually lengthened some of the customer decision cycles. And just kind of any thoughts around that? Is it actually now because some of the discussions have become bigger and now you've got this proposition of the ecosystem to discuss with them than previously? And then also like tied into that, just customer health, obviously, it's a tough macro backdrop. And some of these venues are suffering from high cost pressures, and they can be quite capital heavy. So actually, is that favorable to you guys because they are more open for perhaps a more price-savvy contract? Or is actually that also working into some of the sales decisions and perhaps discussions that they're trying to navigate between. And then I'll ask one on one the SOP after that, if that's all right.

Yes. Okay. So let's start with AI first. I mean, I think the kind of the kind of press coverage of AI is just kind of given everybody pause for thought. I mean, it swings between AI is going to change everything and everything we've assumed to be true is now no longer true to more recently is going to take over the world, and we're all doing. I think that kind of commentary is just giving venues pause for thought. They're thinking are the assumptions I've made around what tech means for my attraction still valid into the future. And I think they're just taking a little bit more time. The other thing to bear in mind, as I said in the presentation is that for the majority of our customer base, they don't have access to a deep technology capability. They don't have the skills in-house to be able to make an adequate assessment of what AI means for their business. And so they turn to us and they engage us in conversations. And those conversations are really strategic level, it isn't just about by purchase software. It's about help me understand how our is going to materially change my business. And those conversations naturally need to take more time. The benefit, of course, that we do have is that we have been thinking about this for a long time. And in the form of the intelligence platform, we have very easy demonstrable capabilities to articulate to them, and actually, we can demonstrate to them how AI can materially improve their business. And we're embedding AI capabilities into all of our products as well. So we we're well positioned for those conversations. It just means that they take a little bit longer. It's not -- we're not in the traditional. We need a new ticketing system. We are now talking to them about actually new strategy. And we are the answer to that strategy because of the capabilities that we can bring to bear. So they're all really good conversations. And the interesting thing about them is that it elevates us in the organization. So whereas previously ticketing decisions may have been an operational decision, we're now having conversations with boardroom level, which, of course, is where we have the most opportunity to shine. So net, it's positive for us. All these conversations are positive. Katie, sorry I forgot what your second question was.

Yes. I mean it kind of ties in. It's just about how actually venues perhaps suffering from increased cost pressures given how capital intensive they can be. And so just if that actually is hindering any of the decisions or really is it an opportunity because you're able to offer the new ecosystem at perhaps more competitive pricing?

Absolutely. I mean, because we can offer a comprehensive set of solutions that now under 1 vendor, we can offer the end-to-end capabilities whereas previously, they would have had to strike up conversations with multiple vendors. We, of course, can provide scale economies into that. But I think the most interesting story we have for venues there is the payments capability and the wholesale pricing that we are able to bring to venues that would have had no way of accessing that pricing. And some of the conversations we're having with moderately scaled venues when we talk about the pricing and the compelling price that we can put in front of them, it saves some substantial amounts of money because we're able to provide wholesale pricing on payments, whereas previously, they would have had to negotiate on their own. And in some cases, that is a very, very substantial number. So we are able to show up wherever they've got price pressure. And of course, the more they take from us, the better our price can become. So we're very well positioned for that.

Got it. And then just on accesso Pay, in order to reach -- you talked about the GBP 300 million and perhaps a larger going forward on payments. Do you need any additional infrastructure or investments in order for that? Or could that be quite a healthy drop through?

We do not need any additional infrastructure for that. We've -- the platform has stood up. We have scaled the team a little bit, but we see that, that team been able to cover the -- certainly the near term growth that we can see. We'll review that as we continue our success there. But I'm not anticipating that there will be a substantial cost item for us.

The next question is from Jon Byrne at Berenberg.

Three questions from me, if I may. Maybe take it in turn. Firstly, I just wanted to break down that ticketing growth number a little bit more. So obviously, you've seen some good momentum from new wins over the years. And then you mentioned that growth this half is attributable to better pricing terms. Just trying to think about what distribution you expect from new wins to be this year or going forward? So how should we think about that sort of like contributing to the gross number?

Matt, can I give that 1 to you?

Sure. So John, you're right. So the ticketing uplift is a number that we've got to 8.3% on a single line and 8.6% on the segment. A lot of that is being driven certainly in the first half followed by revised pricing at a major customer alongside both relatively flat or robust attendances and in growth at new venues being the other component part. So I would expect for the current period, the majority is coming from a revised pricing but on a go-forward basis, would you expect growth to be coming from new logos and cross-sell that Lee has spoken to. We -- it will really be what we've seen traction certainly in last few months on that, as we've indicated on the commercial momentum. So I expect a positive trajectory on growth on that ticketing line for sure in the few years, certainly 2027.

Okay. Great. And then that kind of relates to my second question, which is, I guess, assumptions for growth going forward. I mean, are you factoring facing sort of your growth expectations on more footfall and spend per customer? Or is most of that top line growth you expect to come from new logos and cross-sell with footfall growth being a sort of upside?