Alcidion Group Limited (ALC.XA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Rebecca Wilson, and I'm Chair of the Board and of today's meeting. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Annual General Meeting of Alcidion Group Limited. I'd like to start by acknowledging and paying respect to the traditional custodians of the land, wherever those participating at this meeting are located. Shareholders and their representatives will be able to participate and view a live webcast of this virtual meeting, ask questions and cast direct votes at the appropriate times whilst the meeting is in progress. As the time now is 4:01 p.m. Australian Eastern Daylight Time Savings, and the company has complied with the relevant requirements for convening this meeting, and we have received confirmation that a quorum is present, I formally declare the meeting open. I'm pleased to be joined today by my fellow directors, Danny Sharp; Andrew Way, who's sitting with him in our Alcidion office in Melbourne. Will Smart and our Managing Director and CEO, Kate Quirke. Also in attendance is our Chief Financial Officer, Matt Gepp; and our Company Secretary, Michael Sapountzis. In addition, we have Grant Martinella, representing the company's external auditors, William Buck, in attendance at this meeting. The notice of meeting has been given in accordance with the company's constitution and is always available on Alcidion's website, our share registry's online voting site, or on the ASX. I will take the notice of meeting and explanatory statement as read. The format of today's meeting will be a Chair address from myself, a presentation by our Managing Director and CEO, Kate Quirke, consideration of the formal business on today's agenda and general questions. As Chair of Alcidion, I'm pleased to address you at our 2025 Annual General Meeting. This year marks an important milestone in Alcidion's 25-year journey, one characterized by transformation, growth and unwavering commitment to modernizing health care delivery in the U.K., Australia and New Zealand. Alcidion's simple and ambitious purpose is to transform health care with proactive, smart and intuitive enterprise technology solutions. Our focus is mission-critical, delivering solutions that directly address the most complex operational and clinical needs of hospitals and care systems across our key markets. Designed to address fragmented data and inefficient workflows to clinician workload and operational pressures, our platform is designed to enhance patient safety and provide system-wide insight. Today, Alcidion's technologies and capability support more than 400 hospitals with over 130,000 active users, managing the health data, patient flow and safety of tens of thousands of beds. Whether in the dynamic environments of the U.K. NHS Trusts, the evolving digital landscape of Australian Health Care or the community-centric approach in New Zealand, our solutions are enabling care that is more connected, efficient and safe. At the heart of our offering is Miya Precision, a modular cloud-native platform that delivers real-time AI-enabled clinical decision support, interoperability and intuitive data visualization. And what sets Miya Precision apart is its flexibility. It integrates seamlessly with legacy and third-party systems, liberating existing data for smarter decision-making. It allows customers to start with mission-critical modules where the need is greatest and expand over time from patient administration and flow to mobile records, insights and AI-powered documentation support. Recognized for its usability, Miya Precision helps clinicians save time, improve discharge planning and reduce both medical error and administrative burden. Recent case studies underscore reductions in bed blockages, increased time to care and measurable efficiency gains for hospital staff and administrators. Financial year '25 was a record setting year for Alcidion. And our highlights include total revenue of $40.8 million, up 10% year-on-year, with 63% of that revenue derived from U.K. operations and 37% from the ANZ market. Pleasingly, annual recurring revenue now stands at $28.5 million, up 31%, which is underpinning predictable high-quality revenue growth. Underlying EBITDA of $5.1 million represents an improvement of $8.5 million compared with the prior year. And alongside disciplined operating cost management and positive operating cash flow of $5.8 million. Cash at year-end was $17.7 million, with no debt providing significant balance sheet flexibility as we pursue further growth opportunities. Our financial discipline isn't just about cost control. It's about building a robust platform with continued investment in innovation, market expansion and shareholder value creation. Financial year '25 saw Alcidion secure $73.8 million in new contract value, more than double the previous period. The landmark 10-year $39 million North Cumbria NHS Trust EPR contract, complemented by an additional $6.8 million contract expansion announced last month, highlights both the trust placed in our platform and our interoperability with leading third-party solutions. The ability to integrate scanned historical documents within our Miya Precision EPR is a tangible example of responding to evolving customer needs. Our modular strategy continues to gain traction, enabling existing customers to expand and new customers to build tailored enterprise platforms for their hospitals and communities. From North Cumbria to South Tees in the U.K. and from Peninsula Health to Hywel Dda in Australia and Wales, the Miya Precision platform is establishing itself as the preferred choice to drive digital maturity and clinical efficiency. As we move into financial year '26, Alcidion enters the year with $34 million already secured in contracted revenue for the year, a strong pipeline and an expanding installed base. The recent expansion with North Cumbria Integrated Care Trust, further validates our growth strategy, continuing organic growth in established markets, evolving our product with deeper AI capabilities, targeting new territories like Canada and the Middle East and adjacencies such as aged care and community health and maintaining disciplined execution focused on prudent resource allocation and agile responsiveness to market opportunities. I was pleased to progress our Board evolution strategy throughout the year with the appointment of Professor Andrew Way, who adds further global health care experience to the Board. Andrew was most recently the group CEO of the Alfred Hospital and adds an important customer perspective to his U.K. and U.S. Health Care -- Australian Health Care experience. I'd like to take the opportunity to also thank Victoria Weekes, who retired from the Board in June 2025. Alcidion's purpose-driven mission, disciplined financial model and modular technology platform position the company for sustained growth, innovation and impact. Thanks to exceptional leadership, our global Board and the commitment of our staff, we move forward well placed to capture market opportunities, support our customers' digital transformation goals and deliver enhanced value to shareholders. To our customers, thank you for your trust in our solutions. To our shareholders, thank you for your continued confidence as we execute our growth vision and build the future of Alcidion, and to the entire Alcidion team, from my fellow Board Directors and to Kate and her executive team and every single team member who share the pride in delivering the profound benefits of our technology for sustained improvements in health care. Thank you. I will now pass over to our Managing Director and CEO, Kate Quirke, who will present on the company's operations. Thanks, Kate.

Thanks very much, Rebecca. If we could just move to the next couple of slides, keep going. Thank you. So Becks talked a little bit about the year that's gone by. So I'm not going to labor a lot from a financial perspective. But I think it's really important how FY '25 has set us up with continued momentum as we head into FY '26. It was a record year in FY '25. And suffice to say that we are continuing on in that positive trajectory as we head into the new financial year. Health care is continuing to experiencing the challenges in relation to challenging workforce situation and increasing demand on the resources available to our health care system and the use and deployment of technology is becoming -- continuing to become increasingly something that is a priority to those people that are running the health care organization today. And we are in a really strong position in terms of the financial year that we come back -- come from in FY '25, but also how we enter FY '26 with a solid base of contract revenue and a pipeline that is increasingly seeing adoption of products such as ours. Move to the next slide, please. I don't want to talk too much about the financials. I think Beck touched on those, and I have done previous presentations on these, but it was a record year, and it has allowed us as we move into FY '26 with a very strong cash position and that sort of momentum to look forward to the opportunities that we have to continue to grow the business in FY '26. We've touched -- on next slide, please. In terms of the drivers, as I said at the outset, it hasn't changed. It is just becoming more increasingly challenging in terms of resource availability. And we're continuing to see interest in the deployment of smart solutions of artificial intelligence and increasing capabilities that help support a workforce to deliver more efficient care. So the transition to digital is still very much a driver in health care, and we're seeing continued deployment of budgets to support that. The 10-year plan and the increased funding that is being made available as we move into the next financial year coming off the back of the significant funding that has been already deployed in the U.K. from the EPR program. We are seeing continued investment in digital. The part of the 10-year plan has 3 key components to it, one of which is to support the move from analog to digital. Next slide, please. Throughout FY '25, we continue to develop the capabilities of the platform as well. Miya Precision is unique in that it is a platform that was built specifically for health care, allowing us to consolidate data. And over the last 7 or 8 years, we have continued to add to the modules and the capabilities that can all be driven from the same platform. It's a very important part of our strategy in terms of go-to-market, in that we are -- we adopt a land-and-expand approach. And throughout the year in FY '25, we really focused on new capabilities in the areas of AI and where we are seeing a lot of interest in health care, which is in supporting -- using large language models, working with our partners like Google, in order to deliver increasing benefits around efficiency and during the Miya Scribe, Miya Insight and Miya AI were deployed as new modules on top of Miya ED, which we've released into the market in the prior 18 months. So we will continue to build on that value proposition for health care at every point along the way. Next slide, please. A little bit about where to from here and what we're focused on in the year ahead -- sorry, next slide. We -- you will have seen -- most people have seen these slides that we released at the beginning of this financial year. But our focus is to continue to scale our existing markets. We are only really at the beginnings of adoption in terms of the uptake of Miya Precision in Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. And as you start to see increasing adoption, it is a phenomenon in health care that the more people that adopt a new platform, the greater the uptake of that platform, the uptake of that platform becomes. We're also looking to look at opportunities to expand the capabilities of the platform into adjacent markets. I think Beck touched on aged care and community care. You will be familiar with the fact that we are working in virtual care, the work we've been doing with Hume Regional Health Alliance to deploy virtual care in a community environment is exciting. And we see that we can continue to really build up our capabilities in this area. We're also looking at new geographies with a focus in this year on Canada and the Middle East. And if you could just pop on to the next slide. In respect of moving into -- actually -- and the next one. Sorry, I've got a lot of slides in there. But just in terms of Canada -- and the next one, please? Sorry. In terms of Canada, we're very much focused. We have got consultants working with us in each of these geographies. Canada is a market that is very similar to Australia and the U.K. in the way in which the system is funded and certainly some of the challenges that we're seeing. And there is a lot of interest in how platform like Miya Precision can help with that efficiency of flow. So patient flow, we see as a very significant opportunity into that Canadian market. As everyone can respect, entering into a new market takes time to build presence and our focus in this financial year will be very much around getting that proof point, that first site that can demonstrate to the rest of the Canadian market, the value that Alcidion can bring. In respect to the Middle East, we're really at the start of understanding the opportunities in this market. A lot of the underlying digital platforms that are already being used in this market are very similar to what we see in Australia and the U.K. We know that there is a need. We know that they have very similar challenges to what we are having -- what we have in health care. And we're really starting to build our networks in this region and attending conferences to understand which of the countries and the opportunities in the Middle East will be our highest priority opportunities. Thank you, Tina. Just to touch on the interesting market adjacencies, I think I talked about aged care and community care and some of the work that we've been doing in the Hume region. We see there is an increasing potential for us to bridge the challenges between aged care and acute care. And so we're starting to look at how we can support the health care system in its challenges as the population ages. Next slide. Thank you. As we move forward, and we're now just embarking on the second quarter of FY '26, positive momentum following us through. We've had the extension, the contract expansion with North Cumbria, continuing to build a strong pipeline. We started the year, as I said, with $34 million as a starting point before we sell anything else. We're continuing to commit to delivering a positive EBITDA and positive operating cash flow as the year progresses. I look forward to updating you on how our research and entry into new markets goes. And just to finally touch on, I think I have mentioned in a couple of presentations, our interest in continuing to look at M&A activity, but in a measured way and in a way in which is strategically aligned to the sorts of opportunities that we have just highlighted in that presentation around FY '26 and beyond. I'd like to finish by thanking you all for your support throughout FY '25, and also, I look forward to updating you as FY '26 progresses on the continued positive progression of the business.

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Kate. I will now provide an overview of the Q&A and voting procedure for today's meeting. During the formal business for today's meeting, shareholders will have the opportunity to ask written or verbal questions for each resolution. We encourage you to submit your questions as early as you can. Visitors and media are reminded that whilst we welcome you at this meeting, it is a shareholder meeting, and you may not make comments or ask questions. Questions received during the meeting, which are of a similar nature will be grouped and answered at the appropriate time. If you have any questions which you feel were not addressed at today's meeting, we invite shareholders to contact the company via phone or e-mail. Shareholders wishing to ask written questions, please follow the instructions displayed on screen. Shareholders wishing to speak and ask a question, please follow the instructions also displayed on screen. Prior to asking your question, please state your full name and who you are representing. Regarding voting on today's resolutions, all shareholders, proxy holders, authorized corporate representatives and attorneys of shareholders who are entitled to vote will be able to do so via the webinar poll. It is important to note that if you've lodged a proxy form and voted prior to the meeting, you do not need to vote again, unless you wish to change your proxy instruction. For those proxy holders, shareholders and authorized corporate representatives who have not yet voted prior to the meeting, please cast your votes on each of the resolutions when the poll is opened. For proxy holders, you will have received a summary of proxy votes, which detail voting instructions, if any, for each item of business. By completing the voting via the webinar poll, you are deemed to have voted in accordance with those instructions. I, as the Chair of the meeting intend to vote in favor of all resolutions. When the poll is declared open, a poll window will appear. Please follow the voting instructions displayed on screen. You will have the ability to change your vote up until the time voting is closed. I'm pleased to now declare the poll open. I refer you to the first item of business as set out in the Notice of Meeting, which is to receive and consider the company's financial statements together with the Directors' report and the Auditor's report for the financial year ended 30th of June 2025. These items are contained in the annual report, so I will ask they have been taken as read. The annual report is available on the ASX as well as our website. No written questions to the Auditor were received by the cutoff date, 5 business days before this meeting. Questions may be directed through myself to the Auditor in relation to the conduct of the audit, the audit report, the company's accounting policies or the independence of the Auditor. Michael, did we receive any questions related to this item of business?

Thanks, Beck. Confirming, we did not receive any questions on this item.

Thank you. As this matter does not require a vote, we will now move to Resolution 1. I now refer you to Resolution 1, which is to consider the adoption of the remuneration report for the financial year ended 30th of June 2025. The remuneration report is set out in the Directors' report in the company's 2025 annual report. Michael, did we receive any questions related to Resolution 1?

No, we did not receive any questions.

The following proxies have been received for Resolution 1 as displayed on the screen. I would like to make a few comments on this resolution. The Board was surprised by the opposition to this year's remuneration report following a strong financial and operational turnaround in financial year '25. It is important to understand the context of this opposition. The vote against the report is predominantly a protest vote by a single large shareholder previously associated with Alcidion, whose vote accounted for 92% of the against vote as shown on the screen and prior to closing of today's meeting. As a Board and management team, we can understand that for those outside the company, it can sometimes seem like progress is slow. And whilst we are very pleased and have worked diligently to produce a strong result this year, we understand all too well that we need to continue to build on this performance this year and beyond, which the Board and management team are highly focused. As presented by Kate in her address, we are confident in our growth strategy, pleased with the momentum so far in financial year '26 and look forward to that translating to improved shareholder returns. With that, I move that shareholders consider, and if thought fit, pass this ordinary resolution. I now refer to Resolution 2, which relates to the election of Andrew Way as a Director of the company. Andrew's biography is outlined in the notice of meeting, and I'd like to now invite Andrew to comment on his election.

Thank you, Rebecca. I'm delighted to be here this afternoon, and it gives me enormous pleasure to be considered for election to the Alcidion Board. And my fortunate interest both as a potential and then real customer, the increasing utility and functionality of the Alcidion product, Miya, together with the increasing commitment and improvement for drive -- measurable drive outcomes that the Alcidion team have delivered. My last few months on the Alcidion Board have reinforced my strong belief on how our solutions can deliver high-quality, safe and integrated health care with demonstrable benefits for our customers, their patients and their staff. I have an extensive career in health, both in the U.K. NHS and here in Victoria, Australia. I've been a CEO of major hospital groups for more than 20 years. And during that time, I have been a Director of private for-profit and for-purpose organizations. I have a deep and personal understanding of challenges being faced by health care organizations, their patients and their staff. Throughout my recent career, including 6 months stint as the Interim CEO of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, I have sought to engineer or support evidence that is really data-driven improvement in the way in which care and treatment is provided. I believe that technological solutions and appropriate data protections can improve the efficiency of the health system. Whilst also improving the experience of those who use it, both patients and staff. My experience serving on the Boards of a diverse range of organizations over those last 25 years, both here and in the U.K. has always been exclusively in health and social sector, including health data and health comparator organizations. This experience over many years provides me with a deep understanding of good general and financial governance and strong industry-specific strategic skills, which I believe can help Alcidion respond to the future challenges and secure its place as a leader in health care digital solutions. I'm committed to fulfilling my role to the fullest extent and to the very best of my abilities. And with your support, I hope to play my part in Alcidion's future success for the benefit of our shareholders and our customers. Thanks, Beck.

Thanks very much, Andrew. Michael, did we receive any questions related to Resolution 2?

No. We did not receive any questions. Thanks, Beck.

Thank you. The following proxies have been received for Resolution 2 as displayed on screen. And given the strength of those, I think it's fair to say we welcome Andrew to the Alcidion Board and really appreciate shareholders' support of him. So I move that shareholders consider and if thought fit, pass this ordinary resolution. I now refer to Resolution 3, which relates to the approval of the 10% placement facility. As announced to the ASX on the 14th of October 2025, this item has been withdrawn and will not be put to the meeting. This resolution had sufficient votes to pass. However, shareholder feedback and the fact that we have no intention of using it, we felt it was best to withdraw it. We will now provide shareholders with an additional 30 seconds for poll voting to be completed. [Voting]

30 seconds feels like a long time when you're watching it like that. As the additional time is up, I now declare the poll closed. After the votes have been counted, the results of the poll will be released to the ASX later today. We will now address shareholder questions received in relation to Alcidion's business operations. Michael, are there any questions?

Thanks Beck. Yes, we've received a question from Anders, shareholder. Can you please provide an update on the status of various EPR procurements that Alcidion is participating in? In particular, it now looks like Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust has joined up with a number of other trusts that are current customers of Alcidion to deliver a single EPR? Is this positive or negative for Alcidion?

Thank you, Andrew. I'm going to pass this one over to Kate to address.

Thanks very much for your question. Yes, you are correct. Though Portsmouth has joined University Hospital Southampton and Hampshire Hospitals Foundation Trust, known as the Hampshire Isle of White, they will be going to market for an electronic patient record. They have not done so as yet. The process is quite an elongated in terms of going through this, but we're expecting that, that will happen in the foreseeable future. We currently have our emergency department module deployed at University Hospital Southampton. Actually, it just went live last week in Hampshire. So one would hope that, that would stand us in good stead, but it will be for a full EPR. So we look forward to responding to that when the opportunity arises.

Thanks, Kate. We received another question from Anders. With the technical go-live complete for NALHN, is this enough for other South Australia LHDs to assess Miya? Or do they need to see how successful the user go-live is over the coming months?

Yes. A technical go-live is something that happens usually around 2 to 3 weeks before actual go live. So there's not a big time lag between that and it will be when full go live happens then the rest of the South Australian hospitals will be able to get feedback directly from NALHN, and that is expected to happen next week. So we're looking forward to that.

Thank you. We have received a question from shareholder, Alex. When you say you are starting to look at opportunities in aged care and community, what does that mean? Or providers going to market looking for digital solutions? Or is Alcidion going around to providers trying to sell its products?

Really, we're looking at the potential opportunity for using the platform for remote patient monitoring. So we have been involved in remote patient monitoring of patients at their hospital or health care service is looking to monitor remotely. And we see an opportunity to use the platform to help prevent elderly and aged care people -- patients or people from ending up in the hospital system, potentially stranded in the hospital care system. One of the challenges around beds is that often when someone is elderly and complex in terms of many complex health care issues that is very difficult to then get them out of the health care system back into the aged care system. And if we were able to provide sophisticated monitoring like we do at full home, we believe there's potential around that. Other opportunities are around being part of an increasing move to aging in place where we are seeing people getting home care packages and being looked after by a community health facility in their home. So we really think that as a platform, Alcidion has something to offer in this particular market.

Thank you very much. We've got one final question from shareholder, Matthew. In FY '25, Alcidion provided guidance that they will breakeven at roughly AUD 36 million. Can similar guidance we provided for FY '26?

Do you want to take that one, Matt or do...

Yes, sure. Look, we've not provided that guidance for FY '26. There are some changes to our cost structure of the direct cost line following the recent announcement of the NCIC contract expansion. And perhaps we can talk more about this at the upcoming release, Kate, but we haven't released that number at the moment.

We haven't. But I mean it's suffice to say that we are not expecting to increase the cost base in any significant way. There is obviously a percentage increase related to salary increases that are aligned to sort of with CPI. So you'd see a little increase on that cost base, but you won't see us adding a significant number of people or individuals to what we're doing. So I wouldn't expect it to be far north of that.

Thank you. Apologies. We received one further question from shareholder, Vivek. The company's market capitalization has fallen significantly, while cash remains healthy. Has the Board considered a share buyback to create shareholder value? Or are there strategic reasons for continuing to prioritize other investments?

I'm happy to take this one. Look, capital management is obviously something that we look at regularly. And Vivek, it is a balance between where we sort of deploy the cash that's been generated in the business and where the best sort of return on that investment is going to come to. I can't comment directly in terms of intentions for any buyback to say -- except to say that we are obviously looking very closely at what's the best deployment of our cash resources as I said, to really drive the scale of the business and considering everything in terms of what the best options are for us.

Thank you. There are no further questions -- apologies, one has just come through. Shareholder Matthew, again. Can you confirm whether the company tended for the Stockport Tameside joint EPR? You're on mute, Kate.

That's because you see, I thought I'd finish my questions. We don't confirm and indicate which tenders we have gone forward. So sort of competitive commercial information.

Thanks, Kate. As there are no further questions, and the company has not received notice of any other business, that concludes the formal business of today's meeting, and I now declare the meeting closed. Thank you for your attendance, and we look forward to your continued support.