Auction Technology Group plc (ATG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and thank you for joining us today on ATG's first interim results call. We're excited to have you here and to share what we've been able to do over the last 6 months. First of all, I guess, if you've seen the posting from this morning, we're very happy with these first year results. The last 6 months with our revenue being up 48% and our EBITDA being up 158% year-over-year. The key message that I think we wanted to get across with these results is that the momentum that we saw at the back half of fiscal year '20 has been sustained and has carried on right through the first half of fiscal year '21 for us. And at the same time, while we're seeing some very positive signs on all the key metrics, we want to just to remind people that as we come up to the summer months of June, July and August, ATG will be lapping some of the most extraordinary performance that it has had. And so while we remain positive about where we're headed, we want to just be cautious about where we look as we look into fiscal year '22 until we get through that summer period. So looking at today, what we'll be covering is the results. We're going to financial review, and we'll be giving you a little bit of a look out to the strategy, and then we'll be taking out -- taking some Q&A. If you can go to the next slide. What we wanted to talk about just briefly before diving into the results is just giving people a little bit of a reminder on ATG, who we are and what makes the company special. And I think the key thing I wanted to bring across here is just reminding people that the auction industry is absolutely massive. And it's a part of our economy that people don't think about very often, but it is absolutely huge, and it is still going through that structural shift from off-line to online. And ATG is leading the evolution of that auction industry from offline to online. And we're doing it by providing real measurable value. And we do that by driving higher asset returns for auctioneers and by giving bidders access to the best inventory of curated online items for specialized and unique items in the world. How do we do that? We do that by connecting over 2,000 auction houses with bidders from 150 countries around the world. And we enable auctioneers of all different sizes, leveling that playing field by enabling them to leverage specialized robust technology, a global bidder base and at the same time to realize cost savings through our integrated systems. That's 1/2 of the marketplace. The other side is the bidders. And when you look at what we do for bidders, we empower bidders from across the globe by enabling them to buy at auction in a trusted, convenient, secure and engaging form. We list over 12 million items per year and run over 30,000 auctions on our technology. If you can go to the next slide. This is just a quick reminder of our business model. And just to remind people, again, we are an actively managed digital marketplace. And what that really means is that bidders are coming to the ATG brands auctioneers come for access to the bidders and that, in turn, creates the virtuous circle that you see on this slide. But what's the real advantage of a virtuous circle? What do people mean when they say that. And I think just to draw that out, the key thing with the virtuous circle is that because you have the best inventory, it brings the bidders. And because you have the bidders, it brings more inventory, and what you then get the benefit of is 2 things. The first thing is that you get very affordable cheap acquisition of new buyers, which is one of the most expensive things when people are trying to build an e-commerce presence. And the second thing you get is that you attract the inventory naturally, which means you're not having to sell as often or as hard as in certain other industries. And that's something that ATG has benefited from. We are the first -- we rank first in each of our 6 marketplaces in each of the geographies and verticals in which we operate and as a result, being first really matters in that network virtuous circle environment. We attract those bidders, and we attract the inventory. And as a result, we're able to also spread out the fixed cost of our technology, which is the other big expense in running a marketplace. If you go to the next slide. So some of the big highlights is that we've achieved quite a bit against each of the growth levers that we set out. And the first one there is that we've had excellent first half results that we're very pleased with, all 6 marketplaces contributing to those results. We've seen that structural shift online from offline, accelerated by COVID. As I mentioned, it's been sustained, and with key online share gains, most notably at Proxibid, which as you'll recall from the IPO process, that was a big focus for us, was driving that profit a bit online share higher. The third point is that our shared success model has attracted incremental THV from existing auctioneers, and also we've expanded our total addressable market with THV in new verticals. And just to remind you, THV is the total value of the items listed on our site in any given period. The fourth point is we acquired Auction Mobility, expanding our white label offering, specifically in North America. And we completed the replatforming of Lot-tissimo onto the ATG code base. In the fifth point here, we've combined -- during this period, we've also focused on the operational elements. And so we combined our BidSpotter and Proxibid businesses into one location in Omaha, Nebraska, creating further efficiencies. And then lastly, we were doing this while going through the process of an IPO. And so we believe, again, that enhanced ability to lead the evolution of the auction industry really has been strengthened with this IPO, and we believe we'll be seeing the benefits of that in the years to come. So with that, if you go to the next slide. So what we're particularly pleased with here is that our numbers, we believe, really reflect the progress we've made against our strategy. We brought new stock on to the market. And when you look, first of all, at the revenue, GBP 34.5 million of revenue, up 48%; EBITDA of GBP 17 million, up 158%; our bidder sessions up 35% to 64 million. And then down here on the bottom, you see those key indicators that we often talk about. So total hammer value again being the total value of everything listed on our system has grown by 31%, which is just a huge jump on a year-over-year basis. Online share is up 13 percentage points year-over-year to 37%, reflecting that COVID acceleration that I talked about. And then the most important number to focus on is really the gross merchandise value because that's the value of everything ATG actually sold online. The GBP 3 billion is the amount that we list. But as you know, that can be sold through offline, through the phone, through other marketplaces. The value that ATG specifically sells is our gross merchandise value, and that's what we make our revenue on and that number grew 101% year-over-year to GBP 1.1 billion. And I think what you're able to call -- see from that massive growth in what we're selling, translating into the revenue growth is the -- and the profit growth is the incredible operating leverage that we have in the business. If you can move to the next slide. So during the IPO roadshow, this was a key slide that we talked about, so we wanted to come back to this to just make sure people see that the trends that we saw that began in fiscal year '20 have continued in the first half of fiscal year '21. And so if you look at the left-hand side of the page first, you'll see the different marketplaces and the growth in our online share. Specifically, if you look at BidSpotter.co.uk, BidSpotter.com and Proxibid, these are our North American Industrial and Commercial groups and one of them is in the U.K. But as you'll see, we increased our online share in all of those areas, and I specifically wanted to call out Proxibid there where we grew from 32% back at year-end September to 39%, and that's the achievement there really, I wanted to comment on because often when you grow THV, you'll see online share remains stagnant, or it will even decline slightly. But in this period of time, we were able to grow Proxibid's THV by 19%, and we were able to grow the online share by 7%. So that's really speaking to the value add that ATG brings when it's acquiring the different businesses it does, specifically approximate where we've really moved the online share in the midst of the pandemic from a level that was dramatically lower when it was owned by the previous owners. On the right-hand side, what you see is something that is also important because if you look at the top side of that page, you'll see that we again grew our THV or the value of everything listed on the system by 33% on the sale room by 719% on i-bidder, which is a consumer surplus and returns portal, and by 41% on Lot-tissimo, which is our German Art and Antiques marketplace. And the reason why this is really key to bring out is that we grew our THV more in the areas, in the marketplaces where we have relatively lower penetration online share. And as a result, what you'll see on the right-hand side of the page, is that, while our online share grew on a year-over-year basis from 24% to 37%, it declined slightly from the second half of '20 from 42% to 37%. But that's not because we weren't continuing to grow our GMV, which is the real measure of success across the marketplaces, it's simply because we grew that on the THV by such an amount that the THV -- that the online share of the Art and Antiques divisions and the consumer surplus and returns divisions, weighted -- the weighted average of those divisions online share is lower, and that brought down the overall average. But the overall GMV in all of these marketplaces is growing dramatically. And the key message here is that with the THV growing, that's a very positive sign for us because it's laying the foundation for future growth and future online share gains that we can take to keep that momentum going on the GMV growth. So with that, I will pass over to Tom, who will cover the financials.

Good morning, everybody. If we can make sure we're on Slide 10. I'll take you through the numbers. Before I do that, can I just explain how we've put together the prior year numbers. Last year, the group only really existed is [ Proxibid ] and ATG for 6 weeks of the period. It came into creation on 13th of February 2020. When you look at our interim statements and any of our statutory numbers in the prior year, you will only see 6 weeks' worth of trading. Clearly, that's not very useful for this exercise. So to get some comparable numbers, so you see the real trends, we've aggregated together both Proxibid and ATG as if the group had existed for the whole 6 months in the prior year. And all the numbers you'll see in this presentation are shown on that basis. So that like-for-like numbers is a little reconciliation at the back of the pack in the appendix. I think there is also in the interim statement. So moving to the numbers. John-Paul has already given you some of these headlines, but aggregate revenue of GBP 34.5 million, played GBP 23.3 million last year, so that's GBP 11 million increase, headline growth of 48%. So we benefited from the acquisition of Auction Mobility, which came in October '20, and also, if you normalize for FX [ treated at ] constant currency, you get an organic growth rate of 41%, still an extremely healthy level of organic growth. If you go halfway down the table, you can see our adjusted EBITDA at GBP 17 million, that's a 49% EBITDA margin for the half year. That played GBP 6.6 million in the prior year. So that's a GBP 10 million increase. In fact, GBP 11 million increase in revenue, GBP 10 million drop through to adjusted EBITDA, which, again, just demonstrates, all said along, we have very high operating leverage in the business. We are benefiting a little bit from Proxibid synergies because clearly in the first half last year there were none. We're now getting a full benefit from Proxibid synergies in this half year. But also we brought Auction Mobility costs. So I think those 2 kind of balance each other out. If you move up the line, you'll see operating loss. So despite the EBITDA of GBP 17 million, we have an operating loss of GBP 12 million. So 3 things driving that. We have exceptional items, which pretty much all relate to the costs associated with the IPO and the professional fees associated with that, about GBP 9 million. We have share-based payment charge of GBP 10 million, again with a lot of shares issued to staff and employees prior to the IPO and the IPO should get a large charge for that. And then you've got the normal amortization of intangibles another GBP 9 million. So 3 elements relating to that explain the difference between the EBITDA and operating loss, but those standard things predominantly related to the IPO event we had in the half year. If you look at free cash flow, so that's EBITDA, less trading working capital, less CapEx, GBP 14.5 million. So the vast majority of 86% of that EBITDA flow through to free cash flow. And the final thing I'll start on here, you'll see our net debt at the end of last year was GBP 200 million. Clearly, we had a different financing structure as a [ PE ] owned business. One of the objectives of the IPO was to get net leverage down to 0. And you can see now we're sat with a net GBP 6 million in the bank. We move to Slide 11. This impacts the revenue growth a little bit more. On the left-hand side, you can see this build from the statutory reported number of GBP 6.5 million, which is just for that 6-week period from the 13th of February, you then add in ATG and Proxibid to get you to a whole 6 months of trading for both businesses, gets you to GBP 23.3 million for last year. On a constant currency basis, our organic growth in those businesses were GBP 9.6 million, which gives you at 41% organic growth. We then have an FX hit. So 70% of our revenue is in dollars. And I'm sure everyone were familiar that the dollar has been weakening, but sterling has been strengthening. If you compare the average rate for the 2 half year periods, it's about 7% stronger sterling is relative to the dollar, which has cost us GBP 1.1 million of revenue. Probably also worth noting, as we sat here today, that 7% is now more like 11%, 12% weakening. So the drag in the second half of the year, it's not going to be huge, but it will be bigger than we've seen in the first half of the year just because of where exchange rates are at the moment. So that gets you organic revenue of GBP 31.8 million at current year exchange rates, you're then adding Auction Mobility acquisition, which happened in October 2020, gives you an extra 2.8, getting to the total revenue growth of 48%. We then move to Slide 12, which shows the breakdown of that revenue number by category of revenue. So you can see on the left-hand side, prior year numbers GBP 23.3 million, 60% of that is commissioned. And if you look on the right-hand side, you see the current year first half numbers of GBP 34.5 million, and you can see the vast majority of the revenue growth from GBP 14 million to GBP 22.9 million. So GBP 9 million has come from commission, which is all driven by the actual GMV that's going through the platforms. You'll also see there that Auction Mobility at the top has resulted in the growth of our Auction Services revenue from 0.8% to 3.5%. Now the middle column is the second half of last year. Now normally, these things we would only show to comparable like-for-like periods in these year-over-year. But because last year was very much a year of 2 halves, as kind of pre-COVID, which is the first half of the year, and post-COVID second half of the year. We thought it'd be interesting in this case to show how the second half of last year compared to the first half of this year, which are both 2 COVID periods. So you can perhaps see how we're trading through COVID. So not much to say on this view of life. You can see commission still growing into the first half this year versus last year. The one thing that you do notice is that, that other marketplace revenue was GBP 5.8 million in the second half of last year, has grown to GBP 6.8 million in the first half of this year. You might remember at the beginning of lockdown in the U.K., which happened at the beginning of that second half year last year, lots of auction houses closed and The Saleroom, in particular, stops charging for a 3-month period auction houses its fixed fees and subscription fees. Those fully restarted in the back end of last year, and we've now had a full 6 months' worth of contribution, which has resulted in that revenue line growing back to GBP 6.8 million. If we move over to Slide 13, gives the numbers by segment. And the first thing I'll say here based on what you saw, what people [indiscernible] IPO, we have a new segment of Auction Services. So because Auction Mobility has come in, it doesn't really naturally fit into either Arts and Antiques or Industrial and Commercial. It's agnostic of sector. We've created a new vertical. We've also pulled into the back office revenues that we used to have, which also -- we previously lost in Arts and Antiques, in Industrial and Commercial, but also aren't really specific to any one vertical, to create the new Auction Services segment. There is a little reconciliation in the appendix again for people who are trying to move between the numbers they previously had and the numbers they've got now. So when you look at the numbers, Art and Antiques growth of 21% on a reported basis. Industrial and Commercial stand out 51% growth year-over-year and you can see that on a constant currency organic basis because most of that revenue is coming from the U.S., the growth was actually 59%. So nearly 60%, giving you total marketplace growth reported of 42%. Then you got Auction Services coming in, which has clearly an inflated growth because of the acquisition. If you were to do a pro forma number and treat it as if Auction Mobility be owned throughout this year and last year, that number is still a very strong 62%. So Auction Mobility is actually growing above the rate of the rest of the group, enjoying exactly the same drivers that the Industrial and Commercial and Arts and Antiques have been doing through COVID. That's giving you total digital revenue growth of 53% year-over-year. And then Content slight decline, gives you total headline revenue growth of 48% or organic constant currency, excluding Auction Mobility, 41% growth. If we move to the next slide, Slide 14, gives you a bit more detail on some of the trading KPIs. So these are the numbers for the whole group. Total hammer values, as John-Paul has already said, this is the value of everything that's sold at auctions that we take part in, whether we sell it or not. That's on the left-hand side. On the right-hand side is GMV. So that's where that by value, the items that we provide the winning bid for, and that's the number we own commission and is the direct driver of revenue. And then online share in the middle, which is really one divided by the other or the percentage by value where we're contributing the winner bidder to auctions we take part in. So we look at what's happening. We'll start on the right-hand side, you see last year, our GMV in the first half was GBP 576 million, and it's grown to GBP 1.1 billion in the second -- in the first half of this year. So at constant currency, it's doubled. Why is that? If you move over to the middle chart online share, biggest single driver of that, about 70% of the contribution of that increase is online share increased from 24% to 37%. So 13 percentage points increase, which is, as we all know, the structural mix shift online, which has been accelerated through the COVID period and in particular, the adoption of online-only auctions. However, not to be forgotten and making a significant contribution of its own right this time is THV growth. If you go to the right-hand side, you see we have GBP 3 billion of THV in the first half of this year, which compares to GBP 2.4 billion in the prior year, so a 31% growth. So historically, THV has grown in the single digits, low to mid-single digits. So to get 31% growth year-over-year is exceptional. John-Paul has already shown you the slide, but we've seen that across all marketplaces. So it's everywhere. We've seen that amongst auctioneers, who are sort of operating traditional segments, where we've been strong, but we've also seen it in places where traditionally we haven't played so heavily. And in absolute terms of that GBP 600 million of growth, about half is from kind of traditional sectors, where we've historically been strong, and half is in areas where we have been less prevalent, which kind of leads you to the middle column, the half year 2 and how does half year one compared with the second half of last year. If you look at THV, you can see the growth. In absolute terms, it was similar to the first half of last year, but in relative terms, given seasonality, half year 2 number 70% growth year-over-year last year. When we sat up here at IPO, we were saying that performance is exceptional. However, as you can see, it's carried on, and we've done better in the first half of this year. And really, when you look into half year 2 in a bit more detail, in the first quarter, so Q3 last year, things were a bit subdued. That was the early days of COVID, so it was okay. But growth wasn't strongly. It really started to accelerate as we went through the back end of last year. So Q4, you had very strong growth. And what we're seeing is that's just carried on. So the levels of activity that we had, we exited the year at in FY '20 have carried on through half year, half year '21. If we then move to the online share, and John-Paul has already made this point, if you actually -- we saw a very high level of online share in the middle -- at the back end of last year, so 42%, which has come down to 37%. Two reasons for that is: a, the mix effect. I think we've seen the biggest growth in our marketplaces, which have a lower average online share. So like-for-like, everything is unchanged. It's just the headline because of the mix effect has come down. But also that nontraditional THV, which has contributed about half of that growth, is in areas where we would attract a lower-than-average online share, which was also dragged it down. If you looked at like-for-like cohorts [indiscernible] and like-for-like verticals, actually, there's been very little, almost no discernible change in the underlying level of online share versus what we achieved in the second half of last year versus the first half of this year. And certainly, when auctioneers, who in Industrial and Commercial space, has adopted timed auctions, we have seen no reversion back to live auctions. Levels and penetration are the same as they were at the back end of last year. So if we move to the next slide, Slide 15, take rate and total revenue. So you can see the take rate in half year 1, last year was 3.6%, and that has come down to 2.7% in each of the second half of last year and the first half of this year. Take rate is calculated as total revenue divided by GMV. Total revenues got commission in it, which moves in lockstep with GMV, but it's also got fixed fees and advertising, which doesn't. So when you get this big step change in GMV, like we've had a doubling of GMV, the top half of the equation, some of it moves, but some of it doesn't, which just mathematically gives you that reduction. So that's what the effect that we saw in the second half of last year. If you come through to this year, you can see it's still there because volumes haven't gone back. Volumes have stayed high. So we've kept the same take rate. On an underlying level, if you look at underlying pricing everywhere, there's been almost no changes between the second half of last year and the first half of this year. The only thing that's going on isn't material enough to impact these headline KPIs is the reversion to charging full fixed fees in the Saleroom. And all that's translated to on the right-hand side, marketplace revenue, which has grown 47% in the first half of the year and is about 10% higher than it was in the second half of last year. Okay. So if you move over, and I'll do these next ones, relatively quickly because it's the same picture. This is just on the Industrial and Commercial basis. Again, if you look on the right-hand side, GBP 945 million of GMV doubled from where it was a year ago. Main driver of that is online share, which you can see in the middle going from 29% to 43%, and it's really in Industrial and Commercial, where this big step-up in THV has happened, particularly where these nontraditional THV started coming through, and this is where i-bidder that you saw had that 700% increase in THV in these numbers. So it's gone from GBP 1.6 billion to GBP 2.2 billion, which is why when you get to the online share, as we've said, like-for-like basis, it's been flat between half year 2 and half year 1 -- half year 2 last year and half year 1 this year, the headline numbers come down because of the extra THV that's come through. If we move to Slide 17, exactly the same effect we described in take rate, just the mix and the growth in THV reducing the overall level. But half year on half year, it's been stable, all of which has resulted in revenue growth of nearly 60% on a constant currency basis and about GBP 1 million higher than it was in the second half of last year. And then finally, if we move to Arts and Antiques, pretty much the same picture. The only difference here is if you look on the THV chart on the left-hand side, you'll see that actually in the second half of last year, it dipped down. That's predominantly due to the Saleroom in the first lockdown, which kind of started to kick in April last year, so at the beginning of that half year. A lot of auctions houses did close, and so there was a reduction in THV. We had 2 lockdowns during the first half of this year, but they had far less impact on. So there was no impact, but far less impact than that first lock down. So you can see that big step-up in THV that we've seen in the first half of this year from where we were in the back end of last year, which -- all of which with the online share drivers that we've just described, contributed to 60% -- 70% growth in GMV year-on-year and about GBP 30 million extra than we achieved in the second half of last year. Same drivers to take rate as before, slight reduction in take rates in Arts and Antiques basically because Lot-tissimo growing above average relative to the [indiscernible] just have a lower sale rate and charges a lower average commission in this area. So there's again a mix effect going on reducing that headline. But fundamentally, there's no real difference in the pricing that we're achieving overall has resulted in that revenue step-up of 22% or versus where we were last year, about GBP 1.5 million extra versus the second half. And the final 2 segments, Auction Services and Content revenue. You see the Auction Services already described. This year half year is benefiting from the acquisition of Auction Mobility. If you sort of put Auction Mobility in the previous numbers, it's grown around 60%, 62% on a constant currency basis year-over-year. So enjoying very strong performance since we bought the business performing pretty much exactly as we hoped it would do. And then Content revenue on the right-hand side, GBP 1.6 billion last year, went down to GBP 1.2 million. So it was badly affected during the early months of COVID when lots of advertising just stopped. It's recovered to GBP 1.4 million, not quite back to where it was, but in the grand scheme, it has a relatively -- grand scheme things, it has a relatively small effect on the overall group. And then if I move to Slide 21. That shows the balance sheet and cash flow. Not too much is on the balance sheet. And the only thing I'll draw out is if you look on the left-hand side, about just over half way also, we've got cash, cash equivalents in hand of GBP 44.7 million and 4 rows beneath that you see, we've got loans and borrowings of GBP 38 million. The net of those and the GBP 6 million about at the beginning. That GBP 38 million of debt is kind of still a legacy debt from pre-IPO. We're in the process. I think we said at the IPO, we were going to refinance that process is now quite mature. So hopefully, next time, we show these numbers that position will have changed. On the right-hand side, you see our cash flow, our adjusted EBITDA of GBP 17 million. So to get to the free cash flow number I quoted before, you've got our movement in working capital of GBP 1.1 million, entirely debtor growth related, which is entirely revenue growth related. We see no deterioration in the DSO that we're achieving and auctioneers paying their bills. And then CapEx, including capitalized R&D and right-of-use assets of GBP 1.4 million gives you the GBP 14.5 million. The exceptional costs, which I said before, mainly related to fees on IPO, paid a bit of tax, GBP 2 million. Cash flow from investing activities is the acquisition of Auction Mobility. And then you've got the net of lots of things going on related to the IPO and repaying debt, but give you a positive GBP 50 million overall increase in cash of GBP 30 million, taking the GBP 14 million opening balance to GBP 44 million at the end of the period. So with that, I will hand back to John-Paul.

We should be on Slide 23 now. And the key message we want to bring across is that ATG strategy is [ working ], and we will continue to drive it in the second half of '21. Just a reminder of our vision, the vision is to be the largest global digital marketplace for the buying and selling of all things at auction. And our mission is to lead the evolution of the auction industry as the trusted partner, securely connecting businesses, collectors, consignors, contractors and consumers. And one of the things that I put that in for is that what does it really mean to lead the evolution of an industry. And for us, we talked about within our management team, and we came up with these key pillars on the bottom on the left. So first of all, when you talk about leading the evolution of an industry, you need to be constantly growing the amount of that industry that you're actually facilitating the sale of. And so for us, again, in terms of progress, we feel very good about that, taking our inventory up by GBP 800 million or 31% to over GBP 3 billion now. The second thing you really need to do to lead the evolution is you need to generate results, and you need to have measurable results for both sides. And in this respect, I think, again, we've proven that our strategy is working. So for bidders, the truest measure of a result is that they're finding what they're looking for and they're choosing to buy it through our site. And that's one element of driving our online share up. Bidders have to actually choose to buy through our marketplaces to buy those things. And as you saw, 13 percentage points of growth to 37% is a real testament to that. On the other side of it is that auctioneers have to choose to actually sell online and to push the online channel, whether it be just pushing it as an option in their live sales or by making even bigger commitment by moving into a timed auction environment. And auctioneers only do that if they're generating the asset values that they need to generate to continue to attract the consignors who sell through them. And the fact that we've had such a big shift in our online share, driven by the auctioneer side as well as they've adopted more timed auctions is another testament to the fact that we're serving both sides of the marketplace, and we're generating results for both. In terms of our operating model, that's another element, we believe, to leading the evolution because it's important that we stay lean and have the funds to invest. And what was great for us in this period is it show that we had invested effectively because we were able to grow our GMV by 101%, while adding minimal incremental costs, as you saw from Tom. So huge operating leverage and leanness within our model, which shows that part is working. The business intelligence part is a key part that we're investing in. And this is where we're investing in elements, such as the recommendation engine within the business. So those are the things -- those are one of the tools that allow a bidder who's come online to be presented with an item that people like him or her would have bought similarly. And so that was something we didn't have prior to December, and it's something we're gradually implementing into the site. But what it allows us to do is to take all the different information that we have and use it for the benefit of our auctioneer partners, so that they can target bidders more effectively with the items, bidders find more things more readily and then they have a higher chance of bidding on those items and winning them. And then the last thing I wanted to focus on was the people because again, from my time at PayPal when we saw that growth similar to what ATG is experiencing now, even faster. One of the biggest elements that contributed to that was getting the right people on board in the company. Because when things are moving this fast, you need people who are adaptable, who can throw themselves into the breach wherever anything is happening, and that's the type of team that we've been building at ATG, and we saw that in this period because while we've handled a doubling of the volume, I can tell you that was a huge amount of work for our team, and they were doing it, while learning how to work from home, while learning how to adjust to auctioneers who had even higher expectations of them. And the fact that we are able to generate the results we do and keep the online share that we have, while attracting incremental THV is really, I think, a huge testament to the team that we've built at ATG as well. And so how has that team guided? I thought it was worthwhile to put in on the right-hand side here, what the values of the company are. And so 50% of everyone's review each year is based on these values. And so it's build trustworthy relationships, which is really about doing what you say you're going to do. And so whether that be the relationships we're establishing with you as our investors, with our previous investors in TA and ECI, with our customers or with our staff internally for how we live and breathe as we execute against our projects. That's a key one for us. Raising the bar is not being complacent with the way that we've done things in the past, but in an industry that's evolving at the pace we are. It's about looking for ways to constantly get better, and that's something we try to really bring out in our team. Leading creatively, I think sometimes the managers on the team say that that's my way of saying do a lot with little. And I guess it is, it's about taking what you have and trying to do more with it, not asking for more budget every time you need to do something. And then the last one, which is my favorite is the collaborate to win. And the key for that there is really sometimes businesses can view collaboration as something about just being nice to one another or helping teammates out when they're working on something. But collaborating to win is really focusing people on making your priorities, adjusting your priorities to ensure that you're focusing on the most important things, and that's about collaboration as well. It may mean telling a colleague that you can't work with them on something because what you need to work on is actually the things that are going to drive the business forward. And that's one element of it. The second element is really collaborating with our auctioneer partners because as you know, we've said repeatedly that we have a shared success model. And we do better as the auctioneers do better and that's something that we're very committed to as a business. So that collaborate to win is the fourth element of our values. If you move to the next slide. As we talked about in the IPO, ATG has multiple growth levers that enable us to sustain this momentum for many years in the future. And I think what has been hopefully apparent from this presentation from what Tom shared, what I've shared, is that we really are drawing on all of those levers. So extending the TAM by adding new THV from existing auctioneers and moving into new verticals. Growing our online penetration, that's by more bidders coming on to the system and buying through us, but it's also through the auction format that the auctioneers are choosing. Enhancing our network effect by allowing the cross-listing between Proxibid and BidSpotter and continuing to do that more extensively across the rest of our system. We're also investing in [ SEO ], which allows us to acquire more free traffic onto the site. Expanding our operating leverage. So you saw, again, we grew that operating leverage dramatically into the 40s this year. And that's something we're able to do while taking on a huge amount of incremental volume. We pursued accretive M&A in the form of Auction Mobility. And we've also been able to integrate our previous acquisition of Lot-tissimo into the mix. And finally, while we talk about take rate, keep in mind that as we've said, you should anticipate our pricing at the commission level remains stable because we think it's at the right level. The way that we will be doing this take rate is by adding additional value-added services such as payments, delivery and building out the auction ecosystem. And that's something we're just beginning to explore now. So if you go to the next slide, our outlook so where are we headed. The key focus of the business is sustaining the momentum that we have post-COVID. It's something we believe absolutely that we can do. But as Tom and I both have mentioned, the reason that we've exercised a little bit of caution in this back half of the year is that we're lapping really strong results, and we want to see how we perform over the course of the summer before changing any expectations beyond that. We've seen gains in all segments, and we expect that to continue with the real progression of online-only auctions. And that's something we've seen particularly in the Proxibid division as we emphasize that. And what's been really encouraging to see there approximate, is that it's some of the largest auctioneers who are taking on online-only auctions, and they are usually the bellwether of what the medium and smaller auctioneers will do because if they're able to prove that they can do better off of online-only auctions, then the smaller one should do equally well. Our THV expansion into new TAM and again, representing real upside potential, as Tom talked about, the online share dropping to that 37% is really due to the mix effect. The GMV on a half year over half year basis is growing, and that's the true measure of our success of the strategy. And in fact, this THV growth is just laying the foundation for more revenue for us to capture in the -- down the road. In any online marketplace, you often start on the inventory side, getting a certain critical mass of sellers. And then you have the technology that you need to build out to bring the 2, the bidders and the sellers together. But one of the key things that also happen, the next phase is really about investing in the bidders because ultimately, once you have a critical mass of inventory and you have the right technology, what really keeps your sellers with you is your ability to constantly bring them new bidders. And that's a big focus for ATG in the next 6 to 12 months. So improving our end-to-end UX, investing in the SEO to bring more bidders. And then we've also upgraded our instance of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, so that we have better CRM capabilities, triggered e-mails, relationship e-mails, et cetera. And so hopefully, what we've left you with the feeling for is that, again, we've talked about the fact that ATG has multiple growth levers to sustain our growth well into the future, and we're executing against all of these. And again, we continue to plan to invest against all of these levers into the future. So if you go to the next slide, Slide 26, in terms of current trading. Trading for the year-to-date has been strong. And as a result, we are currently trading ahead of Board expectations for fiscal year '21. However, we remain mindful that we have yet to lap the very strong COVID comparators of June, July and August. And accordingly, our expectations for fiscal year '22 are remaining unchanged. So with that, if you go to the last slide, it's thank you for listening in with us today. And now we're happy to take any questions you may have.

[Operator Instructions] And we will now take our first question. It comes from Gareth Davies of Numis.

Maybe kick off with a couple from me. Firstly, you talked about THV expansion and alluded to nontraditional areas being about GBP 300 million. I just wondered if you can expand a little bit on what those nontraditional areas are? What the potential is there looking forward? And based on past experience, sort of what's the kind of lag before you'd hope to start getting sort of meaningful amounts of that THV to GMV? The second one, you talked about no signs yet of I&C moving back to physical auction. Can you just talk a little bit about physical auction in the context of have they been able to run them if they wanted to through May? When did physical auctions start to come back? And sort of is that really a June phenomenon where you'd expect to get that sort of touch points around that? Because I suppose when we think about the exhibition industry, for instance, in the U.S., June was quite crucial in terms of things starting to happen again in a physical environment. So it would be good to get your take on that. And then final one for me was just, you touched on ancillary services at the end. I know we've never sort of overplayed that as a driver short term. It's a more medium-term aspiration. Should we think of that as purely organic? Or rather is there the potential to do small bolt-on acquisitions that could accelerate that over time?

Okay. So Tom, maybe I'll take the first cut and then and then pass over to you. So first of all, I'll take them backwards, Gareth, and start with ancillary services. So that's something that, again, you're right, it's a midterm aspiration for ours. There's huge potential there, but it's something where we have lots of other things that are much nearer term that we think that we need to focus on first. But payments, delivery, building out that auction ecosystem is very real. And I think there are definitely acquisition opportunities in those areas. We have mapping that we do, and we see opportunities to do that. But again, that's more of a midterm thing that we'd be looking at. On the I&C side, in terms of what happens with the physical auction, so first of all, keep in mind that most -- the vast, vast majority of our I&C business is in the U.S. and the U.S. never actually shut down or band auction. So they've been running throughout this whole period, and auctioneers moved online and moved to more time online only. And the key reason for that is keep in mind that when an auctioneer runs a live auction, they have to move all the assets into a single location for industrial, heavy industrial items or factories or things like that. This is a huge expense for them. They have to rent a facility. They have to provide security, porters, who move items around. They have to have people on the day taking better verification. They have to provide food, and then they have to actually call the auction, which is pretty extensive effort. So when they run an online-only auction, all of those costs are reduced or eliminated. And so what we're seeing is that the auctioneers are saying that because they can achieve the same asset value, which means they're doing their job for the consignors, they actually will then make more money on the auction by moving to an online-only auction. So that's why we believe that in the vast majority of cases, the online share driven by the auctioneers choosing online will stay. And so I think that's it. With the THV expansion, the 2 areas where we've expanded have been into the equine industry and into classic cars. And Tom can talk about this in a minute, but in terms of the lag effect or how that works. But the short answer is that it's hard to tell because we are early into this and that's why we're exercising caution in the back part of this year and into next year because we need to see that as the vaccine comes out more generally and equine can industry and classic cars have been moving with us. Do they move offline? Do they stay? Do their bidders prefer buying in person or they prefer buying online? That's something we need to see. And so in terms of the typical lag, it's quite difficult to say because different industries will respond -- or different verticals will respond in different ways because the appeal buying in-person versus buying online varies by sector. But Tom, do you want to comment on any of that?

Yes. I could have taken the words exactly out of your mouth. For your answer to the last question, it's hard sell because this is so new for us. I mean, I'd add into the mix of classic cars and equine, real estate is up. If you look at some areas, which traditional spaces that we played, but not -- the mix has changed. The Bonhams partnerships come through a full effect, and we've got some very high volumes there, but it's higher ticket still, so it does have a different set of characteristics to sort of call us and take some international auctioneers as well, particularly in Lot-tissimo. All of those things are changing the mix and the kind of new sort of THV, which we're growing at above average rate. But can't say how it's going to pan out. We do have differences of sell-through on a vertical-by-vertical basis even in our existing business. So we do extremely well on I&C at the moment, get some of that agriculture and construction and kind of a notch below that, but still good. So where these things set later, it's difficult to say. But as John-Paul says, fundamentally, there's a lot changing all at the same time. So quite where it settles at, it's difficult to say. Clearly, it's better to have it now than not to have it. But we should also be mindful that there could be some normalization as we go forward into next year on some of the new THV that we've got through. So which is why we're retaining the caution of our outlook that John-Paul has mentioned.

Yes. And in those different sectors, if you look at the classic car sector, for instance, the likelihood, I think, of auctioneers moving purely to offline is very unlikely because I think they've been quite surprised at the returns they've been able to get by moving to an online model and how many people bid online. I mean, we know that it's one of the key things people like many of us on the phone will click on when we see is that if there's a classic car, people will click on it. It's a high kind of eye candy piece. And so they get a lot of attention. And even if they end up -- people end up wanting to go and look at the cars or drive them, they may end up going and looking at 1 or 2 with a given auctioneer, but then saying, well, yes, no, I do want that 1963 Ferrari 250 GTE, but they don't need to buy it from that auctioneer. They can then buy it online and have a choice of many different auctioneers who are selling. And I think that's my belief as to what's going to end up happening. So did we answer your questions, Gareth?

Yes. Fantastic.

[Operator Instructions] It appears there are no further questions at this time. Mr. Savant, I'd like to hand the call back to you for any additional comments or closing remarks.

Okay. Well, I guess what I'd like to say is, first of all, thanks to the ATG team because it really has been a massive team effort over these last 6 months. And like I said, with Tom and me being focused on the IPO for a big part of that, it really is a testament to the strength of our management team and all the teams throughout the ranks that we were able to deliver these results that you've seen today and do all the other things we are doing amidst the pandemic. So a big thanks to the team, first of all. And then the second part is just to say, again, we are incredibly excited by what's ahead. Everything has been going well. I think we're really pleased with the way that our post-IPO time has gone. And we see that the growth levers that we talked to you about are all very viable, and we're executing against all of them. So as we look to the future, we're very optimistic, and as we've said, we are just waiting to see until we get through the summer period before we come back and see what our expectations can be for the future. But thank you for your time today, and we look forward to speaking with many of you over the next week. Thank you.