Begbies Traynor Group plc (BTA.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. A few points of admin for myself. First, the deck that you're going to see presented to is on the Begbies Traynor website. So you can use that for your reference. And this meeting is being recorded, so you can come back to it later on. We'll give the presentation, and then try and deal with questions later on. You can submit those via the Q&A button on your Zoom screen. And so we're very pleased to have back Nick Taylor, our CFO from Begbies and he's joined by Mark Fry, the newly appointed CEO. We're hoping that Rick Traynor may be able to join us later on once he concludes the meeting. But for now, I am going to pass over to Nick to run you through the interim results and the outlook and the state of the market. So over to you, Nick.

Thank you, Andy. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us. The presentation, which I will be running through is the half year results for the period to the end of October. If we start with Slide 2, for those of you who don't know the business, we are a leading financial and real estate advisory firm. Our services are delivered across 2 divisions. The top block of services on the slide in front of you, restructuring, financial advisory, deal advisory and funding solutions and our property advisory services across 4 pillars of valuations, agency auctions, projects and property management. And we operate nationally. We have over 1,300 people who work for the group, and we operate within the heart of local business communities. On Slide 3, our half year results, we're very pleased to report a good first half performance driven by organic growth. We've continued to deliver our growth strategy. We had revenue up 7%, EBITDA up 5%, and we have increased our interim dividend by 7% to 1.5p. We've had good activity levels, which have driven performance within restructuring, there have been positive levels of work. We have increased our market share in the period. We've had strong performance across property advisory, notably in our consultancy services. And the one area where we have faced some headwinds as there's been a challenging backdrop to transactional activity, which has included a delay of some transactions, which will come through hopefully in the second half. And we have confidence in delivering the full year results, which are currently in the market. We have encouraging workflows continuing as we go through to the second half, and we have 2 acquisitions which we completed following the period end. On Slide 4, we have enhanced our leadership structure earlier in the year to support the delivery of our growth objectives. You may well have seen myself and Rick on the previous investor presentations. We've now been joined by Mark Fry as Group CEO. Mark will talk a little bit about his history within the group, but he's a long-standing member of the Board. And in addition to Mark taking on his new role with updated responsibilities, we're now supported by 3 divisional managing directors who will lead our restructuring, property and advisory services reporting to Mark. Now we've made those changes to give our new leadership structure a position where we can manage the increased scale of the group. We're obviously a much larger business now than we were 10 years ago, and we want to make sure we have the right team in place to deliver our growth ambitions. So I'll now introduce you to Mark, and he can give you a summary of his career and position within the business. Mark?

Good morning, everybody, and thank you, Nick, for the introduction. I have been at Begbies since 2005. I joined the business following its acquiring a restructuring practice, which I cofounded managed and built over a 15-year period. And as I say, came on board when that was acquired by the Begbies Traynor group. I came on board with a view to joining the business in its London office, which was a much smaller business back then, the origins of Traynor & Co., which subsequently became Begbies Traynor emanating from the north of the country. My role was to build the London office with a view to enhancing the brand of the business, building on its reputation and focusing on winning better, larger assignments more acceptable to the London market. . We've certainly achieved that over the years, and London has grown into being from a restructuring and advisory perspective, the largest office within the group. But as our -- as the business has grown overall, and our ambitions to continue to grow, then those early intentions still remain a work in progress. I also shortly after taken over in London, I became a regional managing partner for the business, which gave me the opportunity to work with fellow regional managing partners around the U.K. Begbies was very acquisitive back then and growing very rapidly. So working with those partners around the country and ensuring that we were seen as one firm, one team has been an important part of our development. I've also helped develop the international offering that we have, which is a group of firms from around the globe, which participate in a company where we're all investors and the intention of that business known BTG Global Advisory is that we're able to cross refer to each other on an international scale. That led to my appointment to the plc Board in 2011, and I have worked very closely with Rick and Nick since that time on continuing to build the business. And through that time, I begin to get involved in M&A transactions and acquisitions and led us played a significant role in 2 acquisitions we made in 2021, where we acquired 2 quite significant insolvency practices, which were 2 of our larger acquisitions and then integrated them following that acquisitions into our existing business. So -- and that has led to us as a Board, as Nick mentioned, looking at how we take the business to the next level and building our enhanced management team and taking us to the point we're at today, and I'm delighted to accept the appointment as CEO. Thank you. Thanks, Nick.

Okay. Thank you, Mark. So we will now go through the financial and operating highlights of the 6-month period. So if we start on Slide 8 with financial highlights. Revenue up 7% to GBP 82 million with EBITDA of 5% increased to GBP 16.1 million. EBITDA margin is down slightly, which I'll touch on, on the next slide, but we have faced headwinds in the period from the increased national insurance charge, which took 0.9% of our margins in the period. Diluted EPS up by 6% and dividend up 7% to 1.5p. Net debt, up slightly on where we were 12 months ago to GBP 5.7 million. Just get into a little bit of the detail on Slide 9, looking at the income statement. So the revenue growth driven by good organic performance across the business. We've seen growth in our restructuring business, GBP 5.6 million, that's 13% like-for-like growth year-on-year. Property advisory also performed particularly well at GBP 1.6 million. And that's been partially offset by lower revenue within financial advisory, which is very much the transactional part of the business, either corporate finance doing deals or arranging finance for clients. And in the current market, there's been quite a few headwinds there. Our direct costs -- it's principally our fee earning staff and our partners. That was up by 9% year-on-year. The bulk of our national insurance increase is on that line. The remaining cost increase, which is about 8% underlying growth coming from our ongoing investment in the team, both in growing the team to handle our increased workload, investments in senior hires where we're bringing in people to gain market share and grow the business and the underlying inflation, which runs at about 3% for us on a like-for-like cost basis. And within administrative expenses, which are up by 5%, so slightly below the headline revenue growth rate, GBP 0.1 million of NIC cost on this line and the remaining cost increase coming from as we grow the business, investing in that team, the core inflation rate and other operating costs on some IT and marketing projects. We've had underway in the period. In terms of margins, as I said before, they're down slightly, 19.6% from 20.1% in the 12-month period prior -- 6-month period prior, excuse me. National Insurance has taken 0.9% of our margin, which is frustrating because it masks the underlying margin growth that we have seen in the period. We've seen margins improve in restructuring and in property advisory. And the margins in financial advisory are down, and that's a result of those lower activities, which I mentioned previously, together with some senior hires where we've been investing in the business. Our statutory profits are up by 83%, which is a benefit from the reduction in the nonunderlying items. That's the acquisition accounting entries, which we take under IFRS. And our diluted EPS growth of 6% is slightly ahead of the growth in earnings, and that's the benefit from the share buyback that we did in the period. Moving on to cash flow, where we've seen a typical half 1 seasonality in the period. You can see if you look at the comparative period, we have GBP 10 million of operating cash in the first half, followed by GBP 20 million in the second half. We'd expect a similar weighting to the current financial year. In terms of working capital absorption, that's up slightly from where we were last year. There is a time lag within restructuring between doing an hour of work to getting the cash for that hour. It takes about 6 months. So there is a lag between the profit growth and the revenue growth that we've seen in the period and that coming through in cash, which has accounted for that increase in receivables. And in terms of payables, we have a half 1 weighting to our payments as we pay the prior year bonuses in the first half and that accrual gets built up in the second half. Corporation tax payments have normalized in the period. And in terms of acquisition payments, the GBP 3.8 million of payments that we paid in H1 all related to prior year earnouts. And in the second half, we'll have a GBP 4 million of consideration for the transactions we completed just following the period end. And in terms of our net debt position at GBP 5.7 million, slightly up on the GBP 3.8 million of net debt we were at 12 months before, but we have significant headroom within our bank facilities with a good financial position on the balance sheet. It's a GBP 25 million RCF with a further GBP 10 million accordion. And that facility runs through to February 2028, and we have a further 1-year extension. So we expect that facility to run through until calendar year '29. Looking ahead to the second half, we are confident of delivering the current market expectations for the full year. We've seen continuing positive activity levels within restructuring. It was a good first half, and I'm pleased to say that's continued in the period post 31 October. Within financial advisory, we expect to see some benefits coming through from the transactions, which I said earlier were delayed in H1. And indeed, we've seen a couple of good corporate finance deals complete in November, which is encouraging and that positions us well to see that flow through in the second half, but this is definitely an area where the headwinds in the general economy and lower business confidence does make deals that a little bit harder. Within property and advisory, we expect our organic activity to be weighted to the first half. That's due to the timing of consultancy work, which has favored H1. Across the board, activity levels are good. They're robust across the majority of our service lines. But again, it's the transactional market where we're advising our clients on selling commercial property or small businesses, that remains pretty tough. And of course, H2 will include the initial contribution from our recent acquisitions. But overall, with a good first half, we're confident of extending the financial track record that we're very pleased with of profitably growing our business. And just to look at a little bit more detail just to some of the operations on Slide 13, looking at restructuring and financial advisory. The positive workflows have continued, as I said, we've seen increase in revenue. We've also seen an increase in our order book. So we've got more work on the shelves for the team to work on. That's up to GBP 81.6 million from GBP 76.4 million 12 months previously. And we're still seeing favorable market conditions. The market overall, which is the top graph on the right-hand side showing appointments in the 24,000, 25,000 over the course of the last 3 years. But the insolvency rate, which is the percentage of companies in the U.K., which go into an insolvency process, is only at about 0.5%, which is the orange line on that top graph. And you can see that's at a relatively normal level when you go back to the recessionary peaks, then that's been 1% or higher than 1%. So we feel it's a relatively stable market, and we anticipate it continuing at that sort of level moving forward. Our market share increased in the period across both CVLs and administrations, which as you may know, tend to be the larger insolvency appointments. We are clear #1 in terms of overall volume of corporate appointments, and we are closing the gap in terms of our position as second by volume for administrations. And we benefit nationally from a firm from having excellent national coverage. We've got a great team of partners and our strong digital marketing presence is very positive for us in terms of sourcing the volume of lower value engagements as well. Financial advisory has been a bit tougher. The headwinds, lower business confidence has meant that deals have been harder to complete. We're seeing things delayed into H2 that ideally would have come through in H1. And also in our funding business, this is where we're working with clients to secure funding typically for property or other business assets purchases or refinances. The team have been very busy, but the mix has favored lower-value transactions, which has meant slightly lower fee levels, which again, on a like-for-like basis, has pulled the results back slightly. But we continue to invest in growing the team. We've made senior hires across forensics, debt and financial advisory over the course of the last 12 months, and we anticipate the benefits of that coming through in the second half and also in future years. But it's been a strong performance in restructuring overall, and we anticipate a second half weighting to results as some of those transactions and deals come through. If we move to our property advisory business. It's been a good year within valuations. We've seen increased average fees as well as higher volumes. Pleasingly, we're seeing the benefit of some of the process enhancements and IT investments that we've made in prior years come through. And this team really benefit from the strong panel positions that we've got with a very broad range of lenders. Within asset sales, this is the area where the headwinds are in the overall economy. You look at the top graph on the right-hand side, it's been a pretty flat property market even going back to 2016. But you can see at the back end of the far right-hand side of that graph, the back end of '25, we have seen a dip in transactions that has had some impact on us. We've benefited from having a good and growing auction practice, which is the bottom graph on the right, on national volumes of properties sold through auctions which in contrast to the overall volumes of properties sold has been increasing. So that has supported our performance in the period and in prior years as well as a resilient income stream from our lettings activity. But overall, commercial property and business sales, we had some headwinds there. But following the acquisition of the Kirkby Diamond business, which we did following the period end, we are now #1 by volume for commercial sales and lettings. Within projects and developments, we've seen strong growth across those core areas of education, sustainability and transport planning. We're benefiting from having brought the sustainability team in place last year. It held margins back a little bit in the previous financial year, but we've seen good workflow in the first half, which has benefited the performance. This is a part of the business where being on public sector panels is a really positive area for our growth and our development and we've had a good period in that team. And within property management, where we're managing commercial properties for our clients and our specialist insurance brokerage, we've had robust activity levels, and there's a pretty recurring flow of work which we do in that team. But overall, the breadth of services that we have within property advisory has enabled us to continue to grow the business profitably in a challenging macroeconomic environment, and that extends the track record that we've had since we first invested in Eddisons back in 2014. In terms of ongoing investment on Slide 15, we've done 2 acquisitions following the period end, which have boosted the coverage and expertise of our property team. Kirkby Diamond, which is a GBP 6 million revenue business, which is the largest bolt-on we've done to Eddisons since they joined the group in 2014. This is a very well-respected regional consultancy. You can see on the graph on the right, the dark colored blobs with the existing Eddisons offices and the lighter green are the new additions. So it fits well into that overall footprint. It enables us to cover the entire M1 corridor now from London all the way up to Leeds and consolidates our market position in those locations. And the smaller transaction we did, which was revenue of GBP 0.6 million business called Network Auctions, Southeast-based property auctioneer that adds to the existing auctions business, which has been a good area of growth for us and it builds on the investments that we did in the back end of 2023, where we added a business called Mark Jenkinson, in Yorkshire and SDL in the Midlands to our existing presence across the M62 corridor. And as you can see on the graph at the bottom right on the screen, we have reported strong revenue growth and profit growth since Eddisons has joined us in 2014. We've got the 10-year track record on the right-hand side there, and we've been able to deliver that consistent growth despite the challenging overall economic environment and slightly anemic property market, which we saw on the previous slide, and this division now has an annualized revenue run rate in excess of GBP 50 million. And this performance highlights the benefits of the diversification strategy that we've been following over the last 10-plus years. I'll now hand back to Mark, and he can talk through some of our plans to deliver our growth ambitions. Mark? I think you're on mute there, Mark.

Apologies. How do we deliver our growth ambitions? Well, we're a people business. So our people and culture is clearly essential, and we will continue to empower our people and provide a collaborative and supportive culture for them to operate in. Our client trust is something that we continue to maintain and build upon. We are on numerous approved panels with banks, institutions, regulators and public bodies across the business, which enable us to get a regular flow of assignments. We have long embedded relationships with other professionals, an example of which is both the legal and accountancy profession. And these fellow professionals also refer to us across the various areas of our business. We manage all of these relationships with our business leaders, supported by our business development teams and our marketing department. In terms of our capabilities and platform, we are unique in the mid-market in terms of having an integrated restructuring advisory and property expertise. We have excellent sector knowledge and some examples of those are in sport, leisure and hospitality, health and social care and construction. Referring back to sport, one of the very well-known assignments that we're currently involved in is the administration of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, which I will mention again shortly. We could move to the next slide, please, 18. This slide deals with our priorities and areas of focus for our new leadership team. Key priority being to drive sustainable organic growth. How do we do that? Well, I've mentioned our deep client relationships and obviously, our intention to continue to build and expand upon those. Another area is by senior hires, and we are very focused on bringing new people into the business by delivering on our M&A execution, and we have a particular focus on improving our geographical coverage, and that's certainly across the property business, for example, where we have some gaps in the Southwest and in the Southeast, South of London and London and to continue by focusing on broadening our service lines. We are focusing on our operational excellence, and that includes exploring the benefits of AI with a focus on in-house training and process improvement efficiencies. I have mentioned our culture and talent and our intention to continue our recruitment. And to support that, we have invested in an in-house development and recruitment team, and they work across both property and the restructuring advisory business. If we could turn to Slide 19. Just to give you an example and insight to some of the assignments that we've been working on recently, picking up again, firstly, on the administration of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club. One of the exciting aspects about a case of this type is that it involves our colleagues from not just our restructuring team, but also our financial advisory team and our property advisory teams, all working together on the one assignment. Obviously, this has been a good assignment in the sense that we've had plenty of media exposure, both in terms of television and paper which is good for the business. And we're very hopeful based on the level of interest that we have at the moment that we'll be successful in achieving a sale of Sheffield Wednesday and the club continuing on for many, many years to come. Another one I'd like to highlight is the matter above that administration, which is the development finance with integrated insurance solutions. This was a transaction within our debt advisory team where they secured a 9-figure loan for a major London development. And alongside that, they provided integrated insurance solutions and have supported the client across all stages of the project life cycle. Just one more. At the bottom, you'll see on the property advisory, there's an example there of where across our service lines within property, we've been able to support a large independent retailer with valuation, auction, property management and project consultancy advice. So a real spread of our services across a particular client. Thank you, and back to you, Nick.

Great. Thank you, Mark. So to summarize our presentation, we feel we are well positioned for our next phase of growth. The first half results underpin our confidence for the current year in terms of delivering full year results in line with expectations, and we're confident of continuing to build on our track record of growth towards our medium-term target of GBP 200 million of revenue. We've got continued momentum, which I hope we managed to convey over the course of the presentation with strong demand for our services. And the leadership evolution, which we put in place over the course of this year in terms of broadening the management team, we think will strengthen our day-to-day execution and is going to support the delivery of our strategic growth objectives. So as a team, we believe we have strong foundations. We've got a really good level of operational focus, and we've got a clear path to continuing our disciplined growth. And we'll leave you with the next slide, which just shows our track record of delivering profitable growth across the cycle. We're very proud of the record we've delivered over this period, revenue growth of 13%. We've outstripped that with growth in profit before tax at 20%, and we have been growing the dividend in successive years following our first increase in financial year '18. So thank you very much for listening. I hope that's been informative to you all. And I'll now hand over to Andy in directing any questions. Thank you.

Yes. That's great. Congratulations on the results and a very, very clear presentation. Thank you both. Lots of questions. So let's dive straight in. Perhaps one for you, Nick, start with. Previously, in periods of weak U.K. economic growth, there's been a suspicion that government pressure on to lenders to try and avoid pushing debtors into receivership was being applied as that would apparently not look good to voters. Do you think that, that has been a factor in holding back administrations at the moment?

Well, it's probably a better question for Mark than me, Andy. Because Mark is still very much involved in doing the day job and working on admin. So Mark, is that one you'd like to pick?

Yes. Yes, happy to. I certainly don't think that's the position from government. Like HMRC, for example, have continued to be fairly supportive in terms of supporting businesses with time-to-pay arrangements since the pandemic period. But if anything, what we're seeing at the moment is a hardening of government attitude towards extending those time-to-pay arrangements and allowing businesses the freedom to build up outstanding taxes, and they're pushing quite hard in collecting it. So if anything, is the opposite effect to that what's suggested in that question.

Okay. Helpful. Thank you very much. Question on commercial property transactions. Can you attribute the recent dip to the budget causing or a pause or a delay to decisions being made?

I think Mark, do you want to take that?

Yes, I'll just add. I think what we saw across the market generally in all areas was that the uncertainty of what to expect from the budget created at a degree of caution in the U.K. economy and people committing to transactions without question.

And that's a good segue to another question, which was perhaps understandably, what are your first thoughts about the potential impact of the 2025 budget?

Well, I think it was not as bad as it might have been expected. We certainly don't consider it to be a budget for growth. And I think what happens with interest rates in the shorter term now will be quite important. But our view is probably that transactions will begin to unwind, particularly in the property space, which will be good for our funding business.

Okay, nice and clear. A few questions relating to hiring and retaining senior people. First one, has the new management structure been unanimously well received by your colleagues?

As far as we are aware, yes, it certainly has. I had a lot of positive feedback from our colleagues. I'm sure there will be the odd area where perhaps that's not the case, but it's not what we've seen at the moment.

It's probably just -- Mark was already on the board. Julian, who's taken the senior role, leading the restructuring business or already had a senior role leading the restructuring team in the north. And Anthony Spencer had managed the property business since we acquired Eddisons and he joined the business at that point. So it's a bit of evolution rather than a radical change in what we've done.

Right. You've had considerable success in attracting a good number of very senior practitioners. Question probably for both of you. What would -- do you think is the most important factor in their decisions to join Begbies Traynor?

But it would depend on where they're coming from, obviously. But in some of the larger firms in our market, they tend to be more micro managed and less empowered to be innovative and develop and a culture and environment like that gives them that opportunity. They may also have reached a point in those firms where they hit the glass ceiling and progression to partnership is not as quick and achievable as it might be joining us. So we give them that sort of cultural support, ability to advance and we don't micromanage. We manage and we keep an eye on and we make sure performance expectations are being met, but they're empowered to develop and deliver.

Great. Thank you. And staying with these senior hires, we have a question noting that in your trading update, you said that the full benefit of a number of these joiners will be expected in the second half. Can you elaborate a little bit more about the integration of senior recruits and over the years, when you reach what you would consider a payback position from an initial investment and then move into generating substantial profits for the growth.

Do you want to take that one, Nick?

Yes. Okay. I mean a lot depends on which area of the business they're in, to be honest. I mean the primary difference we have between organic and acquired growth is if we do an acquisition, then that comes with a block of work, all the relationships and all the live jobs. So we don't have that leading in terms of profitability. When we're recruiting senior people from our competitors, then those relationships will typically -- or those live engagements get left behind with the previous firm and the block of work that people are doing gets built up over time. Typically, that means that they are a net cost in the first year. We will see them hopefully breaking even or making a return in the second year and being at full power by year 3. So the hires that we've referred to in the half year statement have come in over the course of the last 12 months. We're already seeing some income from them. We would expect that to grow and improve on a like-for-like basis as we progress through this financial year. But realistically, it will be the new financial year before we're making the normal level of return. And that can be quicker in certain areas. If we bring in some valuation people on the property side, that will typically be quicker because they join us. They have access to relationships instantly through our panel positions, which are very strong. And they tend to be instantly quoted in short-term engagements. So there isn't that level of lead time that you may have with people who are advising on broader or larger transactions. So it's a bit of horses for courses, but hopefully, we'll see some pickup in the second half.

Yes. Well, again, long experience, thinking back to your 10-year records of integrating people and firms successfully. So that bodes well, I think. You mentioned M&A. Nick, we have a comment here. Large deals don't tend to cost materially more to execute than small ones. As you're on track for your medium-term substantial revenue target, does that mean you will need to be doing deals of, say, GBP 10 million or upwards to actually make a material difference?

Well, I guess the math suggests that's the case, doesn't it? So as we do grow, clearly, we need to be looking at either the number of deals that we do or the size of them. We did 2 larger deals in 2021. Clearly, if we have the ability in terms of deals which are on our pipeline and we can agree terms, then we would love to do more deals of that sort of size. They've been very positive for us as a business. They've really moved the scale of our restructuring practice forward having done those. I mean we have found, as anyone who's followed us over the years, our sweet spot for deals tends to be in the up to GBP 5 million of revenue and the deals that we've announced just following the half year, Kirkby Diamond is slightly over that, but they're still in that sort of sweet spot. As we get larger, they tend to be more competitive. So they become harder to agree terms. Often, they are multi-partner, multi-ownership businesses. So again, it's harder to agree terms in terms of having aligned interest across that broader equity group. But we're very open-minded. We've recently got our in-house CF team doing a bit more search work for us for our own M&A pipeline. So we're using our in-house expertise to see what we can do, and that is with a view to seeing where there are areas where we can grow and take larger acquisitions. It's probably worth just saying they're likely to be outside of restructuring. The restructuring market, the 2 acquisitions that we did back in '21 were pretty much the last of those independent sizably sized practices in that GBP 10 million zone. So transactions that we do that are larger are far more likely to be on the property side of the group.

Yes. No, very clear. That makes sense. Right. Moving on to a matter close to all our hearts, football. So we have a question here. Football owners do often seem to suffer from their dreams losing out to economic reality. Are there other sports that you think can generate a similar flow of regular revenues for the group?

Well, we've certainly seen some activity in the rugby space, for example. We've worked on a number of rugby clubs. Other than that, there's not anything I can think of that we've been majorly involved in on a regular basis.

Okay. And staying with the Sheffield Wednesday theme, Mark, and you mentioned a remunerative role for you because it seems to involve takeover advisory assumption of debt and property advice. So the question is how often do you have clients utilizing 2 or more of Begbies diverse business lines?

Actually quite frequently. There are numerous cases where we're working with both the restructuring team and the financial advisory team. An example of that will be, in some sense, is not dissimilar to Sheffield Wednesday where you've got a business you're involved prior to it being completely terminal early enough to give wider advice about what the options might be. One of those options may be refinancing, so we can work with our debt advisory colleagues. Another option might be to run an accelerated M&A process to attempt to sell the business before it proceeds into a formal insolvency so that you can get a better valuation for all the stakeholders. And on top of that, we are quite regularly working with our colleagues in the property business, not just on valuation and selling properties on our behalf from a restructuring perspective, but also in terms of assisting with the disposal of other assets, including, for example, plant and machinery. So there's quite a lot of crossover. And the forensics team will work on investigations on some complex insolvency cases where there are potential asset recoveries from various transactions that may or may not have occurred.

Yes, all very encouraging to see the group functioning that way. Margin, so probably one for you, Nick. You've mentioned that good underlying growth in operating margins was hampered by the national insurance costs in the past period. Can you give an indication how much of that impact you've been able to ameliorate through charge-out rates increasing? And overall, what is the outlook for your pricing environment at the moment to clients?

It's pretty hard in our business to say it's purely down to pricing because the price we charge is also driven by the type of work we're doing and the grades of staff that we have working on it. If we were to look at the restructuring business, margins overall have gone up, and we've managed to recover that national insurance increase. And that increase in margin has been driven partly by pricing because we increased our charge-out rates. We'll typically only recover that on the very biggest jobs. Our income per hour has also increased just from the fact that we're doing bigger and better quality work, which we're typically paid more per hour for doing. Across the board, we have nudged up prices, we'll have done that on the property side, where we're charging a bit more for a valuation report or other pieces of advice, but it's a headwind. We have to look for ways to offset those cost increases, whether it's national insurance or other inflationary rises. Sometimes we can recover it from clients. And in other situations, we have to find a way that we can just work smarter and better to protect or hopefully enhance our margin.

Very clear and a lead-on question following on from the pricing environment. Because the overall economic climate has not been giving a great deal of help to service providers. Have you noticed any of your competitors in specific areas falling by the wayside or diminishing their efforts?

Well, clearly, it's been a positive market overall on the restructuring side. So that hasn't been an issue there. I think if you look across the property world, we're very fortunate in terms of the mix of services we have, which means we aren't exposed to some of that volatility that others may be. In terms of falling by the wayside, nothing notable that I'm aware of, but clearly a number of firms will be facing more headwinds if they are far more exposed to transactional or investment-related work.

Again, I suppose a positive for the diversity of Begbies and its ability to service clients through different points of the cycle and balance the group growth. And I think we're probably up to the final question, which is around auctions. Where does the recent takeover of national auctions leave your market share in your opinion in what appears to be an attractive and growing segment.

I mean the overall market share, we unfortunately, I have the stats that show exactly where that is. So it isn't something we can say with absolute confidence. We expect that as a general property auctioneer, we will be in the top 2 or 3 definitely by volume. There are a couple of firms who will do the bigger high-value London properties that get auction. So by value, I'm sure they will be generating more fees than we do. But in terms of the volume in national market, we think we're in a very good place. And the benefit that we now have with our auction platform, principally following the SDL acquisition is a really strong back-office function. There's a fair amount of admin in terms of being able to process the number of properties that you sell on an efficient basis. And the new team will fit pretty well into that. So they will be running from our platform very early in the new calendar year. So we think there's lots of opportunities where we can use the footprint that we've got to continue to grow that as a service line. It's an area we're very, very positive about, and we think we've got a great team in place to take it forward.

Great. All right. Well, it just remains to thank our audience for their interest and all their questions. You will -- the viewers receive a feedback form, which the company is always very interested to hear your thoughts on. Thank you very much, Mark and Nick, very thorough presentation. And we wish you all the best for the second half to continue displaying the good momentum that you've just reported on.

Thanks, Andy. Thank you much, everybody.

Thank you and Goodbye.