BTG Consulting plc (BTA.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Well, welcome, everybody. Those in the room and those who have dialed in, this is the results presentation for Begbies Traynor Group for the 12 months to 30th of April '24. There will be plenty of time for questions at the end of the presentation. But if we can keep the flow going in the meantime, that will be great. There's also a disclaimer here, which you can read at your leisure. Moving on to the next slide, post disclaimer, there we go. Very pleased to be announcing a strong set of results, continuing a decade of profitable growth. Overall revenue growth of 12%, half of which was organic. Business recovery in advisory, 7% growth over the period, led by business recovery, which is up 13%. Record year for the Property division with 26% revenue growth, a mixture of acquisition and organic growth. We had 4 value-accretive acquisitions in the period, contributing GBP 5 million to reported revenue. Our net debt position was lower than anticipated at GBP 1.4 million, which compares with our new facility of GBP 35 million. Nick will go into more detail on that in due course. And that net debt position is after absorbing acquisition payments and funding our EBT share purchases of over GBP 11 million during the period. Seventh consecutive year of dividend -- growth with a 5% increase in dividend proposed to 4P full year. So another successful year of strong financial performance, and we're confident of the year ahead. Moving on to the next slide. Looking at that, what we think is the impressive 10-year track record of consistent profitable growth across the cycle. And this is a result of our diversification strategy, which allows year-on-year growth despite some short-term market conditions, which have been against the insolvency business during a lot of that period. So looking at revenue growth, a cumulative average growth rate of 13% year-on-year since we bought Eddisons in -- at the end of 2014. So it impacted the 15-year. So that's an increase from GBP 45 million to GBP 136 million. In terms of profit growth, we've seen a 6x increase with an average growth rate of over 20%, that 22%, rising from GBP 3.6 million to GBP 22 million. On the dividend front, cumulative average growth rate of 7%. For the first 3 years of that 10-year period, we kept the dividend at a flat level. And then we've started our aggressive dividend policy since then which has been on a relatively conservative basis retaining cash to assist with the acquisitions we've been making over that period. And in terms of share price performance, over the 10 years, a cumulative average growth rate of 10% in the shares and total shareholder return at 14% as you can see from the graph, bottom right-hand corner, green line is total return. The blue line, dark blue line is the share price, and that compares with the gray line there, which is a pretty flat line, which is the AIM All share index over that period. Now moving on to the next slide, that growth and diversification has resulted in a leading U.K. advisory firm with 2 divisions: the first, business recovery in advisory, which has two pillars of services, which is business recovery and then advisory and corporate finance. And then our Property division has three pillars, which are valuations, asset sales and property consultancy. Overall, for our turnover for last year of GBP 136 million, some 58% of that came from business recovery. So over 40% of our activities now are non-insolvency related. And there's lots of growth potential, which we'll cover in later slides. Moving to the financial review. I'll pass over to Nick.

Okay. Thank you, Ric. Good morning, everyone. Starting with the financial highlights. Another year of double-digit growth, as Ric said, with revenue growing by 12%. Half organic, half acquired and operating profit up by 10%. So that gives us revenue for the year of GBP 136.7 million and an operating profit of GBP 23.9 million. Operating margin is down slightly to 17.5%. There's a bit more detail further on in the pack. But in summary, it's increased margins within Business Recovery and Property Advisory, which were held back by subdued M&A markets. Central costs increased in absolute terms, in line with the revenue growth as a percentage of revenue, 6.7%, and that's notably due to investing in IT and HR capability in the business. Adjusted pretax profits were up by 6%. That reflects increased finance costs. Finance costs were up by GBP 0.75 million. About half of that was interest on our bank facility and half were IFRS 16 interest charges from some new leases that came in over the course of the last 12 months. Our tax rates up to 26%. So that reflects the increased overall corporation tax rates, which have been effective for us for the whole of this financial year. And that corporation tax rise has brought our EPS in at 9.9p. On a constant tax rate, we would have had an EPS of 10.6p, which an underlying rate is about a 5% increase. And in terms of the dividend, as Ric said, we're proposing an increase of 5% and that leaves dividend cover well ahead of the target of 2x. We ended the year with a modest net debt position of GBP 1.4 million and the more detail on cash flows further on in the pack. We move on to the next slide, which is a reconciliation of our adjusted results to statutory. All of these items are acquisition accounting. They are in common with what you'll see in any of our other acquisitive listed peers. The first and largest item is the acquisition consideration. This gets charged to profit rather being capitalized, it is a requirement for the vendors to stay with the business for a period post deal. That's an important clause for us. It's designed to preserve the value of the goodwill and the relationships that we're in and all of that is detailed within the sale and purchase agreements because we have that consideration that doesn't get capitalized. We often have an exceptional gain as we do with the initial acquisition accounting. And then we also exclude transaction costs, which are legal and professional fees and the noncash amortization of the intangibles that get recognized through that initial accounting. All things being equal, if there were no further deals, then these charges gradually reduce over the course of next 3 years. On Slide 8. This slide shows the movements in operating profit. And you can see with the ups and downs, that balanced mix of services has driven our double-digit growth in profits. The largest profit increase at the top of the slide, insolvency, where we saw increased activity across all of our case sizes. That increased our revenue, profits and margin in the period. Within property advisory, good organic growth in profits, and that was supported by the acquisitions, and that's from both current and prior year transactions. Going the other way, as we reported at the half year and the comparative periods of the first half of financial year '23, it was a particularly strong period for financial advisory. There were a number of contingent fees that came in that period, and that saw margins in the comparative period up to 30%. It's typically around 25% in financial advisory. And then what we've also seen on top of that in the year because of the reduction in M&A work is that margin coming down to about 18%. So much lower corporate finance work, but that's been supported by refinancing and restructuring work that the team do. And in shared and central costs, they've grown pretty much in line with the growth of the group, and that's investing in our IT and HR capability. And the net impact of all those movements is a GBP 2.1 million increase in operating profit or it's a 10% increase. So the next couple of slides, look at the -- each of the segments in a little bit more detail. Business recovery in advisory had a further successful year. Revenue growing by 7%, which is largely organic and a profit increase of 5%, margin down slightly for the reasons I explained on the previous slide, but we have revenue of GBP 96.4 million, up from GBP 89.7 million and profits up to GBP 25.5 million from GBP 24.3 million last year. In terms of insolvency, increased level of activity that boosted revenue from insolvency by 13% and also boosted our order books, so that's the work that we've got, where we've been appointed still to do in the future. And that 8% increase year-on-year is largely from contingent cases, and that reflects the type of work that we've been doing over the course of last year, more investigations and more fraud work. And within advisory, we saw a reduction in revenue to GBP 16.9 million, quieter M&A market, as I explained previously, but that was supported by work on refinancing and restructuring, giving overall a resilient and profitable performance. And the year-end headcount in this division is up to 732, and that provides lots of capacity for filling in any work as we look forward to the new year. Moving to Property Advisory, where it was a record year, revenue growth of 26% and profit growth of 38%. The margin is up to 18.9%. On an underlying basis, it's more like 18%, which is where we'd expect to be moving forward. There were some consultancy fees, which landed and benefited margin and results in the 12 months we are reporting here. Looking at the 3 notable parts of Property Advisory, the largest, 40% of income comes from consultancy work, where we're seeing significant revenue growth, which was largely organic as we continue developing the service offering that we have there, that's our education clients and other commercial clients. Within asset sales, which was 35% of income in the year, the revenue growth of over 30%, principally driven by the ongoing investment we've made in our auction business, which Ric will talk a little bit more about. And our local agency teams that sell in commercial property and business, small businesses had a resilient year that reflects the strength of their position in the local marketplace and the type of assets that they're selling. And within valuations, which is 25% of the business, the revenue growth was largely acquired at 10%. And on an organic basis, performance was robust, and that reflects its part of the resilient business in terms of the type of work, it does very strong panel positions, and that's what generates the workflow into that team. And a significant increase in the overall size of the property advisory team up to 442 from 338 last year. Looking a bit broader across the group, where we're continuing to invest in our growing business across people, processes, sustainability and marketing, a quick look at each of those 4 areas, where with people, we've continued to invest in developing our teams. That's looking at talent and learnings so that we're giving people all the support they need in their careers. And we've also enhanced our benefits package over the last 12 months to make it more flexible and offer a broader range of benefits. In processes, we're investing in technology to improve what we do and to be more efficient, looking for increased levels of automation. We typically get that through using third-party software solutions, off-the-shelf solutions and using in-house skills to deliver successful implementations. And they're typically cloud-based offerings, which is part of our IT strategy looking forward. On sustainability, we've made good progress during the year across both people, well-being, where we've improved the support we offer to all of our colleagues and made good progress on reducing our environmental impact. And within digital marketing, we have successfully increased the income from Internet-led direct marketing. That represents nearly 12% of our insolvency income now, and we're using that marketing approach for other offerings as well in property advisory notably in the auctions team. And all of that enables efficiency across the business and sustainable growth for the group. On Slide 12, we're in a strong financial position. We have our new enhanced bank facilities, which we entered into in February 2024. Just a reminder of what they are. It's a GBP 25 million RCF, which is the same quantum as we have previously and a GBP 10 million accordion, which we have increased from GBP 5 million where it was previously. Costs are broadly in line with the previous facility. It's a 3-year term, which runs through until February 2027, we've got two 1-year extension options. So we expect that facility to run through until February 2029. Looking at the cash flow in the year, EBITDA up by GBP 1.9 million. So working capital absorption on the organic growth, giving an increase in operating cash of GBP 1.2 million. The increased corporation tax rates of GBP 1.4 million and other payments across interest, CapEx and leases up by GBP 1.5 million, that's principally interest of GBP 0.9 million increase, and that includes refi fees of GBP 0.2 million. So that are the fees that are paid at the start of the facility and get amortized over it. Because of those higher tax and interest payments, free cash flow is down slightly on the prior year at GBP 12.4 million. We paid our dividends and acquisition payments and the GBP 2.4 million for purchase of owned shares is GBP 2.9 million funding the EBT net of proceeds of GBP 0.5 million from [ same as it was ], which matured in the year, and that left us with a modest net debt of GBP 1.4 million at the end of April. And final slide from me in terms of guidance, we are confident of a further year of growth, in line with current market expectations. Within business recovery, we are well placed to continue that track record of growth. Insolvency is currently at elevated levels and with the sustained, and normalized interest rates would expect that to continue to support a more normal insolvency market. We anticipate that being maintained through 2025 as the economy recovers. And though Ric will give his perspective on the market in a couple of slides time. And we're well placed with our national team to provide advice and support to the business community. Within advisory and corporate finance, we'd expect to see an improvement in performance, notably from a bounce back in the CF area. We've got an encouraging pipeline of M&A. I would expect to see an anticipated recovery on that later in the year. We're continuing to see positive activity levels in debt advisory and funding advice. And in property advisory are we -- are well placed to build on our recent strong track record and there's lots of really good prospects for further acquisitions and for organic development across all of those 3 core areas. So with our cash generation, with our new enlarged debt facility, we've got lots of flexibility to continue to execute that growth strategy. The results of that Ric highlighted earlier that we've been following since 2014, and we'll give our next update at the AGM in September. So all in all, another strong set of results shows our consistent performance through the cycle. And I'll hand back to Ric to talk through the divisional review.

Thank you, Nick. Moving on to Slide 15. Business recovery in advisory, a further successful year for us, looking at what we achieved during the year, continued revenue growth across all case sizes, resulted in GBP 9 million increased turnover in the period. Larger, more complex appointments represent about 50% of our revenues. You can see from the top graph on the right. And the regional network in digital marketing provides the volume of cases, which means we've retained our market-leading position by volume. First, nationally overall in terms of appointments, have been taking approximately 2,800 appointments in the year. And second, nationally for administrations with approximately 170 appointments during that period. Notable cases. administration of Worcester Rugby League Club and receivership of Britishvolt EV battery site, which is the giga site up in the Northeast, which we're appointed LP over the property on. There are examples of ongoing work. Those appointments came in the prior year. But it's an example of how those larger appointments provide fees over a period of typically 2, 3 or even more years than that. In terms of New administrations, Readie Construction, Breathe EV, Fortress Capital, which I'm sure you've seen plenty in the press about, Thought Fashion are all sizable cases, which will provide fees for this year and beyond. And the ongoing momentum with new administration since the year-end is there with the appointment of Cascade and Island Poke, which are both in the hospitality sector. And overall construction, retail and hospitality are major providers, have worked for us. And most of these cases, I've mentioned fall into those camps. In terms of advisory, well placed to deliver further growth. After a mixed year, as Nick has alluded to, senior recruitment ongoing and potential acquisitions. So we're looking at organic growth to build the team across our various different services in advisory, and there is the possibility of acquisitions in that area as well. And again, as Nick said, encouraging pipeline of M&A, and hopefully, they will result in transactions in due course given the fact that we have potentially a lower interest rate environment or certainly the thoughts of interest rates coming down, and we have now some political stability, which hopefully will help with some of those transactions going through. We've got a resilient finance broking business, which again should benefit from the easing of interest rates. It's had a pretty good year all in all, over the last 12 months, but we're anticipating a better year this year. Looking at insolvencies moving forward, those elevated levels of insolvencies are expected to be maintained, and the logic for that is that administrations, which as you know, are typically the larger cases remains significantly below the peak of 2008. If you look at the top graph on the right, you'll see in 2008, 2009, we're looking at appointments of 4,800 on administrations. And this last year, we've had 1,700, which is still not quite up to the level in 2019. So they're still at a very subdued level. And the liquidation rates overall is less than half of what it was at the peak in the last recession. So that's looking at the number of companies in the population and the number of those that enter into a formal process in a given year. So that's pretty much at an all-time low and that's as a result of very low interest rates. And of course, we're expecting normalized interest rates to sustain a higher level of activity moving forward because even while we are looking at some easing in interest rates, we're certainly not going to be going back to near 0 interest rates in due course. Our red flag research shows there are heightened levels of distress, over 0.5 million businesses in the economy have some significant stress. 10% of those are critical. And our experience shows of those critical about half enter insolvency in the next 12 months, so that would give a figure of mid-20s for next year. That ties in to a large extent with [ Alliance ] trade, which is the trade credit insurer, Allianz, and they're forecasting a further 10% increase in numbers in this current year of '24 calendar year. And remaining at an elevated level in '25. In terms of our own business, we've increased the number of insolvency practitioners to 98 from 93. We've got a total professional team of 625. Our turnover per partner has risen to 877,000. We expect that to increase further moving forward. We've seen that at well over 1 million in the last recession. So we have the capacity to deal with more work as and when it comes. So in terms of insolvencies, we're expecting to see heightened levels this year and next year, and we're expecting to see the floor level of insolvencies through the next cycle to be 20,000 and beyond. That's as a result of those interest rates remaining at real levels rather than the position that we saw in 2011 through 2021, really where solvencies were at a subdued level. Moving on to Property Advisory, looking at the 10-year growth record of that business created in late 2014 when we acquired Eddisons, a commercial chartered surveyors practice, we've significantly increased the scale of that business from GBP 12 million when we bought it to a run rate of GBP 45 million now and grown it from a Yorkshire-based property consultancy to a well-regarded mid-tier national firm, retaining and operating under the Eddisons brand. It's demonstrated resilience through the cycle, reporting strong growth and improved profitability despite a subdued market for some of its service lines. We've completed 15 acquisitions over that period with a total investment cost of GBP 34 million, including the acquisition of Eddisons. And the team has increased from 135 to 422, reflecting the expanded range of services and coverage, and we expect that to be continued in terms of growth. So moving on to Slide 18. A record year for our property team and continued expansion. As Nick has said, 26% increase in turnover over that period in our 3 pillars of services, being valuations, asset sales and property consultancy. Looking first at asset sales, further investment to boost the team. We now have a national auctions business with a turnover of about GBP 10 million, which covers property and plant and machinery. We acquired SDL in December '23, and that is a Midlands-based property auction business, and that follows the acquisition of Mark Jenkinson in the prior year, which was a Sheffield based property auction business. And we're now marketing over 250 lots per month across property and plant and machinery. We're still working on integrating those businesses together in terms of the back office to make them as efficient as possible. And then there's a planned marketing campaign to really turn that into a national business, which has held both by our geographical coverage now in the North and in the Midlands but also the fact that auctions post COVID is now an online business rather than what they used to call them "in the room" business. And I don't think anybody believes it's going back to "in the room." And because it's online, it means you can cover a larger geographical area than you could traditionally, where you are literally looking at auctions in the room and covering a local geographical area with buyers and sellers attending those auctions. So lots of growth potential there. Again, on asset sales, the acquisition of Banks Long in May '23, a general practice typical of these sorts of businesses, strong commercial property agency team, strengthened our presence across Eastern England and South Yorkshire. Lots of those to go at, very good quality local businesses in secondary city locations, typically, one office, but available for us to negotiate acquisitions on and bring them on board and integrate them into our existing offering. And in terms of capital value of assets sold over the period, GBP 300 million is some 50% increase on the prior year. And we're now ranked #5 by State's Gazette League Table in terms of volume of property sales and lettings. On property consultancy, the growth continues with plans for further development, continuing growth in key clients in the education sector. We've seen good growth out as you know, over the years, and that's continued. We've recruited a Head of Sustainability and Decarbonization and that's going to broaden our service offering both to new clients and also our existing clients where we see the opportunity to sell those additional services. The synergy and cross-selling benefits from growth across the wider business as we get more service lines into the group. There's more opportunity to sell those to existing clients who have the need for more than one of those service lines. And in terms of valuations, geographic expansion. We brought the Andrew Forbes business in November '23, which extended our valuation practice into the Southwest region. And we expect to see and indeed are already seeing benefits from enhanced panel exposure to deliver revenue synergies. So we're on all of the major banks' panels for lending reviews. They give us work where we have a physical office and we're capable to going out and doing those reviews. So if we move into a new area, it means that we get more work from those existing panels. And we've already seen that with the Andrew Forbes acquisition, where we're now getting work in the Southwest and the average fee has materially increased as a result of that from the local work that we're getting to the national work that we're now getting. And there's an ongoing recruitment drive to increase the size of those teams. We brought recruitment in-house at Eddisons, and that's working very well for us identifying people to join us in the shortening the time between making contact with somebody and actually getting them on board. And there's still significant opportunities to consolidate in a fragmented marketplace. So lots more opportunities to grow both asset sales, the consultancy business and valuations by acquisition as well as organic growth. Our strategy for growth, looking at Slide 20. This is nothing new so you'll recognize this. Organic growth is the retention and development of our existing partners and employees, of course, keeping people on board and making sure that they're as trained as possible to both enhance their careers and offer a service to our clients. The recruitment of new talent, both senior people and those starting their professional life to junior level. Enhanced cross-selling of our service lines and expertise to a wider client base. We've seen in the past, of course, the interaction between insolvency and Eddisons. And we're now seeing the interaction between our finance broking business, our restructuring business and asset sales. And in terms of investment in technology and process to enhance working practices and improve the services to our clients, Nick has covered that already. A lot going on there, both using our in-house resource and using outside expertise where required. In terms of the acquisition strategy, we're looking for value-accretive acquisitions in any of the following market segments. So existing service market shares, enhance market share expertise, easing geographical coverage and complementary professional service businesses to continue the development of the group and its service offering. Our ambition is to maintain our growth record with a medium-term revenue target of GBP 200 million. On Slide 21, to look at those acquisitions and that growth over the period since 2020, where revenues increased from just over GBP 70 million to GBP 136 million. GBP 41 million came from acquired growth and GBP 24 million from organic growth. And looking at the second chart there in terms of the acquisitions year-on-year, you see the big jump was in '21, and that GBP 21 million was effectively the 2 insolvency practices of CVR and DRP. So these acquisitions have significantly increased the scale of the group. We intend to continue doing them. We've got a well-established process for identifying, valuing, acquiring and integrating those target businesses. And we've made 13 value-enhancing acquisitions, delivering revenue and operating synergies over this period we're looking at on this slide. So cash generation, strong balance sheet and facility headroom underpin the capacity for further acquisitions, the pipeline of acquisition prospects across the various service lines is good. So moving on to the summary on Slide 22. We're confident of having a strong platform for future growth, continuing what we've done over the last 10 years, successfully executed that growth strategy and that diversification strategy. And over the 10-year period, again, as we've said, we've got a cumulative average growth rate of 13% in revenue and 22% in adjusted pretax profits. The results for the year build on strong track record with growth across both divisions, delivering our seventh successive year in dividend growth. And we've started financial year '25 with encouraging activity levels in all service lines and positive momentum. Market conditions for the group's services remain positive and our strong cash generation, enlarged debt facility gives flexibility to execute our growth strategy. Our ambition is to maintain our growth track record, as I've said, and that GBP 200 million target is something that we're looking out in the near to medium term, and that will depend on the mix of organic versus acquisition growth over the next 2 years. And we'll leave you on the screen with the investment case on Slide 23. And if there are any questions, please fire away.

I think the really interesting graph is on Slide 15, where it shows where the administrations were post the GSE. It might be -- obviously the environment is very different now so it might not get to that -- quite that level. But what do you think could stimulate administrations for them to increase somewhat?

To get back to the normal level, I think we need to see a prolonged period of higher interest rates. Clearly, interest rates have gone up from almost nothing to a material number in a short period of time. That hits the smaller businesses first, understandably. They don't have anywhere to look for additional 5 [indiscernible]. Medium-sized businesses have more stakeholders who can spend time and money looking at alternatives to restructure so whether it's shareholders putting cash in or it's banks who are prepared to lend more or whether it's major creditors who are prepared to take some sort of haircut. So it does take longer for it to permeate through to medium-sized businesses. We don't anticipate getting anywhere near that peak of 4,800. But getting back to a level where it is consistent with pre-pandemic levels, I think, is a minimum. So we're seeing that going up to over 2,000 appointments in the year, I think is perfectly reasonable.

Just on acquisitions. In the near time, do you obviously have any color on what's in the pipeline do you fair to be so weighted towards property as in prior year. And then can you just remind us going forward in terms of the complementary cases you may go into? Is there anything that looks quite like property where you could do back in Eddisons side, a bigger deal which is bolt on persistently, is there anything in the industry do you think could work?

Yes, there are. So in terms of things we're looking at, you're right, property is -- there's probably more in a property pipeline because it's just such a big industry, and it's very fragmented. There are still insolvency opportunities. They tend to be smaller, but we'd be disappointed if we don't do 1 or 2 of those over the course of the next 12 months. And again, on our advisory, most of the things we're looking at probably are modest sizes, either in existing service lines or things which are very, very similar to our existing service lines. In terms of moving into a new area, substantial area, let's say, for example, legal services, which is a huge industry. It's one that's still going through change in terms of change of ownership rules and technology being used, et cetera. Although there isn't anything we're looking at the moment in that industry, that is typically something where potentially there would be something we could move into, which would have a scale, which means it's got quality management with the team already which can grow that business and there's the ability to grow it organically and built on smaller acquisitions. So it is something we're looking out over the next 12 months, I think we're probably pretty much be focusing on our existing service lines.

Ask you if you've managed to push to any price increases in charge-out rates or anything like that. It seems to have been a bit of a fragmented business services, whether that contributed to some of the organic growth seen year-on-year?

Yes, we put our charge-out rates, which periodically we review. We think probably about GBP 0.5 million of advantages come through that over the course of the last 12 months. We'll be reviewing them again now in the summer for the next 12 months. So it is something which we do get some benefit from. On a lot of the smaller insolvencies where we don't get paid our time costs in full, it's fairly irrelevant. So really, the benefit there in terms of looking at how to increase profitability is, one, scale, and two, efficiencies. How do we do those jobs more efficiently with less labor cost basically.

On cross-selling, can you give us any more steer or quantification in terms of how much of current group revenues are being generated by direct cross-selling [ expertise ] in the group? Or if not that, where you think the kind of direction of travel is as kind of a part of the pie over the next 3 to 5 years?

Yes. Well, cross-selling is one of the holy grails of professional services. It's -- in theory, it's something we all should be doing, in practice, it's extremely hard to do. We're having a real push to try and achieve that. And so far, we know there's probably about GBP 2 million worth of business, which goes from insolvency to Eddisons. There's probably at least another GBP 1 million worth of businesses across the group in terms of finance opportunities and other opportunities that we know have been realized. What's the potential there? It's a difficult one. I'd be very disappointing if we couldn't get to and identify at least GBP 5 million worth of additional opportunities to cross-sell to our clients. A lot of our work comes from other professional firms, which give advice to their clients, and we provide the specialist services they don't. Now those clients, for example, the firm of accountants that every year has one or two clients with financial services problems, insolvency problems, sorry, shall I say, they'll have numerous clients who are looking to buy properties, sell properties or finance business assets. So in theory, there should be a lot of opportunity there. In practice, it's very difficult to get professional people who are concentrating on their own area of expertise and their day job to actually do it. So what we're looking at is how do we actually bring in dedicated sales people who've got the expertise to go around and sell our wares to our existing client base, a new client base who don't get bogged down in actually doing the work, but they're there literally to go and spread the message and to sell.

Seem to be going anticlockwise. Nick, you mentioned an insolvency's contingent fees and a lot of mentions of larger deals, which are more complicated and take more time. Can you give us a perspective of these larger deals, are they 18 months, 2 years, 3 years, of the ones that you've been reporting now. And looking forward, how much is under the bonnet for contingent fees and what you're already working on that might come through in FY '25?

Well, in terms of the -- what we're working on at the moment, that's the GBP 70-odd million that we're calling our order book, about half of that is contingent, about half non-contingent. I mean, typically, in a year, about half the revenue is on cases we've run in that year and half is coming out of that order book. So it's that sort of proportion. And yet small cases, ideally done within 6 to 12 months, larger cases, that can be a 2- to 3-year periods.

As general interest as to how the government -- well, the ex-government bounce back loans coming along and how you're sort of seeing that as a business opportunity. And just touch on in fact, your debtors rapidly falling, what was the Board's approach to share buyback.

Well, in terms of bounce back loans, we've been working with Barclays on their portfolio to chase those loans and get recovery. We haven't had material traction with other banks yet on that. So whether they're doing it quietly in-house or it's not to focus their attention, we're not quite sure. We think there's a lot more to come from bounce back loans. A lot of them will be over a period of time where we're agreeing with directors that they pay that money back where it's been inappropriately used. Where it's been appropriately used, of course, it's not repayable. If it's been inappropriately used, agreeing a scheduled repayments over a period of time because that's the best return for creditors ultimately. But I have no doubt there will be a very significant write-off in due course. And in terms of share buybacks, as you say, we're generating cash. We've got a significant facility that we're hardly using. We're hoping that our emphasis will be on acquisitions. Finding the right value accretive acquisitions, but we're also mindful of the fact that if we're generating surplus cash and we don't have a use for it, then returning it to shareholders might actually be the best use of that cash, particularly given the environment we've got now with pretty depressed share prices for small caps.

Could you comment on utilization of staff particularly in business recovery? Do you feel like the pace of recruiting is accelerating for you guys or you fully utilized? Or do you need to maintain a lot more additions to view the item...

Well, we've made additions over the period, and our utilization has been pretty flat over the period. So we've definitely got capacity for more. So we're running at mid-70s. So getting up to over 80% on a full-time basis when we're busy is achievable. Beyond that for short periods, we can do it, but then, we get burnout and it's not sustainable.

So one more for me. One of the big drivers of the market at the bottom end has perhaps been HMRC tightening there. Kind of the focus on kind of businesses that borrowed against all kind of deferred taxes have carried. And kind of do you see a big uptick in the HMRC-led winding up petitions with the new government coming in that sits there with a manifesto same pro-business, pro-growth, I appreciate it's around the edges, there's still kind of a big structure in there for why we want to see insolvencies, right. But do you think there's any change in direction where you might see HMRC pull back from [ Luxbet ]?

I would be surprised. We don't know yet, it's very early days, but I would be surprised. I think that HMRC were too lenient which is not really in their DNA, but they were for a period of time and they're getting back to norm now. And it's probably sensible. In lots of those cases, they're giving time to pay for a business which is never going to pay and all it's going to do is rack up on the debt for other people and eventually go into liquidation owing more people, more money. Anything more, folks?

No, there are no remote questions.

Excellent. Well, thank you very much indeed. Both again in the room and those who've dialed in. Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you again in 6 months' time with a progress report on the current year, which hopefully will be a very positive one. And then the final report again this time next year. Thank you very much.