Calnex Solutions plc (CLX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to Calnex Solutions plc investor presentation. [Operator Instructions]. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you to CEO, Tommy Cook. Good afternoon, sir.

Good afternoon, and thank you very much, everyone, for joining us today to hear about the results from H1 FY '24. So before we go into the results, let me just take a few minutes to -- for other people maybe don't know us so well to just remind you who Calnex is and what we do. So Calnex delivers cash solutions to the worldwide telecoms and cloud computing industry, where we have an established position shipping products to over 68 countries in the world. And primarily, our products are used to improve performance, whether it's within the R&D or it's within the network scenario, they use our products to prove that the telecom infrastructure is going to work correctly to the specification and also to international standards. We operate a lean business model where we use an outsourced indirect sales channel partnership around the world to give us that global footprint, and we also use a local manufacturer -- [indiscernible] contract manufacturer to do production for us. And you can see on the right-hand side some of the names that you would be familiar with, that we sell to telecom vendors like Cisco, Ciena, Ericsson; operators such as BT, AT&T; and sales of the component manufacturers, Intel, Qaulcomm, Broadcom; and then increasing the resale to some of the large enterprises and the hyperscale people at Meta, Google and Apple. So quite a wide space. So where this test fit into all the telecoms. Well, it fits in just about everywhere, whether you're designing new equipment, you're verifying new designs before they go into production and manufacturing tests, building networks, managing networks. The bits that we focus on mainly is that design validation conformance test. So you can imagine that R&D teams in a company like Cisco or Ericsson, when they get the prototypes back, they have to test them to see -- make sure the design is meeting the public specification. And then the conformance test part allows us, if they're going to claim conformance to international standards, which [indiscernible] every piece of equipment well, then they need to put it through and check that it actually does meet that. And it's very much an area where you can command a healthy price and gain margin because effectively, we are enabling our customers to get their new designs to market quickly and robustly, and robustly is as important as quickly because ultimately, they want to make sure they have good design margin that once you go into manufacturing test, they don't have yield issues, plus once it starts getting deployed in the many networks around the world, all of which are different topologies, that it's going to work under all conditions. So that's very much an area where we focus on. The one other area we focus on is the maintenance and monitoring part. So it's not so much in building new networks, but it's more of that maintenance that once they figured out there is a complex program when they need a test that gives some deep insight into what's going on in the network to allow them to debug it and that's where a lot of test is fitting. So that's really broadly where we sit in the world. So what's been happening lately. While as you know, it's not the greatest attains in the telecoms world at the moment, very much the industry has gone through a flat period. Looking back, it probably started at the turn of the year. And for the last 3 quarters, our business from the telecom space has proven to be quite flat. And I think in general, what happens in the whole ecosystem, you have the operators at the head of the food chain. You obviously are building out the mobile network and they still need to do that. And in our judgment and how everything we see in the trade price suggests that need is still there, the need to do it in the future, but they've slowed down in the build. A lot of these build-outs are done using volumes from our debt and obviously, interest rates going up has caused that to slow down. And of course, when the operators slow down the spend, then the equipment vendors that supply the operators, they slow down and basically become more cautious about spending, especially in capital equipment budgets and our equipment is bought from their capital equipment budgets. So we are a better with tail of the dog in this situation. We've seen this before and within Calnex, we've seen it twice before and my 40 years in this industry, I've seen it many times before in the telecoms industry where when there's lack of confidence and growth, then they basically slow down that spend. They become very cautious in capital spend budgets, which all companies do. It's the first lever you pull. And in fact, what I would say is the behavior we've seen from key customers is the same as it's always as they basically keep trying to delay the spend. They will spend. So it's not like that we are not getting any business, but they'll try and hold off spend to kind of manage that expenses through these periods. So the behavior is the same as we've always seen in terms of street prices as well. You'll see the street price hasn't changed for our product as either they can get it signed off or they can't get it signed off and leading with things like discount, et cetera, is not a great way because all they'll do is take the discount and still give you the order in the next period, but take the discount in the following period. So we've managed through these situations before. It's about staying through with the customers managing that customer relationship. There's a chance to build relationships with customers, try and help them. The thing that is difficult to forecast is how long it's going to last. And in each one of these stages, it always lasts a different [indiscernible] and really, because the -- in my view that the pressure is coming from outside the industry, interest rates in general, concerns about the way the economic situation, it's hard to see. And at this point, we still don't see the green shoots of recovery. And the recovery is likely to take kind of 3- to 4- to 5-month period because they won't suddenly start spending overnight, they'll just start to release their budgets. And that's why it's important to stay true to your customers to make sure [indiscernible] is the stop of the list or high in the pile to get budget when budget comes available. So you got to stick in, but it's not a matter of sitting doing nothing during this time. You're going to continue to drive -- work with core customer base, but also look for other opportunities that we'll talk about. So as I said, I guess, let's look at what's happened through the first half. So for the first half of this year, our revenues were GBP 7.8 million. Our profit before tax was -- we made a loss of GBP 0.6 million and we have a closing cash balance of over GBP 13 million in the bank. And we're going to continue to supply a dividend of 0.31p per share, and that's the same level that we awarded last year for the first half of FY '23. The revenue drop is linked to the subdued level of orders. Our funnel is quite healthy, but it's at last part of getting it closed. It's a challenge. And obviously, as you know, we announced a downgrade in October, and that was really because we didn't see the uptake. Most of it -- typically, in our quarter, the third month of the quarter is always over other months. And in these situations, it becomes even stronger than we were. Basically, our customers are waiting to hear whether they're allowed to spend and the customers are waiting to see what happens through the quarter before they decide towards the end of the quarter. So September really didn't uptick in the way that we hoped it did and that meant we had to look at what was happening and kind of be realistic in terms of what we expected in the near term. But we believe we were in a strong position in the market. We still have a strong order funnel. Orders that are well qualified don't disappear. Again, that's typical to what we've seen in the niche markets, and what becomes hard is to predict when it's actually going to turn into an order. But we don't get canceled orders and even deals, as I said, that are well qualified tend to say. They don't go away. They just -- it's our unpredictability at the end. But of course, our business in the nontelecom space is starting to grow, and that's an area that we're going to focus on. While keeping contact with the telecoms and waiting for it to come back again, we'll focus on the non-telecom space to address new applications in places where we can generate growth. So we're going to maintain our investment in R&D and customer relationships. In terms of -- and we'll talk some more about the new product program, we have an extensive product program, and that's essential to get growth back coming out with new equipment further or new enhancements to our equipment, whether it's to better address some application areas where we can close business or whether it's to meet the ever-changing standards that we have. Because again, when you have new equipment, again, from experience, we find it's easier to get the deals over the line when it's something new rather than selling a second or a third unit to our customer. So that's really important. That's why we believe we can get growth back in the business and we're keeping our investment in R&D. And [indiscernible] customer relationships, the investment in that in terms of travel budgets, although they're tightly managed, it's a time period where you want to engage more with customers, not less. You don't want to retreat to the port. You get out there and speak to people, work with them, try and help them, get that relationship strong so that when money becomes available, you get the benefit at that time. And we have already some new capability released. There's a new product called SNE-X and SNE Ignite. It's a common platform, has 2 variants. And we've already released SNE-X and Ignite will ship in Q4, which was January, February time, and we've already secured the first orders for that equipment. And our NE-ONE platform that we acquired last year when we acquired iTrinegy, that's gaining traction, and we've moved more into places like government and defense spend, again, areas where it has not been so affected as the telecoms is. So there are things happening and things that we're going to continue to follow through to ensure that we cannot just sit around waiting for the welcoming back to us, but we look to generate growth from the things that we are doing on the ground. As I said, we are closing business, and I'll just come up with kind of 6 case studies here to try and give you a flavor of where are you getting business, I'm sure you're asking. The telecoms world is still given -- we're still getting business from the telecoms. It's just a bit harder than it has been in the last couple of years. On the left-hand side of the slide at the top left there, we're actually one of our Tier 1 European operator who we've served for many years have actually just bought some paragons because the need was such that they decided they need to spend and invest. So there's still business coming from our top customers. We also had the success from one in the U.S., like network operators where we've gained resource for many years, but we actually just sold one of our new SNE-X. Again, we'd be able to persuade them the capability and the value that delivers to them was worthwhile to invest in it at this time. But then some new cases where we're getting new business as well that we've tried to show on the right-hand side. In the middle, at the top, in the data center operator just acquired one of our products. And this is what they call a hyper-converged infrastructure, [indiscernible]. But what it really means is that basically host on the network and operate -- network infrastructure in the data center. So that's basically the storage capability, the switching capability that's required and that has been successful. And in all these cases, our standard process is when this happens, we get a new customer, we really understand why the customer -- why the customer has bought it, where the value was so that we can then create sales collateral and take it to other similar operators as data center operators and see whether we can turn that one success in to multiple successes. We've also been successful with our education research center in Europe. We've actually set up a Proof of Concept lab. We are actually inviting companies to come in and look at and come with ideas on future 5G and obviously 6G infrastructure of what it's going to do. These don't often generate a lot but they follow our investments. But what it does is it actually allows us to meet other customers and other potential customers and people to see our equipment and action and cause customer relationships. So we would hope that would lead to us getting new customers in the future, like people coming to these labs, bringing their equipment but seeing other equipment in action and become interested in and acquire one for their own lab. As I mentioned earlier, the defense and government sector is an area where spending is continuing and is not so affected by the kind of global challenges that are happening. Bottom there, we actually sold to U.S. Defense contract [indiscernible] ever sold to the defense sector is pretty hard to understand exactly what they're doing because they don't like telling me very much. But it looked like they were using mainly one, which is a network emulator. It's basically for training for their operators of remote stuff whether it's -- I guess, people on the ground, equipment on the ground, things in the air. And basically, they're setting up realistic world situations where all our devices are at different positions in the battlefield that actually get different bandwidths, different solar network connections to them and using that equipment to emulate that situation to allow them to train their people to be effective in the real situations. And the last one I brought up here is an IT system integrator in the U.S. that focuses on government contracts. Now I've kind of labeled that new customer/channel because although it's a new customer in that we would sell it direct to them, I think it's like a channel because they basically get contracts from the U.S. government and whether it's for fuel systems, IT systems, cybersecurity, the whole thing, put things together, do the installation. So very much system integrator, but they've agreed and see the value of including any one in bundles that they sell to their customers. So that's another case where we're continuing to look for new areas where we can expand our footprint and gain further business. So at that point, I'm going to hand over to Ashleigh, and she's going to give you some more details on the financials.

Thanks, Tommy. Just before I go on to the detail on the next slide on the income statement, I thought it would be useful just to give you a quick recap of our revenue model. So some of you will know Calnex generates revenue through the sale of bundled hardware and software as well as software support and extended warranty programs. So a typical customer will purchase one of our hardware products with a number of software options included at that time, and then that is invoiced as one bundled sale and then that customer, same customer can come back for upgrades or additional options that are added to that existing hardware that they've purchased in the past through the provision of a license key, and we can also sell those software sales or upgrades as a stand-alone sales. So bundled hardware and software is our main revenue stream. And as you might expect, the pricing will differ for each order because it really just depends on the combination of what the customer has purchased in terms of hardware and software option choices depending on what they need at that time. Then that revenue is recognized on dispatch or delivery of the software license key if it's just a standalone software upgrade deal. And then each of our products comes with a standard warranty period, which can be extended for an extra fee, and we also sell software support programs, and that makes up the -- a smaller portion of our revenue streams. That revenue is recognized over the life of the product. So just on to the income statement. Revenue for the half was GBP 7.8 million, which is a 38% decline on last year's half, and that's driven by [indiscernible], also seeing the dynamics in the telecoms market. And consequently, our lower level of orders generated from the same market. Our indirect cost base is largely fixed. So the performance in revenues dropped through to the bottom line profit, as you can see here. I've got more information on the regional and product line revenue trends on -- in the half on the next slide. So I'll go through the rest of the income statement and come back to revenue, just to give you a bit of extra detail on the revenue trends in just a minute. So just working down the income statement. Here, you can see gross margin was 74% in the half year, and that's largely in line with the full year margin in the prior year and prior half trends as well. So just as a reminder, that gross margin is net of commissions payable to our channel partners. So that's the gross margin that belongs to us. Gross margins can fluctuate 1 to 2 percentage points through the year, and that really just depends on the mix of the products and the mix of that bundle of hardware and software that I was talking about before, particularly in a shorter period. We increased our pricing through discussion with our distributors in the early part of last year, and that's helped us maintain gross margins while we have seen some of the direct material cost increases come through from the wage economic challenges that the world is having. So we're keeping a very tight hold on costs while we go through this period to produce larger volumes. As a result, we haven't had any head count increases, apart from graduate hires in the period. So we have a gradual higher hiring program that we have continued because it's on a cyclical basis. So the only increase in head has been 5 new hires in the period. No other head count increases across the company. And as you can see here, admin costs. So admin costs in this particular table excludes depreciation and other amortization, sorry, which are shown separately here. That came in just under the prior year level, as you can see, as a result of lower commissions on the lower order volumes, lower hiring costs because of our hold on adding heads and reduced profit share accruals, offset partially by increases to share-based payment accruals. We also had a small amount of acquisition costs included in the prior year P&L for the iTrinegy acquisition, which were nonrecurring, so we had to save in there as well. And as you'll know, we capitalized 100% of our R&D costs and amortized these to the P&L over 5 years. Our R&D amortization came in at GBP 1.8 million for the period as planned versus GBP 1.6 million in the prior year. And that increase is solely due to the pattern of R&D cash spend in the previous 5 years of that 5-year amortization profile comes through. So the loss, as Tommy was saying, loss before tax came in at GBP 0.6 million, and that's very much driven by the revenue performance from a volume perspective. Our fixed cost base creates a negative operational gearing effect on the P&L at this time as we retain our -- retain our head count, retain our cost base in order to return to growth in future periods. The full year market guidance from our brokerage shows a breakeven position. And so that assumes a slightly heavier retain to H2 for revenues, but that heavier retain revenue volumes will drop through to profit to bring the profit back to a breakeven level of costs and should continue on H1 run rate. So just a quick one on the tax rate here, just to explain it. Looking at the tax number and the tax effective rate, looking at mathematically, the effective tax rate comes in at 37%. However, that's quite an unusual rate, and it's very much driven by the mathematics and on the loss-making position. So I just wanted to pull out a couple of things here to explain it because it's not something that we would envisage being our effective tax rate going forward. As we return to profit and as we return to growth, we would expect our effective tax rate to go back in line with previous years. It sits around about that sort of mid-20%. So just a couple of things to explain that. The underlying applicable rate applied to the loss-making profit before tax was 25%, which is the usual U.K. corporation tax rate. And as you'll know, we benefit from R&D tax credits. And in the period, we benefited from the SME scheme in the half year. The RDEC scheme, which is the larger scheme, we also benefit from, but that comes in H2 on accounting journal. The SME scheme credits are accounted for within the tax line and the tax credits are calculated as a percentage of the R&D spend in the year and not on the profit. So that tax credit has had the effect of increasing the overall tax in the period, a tax credit in the period and flipped it into our credit position. So that's what's driving the 37% there. EPS is currently at a loss per share of 0.42p and that's driven very much by the trading performance. So just on to the next slide, just to take you through some of the revenue movements in the period. So as you can see from the disclosure notes in the RNA, the wider economic climate and the subdued market had an impact on revenue levels across our geographies, and it has also had an effect across our product lines as well. So we just want to give you a little bit more information on that. So as you'll know, we've got our 3 regions, which are Americas, North Asia and rest of world. And that rest of the world region has broken down into Europe, Middle East, India, Southeast Asia and Australasia. In that rest of the world region, trading was least affected by the slowdown with the EMEA sub region performing strongest in that region, and that's where business has come from a wider range of sectors including automotive, power and rail alongside telecoms at the same time. Within North Asia, we're increasing our focus on growing the business in Taiwan and Japan, while China remains challenging due to the impact of U.S. restrictions. And the Americas region saw most of the impact from the slowdown in the telecoms market, as you might expect. We're continuing to see very close to our end customers in this region and the other 2, while increasing our focus on opportunities within hyperscalers and government end markets where we see the best chance to close business. And from a product line perspective, lapsing, and so that's the Paragon product, and you'll see that in a slide to come up in Tommy's next section, saw performance come in lower than the previous period, which is driven very much by that product line's end market being largely telecoms. That's also the case with Sentinel, which sits in our network Sync product line. Our plans for growing our Sentry sales, which is our newer network Sync product, in the use of the data centers are continuing. And from a cloud and IP perspective, we need to look at it from both the infrastructure and applications perspective as the driver is just slightly different. So within infrastructure, the SNE, has had a larger exposure to the U.S. market, so saw performance drop as a result of the wider economic challenges. But this is expected to pick up in H2 as a result of the launch of our SNE-X and SNE-Ignite products, which Tom will touch on later in the presentation. And in applications, which is our NE-ONE product from the iTrinegy acquisition last year, we're on track to achieve our original full year revenue target as our channel expansion plans continue together with success from selling into defense and satellite communication sectors. So on to the cash flow. So as you can see here, total cash outflow for the period was GBP 5.6 million, which reflects both the loss in the period and increases in working capital, which is namely inventory. And the increases in working capital are largely one-off in nature in the period. So I just wanted to pull out a few things there to explain that. So working capital movements were GBP 3.3 million, and the large majority of that was inventory. So that was driven by 3 things. So we always plan to build up a little bit more of our on-the-shelf inventory, inventory that we can have access to within our own building as opposed to our outsource manufacturer. So we always had that plan to use that as a buffer stock to mitigate against any future supply chain delays that we suffered from in previous years. We also are -- the demand plans that we have in place with our outsourced manufacturer were based on previous order expectations, which always take a little bit longer time to dial down compared to the market -- the end market forecast changes that are happening in the wider world from a customer perspective. So it just takes time to dial down through the supply chain as the supply chain is longer than [indiscernible] manufacturers you expect. And inventory purchases made as a result of the tail end of the supply chain issues are also coming through as well. So a lot of these are one-off in nature. And excluding any further tailing effect of the supply chain issues, we don't expect working capital movements in H2 to mirror those of H1. We don't expect them to be as material. We paid GBP 0.8 million in tax to HMRC this period, but that was based on profits generated in the prior year. And given the current expectations for trading for FY '24, this cash should be refundable on FY '25 after submission of the FY '24 year-end tax return. Cash spent on R&D activities, which is capitalized and amortized over 5 years was GBP 2.6 million versus GBP 2.5 million last half year, and that slight increase just reflects the inflationary salary increases and the graduate head count increases that I was talking about earlier. And as I said earlier, there were no other head count increases in R&D in this period. We still hold currently surplus cash in notice accounts to gain a little bit of a higher interest when we can, but we do not hold any long-term deposit over 95 days. So that just explains that GBP 1.5 million cash inflow coming in there in the one-off income section, which just explains the statutory [indiscernible] of the cash flow. We still have no debt on the balance sheet. And as a result of the working capital flows normalizing in H2 and the profit coming back to breakeven, we expect H2 cash to be breakeven in order for us to maintain that cash balance to the end of the year. So to summarize, while the results for the period are disappointing, we're seeing encouraging performance from our new products, and Tommy will touch on that a little bit more in his next section. Our gross margins have remained robust and in line with previous years, and we're keeping tight control of our existing cost base to minimize any additional impact to profit. Our ever productive R&D and sales teams are focusing on areas that will generate future growth for the business, whether that be in telecoms or non-telecoms end markets. And our investment in inventory means we can be ready to reduce order fulfillment lead times and control fulfillment lead times once demand picks up with a healthy cash balance, which we expect to maintain over H2, providing us with a good foundation on which to return to stronger financial performance in future periods. And I'll hand you back over to Tommy.

Thank you, Ashleigh. So just to finish off here, let's just have a quick recap of our strategy and also just wanted to look at our product program to try and give you some insight to where it's important and how it's going to deliver growth for us moving forward. So our strategy is the same as it's been for a number of years, not surprisingly, we're going to continue to focus our product innovation and capitalizing the growth of 5G or the build-out of the mobile network. I think everything we watch very carefully with trade price. And then back in 2001, there was a structural problem in our industry. And we suffered badly from it. I do not believe that's what's happening here, but it's a wider economic climate. There's definitely a slow down at the moment, but the drivers, the underlying need of the world to get a more effective communications network just seems to be still there. So firmly believe that it will come back because it needs to come back. So it continues to be a key focus for us. And of course, the cloud computing area is the other area that we focus on whether it's actually the infrastructure that creates these data centers or whether it's the applications and software that's running in the cloud. Both of these things, again, the world is still kind of moving towards that way, things like AI Ashleigh talked about causes some concerns in that world because of the processing required to deliver an AI request. For example, if you ask your appraiser for, you show me [indiscernible] homepage. Imagine the processing that is required to do that versus say, could you give me the history of [indiscernible]. So it's -- the whole AI is going to put a huge amount of pressure on the cloud computing or the data centers, and they need to look at efficiencies as well as how to build [indiscernible]. And a lot of what we are doing with them is making that infrastructure more efficiency. We still believe there's a lot of opportunities going to come out of that. So these 2 growth engines, we still believe are core growth engines for our industries -- for our markets and will continue to be for the foreseeable. And the third thing that we've always talked about is that we are open to M&A opportunities. We are continuing to look for these. As you know, in our market, there isn't a huge number of testing measurement companies. There are a few, tens of them, but it is not hundreds of thousands. So there's always an element of opportunism of when something comes around the right time. So we are continuing to look. We're also continuing to speak to people. And if something comes to the point that we think it's the right product to expand our portfolio to create what I would call new business, that's either selling to people we don't sell to today or selling something in addition to our current customers, then it's a case I would take to the Board for discussion to see whether this is something that we should move on. Our product program, you all have hopefully seen this slide before, is we're basically focused on developing platforms that we can add lots of capability to. We have a number of new things. I've already mentioned the SNE. You can see on the right-hand side, there's now 3 SNE platforms, SNE, SNE-X and SNE-Ignite and the reason for that is the top 2 are really based on the new platform that's tightly linked to SNE. So there's a lot of commonality. But by using different platforms, which actually have different build price points, it also allows us to position it to the many different groups and the applications that need a network emulator. So we can focus the right platform, whether it's high performance and Ignite from a hardware-based implementation or it's high complexity at the lower data rates in the SNE or in the middle there where you're working on the high data rates, high complexity, then we can target the right product to the right customer and obviously, value price it in that market, but still gain a healthy margin from that. And in the center block, we have the SyncSense. This is a new product that we introduced earlier -- in the last time's meeting. And we're just still in the very early stages as discussed this with customers. So this is a monitoring system where we probes across a whole network, whether it's within a data center or whether it's within a telecom's network that looks at the same synchronization and reports where there might be issues. So we're at a very early stage with this, and we have started to engage with Sync customers or what we would call development partners to help us tune the offering and make sure that we're offering something that's real value. So early to say where that's going to take us. We are quite excited about it. Unlikely to get much business or any business FY '24, but we'd be looking to hopefully close the first orders for that in FY '25. But in all these platforms, we've actually got ongoing development. And on this slide, I've tried to kind of summarize that and give you a flavor why do you have this. So in a strange picture on the right-hand side, there's 3 columns. The left hand column is that the various platforms that we were just looking at in the previous slide. The middle column is the various projects. And then on the right-hand side, I've tried to indicate a few that's -- whether it's telecoms and non telecoms. And you can see in all our platforms, out continued enhancements and that's very much the nature of what we do. Our customers invest in our platform, it's not just investment in terms of buying the product, but the team -- there are people to use them, but they often develop software routines to run automated test scripts to test their equipment. So they want our products to continue to keep up the standards following technology reaps. So some of these are fairly big projects. Look at the bottom there, we got the SNE-Ignite and X that I've talked about, that's a project that's been going over 15 months, and it's just coming to the end. So it's a major platform change that's come along. I think most of our products and most of the technology, it's the same technology underneath even though different sectors are using it. So kind of 80%, 85% of the functionality that we have to develop. It's common to all applications, but we had a layer on the top that sometimes the special features that a particular application needs or you want to present it in a way that makes the specific customers understand how they can use it in their application. So that's why the same product can end up target both telecoms and non telecoms. We have other big projects, the one at the very top, 800 gigs, that's out in the current leading edge functionality to the Paragon-neo, something our customers are already asking us for, and we've started developing it because we had to wait until the building. This is really a LeadingEdge technology and the building blocks only became available about 2 quarters ago to us that we could actually start and make a project and build that. That will come out in the second half of FY '25. So again, it's that kind of longer term. But in between, we need to keep up with the standards. We need to keep giving new functionality. So things like [indiscernible], which is a bit of a vanilla name, but it's got a whole host of smaller features that the customers are asking for to make sure we keep up the standard, keep up with their needs as we go along. So these are also very important because when you have something new allows a sales team to get in front of customers again. So here, we've got some new capability, kind of come in and explain it to you and allow them to go in there and start engaging. So our programs always need this. We continually need to enhance our products because our customers' needs are changing. But of course, that means we can obviously generate revenue from these enhancements as well. So as you can see, we've got a full program of continuous enhancements. And these are what gives us confidence that in the future -- in FY '25. We can start to generate growth even if the telecoms market stays flat on us, because we feel that we are starting to come out with new products that will generate business and target new applications. So to summarize all that together, we still believe the underlying market drivers of the build out of the mobile network and move to cloud computing have not changed, but there is clearly a near-term softness in the market due to the macroeconomic effects that happened around the world, but the drivers are still there. New product program is really important, and that's why we've continued to invest in our new products because that is important to keep engaged with customers, see that our customers that have invested in our programs that we are going to follow through with in, but also develop new unmet needs and basically and hopefully encourage people to place orders for the new capability. We have a team. I keep mentioning I've been around for quite a long while in this market, but we're actually a very experienced team. So we have been through these many times before and nobody wants them, but we do not work on a straight-line market. We do not keep -- telecom has never always kept going, it wobbles as we go along, and you just need to deal with the situation. And we've got a team that's been through this before. I know how to do it, how to stay and keep these customer relationships strong, how to keep working with our partners and be in a strong position, go and make business where we can, but also stay strong so that when the market comes back, we can start to grow in these markets as well. Our pricing has remained stable. We haven't really seen the street price drop. The problem is just getting the whole order over the line. It's not a matter of street price. As I actually mentioned, we have a robust balance sheet. We have cash in the bank. We are, at the moment, running more on kind of breakeven from this point on. So we are in a strong position, but we do believe that we can get growth back into the business, both some in the second half from the kind of seasonality and some of the new -- the early introduction of programs. But obviously, as we go into FY '25, even if the market stays flat on, we will be able to bring growth back into our business and make -- and have a stronger FY '25 than FY '24. So at that point, that's the end of the formal presentation.

[Operator Instructions] But just while the company takes few moments to read those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via our investor dashboard. Tommy, Ashleigh, as you can see, we've received pre-submitted questions. Dave also received a number of questions throughout today's live event. And if I could just ask you to read out those questions and give responses where it's appropriate to do so, I'll pick up from you both at the end.

Okay. Thanks, Alexander. Okay. Let me -- so there were 3 presubmitted questions. So I think it's only right we answer these first. I'll take the first 2 and then hand over to Ashleigh to do the third one. So the first one was both Ericsson and Nokia have recently released pretty poor numbers and short-term forecast for continued weakness in our networking businesses. Do you feel your financial balancing business structure sufficiently robust to withstand another year or 2 of weak demand? What do you need to do? In some ways, I think I've just -- well, I hope I've answered that question. I think we are in a -- I think we have a robust balance sheet. We are in a -- we have cash in the bank, we are in a situation where we believe from this point on we can run at breakeven and above. But breakeven is not where anybody wants to be, we want to be above. And through our new product program by going looking for opportunities, we can grow. As I say at times when you're the tail of the dog, you have to wait for the dog to waggle you, but we are not going to step back and wait for that. We're going go at it. We are looking for business. It's a good time to encourage our teams and drive our teams to go and look for new areas where we can find new applications which will spread our portfolio, spread our footprint, which will be strong for us in the future. So yes, we do believe we're in a position that we can manage this period for -- if it goes on for a more extended period, but fingers crossed, that's not the case. Does Calnex and it's advisers aware that it is customary to release market-sensitive information at 7:00 a.m. All other market sensitive announcements by Calnex have been released at 7 a.m. Why was the trading update on the 10th of October, released at 3:17 p.m. Good question. Well, I think the reality is that just to kind of clarify from a compliance point of view, we are required to release it as soon as it's available, i.e., the Board has completed the work to complete the RNS in terms of they've made a decision, we have to then obviously get a document and make sure that we spend time to get the wording right, especially in this one that was coming out -- of the one that came out on the 10th of October. It was important to get all the wording correct and got a clear message and that's just messaged out to you. And actually -- and by compliance when it's ready, that's supposed to be released at that time and if it's before 4:30 in the day and that's what happens. We probably had assumed we thought we could get it out early in the day, but just getting that wording right that kind of drifted further into the day and that's whey it came out in the middle of the afternoon. What we believe we were following our requirements by the market to release the information to you as soon as we were aware of that, and we could communicate it clearly to you. Ashleigh, do you want to take the third question?

Sure. No problem. And then it's actually -- the third pre-submitted question is actually related to another couple of questions that have come in during the call. So I'll just read them all out because hopefully, Ill be able to answer them all in one answer. So presubmitted question, why are you confident that your only supplier Kelvinside will survive any major economic downturn? That's also a similar question to a question, Andrew G has asked. How has your slowdown affected your outsourced manufacture? Any issues with their stability and Freddy A has also asked the question. We are reliant upon a third-party for manufacturer. How are they dealing with the industry slowdown? Are they robust? So I'll just answer all of them in one block, if that's okay. So Kelvinside manufactures for us, but they also have quite a diversified portfolio of customers that aren't -- that don't face into the telco end market. So we usually sit at the top -- in amongst the top 3 customers for Kelvinside. The other 2 main customers that they have are nontelco based companies. They deal more in aerospace, government, defense, tech industries. And those customers for Kelvinside actually took a dip in COVID and are actually growing from the COVID times, they've seen quite a lot of growth from those customers into this period. So the diversified portfolio that they have helps to spread the risk in times when one customer has dipped in demand, they have seen an increased demand in their other customers. We also have a really close relationship with Kelvinside. So we share information with them. When we can share information with them on our public information, we do, but we also receive financial information from them on a regular basis just because of that close relationship that we have with them. So the communication channels are very from an operational perspective but also from the financial information perspective. So we do have very regular conversations with them on their financials, on their cash flow, on their overall stability. And they are actually in growth at the moment. Just because of that growth, it's going back to other customers. At this moment in time, we don't see any risks with their financial stability. They're also not leveraged as well. So we have no significant bank debt, so they're not suffering any interest costs that the other manufacturers may be suffering. And then there is another here -- hopefully, that answers the Kelvinside question. There's another question here from Simon B. So it's FD mentioned that the slight reduction in admin expenses was partly due to less sales commissions being paid and not on account. So should sales commissions be part of sales costs? So actually, all our sales costs, so the cost of the sales team and their salary, they're sort of noncommission-based salary costs, their travel costs, et cetera, all sit within admin costs. So their sales commission -- the sales commission costs are linked directly back to that -- to where they are accounted for with an administration costs. So that's essentially where that should sit. So from a like-for-like perspective, they both sit in the same pot when it comes to the statutory of the P&L.

Okay. I got a couple of questions here, Ashleigh, and I will pick up. Andrew asked the question, you mentioned having to work in various topologies. So to what extent could you be liable if your equipment validates a piece of kit, which subsequently doesn't perform as anticipated in a specific application? Yes. I guess that's never came up as an issue in my experience, Andrew. We tend to specify or prove particular situations and what usually is the problem and actually, the next question may be linked to this, in some ways, I'll come to it from Derrick, is that they haven't tested enough different scenarios. So it's not so much that we test and it's up to the customer to take our instrument and we create various scenarios. We can give them ideas. We can help them think about things, but it's up to them to create the test plan at the end of the day what they do. So our product will execute that test platform. If they haven't done an extensive test or an extensive enough test plan, then basically, they leave themselves to particular problems. And I'll just jump to the second question because Derrick pointed [indiscernible]. So Derrick says Optus Australia has had a complete breakdown in one of its service in Australia recently, which has proved very expensive. Do you see that it's due to an issue between its parent Singtel and doing an upgrade? Are their clients made -- you've helped them avoid this crisis? We have sold to Optus in the past. I'm not sure whether -- I don't know the details. I'm not sure whether they released the exact details. I don't -- I don't want to say like an ambulance chaser, but actually, these things help to remind our customer base, why it's important to actually test and do that sort of robust testing. Because if you do a superficial testing, you may think it looks okay, but it's not until it's enters these environments, and that's where we try and provide expert advice to our customers of saying, well, have you tested these things, what about this sort of scenario and help them develop an extensive test suites so that they have completely understood what can happen in real-world networks and then really replicated them in the test lab to see what their equipment does and whether it manages it. Because there is many different things that happen in real networks and it's about creating each type of event, but sometimes combinations that we know packets get delayed, they get lost, sometimes they get misordered in networks and they come in different ways. But then you made it delay varying at the same time. So creating combinations of delay variation. At the same time, there's low throughput, make it quite a different environment to the software than just to do each one, one at a time. So it gives us a chance to basically engage with customers, try and help them. And of course, the bigger the test plan and more likely they'll need more test equipment from us. So it's something that we do. Ashleigh, if you got other ones, you can pick up.

Sure. So we've got one here that [indiscernible] for us both to comment on. So [indiscernible] has asked, given that Calnex is an excellent example of a very high-tech U.K. company serving global market, how do you ensure that truly influential business supporting politicians in both Scottish and U.K. governments are kept very much aware of you? So I'd let Tommy just talk about some of the history of Calnex because the Scottish Enterprise -- Scottish partners, Scottish government has been -- was very supportive of us prior to IPO, and they still remain quite a significant shareholder. If you were to -- if there's a -- if you look at the significant shareholders on our website, you can see Scottish Enterprise is in the top 5. They were supported right from day one from us. And then for us going forward, it's just about keeping that conversation going so that people understand how that investment from Scottish Enterprise has been a success. And I don't know, Tommy, if you want to just talk a little about the history of the question, please?

Yes. In early days, we received a lot of support from Scottish Enterprise. There's a long story. I maybe tell you 1 day of how without Scottish Enterprise, Calnex would never have existed. It was a transmuting that actually inspired our need to start the company. And in the early days, they were a huge support to us in terms of not just grants that we were never shy to take a grant from them, but in terms of just mentoring and support and all sorts of ways. So they've always been very supportive of us. Today, we get probably less support because we're a bigger company. We don't need support. We've got cash in the bank. So I'm not sure it's right, but we would be taking a lot of support. I think -- but over the years, yes, they have been very [indiscernible] and very supportive to us. Even remember back when the banking crisis hit, that was one of the bad times for the company. We were a very young company. We were closing 1 or 2 deals a month and had 3 months when there was no deal. So you can imagine that it was a bit [indiscernible] to say the least. But SG was straight in and managed to get us a grant for travel to go, as I said, go see customers, don't sit there and do nothing today. So they've always been very supportive and in many ways, Calnex wouldn't have existed if it wasn't for Scottish Enterprise.

Another one here that I can take it. So Stephen R has asked 2 questions. I can just cover both of them, hopefully. So 2 quick ones. He says, am I right in thinking Spirent is an important distributor for you? Would that be more than 10% of revenues? And the second question is, did you give us the approximate split between telco businesses and others? So from a Spirent perspective, very much so from a distributor perspective, it's actually closer to 65% to 70% of our orders go through Spirent. We still maintain that conversation with the end customer. So we're very much in touch with the end customer for every transaction. The orders do go through Spirent for that percentage of end volume in our orders. We also have other distributors across our network that make up the large majority of the rest of the order flows. We have a very small percentage of customers that we deal with directly. So hopefully, that answers that part of the question. And then in terms of the approximate split between telco businesses and others, we don't show that in our half year RNS, we do on a few year perspective. And so over the last 3 years' trend, from a telco versus non-telecom orders in the year, that has been averaging out around about 23% in terms of when you look at last year's orders. We do expect that percentage to continue, maybe slightly higher than that in the years depending on their percentage compared to telcos, but that's essentially where we've seen the trend historically. You should be able to see that within the annual report for last year, which is on our website in the financial section, you should see it within the revenue model section.

Okay. Has a question here from Lucas. I'll pick up. Good question, I guess. Can you talk a little a bit more about the new customers for the military sector? Are those first deliveries just a test run for them or to try the solutions? What potential do you see in the medium term and really expect this to go? Most of my life has been with telecoms and my working life has been with telecoms. And we form really strong relationships and we -- I'd like to believe that our trusted partner, we can sit down with our lead people who will tell us what they're going to do next year and the year after, what they think about technologies in a very honest way even though they know we speak to the competitors, but they completely trust us because we would never pass information between anybody, any customers. But they will [indiscernible], and that's helpful because it allows us to obviously get a road map in place to have the capability there when you need it. I always get frustrated with the military people. I guess it's spread into them. They just don't tell you anything. So I'm not sure how easy is to answer this question, Lucas, because they really don't tell you very much at all what they're doing. They're very polite but you walk away, you think I'm not sure you really told me anything, I guess. I think from that sales that we had there into the -- I would assume, and this is my assumption that they actually do a lot sitting up with our operators to manage all sorts of scenarios in terms of different situations, different points in the world where equipment is getting controlled for. So I would like to think they are actually building this and they will use it not just as a kind of single run, but an ongoing because from what we know about it, it seems like it was put into an environment that would be used on an ongoing basis. I think that's why, I guess, in the case example slide, I put up about the system integrator. Because I guess with the military -- with all customers, it's how you get to customers, how do you speak to them. You might have a product they like, but how do you get it to them? And I guess this is where having a system integrator who already has established relationships into the different sector and a better route in, it feels this is important for us to actually basically work through them as a channel partner and use their contacts and leverage and make sure they understand how our product can be used and leverage through there. And hopefully, we can get into these military accounts in the U.S. and increase our business there. Is that finished or there's one more here.

One more there.

Yes. Let me try and answer this last one and then I think we are done. Are your telco customers mainly cutting on big investments? Or do you see a broader cutting in smaller investments, R&D, OpEx? I would -- I guess, in terms of what we assumed, at the end, we are further back these big cuts to happen at the front end. We don't sell directly. We see the consequences of them slowing down. So what we see is within engineering departments that we sell to, we go through the standard sales cycle of technical close, commercial close, and then the last bit that's only a small bit is getting the people sign. And we get to that point and then basically because within the company, there's either a freeze or the authorization levels moved up in terms of getting signed off. And so they definitely got more restricted budgets than they've had in the last few years and they find more difficult. And again, that's where we need to work closely with them because we need to equip the people we speak to, to go speak to here as the budget holders to have a compelling case why I need to buy this or they need to buy that. And again, as I said earlier, when it's new capability and they can't do without, then these things are important to try and equip the people we speak to, to try and internally get the people work across with them.

Perfect. Tommy, Ashleigh. You've addressed all of those questions from investors. And of course, the company will review all the questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. But just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which you know is particularly important to the company. Tommy, could I just ask you for a few closing comments.

Okay. Yes, it's not the best of times, so I'm not going to try and kid you this. And I've been through this before, and there's no pleasure in saying that either because it's better when it's all going to the right business. But we believe we can come through this. We have a difficult time we've been through here before. We need to keep managing. We know how to keep our current customer base on track or on side with us and manage to develop keep these relationships strong. And then sometimes you can sense the relationships when you help people through this period. And we do have to kind of wait until the world gives us a break, but we're not sitting waiting for the world to give us a break with our new product program that we're going to continue to invest in looking for new ideas, looking for new opportunities. And where we do get opportunities and we get orders and we'll analyze them and grab we are looking for where there is one because that's what we need to do. And if we can do that, then I believe we can get growth back into the business next year. So thank you very much for your time today.

Tommy, Ashleigh, thank you again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session as you now will be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better stand your views and expectations? This will only take a few minutes to complete, but I'm sure they would be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Calnex Solutions plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.