Credit Clear Limited (CCR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Credit Clear's Half Year Presentation for FY '25. Thanks very much for joining us early this morning. Today, we have Andrew Smith, the CEO; Victor Peplow, the CFO; and also Jason Serafino, the Chief Information and Product Officer, on the line to answer your questions, which we'll run a Q&A after the session. We go through our usual slides. And the webinar today is being recorded, so we can send a recording of this around -- afterwards. With that, we'll hand over to Andrew Smith, the CEO.

Yes. Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining this morning. And obviously, welcome to Victor Peplow, our CFO, and thank you, Warrick, for the introduction. Sort of a pretty significant presentation for us. It marks the 10-year birthday of both Credit Clear and ARMA Group in March this year. So it's incredible to think what the businesses have done together since joining just over 3.5 years. For me, the highlight has been that we have become the debt resolution company of choice for many Tier 1 clients who continue to select Credit Clear as the choice to offer Software-as-a-Service, debt resolution capability, debt collection and legal work. So I'll highlight some of those key client wins over the last 12 months. But ultimately, we're here to talk about the numbers and revenue of $23.2 million in the first half of the year. That is up 16% on the prior corresponding period, $2.9 million of underlying EBITDA, which is up 66% on the prior corresponding period. And from an FY '25 guidance point of view, we're reaffirming that guidance with expectations of a stronger second half as is traditional within our business that's growing fast and onboarding lots of new clients. So we'll get into the details. It feels like I've been talking about this for 3.5 years, but I'll do it again for those that aren't quite as familiar, as lots of you will be with the end-to-end offering that Credit Clear offer. We start with early-stage intervention and debt resolution services that we offer typically as a white label software solution that delivers debt recovery and accounts receivable services that typically deliver a 22% uplift in terms of performance. That flows through to our traditional third-party collections business, which was ARMA Group, that is now a digitally-led or digitally-enabled business that looks at assisting clients in resolving overdue debts as a third-party. And if that can't be resolved, then we also have a late-stage legal team that can get involved if there's a requirement from clients usually in that business-to-business space to collect overdue debts through the courts. Some of the key things, as I said, are around the improvement in performance from a collections perspective. The speed of recoveries is a huge reason why people choose to use our services. And lastly, but certainly not least, is the Net Promoter Score, which measures the customer satisfaction of a client engaging with Credit Clear throughout the processes, is still over plus 40, which in effect is a very, very large endorsement that this service despite being in the debt collection space is a service that's being well received by customers. And that's been surveyed over 669,000 responses. So quite extraordinary number of responses and is still a source of hot debate with many of our clients when we talk about our Net Promoter Score, even though we're involved in the debt recovery space. It's really nice to sit in front of you as investor community and look back not just in the last 6 months, but look back longer. It feels like it wasn't that long ago where the mission was to generate cash and not burn cash and become self-sustainable as a organization that didn't need to constantly come to the market and raise money. And I can confidently say having had 6 halves of positive cash generation is something that we're very proud of, and it's reflected in these numbers. So I'll throw to Victor, the CFO, to sort of go into a little bit more detail as we explain this in a graph format.

Great. Thanks, Andrew. Look, as you all can see, our key financial indicators are heading in the right direction. We have provided 6, 7 halves there to give the audience better perspective. And we've been consistent with what we've reported for financials as well. So in terms of revenue, up 16%, as Andrew has already mentioned. What's pleasing there, though, is there's been a strong bias in revenue growth from new business, new clients despite us continuing to upsell and cross-sell existing, we're getting a larger share of revenue growth from new clients. And there's still a lot of upside in those new clients that we've brought on in the last 12 months, and I'll talk a little bit about that in a moment. Underlying EBITDA, again, heading in the right direction. It was only 3 halves ago that we're at breakeven. So that's coming along nicely. And in terms of cash, again, Andrew has already mentioned 3 halves of positive cash flow from operations. That will continue to grow. The cash reserve will continue to improve, and we'll use that for future growth opportunities as they arise. I think the key point on this slide, though, is that the business model is sound. We just need to do more of the same and accelerate growth. In terms of gross profit margin, and again, marginal increase from 53% to 54%. Although, the key point there is that there was material expenditure incurred in the first half to onboard key clients. That's been the focus over the last 6, 12 months that we've communicated consistently. Bringing on larger clients involves upfront costs for longer term gains. To give you a feel for some of the -- or the nature of these expenses, they involve or include systems integration, which are more complex for larger clients. Their reporting requirements is a lot more comprehensive and data security requirements are a lot more stringent. So with that comes longer time to onboard, to integrate, but they are more lucrative clients and it's stickier business as well given the heavy integration. A lot of Tier 1 clients have a reluctance to move service providers across many, many services, particularly key services such as ours. The fact that we're winning them is testament to how we compare to our competitors. However, there is an upfront investment there, okay? Despite all those expenses, again, just to emphasize, we managed to improve gross margin. We expect that to continue to increase though over the next few halves. Cash generation already -- we've already commented. Underlying EBITDA as a percentage of revenue improved from 9% to 13%. Again, as revenue improves from recently acquired clients, we expect that to increase further, particularly as we achieve economies of scale. Is there anything else you'd like to add on this slide, Andrew?

Yes. Look, just to reinforce what Victor said about these large clients choosing Credit Clear as their debt collection partner or debt resolution partner. A lot of them haven't shifted service providers for 10 years plus. So on one hand, it's just a testament to the service offering and the competitive advantage that Credit Clear has over its competition, while we're being chosen as a provider. Secondly, once you can do the hard work to integrate those clients, they're very reluctant to move. So it's a very large decision for an organization to sort of shift providers, not just because of the cost and time it takes us, but it costs those clients a lot to move supplier as well. So, we'll go through some of the names of the key clients that we've won over the last 12 months in later slides, but it is quite an extraordinary list. And given I've been in this industry for 20-plus years, I've never seen an organization attract those type of clients as quickly as we have. And what that means is that in terms of the cost curve when onboarding a client, the costs are higher at the beginning of the relationship and the revenue is lower, and it takes some time for that cost curve to come down and obviously, the revenue curve to start to peak. And the fact that we're still growing our gross profit margin, still driving cash uplift in the bank, still improving our underlying EBITDA margin is extraordinary considering the onboarding that we've been doing.

Okay. This is -- I've used this format, I think, the last couple of years, which ties in underlying EBITDA to the statutory accounts. And again, I'm showing 3 corresponding halves here for better perspective. Firstly, revenue line, we've already spoken about that, up 16% with upside to come. Employee benefits, look, that's up 13% for reasons we've explained again. System integration, it requires people to get them on board, our people, our tech people, our process people, working with our clients' corresponding groups as well. There's a lot of back and forth there. We're talking about very large volumes here going back and forth in terms of collection files. These should be done in a controlled environment, very simple. A lot more complex and challenging, if you like, than the smaller clients that merely send us files and this back and forth. This is a lot more integrated, as I said. And so, with that employee benefits have increased for the resourcing of new clients and onboarding. In terms of the tech development line, this is the OpEx component. That's been fairly consistent over the last 3 halves. Look, we continue to invest in the technology platform. That's a key and important part. It's a point of difference that we have compared to our competitors. It continues to perform well in terms of collection rates. NPS scores, that Andrew has already touched on. And it's a very compliant way of making collections. And you can do it, obviously, in very high volumes given its technology base. All that said, we continually evaluate what we invest in tech development. Jason is on the call. He and I, the senior executive, we talk about what's being worked on every month, what the returns are. Return on that investment is important. So it's continually evaluated to optimize returns. In terms of other expenses, again, they're up 10%. That relates to things such as client reporting, customization, data securities, which I've mentioned. A lot of that client reporting though, we're finding can be automated. So we're working on that, which will free up staff to get on with other things. Despite all that investment though, we've still managed to have 36% of revenue increment flow through to underlying EBITDA. Yes, our target is 40% to 50%. But given the expenses we've carried, 36% is still a pleasing result. I will emphasize though that when comparing first half '23 to first half '25, so over 2 years, 50% of that additional revenue has flowed through to underlying EBITDA. And that's the top end -- at the top end of our range of 40% to 50%. So we're very pleased to achieve that over that 2-year period, which has been a transitional period. If you think about the acquisitions we've made coming together, putting on clients, there's been a lot going on there. We see the business settling much more going forward than what we've had to manage over the last couple of years. So that's revenue through to underlying EBITDA, that second blue line. Just commenting a little on the other items below underlying EBITDA. Expenses there of $794,000, systems consolidation and client migration. Just to be clear here, these are post-acquisition non-recurring expenses. So I'm referring to with the 3 acquisitions we've made over the last few years, multiple systems, bringing them into one. Client migration, which is highly complex, particularly where you've got to involve the client who works with us on the client migration into a consolidated system. That exercise is largely completed now, but there was a lot of that being done as well during that first half. Share-based expenses fairly consistent. They're all linked, of course, to financial targets being met, which leads us to the EBITDA line on the statutory accounts there. Now obviously, other items, expense -- other expense items rather has affected the statutory EBITDA line, but we expect that to improve in coming years and it will. Depreciation, amortization, that's largely due to capitalized tech development and office leases. That's split evenly. And that leads us to NPATA. So this year, I'm showing NPATA and amortization of acquisitions below or separately, which is more transparent because it's the amortization on the acquisitions that really reflects most of that bottom line loss. So if you back that out, we're pretty much at breakeven there, and that will be a black number as we move into the second half and following years. So in summary, despite the first half carrying material costs for onboarding key clients, the business was still able to grow underlying EBITDA. So we're pleased about that. There's a lot more in that during the second half as we see it. But I think what gets lost in the numbers is the quality of clients we are acquiring here over the last 12 months. So to name a few, and I'm stealing Andrew's thunder a little bit, he'll get to this, but I will pinch a handful. ANZ, EnergyAustralia, IAG, Origin Energy, they are all large household names. These are blue-chip companies that will set us up very, very well in the long term. They have very large debt collection files for us to work. So I think we've built a really solid foundation here to build upon, and this will -- that will flow through in the financials going forward. I'll stop there and pass back to Andrew.

Yes. Thanks, Victor. I appreciate you taking some credit from a sales perspective. I take credit from a numbers perspective on a regular basis. So it's probably only fair. Yes. Look, we're going to go talk about the clients building momentum. And that really, for me, is the highlight. I know I mentioned earlier in the presentation that I've never seen a situation where an organization has been to attract such incredible list of household names. And I know that Victor mentioned a few, but I want to give you a bit of a longer list, Alinta Energy, Allianz, Angle Auto Finance, ANZ, EnergyAustralia, Engie, which is the old Simply Energy business, Greater Geelong Council, Holcim, which is one of the biggest concrete providers in Australia, IAG, Kleenheat, another Western Australian energy provider, Suncorp, Vocus, Vodafone TPG and a big project continue with Zip Money as well. So -- and that's just in the last 12 months. So it's quite extraordinary that we've set the business up for growth for the next 10 years. And a lot of that work and effort where little return comes in terms of revenue or profitability goes into winning those clients, onboarding those clients, doing the due diligence process with those clients. And when you kick off, they don't necessarily give you a big chunk of work straight away. They can give you a small component of the work to really test whether or not the unique offering that ARMA and Credit Clear provide is going to deliver better results. And that's when you really see the business scale profitably because the costs that go into the onboarding or the signing can come out of the business. And that's certainly what we're focusing on in the next period of our journey is to sort of manage those costs down and continue to sort of drive up gross profit margin and overall profitability. So I think that's the phase of development that Credit Clear is moving into. So in terms of numbers, Tier 1 clients up to 21 from 16, once again, an extraordinary performance, I think, in an industry that's still highly competitive. We're seeing 95% of Tier 1 clients retained in the period. The average revenue that we're getting from a Tier 1 client is 1.1. So we're seeing less risk tied up in individual clients that's spread across the business in multiple industries and our largest annualized client representing about $3 million. So as a percentage of total revenue, that client is getting less as well. So I think the robustness of this company continues to strengthen, and that's also reflected in Tier 2 clients, which once again are the bread and butter that continues to develop into Tier 1 clients, which just continues to deliver a large proportion of the revenue as well. Yes. I know that lots of you will be very interested in what we're seeing from a competitive landscape. I think that a lot of our competitors, as you know, if you've been watching Credit Clear for a while, have either consolidated, they've gone through restructures. And it has really left Credit Clear as one of the 3 or 4 leading organizations that are providing services to the top end of town. And there seems to be quite a significant gap before you see a fifth or sixth organization emerging as a significant challenge. I'm still certain we have a strong competitive advantage and moat from our competition underpinned by our technology, our systems and processes. So that's very, very good. Given that there's been a lot of mergers and acquisitions with Credit Corp, Recoveries Corp, Milton Graham and change of ownership. I think that that's allowed us to continue to develop our gap in terms of technology. Naturally, when you're going through restructuring and a sale process, it takes focus away from innovation. So it's been wonderful for us to sort of see that gap, I think, widen. In terms of economic factors, we certainly see lots and lots and lots of debt in that market expanding. There's still been a reluctance in terms of debt sale. A lot of organizations are still reluctant to sell debt in the volumes that they were doing prior to COVID. They'd rather partner with organizations, and we're seeing more of an expansion in this part of the market, in the debt purchase market. And naturally, we're going to benefit from that in the future. In terms of cost of living, it's pleasing to see that interest rate cycle start to come down whenever there's more cash in their community. Whilst there's very large amounts of debt, what that will do is help push up our recovery rates, which once again sort of drives better value to our clients. But on those organizations where we're charging commission, that will deliver a higher commission yield for the portfolios we work. So that's good news. Once again, having near full employment is a very, very good environment for us to see the ability for organization -- I mean, individuals to be able to pay an overdue account either in lump sum, in an arrangement or a deferred payment, we will hope to see improving as well. It's interesting that we're talking about big banks reporting larger arrears volumes, which has been reflected in our numbers as well. ATO actions are still at a record high. And anyone who's been following the sort of business world, there's lots and lots and lots of administrations. In fact, it was the highest amount of administrations on record in the past period as well. So lots of small and medium-sized businesses are being wound up and put into liquidation by predominantly the ATO, but certainly other organizations as well. So lots happening, and I've already talked about less debt being sold. Okay. So as we spoke earlier, we're expecting a strong second half like we did in last year. We typically have our best 4 months in sort of March, April, June or coming up in this period. So we're looking to see some real uptick given the fact that we're just about to go live with some major clients. Some organizations that were holding back from doing collections over the last little period because of system migrations are coming online as well. So we are very, very positive about having a stronger second half than our first half. I know that we started the year well. But naturally, the December, January period can have some slowdown effects, and we're just preparing for really strong growth moving forward. Look, I've already talked about macroeconomic tailwinds being in our favor. Organic growth seems to be on the cards at the moment. There's probably going to be some questions around our decision to put on hold some acquisitions that we're looking at perhaps in the U.K. But the reason why we were doing that was because we've got such a huge opportunity here. And if we were to take our eyes off that opportunity here, I think it would affect our increased share of the wallet. So whilst it still remains a key growth strategy as part of our long-term strategic plan, it's currently on hold. I just want to reaffirm guidance again in terms of $48 million to $50 million in revenue and an underlying EBITDA guidance of $7 million plus.

Very good. Let's take some questions. [Operator Instructions] I see Larry and James have already found that button, so we'll go to them shortly. And there's also a Q&A function if you would like to enter your question in writing. We've received a few, which we will go through. Larry, I'll allow you to talk.

Thanks, Warrick. And Andrew, Victor, well done on the strong result, which we've gotten a glimpse of before. Look, Victor, I'm going to just start with you just on a couple of questions, if I can, on that slide with the P&L on it. In terms of those underlying expenses or sort of non-operating expenses, how do you see the full year playing out with those numbers? And do you think they will continue to roll into F '26?

No, I don't expect them to roll into F '26. There will be a lesser amount in the second half of this year, '25. Just to break that down a little bit, okay -- and again, just to emphasize, this is not relating to new clients onboarding. This is post-acquisition consolidation of systems and clients migrating from 5 systems we had on to one, okay. Now, a large part of that is the tech hosting environment, again, through acquisitions. We had duplicated hosting environments, which are expensive, all right? That ceased in December, all right? So -- and that was a large material amount, so that won't be there in the second half. I would say 90% of the client migration and consolidation is now completed. So that will be a lower figure in the second half of this year and should be minimal from FY '26 on.

Okay. Great. And a couple more from me, but this one financial as well. If you go to the Slide 4 with the cash from operations and relative to EBITDA. Now Victor, just if you -- just that cash from operations slide a little bit for the interest you received in those periods, there's a bit of a gap between underlying EBITDA and cash from operations. Just wondering what tends to be those -- the delta there that might be a drag on cash relative to earnings?

It doesn't take much given we've got larger clients and larger invoices. It may be a case of 2 or 3 larger clients paying late. The larger customers are slower to move in all things, including payments of their invoices sometimes. That would be one reason. But you get movements with receivables and payables from period end to period end, particularly over Christmas, December year-end where it can be more accentuated, these differences, because of clients taking leave, et cetera.

Okay. And I guess there's -- well -- all right. There's no sort of working cap -- well, as you just pointed out, there is some working capital drain there. Okay. That's fine. And Andrew, I did have a question, which piqued my interest after you made a comment about it's time to focus on managing down the onboarding costs. Maybe you could talk about that opportunity because you've obviously been onboarding -- you listed that great list of clients coming on. What is that opportunity to recapture back in the P&L?

Yes. Look, there's been a lot invested in terms of onboarding sales and marketing to attract these clients to the business. And if we want to focus on nonrevenue-generating, say, individuals that we can move on potentially, or costs that we're incurring that we can improve in terms of onboarding faster, because we've done that onboarding more often, then that's going to be a key driver moving forward. I think that we've matured enough that we can now look at becoming more and more profitable, and that's what I really want to focus on.

I'll break that down a little further, Larry. So there are 2 -- another 2 key components for the onboarding costs. One is systems customization. So we're onboarding these clients onto our core collection system. They've got data set in a particular format, and we're getting into detail now, but it's important, okay? We -- generally, they can only provide data in one way. So we've got to adjust our systems to take that back in to ingest it. And then -- it's not just one way, goes back and forth as their customers are paying invoices -- unpaid invoices, we've got to continually update. And again, Jason is better qualified to give you a more technical answer. But at a higher level, that's what's happening. So we're having to adjust our systems there. So that's a system cost -- a system vendor cost for us. Then you've got the people managing that integration, right? So that could be up to 5, 6 FTEs. So that -- there's a cost there as well.

Okay. That's interesting. Last question for me, guys, I'm sorry for [ hugging ]. But Greater Geelong Council has come on. I think you guys have a very strong market share in councils in South Australia.

Yes.

Is this a sign that you're cracking the Victorian market? What should we think there?

Look, I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. We've certainly won 2 major councils in the Victoria space, which is really strong indication. We've got a great sales representative that's got very deep and wide relationships across that sector. And given there's been some legislative changes in that sector, resolving overdue council rates without litigation is something that's really at the top of most council's agenda, and we're doing that through that automated technology piece as well. So I think that it's a very, very good opportunity for us as a market, and that's certainly indicated that we're starting to make some ways in that space.

James, over to you. If you unmute yourself, you should be able to pose your question.

Thanks for the detailed update as usual and congrats on the 10-year milestone. Just a couple of quick questions from me. Just in terms of the onboarding of ANZ, I understand that's introduced CCR to the TDX platform debt recovery. Can you just talk to the significance of that as a byproduct of onboarding ANZ as a starting point, please?

Yes. So there's probably 6 to 7 major organizations in banking, finance, utilities that are using that system. And naturally, the first time you integrate with that system, it is extensive and costly and we've had 2 consultants employed internally working on that system and system consolidation. We have had to spend a lot in terms of our own system improvement. I'm talking about a third provider. So what we anticipate is that as we bring on second and third organizations, one of the customers I called out being Optus, use that system as well. So the onboarding process, albeit still lengthy, is about 1/3 as long as what the ANZ onboarding process was. So what we're seeing is a shortening of that -- at that time, which naturally has 2 impacts. One is it costs less, but 2 is it means that we can realize revenue quicker and then deliver upside in terms of each dollar that added in revenue will have a drop-through. Because at the moment, the revenue that we're seeing an uplift in other clients is being a little bit cannibalized by the costs associated with this onboarding stage. I will say, though, that this is really setting our business up for the next 10 years. If you've got a cohort of clients, like where we have now, and continuing to increase, that is the foundation for future growth. Growth comes from existing customers first. New business needs to be signed 1 year or 2 years before to deliver growth in coming years. So what we've gone through is a cycle of really winning new clients, onboarding them and so we've have done that with substantial improvements in profitability and cash generation. I mean, I personally think it's extraordinary, and I'm always encouraging the team of how good a job they've been doing.

That's great. And just in terms of -- you guys have done a great job in terms of winning tenders and growing share, in particular Tier 1s from sort of FY '23 to the first half. Can you give us a sense of is that sort of cadence -- in terms of doubling the Tier 1s in that period, is that cadence something that we should continue to expect that regularity? Or how should we think of that going forward, please?

Certainly, in the short to midterm you'll note that there's not many government agencies outside of, say, local government councils. That is a huge market, and they're probably the slowest to move. But we've got sales process engaged with most of those major organizations. I'm talking the ATO and Centrelink and Revenue New South Wales, those very large organizations that traditionally deliver the highest amount of revenue to organizations like us. The reality is that they're still yet to come. So whilst they're slow to move, we've been working those opportunities for -- certainly in the last 3 years since we've come together. And I suspect that that will continue to grow post '26, '27, '28. But like I said earlier, I still want to make sure that the company is growing our profitability, growing our cash because that's what I think our shareholders expect, and that's what I think will deliver value.

Great. And just one last one, if I can. Just in terms of obviously, the capital-light tech-driven approach that's working so well for you often whilst you're scaling, will require investment. From a capital allocation standpoint, how should we think about prioritizing R&D versus client acquisition going forward?

Yes. Look, I think that that's certainly on the table for discussion around our strategy moving forward. It's been 10 years' worth of tech development into technology. It's actually doing a wonderful job in terms of doing a lot of the heavy lifting, certainly within the sort of high-volume consumer space, also within the insurance to consumer space where we're resolving a lot of insurance claims, overdue premiums, shortfalls in excess. So that's working really, really well. And at some point in the future, I think it's going to make sense to peer that back and put that back in the business in terms of profits. So whilst we've established ourselves as, I think, the most innovative organization in the sector, how does it look on moving forward, I think that we should see that certainly shrink.

We've got some questions that we've received in writing that we can take through first. The first one is from Scott, just asking about a little bit more information or color around the 12 Tier 1 clients that we say are not fully developed yet. Andrew?

Yes. I mean just to really break it down into simple terms, a client like Vodafone TPG, for example, will have introduced us on to the panel, I think, 8 or 9 months ago, giving us a 20% share of the portfolio, right? And what we needed to do is to not just demonstrate that we can collect more quicker and deliver a better return to their clients through Net Promoter Scores and cash returns, we need to do that consistently over a period. And usually, they don't look to review that increase in share allocation unless there's sort of 6 months' worth of performance. And our goal would be to get to 50% or 80% of that portfolio. And that change could mean that instead of billing Vodafone TPG $30,000 or $40,000 a month, it could go to charging them more like $150,000 a month. So when we talk about expanding the Tier 1 clients and increasing the market share, that's how you do it. And we do it at the very beginning through a combination of technology and people. And in some instances, we'll put more people on it because we want to really understand what drives performance within that portfolio and understand which clients are likely to resolve their overdue accounts without ever talking to a human, and then we slowly peel away some of those resources. So 2 things happen. You get more work and that work becomes more profitable. So I think that's what we mean when we talk about fully developing clients.

The next question from an anonymous investor, just asked about share-based expenses, Victor, and linking them to EBITDA. Perhaps just talk about the alignment of company executives and share-based expenses?

Yes, sure. So shares and options are conditions-based, okay? So obviously, to align managers' objectives with that of shareholders. So if the business is successful, we all benefit. If not, management will suffer there as well. That's the first point. The reason I do report them on that particular slide separately as well is not to contaminate the underlying performance of the core business. And I say that because from year-to-year, share-based expense can be quite volatile depending on whether the conditions are met. So in the past in the initial years, conditions were not met. However -- and therefore, a lot of these shares and options have not invested. However, because of the way the accounting standards work, we still need to amortize and charge the P&L from grant dates, right? Now well may be that in FY '25, for example, if the conditions are not met, you will see credits there in the second half. However, they do need to be charged to the P&L from grant date day 1, which is the way the accounting standard prescribes they need to be accounted for.

And I think we've covered this since the question came in, but just to recap, the higher expenses for compliance and system migration, what can we expect for the following year and the following half?

Yes. Look, Larry has already asked this earlier. So I've explained that. Again, just emphasizing these are post-acquisition, not client migration costs. They were to do with the multiple systems we had, bringing all the clients under the one system. We expect a decrease in the second half and should be minimal expense from FY '26 going forward.

Okay. A question from Simon, regarding why lease expenses are excluded from underlying EBITDA?

Yes. This has been asked previously. And again, it's to comply with the accounting standards, what I presented there. The format I use is to be totally transparent to tie in underlying EBITDA with the statutory result. And the way accounting standards prescribed office leases should be accounted for is to treat them similar to an asset that amortizes, okay? So they come through as on the depreciation and amortization line. And we need to conform and comply with the accounting standards. But again, we've been pretty clear in the description there, what it relates to, and it's for right-of-use office assets as well as capitalized tech development.

And 10:00, I think we have time for one more question from Mark. Says, well done on margin expansion. Can you explain in the segment analysis if head office costs were reallocated between the divisions?

Yes. So comparing half-on-half in the prior year, a lot of those -- a large part of that relates to the amortization on acquisitions where in the prior year was carried as a head office cost. For this half year, given the acquisitions relate to collections, we've moved across, but we've not adjusted the prior year. So it's not to change historic reporting, but you'll see that coming through under the collections segment going forward.

Very good. Andrew, perhaps just a concluding word for you before we wrap up?

Yes. Look, massive. Thank you again for the support of our shareholders. Those of you who have patiently supported us along the way of being given plenty of advice by many of you. One is that the market is looking for consistent growth, no surprises and continuously to sort of overpromise -- underpromise and overdeliver. And I hope that we can continue to do that. So that's the plan. Thank you very much.

Thanks very much, everyone. Have a good day. A recording will be circulated later.