Craneware plc (CRW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you very much for joining the Craneware interim results for fiscal '26. Just to remind everyone, Craneware produces software for hospitals across the U.S. for their operational and financial performance improvement. It's been a very positive first half to the year for us. Like everybody, I think there's been lots of dynamism and lots of change through the course of the last 8 months or so that has been both very exciting and something that I believe that the company has dealt with very successfully coming through there. That has left us in both a financially strong position with $184 million of ARR, continuing with a greater than 100% NRR. Long-term relationships with our customers on average, 5 years with some of our top 10, actually significantly exceeding 20 years in what is now 27th going on to our 28th year of business. Circa 90% of our revenue is recurring. We are profitable. We generate cash, and we've had a very positive first half performance, not just from a financial perspective, but particularly from an operational perspective as well. Next slide, please. So just reiterating that, I think strong performance and momentum -- continued momentum through the period, both strong financial performance with good key progress across our key metrics, good sales performance, which has included both competitive wins and competitive takeouts, which we'll cover in a few slides' time. And then by continuing to evolve and grow our product set, an acceleration in our TAM and a continued growing total addressable market for the company as well. Next slide, please. Thank you. So I mentioned very strong sales performance in the period and a positive both expansion wins, but also new hospital wins and new pins on the map as well. We grew our new hospital wins to 12% from about 2% of our new sales in the equivalent period last year. So grew that to 12% mainly through a mix of competitive wins where both in head-to-head in various different RFPs for some of our point solutions. But again, taking out point solutions in competitive takeouts and replacing them with the Trisus platform and then building upon that with other wins. And obviously, the importance of that is that then becomes future expansion sales, which made up 88% of our sales as we went forward. Some of the examples from that really come from all areas of the business and from various different areas. The first that we've highlighted there was a 5-year Business of Pharmacy Suite win with a large stand-alone hospital that was looking at that stage to consolidate down on their vendors. Our second one was a critical access hospital where the hospital itself, a Midwest rural hospital was looking to then increase the amount of transparency and their understanding of the data that they held within their organization. Thirdly, listed here as one of the examples is then one of our 340B takeouts and wins that won there for a midsized health system that was suffering from operational delays with 340B and a very poor capture rate from 340B and recognized from both referrals and from customer references coming through that we could do a better job for them. And we started that off on a 3-year contract coming through. And then the last one was another competitive takeout, which was across medication formulary, but also adding in a competitive takeout in our Chargemaster space and in our -- with our Trisus Supplies Assistant as well. Again, updating and modernizing systems as we take them forward. I think it's important to say that also with our new sales wins, we then also had a very positive retention rate with our customers with across all metrics that being significantly above 90%. Next slide, please. There's been a lot made of AI, particularly in the last couple of months. And I think I'd just like to highlight from here some of the strengths of both the business and some of the successes that we've seen and also my own personal view that AI rather than being the death of SaaS is actually the acceleration of SaaS and the ability for organizations like us to more fully and better develop our software offerings for our customers and do that at pace and do that in an environment that is completely secure for them as well. So the combination of all the items that we believe that are important for success for the future is, one, we already have scale. We're in about 40% of U.S. hospitals. We have a reputation. So we have earned trust with our customers with winning the KLAS award for the 15th time for our Chargemaster -- Trisus Chargemaster products in there. We've got that significant amount of expertise. We're embedded into our customers' workflows and functions already, and we drive significant return on investment for our customers as we go forward. If you mix all of that then with our technology partnerships and our long-term work with AI, we then get a very custom and very quick productivity and additional productivity going forward for that, which then allows us to continue to advance that and continue to move our software forward at a faster pace, I would argue, than anyone else. And I'll come on to specific examples from that. And we're often asked about are we worried about that disruptor in the bedroom using AI and trying to generate software equivalent to ourselves. And we would argue that actually, no. Just as the disruptor in the bedroom has embraced AI, all of our developers have embraced AI. Greater than 80% are regularly using GitHub Copilot and then the remainders are using various other tools supplied to us through the Microsoft platform that allow them to be far more productive in their day-to-day jobs. But let's not kid ourselves that currently, AI is not generating enterprise-grade software. AI is able to generate some very interesting routines, but unfortunately, is not grading stuff that is qualifying for high trust that gives security and a solid platform for an enterprise-grade solution to be able to move on to that en mass. And that, combined with then our ability with our 200 million-plus patient records and the data from the 40% of those customers, being able to utilize that to test our software and to QA our software gives us real hope and real -- well, gives us real strength and trust in our ability to keep ahead of the marketplace with our offerings. We've seen that through accelerated productivity gains. Those accelerated productivity gains have given us new products. They've set our products and be able to advance our products. So our products have not stayed static during the course of the last year, hence, the awards that we've won through there as well and taking that forward. And that's giving us the really strong confidence that we can stay significantly ahead of any potential disruptive competitors coming into the market, of which we currently still are not seeing anyone from there. If we go to the next slide, please. I just want to touch a little bit on 340B because there's been a lot of changes in the 340B market through the course of the last 8 months as well. A real evolution that came in and was introduced by the government body, HRSA, back in midway through the period, the last period, which was to introduce a pilot program for a rebate model for select drugs to be able to trial this out. This was launched in, I think, in September of -- approximately September of last year or announced in September of last year. And the reasons for this were pressure from the drugs companies looking for change within the 340B program. I think I want to continue to underline the 340B program's critical role in keeping hospitals and particularly rural and disproportionate share hospitals share hospitals open. Drug spend in the U.S. has massively increased in recent years. Since 2010, there has been probably an additional -- almost a doubling -- an additional $200 billion spent on drugs in -- by health care in the U.S., a significant amount, and that is continuing to grow and shows no sign of letup. At the same time, drugs companies have taken probably some of the strongest margins out of health care. Drugs companies' average margins are north of 20% when the average hospital margin for a not-for-profit is between 1% and 3%. So a significant difference in where profitability is going. So there is definitely something wrong in the equation with regards to drugs purchases in the U.S. going through. Drugs tend to be one of the largest expenses that hospitals actually face coming forward and the quickest growing expense that they face as well behind just their labor costs going through from there. Yet the 340B program is actually a very efficient way of being able to manage some of that increase in cost, particularly for those that most can't afford it across the U.S. If we combine this with the political situation whereby hospitals themselves are the largest employers in just about every state, you get a triple whammy effect of hurting hospitals, hurts the electoral and the political landscape as well. And so despite the move in these evolutions, there is a real need for a program like 340B being in U.S. health care, and we believe that there will be something like this around for a long time. The rapid introduction of the 340B rebate pilot program despite it subsequently being halted and paused so that they could relook at that pilot and relaunch that pilot again is a good indication of the evolution that companies like ourselves and any companies in this space have to be able to deal with and have to be able to develop around in order to benefit and for our customers to continue to benefit from the program. Next slide, please. I'm very pleased to say that actually, in this, we were the only software vendor that was able to deliver a true, integrated solution in time for the original kickoff date, which was the 1st of January within this. And that was in response to the pilot and being able to take this forward. So utilizing AI tools, utilizing our data sets, utilizing the talent, the expertise and the specialist knowledge within our teams across the organization, we're able to mobilize that and produce a brand-new product of enterprise grade ready to be able to roll out and to be able to sell to our customer base and also be ready for that 1st of January kickoff. Unfortunately, with the pause on that, that did mean that we had a little bit of a double whammy coming through. And I know when Craig gets into the financials, he'll be able to demonstrate that. But a little bit of a double whammy of that coming through. And with the pause in that, we not only had to take all of the revenue out from the sales of the brand-new product with regards to rebate. But on top of that, we also had to pause the conversion of our shelter program from transactional revenue into ARR into long-term revenue because some of that revenue was obviously associated with the drugs that were coming out and the change of the 340B program coming through. And so until we get a bit of certainty on the remodeling of the Rebate 340 program and the rebate pilot program, we won't be able to do that AR transfer coming through. So that allows for our ARR to be a little bit soft coming through on that. Next slide, please.

Great. Thank you, Keith, and good morning, everyone. Well, as Keith just chatted you through, it has been a busy and eventful half, and that's not just for us, but for our U.S. hospital customers as well. Through these next few slides, I will hopefully demonstrate how our annuity SaaS model, coupled with the investments we've already made and continue to make have delivered another period of healthy performance. So let's get on with it. The headline metrics themselves. Revenue grew 6% to $105.7 million. That's flowed its way through to double-digit profit growth, demonstrating the operational leverage that exists within our business model. Adjusted EBITDA increasing 10% to $33.4 million and delivering a 32% margin at the top end of that range of 30% plus or minus 1% or 2% we have guided to through all these years. We continue to increase our adjusted basic EPS. That grew 16% to $0.587, up from $0.506 in the prior period. Alongside this, despite the impact that Keith has just talked to, we have grown our annual recurring revenue. That now stands at $184.2 million, and that's up from $177.3 million this time last year. Throughout all this, we have maintained our core financial dividend disciplines that you've come to expect from us. Our 12-month operating cash conversion at 85%, and we've continued to reduce our bank debt, reducing it by 26% to $23.4 million. So the headline message is growth, margin expansion, EPS up double digit and less debt. We've done all this whilst delivering strong cash generation and strengthening the balance sheet. I move to the next slide, please. So in addition to the current year results, this slide shows the 5-year trend for our key P&L metrics. As you can see, there's a consistent step-up over time, and that's the whole purpose of our model, long-term sustainable growth. Revenue has moved from just over $80 million in the first half of '22 to $105.7 million today. Our adjusted EBITDA has grown from $23.7 million to $33.4 million and continually delivering above 30% margins. We've seen a similar growth in our EPS. This steady, sustainable growth is driven by our multiyear contracts, our high customer retention and our net revenue retention. This is also coupled with our ability to expand within large health systems -- large and small health systems as they roll out Trisus and our 340B offerings. Ultimately, we are building long-term value on top of high-quality foundations. Can I move to the next slide, please? On cash, there are a few moving pieces here worth just working our way through. On the face of it on the balance sheet, our cash and cash equivalents showed $40.9 million at the half year. But there was $30.3 million of cash in transit, and that relates to the customer monies we manage and we received that twice every month. Last year, inevitably, that money came in just before December 31. This year, it was 5th of January. Well, that was the first Monday back at work. So 5th of January. But to get a true like-for-like comparison, you have to add the $30.3 million in. When we do that, we deliver a cash balance of $71.2 million. That's effectively flat against the $72.2 million this time last year. I've already mentioned, whilst we've moved to a full RCF, we've continued to pay down our bank debt. That now stands at $23.4 million, down from the $31.6 million this time last year. Our operating cash conversion at 85% is slightly below that internal target we set ourselves between 90% to 100%. But if you go back historically, this level of seasonality is not unusual. We often see hospitals slow down cash payments as they run towards December 31 themselves, their own year-ends. We monitor this as we start to see our cash collections pick back up in January. We've definitely seen that happen, and February has been a particularly strong month. So no concerns over the full year target of 90% to 100%. This cash conversion has allowed the Board to increase its interim dividend once again. So we're now proposing a 15p per share interim dividend, up 11% on last year and absolutely maintaining our progressive dividend policy. So we're funding investment, reducing debt and returning more to our shareholders. All of that is from internally generated cash. Can I move to the next slide, please? So here, we look at the core foundation of our long-term growth, our recurring revenue. The bar chart on the left shows contracted recurring revenue in the year -- sorry, at the end of the period of $87 million, effectively flat on the $87.9 million a year ago. However, our nonrecurring revenues, our platform revenues have more than doubled to $14.6 million. That's from $7.1 million this time last year, and that's driven by the large part by shelter. Keith has already mentioned how we couldn't actually take the 340B shelter revenue and call that recurring in the period. Remember, our platform revenues strategically are designed to become recurring. We start by recognizing revenue as it's invoiced. Once we see a stable pattern of usage and billing, we recategorize into ARR. The uncertainty of the rebate program and its announcement and then postponement cause, we have decided prudently to make no changes relating to shelter in any part of our ARR. So a large portion of that shelter revenue is classified as nonrecurring platform revenue. And we've already mentioned, none of the rebate licenses we sold in the period have been included as ARR either. That has given us the 4% ARR growth compared to the 6% revenue growth we saw in the period. Also on this slide, you can see that our ARR is continually progressing. We started with $171.4 million. We're now sitting at $184.2 million. That's supported by an NRR figure of 103%, customer retention above 90% and continued expansion of our 6 Trisus optimization suites. Can I turn to the next slide, please, to our detailed income statement. I already mentioned the 3 primary measures. But on top of this, it will be absolutely remiss of me not to mention the statutory measures, profit before tax up 29%, basic EPS up 38%. Our R&D spend is our investment on ourselves, and we continue to invest in ourselves. We've increased our R&D spend by 13% to $29.8 million, of which we've capitalized $8.4 million or 28%, very much in line with our 25% to 30% guidance we've given. The slight increase on the level of capitalization to last year reflects the mix of products. We've moved several substantial Trisus and 340B initiatives from proof of concept into full development. These include our AI-enabled solutions that Keith will talk to in the next couple of slides and our 340B rebate project that whilst on hold will deliver value in future periods. We continue to apply our tight controls to capitalization that I've described in previous years. We have an absolute focus on future economic benefit. If we continue down our P&L below EBITDA, EPS has benefited from lower net finance costs as we continue to delever the balance sheet. You combine that with an effective tax rate of about 23%, and we've delivered incremental growth of 16% on our EPS. So we're not just growing our business, we're converting that growth into earnings per share for our shareholders. If I can move to the next slide, please. To our balance sheet. Our balance sheet remains a strong software company balance sheet. The biggest change in the current period has been the completion of our share premium reclassification exercise. As a reminder, what we did here is through court approval, we got the share premium and merger reserves moved to retained earnings, effectively moving them to distributable reserves, giving us over $330 million of go-forward distributable reserves that gives the Board far greater flexibility in its future capital allocation decisions. From a banking perspective, we continue to enjoy really good relationships with all our lenders, our consortium of 5 banks, and we've got significant headroom in our covenants. If I could move to the next slide, please. So bringing it all together, let's have a look at our capital allocation. Our business model, our strong balance sheet and high levels of cash generation, all combined to give us a really solid financial foundations and clear future revenue visibility. With these factors, we're able to fund innovation that drives our own growth, keeping R&D at approximately 25% of revenue and focusing on priority areas where we see clear demand and strong ROI. We've got over $175 million of potential firepower in available facilities that, again, gives us added flexibility and options to move quickly in the future. We've continued to deliver shareholder returns. We have our progressive dividend policy. So over the 4.5 years shown, if you take our dividends and the limited share buybacks we've done to date, we have returned over $66.1 million to our shareholders. On top of this, today, we're also announcing our intention to do a further $25 million share buyback, and there will be more details on that to follow. When you combine all this with our high levels of ARR, our strong NRR and our independent ownership position within the health care IT marketplace, we believe we're well placed to support our customers as they navigate the evolving U.S. health care landscape, execute on the considerable opportunity we see ahead of us and all this whilst delivering for our shareholders. So with that, I will say thank you, and I'll hand back to Keith.

Next slide, please. And one more. So one of the things that I think we want to make sure that is remembered is that there are 3 very strong catalysts for growth within the business. First of all is our existing customers and providing them more on the platform to deliver ROI for them that then allows us to continue to grow as well and drives our success. As we've already mentioned, and we'll go into a bit more detail, we've got 2 new products launched that will be launched next week at the HIMSS conference, which I'll move on to. And all of our new wins that we've had this year are further expansion opportunities going forward into the future. We don't forget that other part of the market. I mean there is 60% of the market, although we are tackling that and we are growing that. We still see it an opportunity for us to have our software in all U.S. hospitals, and that's something we continue to go through. The ongoing competitive wins and competitive takeout is very encouraging that, that is -- that long-term aim is very much achievable. And then lastly is adding on to the platform itself and providing new sources of return on investment for our customers and our customers' success will result in our success as we go forward from here. And so adding new products on and continuing to develop, of which we do believe that AI is a huge catalyst for -- and a huge enabler and a huge productivity tool for us as an organization. We're often asked with the 25% of R&D spend is should we be reducing that? And our argument is no because what we're actually seeing is we're seeing opportunities to create even more products that are to the benefit of our customers that will be monetized in the future and will allow us to continue to accelerate our growth. So adding to the platform is a very strong part of what we can continue to do. Next slide, please. So I mentioned 3 different areas of expansion for us and major increases in our Trisus capability. And this is one of the features that I believe that AI is really strong for our SaaS companies that already have preexisting offerings is not only analyzing exactly what our customers truly want from all of the feedback and all the information that we get from them, but then designing products in conjunction with them that we can then take back to them in rapid fashion in a very similar way to the way that we were able to do with our 340B rebate program. On top of that, we've increased the capability and continue to bring forward the capability of our Trisus Assist offerings in our Chargemaster space and across the platform. We've added agentic capability and platform level orchestration within there to really have scalable agent integration. So the whole piece is all kind of coming together in there. On top of that, we're able to build application-specific AI tools that come through. The first being our Trisus Labor & Productivity product with AI capabilities that allow predictively for hospitals to manage their workforce at a web -- sorry, at a ward level offering and to be able to take that forward there and give them true visibility in that with massive benefits to productivity within the hospital, freeing up clinical staff's time away from administrative duties into being able to care for patients and providing a far more stable and predictable scaling system, which is -- which provides a better work-life balance for the teams involved in the hospitals themselves. And then on top of that next week at HIMSS, we will also be launching our Reimbursement Intelligence products. And that's where we allow hospitals utilizing the power of AI to be able to manage contracts to be able to understand these very complex payor contracts, bump that up against their internal data and be able to not only leverage those contracts and negotiations with insurance companies and payors, but also make sure that they're getting paid what they are entitled to be paid from those contracts as well and to be able to make sure that they understand and they keep on top of the management of those contracts going forward. So both of those 2 new capabilities resulting in new product lines, which add to our TAM and our expansion opportunities within our existing customer base. Next slide, please. So with the launch of those 2 new major solutions and more to come through the course of this calendar year as we continue to be able to create products that will matter for our customers, capitalizing on both on the HIMSS conference, which is next week, the Global Health Information Management Systems Society Conference, working with our partnership for -- with Microsoft on that, both appearing on their stage and them appearing in our booth and doing work with us in our booth on our go-to-market strategy with them and our co-marketing with them. And then continuing to leverage the strength and the power of the Trisus platform to provide really unique customer insights to delight and grow our customer base. We truly believe that by making our customers happy, by supporting our customers through the navigation of this evolving landscape in health care through here that, that is where we will find our success as well. And that's where our focus and the focus of my team is all based on. Next slide, please. And so just pulling that all together, some really unique strengths underpinning the future of our revenue and our growth acceleration. We've got that strength of ARR, our NRR in the period coming through and adding to our overall expansion story. We've got continued opportunities in the market. As the market continues to evolve, that creates new opportunities for new applications to sit on top of the platform and for new partnerships to be formed for us to work with other vendors with the data that we have to be able to provide real value on behalf of our customers and for our customers. Disciplined capital allocation from the group and from the Board, as Craig has discussed, and then continued innovation alongside those powerful partners to make sure that not only do we stay ahead, but we accelerate and continue to accelerate ahead in not only this AI journey, but the next wave of SaaS enabled by AI productivity, both for ourselves, but also for that productivity for our customers so that our customers, each individual user becomes more productive as well. And all of that means that the opportunity continues to be even greater ahead despite the fantastic success that we've had in the first half of the period, and we continue to see that acceleration in growth coming in the near term.