Craneware plc (CRW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Craneware Plc's Full Year 2026 Results Presentation. [Operator Instructions] I would like to remind all participants that this call is being recorded. I will now hand over to Keith Neilson, Chief Executive Officer, to open the presentation. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, Leila. Thank you very much, everyone, for joining us today on our fiscal '26 results. First slide, please. Thank you. So we're going to handle today's results by really doing it in 3 parts. First of all, a brief introduction and overview of the fiscal '26 results followed by an update of our cybersecurity instance, what happened post balance sheet date in early July. I'll then hand over to Craig, who will then continue with a bit more of a deep dive into the financial review itself for fiscal '26, and then we'll come back to review some market opportunities and updates in both the 340B market and the revenue integrity market as well as getting an indication of our beliefs on the growth strategy and the outlook as we go forward. It is worth starting off by saying we are obviously deeply disappointed by the fiscal '26 results. However, what we would like to remind people is not to throw the baby out with the bath water, and we will go through some of the positives that we have for building blocks and foundations for the future as we go through into fiscal '27 and fiscal '28. Next slide, please. We do want to remind everyone that we operate in 1 of the largest, if not the largest B2B software verticals in the world of U.S. health care. U.S. health care is greater than 60% of the global health care spend. And as such, it is incredibly dynamic marketplace and a very exciting marketplace to be part of. Our role within that is nonclinical those so we are not impacting on the clinical side, but we are working on the operational side of the hospital to make sure that it runs effectively. And our role is really in helping hospitals take forward and transform the business side of those hospitals and transforming the business of health care. Our business and our business models are very financially resilient and have proven to be that. We continue with long-term relationships, long-term software operations and tech-enabled services for our customers. With a view to be able to complete that transformation for them. The underlying financials of the business are strong with strong ARR, long-term relationships, as I say, and very high consistency of customers over that period. Next slide, please. Through the fiscal '26 performance, itself, we did see a disappointing slowdown in our 340B transactional revenue towards the end of the second half of the period, very much due to manufacture unilateral restrictions on the honoring 340B pricing and supplying drugs at 340B pricing to the hospitals themselves. Having said that though, we did have a very resilient ARR through the period. The recurring revenue was $185 million. And then our NRR was sitting comfortably at 100%. We saw a healthy customer retention of greater than 90% by all of our measures and a strong EBITDA performance and cash generation through that period. As I mentioned earlier, we did have a cybersecurity incident very early on into the new year, which is July coming in. I'm pleased to see that, that is moving into the remediation phase, and I've got more details of what both happened in that incident and where we are at today. That, though, combined with some of the uncertainty that we saw towards the end of last period in 340B, which is still working its way through the system has brought us to the difficult decision of rebasing our fiscal 2027 numbers. backwards to our ARR level to allow us to have time to be able to see how some of these changes pan out and from them to take away some of this uncertainty and base our numbers on some certainty. So not only can we as a business, make investment decisions, but also our stakeholders can make decisions about the business as well. As such, we'll also be undertaking a comprehensive review of our cost base so that we are cutting our cloth accordingly across the business to reflect those changes in our revenue line as it's expected, and then also to set out a plan of investments at the time when we then start to see that revenue growth come back again and step up as we go forward. Pleasingly, the business continues to work strongly with Microsoft has a very good partner that has brought both technology, AI resources and people resources to us as well as helping us accelerate new customer wins through the period and continuing into this year. And that gives us a great deal of confidence in being able to return to growth at least into the period of fiscal '28 through a number of different angles. One, by that stage, we are expecting to see a lot more certainty through the 340B program at both state and at a federal level. We're also expecting that our earlier investments that we've made in our products across both 340B and Revenue Integrity will result in further sales coming through. And that, combined with our cost initiatives and our cost base review will result in us returning back to far more positive margins by fiscal '28 as well as we see going forward. Next slide, please. So I've mentioned the cybersecurity incidents, and this has created certainly some short-term and potentially medium-term uncertainty for the business. What happened was we became aware in early July, some threat actors had access to our system and had excavated some files from our system with the threat that we would publish the details of those files onto the dark web. As it turns out, the vast majority of files that were taken from our systems where from -- or all of the files that were taking from our system were from nonoperational servers. They were from nonwork service and nonproduction servers, but they did include some working servers that were used by members of our team to be able to do day-to-day work. some of those fare versus some of those files did include elements of both internal staff details within there and some of our employees' details, but also included some of our customer details and some of our customers' patient details within tie. And we're currently in the process of working with our customers to notify them of exactly what information was leaked and working with our staff on those just now. What I am pleased to be able to say is our teams were able to very quickly verify and with the and then have third-party verification that the threat actors were no longer in our system within a matter of -- within a number of hours and within the first certainly well within 24 hours of the threat actors gaining access to our systems and that there was no ongoing effects from the threat actors on our systems the otherwise. So as such, operations have continued through the period in between. And the data that was taken was a very small subset of our overall data that we have on behalf of our customers and was -- and that data was not reached in any way. We have moved into the remediation phase, as I say. So we are now in the process of working with both third parties and through our own data teams to analyze down to the detail at the patient level, exactly what data was taken and what data has been published on to the dark web. And we'll equally be moving into the -- into understanding what the financial impacts will be of the business. We are cautioning that although we will get better clarity through the course of this year through fiscal '27 with regards to some of the impact of this it may be a number of periods, so maybe going into future financial years where the full impact of this will be seen. I am very pleased and thank our customers and our staff for their understanding in the meantime, I know that they have been very supportive and have been very appreciative of the efforts that we've taken so far with regards to this incident, and we do treat the sensitively the utmost seriousness in terms of both remediation but also making sure that we're as protected as any organization can be going forward on this. Next slide, please. So looking at fiscal '26 overall, I want to just highlight some of the positives from our sales performance. In the performance of lower sales were comparable to the prior year of fiscal '26 and as Craig will go into our revenue numbers, we're very comparable with that as well. One of the benefits we did see was an increase in the number of new customers, net new wins that came to us through the period. And those net new wins pleasingly came through a mix of competitive takeouts and competitive displacements as well as a significant number of expansion sales within our existing customer base. And pleasingly, some of those competitive wins and expansion sales have continued through into this first quarter of the new year. and we will be hopefully reporting or we will be reporting on this as we come through to our interims into the new calendar year as a cost. And with that, in that overview, I'll hand over to Craig for the financial details of fiscal '26.

If I could move to the next slide, please. So thank you, Keith. In the next few slides, I will step you through the financial results for fiscal '26. The fiscal '26 year was a year of seeing really good positive operational progress -- but ultimately, we do recognize and I'm very, very aware the fact that the financial outcome was below our expectations. A significant factor in that was the headwinds we experienced in the 340B marketplace. A good example of that is our shelter program. Here, we were able to identify significant opportunities for our customers. We saw high levels of customer engagement, but due to the restrictions that were being placed on them, they were unable to take advantage of these opportunities, and that has the knock-on effect of the expected transactions we expect to see did not materialize at the rate we anticipated. Clearly, this is disappointing. But I think it is worth us on reminding ourselves the underlying financial characteristics of the group remains strong. We retain a substantial recurring revenue base, long-standing customer relationships healthy margins, strong cash generation and significant financial flexibility, and I will demonstrate that in the next few slides. If I could move to the next slide, please. Looking first at our headline financial measures. Revenue was broadly unchanged at $206 million. That generated an adjusted EBITDA of $67.1 million with a corresponding 33% EBITDA margin. Ultimately, we delivered adjusted basic earnings per share of $1.16. our ARR, as Keith mentioned, our annual recurring revenue remained steady at $185 million, and our operating cash conversion was 98%. Looking at our bank debt, our bank debt did increase in the period from $27.7 million to $43.5 million, and that was a deliberate capital allocation decision we made we decided to draw some debt down alongside our own cash resources to fund the $25 million share buyback we performed in the year. Overall, though, we do acknowledge and we are very cognizant that these results were below our expectations, especially for revenue growth. But they also do demonstrate the resilience of this business during this more challenging year. A good example of the underlying resilience of our business is our annual recurring revenue. So let's have a look at that base of that sponsors. It's really important as we go forward. Within our ARR, no individual customer represents more than 8%. Our 10 largest customers account for less than 30% and their average contracting relationship with ourselves is over 21 years. So that annual recurring revenue foundation gives us meaningful visibility diversification and a dependable foundation against which we can plan the future of the business. As we enter fiscal '27 and in light of the post year-end cyber inside that Keith has talked you through, we have adopted a prudent planning basis. We've reset our revenue expectations to approximately the level of our current AR, and that's to provide certainty to all our stakeholds and allow us to make sensible planning decisions as we wait for various factors to work their way through the system. Against that, we've talked to a comprehensive review of our cost base. Here again, the objective is to align the organization with that revenue framework we've set ourselves. We'll do this whilst protecting customer service, cybersecurity regulatory compliance and the product investments that will be the foundation for our future growth. Our approach to capital allocation remains disciplined and unchanged in principle. If I could move to the next slide, please. I've already covered the headline metrics. So on this chart, I think it's the graph on the right-hand side, the 5-year chart that really provide a useful context of the underlying strength of the business. They demonstrate the continued progress we've been making across revenue and adjusted EBITDA. And actually, if we took those graphs back, you'd see that continued progress all the way back to our IPO back in 2007. A strong business has to be able to adapt to difficult market conditions and unexpected events such as the cyber instance, acting to preserve margins without curtailing investment will be what ultimately drives our future growth. We honestly believe that the actions we continue to take, we are going to meet those objectives, which will cause short-term pain, we understand that, but will ultimately benefit all our stakeholders. If I could move to the next slide, please. Turning to cash. And cash is obviously really important as you navigate this period in the company's history. Five-year charts again gave appropriate perspective. Whilst cash holdings have varied as we've made various investment decisions, we've reduced debt. We've returned capital to shareholders. We have always maintained substantial liquidity -- and that really reflects the cash-generative nature of our annuity SaaS model. Operating cash conversion, 98% of adjusted EBITDA, again confirms the quality of our underlying earnings that we did within the year. We did see a $10.4 million movement in the funds held on behalf of customers. Those funds fluctuate as part of normal customer operations -- what we do and consistent with prior years is we've always excluded these from our operating cash conversion measure that being a true measure of the cash generated by the business itself rather than how we deal with our customer cash. After investments, dividends and share buyback, year-end cash remained strong at $54.8 million. We have a further $56 million available to us under the RCF. And then we have a further $100 million according facility pre-agreed. I've talked about increasing the bank debt and in part funding the $25 million share buyback -- after all these factors, the Board is proposing to maintain the total dividend for the year of 32, resulting in a final dividend of 17p per share. We believe that balance is an appropriate return to our shareholders against the importance of retaining liquidity and investment capacity as we reset our medium-term objectives on a solutions. I could move to the next slide, please. I've mentioned our annuity SaaS model. It really is the foundation of our financial resilience. It's underpinned by multiyear contracts with software subscription revenue recognized over the contractual term. Contracting recurring revenue was $175.1 million, approximately 85% of our total revenue. SaaS software revenue was $130.4 million, transactional revenue, which is build on a monthly basis but is supported by long-term underlying contracts was $38.9 million. And finally, our recurring professional services contributed to $5.9 million. Software license revenue did reduce in the year, but that primarily reflects an ongoing trend we've seen, again, in the 340B market where hospitals are prone to move from a license to recurring transaction revenues, and that allows for more transparency, tying the actual benefit and the transaction cost to the individual patient encounter and the perinatal -- both our transaction offer on platform revenues grew in the period. However, both were impacted. We've previously explained that platform revenues are excluded from our AR until we have sufficient evidence that they're recurring and reliably predictable. At that point, we can then record them as a whole thicker than as we can. The headwinds we've outlined actually had a double impact. The growth in our platform revenues did not incur as we expected to but nor could we assess any of these revenues to be recurring in the current year. So that impacted both the growth of our transactional revenues and our ARR. That could move to the next slide, please. I've covered the key metrics. So let's dig into the margins themselves. Gross margin came at 84% compared to 87% However, overall, our total cost base didn't significantly change. It really was just an allocation from our OpEx cost to our cost of sales, reflecting a slightly different revenue mix more geared towards the technology-enabled services we did in the period. Through this period, we've remained disciplined on pricing, cost of certain tactual risk. Net operating expenses, as I've mentioned. So adjusted EBITDA reduced $105.7 million. A big factor of that being the movement into cost of sales. We've continued to invest with total development expenditure increasing 4% to $59.6 million, of which we capitalized $16.9 million that small increase in the capitalization just reflects the stage of the qualifying work that we've been doing in our development capital department. So focus on data integration, AI-enabled applications and expanded pharmacy offering that Keith will talk to in a slide or 2 time. Our capitalization criteria remains vigorous. Expenditure is only capitalized where projects are technically feasible commercially supportable and expected to deliver future income benefits. All this resulted in the 33% EBITDA margin I've mentioned, statutory profit before tax was 7% increased 7% and a broadly stable adjusted basic earnings per share number. If I go to the next slide, please. Our balance sheet remains strong and provides us as the real basis of our financial sites. Talk to cash of $54.8 million. Cash less bank debt is a net positive of $11.3 million. Our RCF, $56 million undrawn and about $100 million on all banking covenants were met throughout the period and our going concern and viability work we can form as part of the audit to clearly we are to sign off this year. all banking covenants continue to be met as we never get our way through the cybersecurity instance. We performed a capital reduction exercise in November. That created additional distributable reserves. That gives us even greater flexibility in the future and our capital allocation decisions. However, that flexibility doesn't change our discipline. We'll continue to assess liquidity, equipment headroom, investment requirements and the interest of all our stakeholders before making capital allocation decisions. Next slide. That brings me neatly to the capital allocation. As you know, capital allocation is ultimately about balancing current returns with future investments, delivering value for all our stakeholders. Break them down in our different stakeholders. Over the last 5 years, we've returned nearly $100 million to our shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. At the same time, we have substantially reduced the debt we took on to apart from the Century acquisition back in 2021, and we've retained the extra capacity of $150 million to the code and undrawn facilities. We've continued to invest ourselves or investing approximately 25% to 30% of revenue from recession development. And that investment is not in disc -- we've talked to the cost review expenditure we prioritized according to customer impact, demonstrable customer demand, future economic benefit and our ability to support future sustainable profit growth. Our objective is to protect the recurring revenue foundation, preserve strong cash generation and continue investing selectively in the opportunities to consort our return to future growth. So in summary from me, we are very conscious we didn't deliver the revenue growth we expected. We've responded with a prudent reset and we're setting around our recurring revenue and launched a comprehensive review of our cost base Again, though, the group remains profitable, cash generative and financially well positioned, supported by $185 million of here, high customer retention, long-standing customer relationships and substantial liquidity. With that, I'll hand back to Keith, and we'll take you through the 340B market, our response and the outlook.

Thank you, Craig. Next slide, please. And next slide again, please. So as we consider the 340B market, it's worth pointing out that it's coming into its 34th year and is an approximately $100 billion program now. So as such, it's not unsurprising that it's going through an evolution and it comes under much regulatory, operational and financial scrutiny to see whether that is appropriate or not. The 340B market and the 340B benefits that our customers are received from 340B pricing, help them fund health care across their communities, helps keep hospitals open and is absolutely critical to a large wave of hospitals across the U.S. is survival and operational effectiveness. As such, we believe that it will stay around into the future even if some of the underlying change -- some of the underlying structures may change or evolve as we go forward. And as such, we are committed to supporting this marketplace for the future. Interestingly, through the course of this year, we've seen a number of different changes and proposals with regards to the market. First of all, we have seen new proposals for the rebate model coming in with our proposed start of a new pilot starting in the first of January for next year. And on top of that, we've seen different legislation proposed and moving into draft form in both the Senate and in the House in the form of the SUSTAIN 340 CR3 and access 340B act. It's worthwhile noting that SUSTAIN, which is in the Senate currently and secure, which is in the house. have got bipartisan support. And on top of that, have got a lot of commonality, which helps the pendulum swing back towards health care providers because of that benefit and the importance of health care providers to each of their communities, but at the same time does hold health care providers accountable for transparency and reporting fairly and accurately on the 340B program. Something which we both advocate for and support in our software and in our offerings with our customer base. On top of these pieces of legislation that have been proposed going through the year, we've also seen the drug manufacturers themselves, propose and enact unilateral restrictions on the 340B program. This has formed the fact of closing down the opportunities for hospitals to use contract pharmacies and insisting that hospitals provide data and patient identify data to those drugs manufacturers. Despite that, the drug manufacturers do not need these for their regular operations going forward. On top of that, we've seen the state work to protect their hospitals in those areas by providing protections to contract pharmacy and then we've then seen drug manufacturers challenge that legislation and in many cases, be unsuccessful in their appeals process against the findings of those challenges when they've been found to be wrong. And lastly, we've seen proposals for centralized clearing houses for some of this data to get over the challenge of drug manufacturer, you see the data which really they shouldn't be given access to and that coming through a centralized clearing house and being the arbiter of that data to make sure that there is no fraud and abuse in the system as we as we have seen and we have witnessed that there currently doesn't seem to be a high degree of that in any shape or form. So what are the implications for our customers with regards to this? Well, first of all, rebate model would be a change to the cash flows and the operating model of the 340B program over the last 3, 4 years. Over the last 34 years, the 340B program has worked as a discount program where the hospital is able to purchase drugs for qualifying patients being able to purchase those drugs to be able to then see the benefit of the discount price being passed through to care into their community and care for those that can't afford it otherwise. It has stretched scarce federal resources as it has been intended to do from the initial legislation back in [indiscernible]. On top of that, we've seen implications with regards to reporting, for tougher compliance, tougher data gathering requirements and tougher audit requirements. We've seen a tougher patient eligibility requirements being proposed and more complex processes for both approving patient eligibility and improving patient referrals through the system. Within specific programs, we've seen contract pharmacies, both being protected under sustained and to secure proposals and we've seen them restricted under the access proposals. And equally, we've seen the rebate model being either delayed or removed under sustained and secure and we've seen it maintained or extended under access. So with all that uncertainty, what are we likely to see? And what are we expecting to see over the course of next year and the following years. So first of all, we are expecting multiple legal challenges to the 340B program itself for both hospitals seeking clarity and from drug manufacturers looking for change within that program. We're also seeing challenges and legal challenges to the rebate model that's proposed to come in from the first of January. We're expecting though that those changes having analyzed and looked at both access, sustain and secure the 3 pieces of legislation that have been proposed will be more likely a gradual evolution rather than a big bang approach changing everything. And part of the reason for that is we just don't believe U.S. health care can afford to lose the strength and the importance of the 340B program and the benefits it provides not only to the hospitals, but to the patients and communities right across the whole of the U.S. We do believe, though, that we would expect to see hospitals having to increase their evidence of valid claims and increase the complexity of the workflow so that they can withstand a be able to demonstrate auditability of their claims within 340B. And we do see that there will be pressure on 340B traditional third-party administrator revenue -- and that will morph as these new business models come through. However, we believe that we can address those concerns with our software, which would be our crisis online medication software which we've launched through the course of this year. Next slide, please. So just touching on Crisis waddling medication, those that are interested in finding out more of that -- at the end of this presentation, if you go to the -- into the appendix, there's some links in there to some videos, which will give you more information, more detailed information about 1 length medication. But 1 link medication is us taking our technology, moving our 340B expertise in utilizing our teams to move our 340B expertise into the Crisis platform to allow us to be flexible in both our reporting auditability and transparency for our hospitals and for the industry on the behalf of our customers so that they can demonstrate and show the strength of the quality of their 340B claims that they make with regards to this. It centralizes this onto the [indiscernible] platform -- it brings all of those workflows into 1 place, regardless of the business models and the legislation, which is successful going through the coming years. with regards to that. It's adaptable to be able to deal with these changes and it becomes a one-stop shop for our customers to be able to process all of their 340B claims coming through from there. Next slide, please. On top of that, we continue to enhance and improve our revenue integrity offerings. We have built across all of our offerings a range of AI assistance and improvement to the software, and we continue to use AI, both internally to allow us to develop software quicker and more effectively and more efficiently. But also at a higher quality and in a greater depth with more performance than we've seen previously. And we continue to see this build through our product ranges with both launches that were made through fiscal '26 and ongoing development and launches that go into the new -- into this new year as well. If we then go to the next slide, please. All of this is done by focusing on our strengths. And our strengths are leveraging the power of the data that we contain within our systems. And working with our customers on those long relationships and those supportive relationships for us benefiting and doing everything to the benefit of our customers. And lastly, by playing to the strength to being able to be dynamic in this marketplace and address the real-world concerns of the uncertainty that our customers face by giving them certainty in both product offerings and the strength of our products and in the strength of our teams that have the knowledge to be able to back those products up and take that forward. Next slide, please. And so drawing that all together, we believe that this indicates, although we have had this reset back to our ARR numbers now -- we're giving a number of different areas where we can layer on top improvement and growth opportunity for the future, built on our strength driven by the fact that there is a real market need from our customers who are under pressure from these changes in the rules and regulations from the complexity that comes through from the U.S. health care systems that are there. From having best-in-class products and having quality products that can address those workflows to make not only every member of our team more productive and every member of the customers' teams more productive so that they can address the needs of their patients by continuing to innovate at pace and that quality to be able to provide real offerings, which are game changers out there in the marketplace. This financial reset allows us to ensure that we will have growth in the future and that we can then have sustainable growth for the medium and the long term going forward with that. And with that, I'll ask if we can take the first of the questions, please move to the next slide. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Here's our first question. Have any customer renewals been delayed or lost because of the cyber breach and what level of EBITDA should shareholders expect if fiscal year 2027 revenue really is only around $185 million.

Okay. So first of all, with regards to Sabre, our customers have been very, very supportive through there. The vast majority, almost all of them have been hugely supportive with us in going through there. Many of them themselves have already suffered breaches and understand the pain and the anguish that goes on and the responsibility that comes with having this data in the first place and to understand what we're going through from there. And the majority of them, if not all of them, have had multiple vendors almost on a monthly basis that have also been breached as well. So are very familiar with the processes that go through from that. It is worth seeing as well as when we discussed the breach, and we worked with each with Microsoft, they actually really active that we were 1 of their few, if not the last of their global solutions, health care providers in the U.K. that hadn't had a breach at that point. And so all of our interactions with third-party agencies that have been helping us with the breach as well have pointed to the team's performance and the ability of the teams performance through the course of this breach as being a top notch from there. So no, at this stage, we haven't -- we are not resting on our laurels and we are working with each of our customers to make sure that we are addressing all of their concerns as quickly and as fast as we possibly can with regards to that. As regards to costs, we are undergoing a review just now. Our expectation is that review will be ongoing through the course of this year. The impact of that will mean that we won't get back to our 30% plus margins by the end of this calendar year, but we will be somewhere on track to do that somewhere in the mid- to high 20% margins, -- but our exit run rate by the end of fiscal '27 will be aligned to take us into a 30% plus margin for fiscal [indiscernible]. Next question, please.

What's the expected level of ARR for fiscal year '27?

[indiscernible] as has been ruled -- has been said, will be the starting ARI.

How much is the cyber attack likely to cost?

We just don't know, it's too hard to quantify that at this stage. And I don't think it's in anyone's interest to speculate this on this until we get a little bit further through the process. It's still very, very well in many ways for us. Just the $185 million fiscal year '27 revenue guidance assume core subscription ARR stays flat with 0 transactional revenue? Or are you budgeting for a net drop in [indiscernible]. No. So our transactional revenues, because they are supported by underlying annual contracts are part of our AR balance. So we've modeled from a number of different angles and keep going back to the ARR being the solid foundation that we can point to at this time. And as we see the uncertainties that Keith described start to work their way through during the course of the year. be able to provide updated guidance, excuse me, at that point -- so now we're not expecting to drop in AR. We're still modeling approximately 10% and now we're just giving ourselves balance of risk as we look at our different revenue streams.