Credit Clear Limited (CCR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Credit Clear First Half '26 Results Presentation for the period ending 31 December, 2025. This morning, we have CEO and MD, Andrew Smith; and CFO, Victor Peplow presenting. There is an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. You may do so by the bottom of your screen. I'll now pass to Andrew.

Yes. Welcome, and thanks for joining me. Victor Peplow, the CFO. My trustee sidekick who's always there to sort of make sure that the truth department comes through in terms of financial reporting. We're sort of really looking forward to this half year presentation. There's been a lot that's been achieved across the first half of the year. Really excited about some acquisitions that are quite nice. Expand our total addressable market and give us a really good launch into new and exciting territories. So for those who are relatively new to Credit Clear, this slide will give you a good understanding of the breadth of what we provide across the accounts receivable space through to late stage collections. Very important to note that we don't buy debt. So whilst the name Credit Clear can be confused with others in the market, we absolutely don't buy debt. We assist our clients resolve debt through technology and people. So Credit Clear, powered by AI, customer engagement and digital payments, supported by ARMA is more collaborative collections business that uses a combination of technology and people. And then Oakbridge, whilst it's our smallest cohort of revenue and staff, they represent effectively the enforcement through the legal process. So many of our clients use all three services. Some use 1 or 2, but what it does is give us a very wide reach across the customer lifecycle from short term debt management through to late stage. I'll throw to Victor to give a roundup of the numbers for the first half.

Thanks, Andrew. ,Look what this slide shows is that key financial metrics continue to head in the right direction. We're quite pleased with the first half result that you see there. Revenue up 8%. And that improvements come from a mix of existing clients as well as new clients. Although we have focused more recently on existing clients, which is finding that the return on efforts, if you like, from existing clients is quicker than new clients. Notwithstanding that we're still chasing new clients and there's a good sales pipeline there. But greater focus on existing clients, which is proving successful. Underlying EBITDA up 24%, which again, management is extremely pleased with because that's despite us trying to invest in growth. We're a growth company. We've been investing in growth for the last couple of years. We've taken that to the next level with the acquisitions that Andrew will talk about. But we acknowledge that shareholders look for improvement in financials, namely revenue and underlying EBITDA. So that's why we're quite happy with the graphs there. In terms of cash, we did raise some capital, although we've already spent some of that on the acquisitions. But all that said, there was still just under $21 million on the balance sheet at 31 December. And that sets us up quite well for future opportunities in relation to growth. Cash from operations, I want to explain that because it's quite important. There's a dip there. However, that reduction in cash from operations is mainly due to the reduction in the payables balance by $2 million. And you can see that in the accounts that were released this morning where our payables balance decreased from $6.7 million to $4.7 million. It is not a reflection of underlying operating performance. It's merely a timing difference. So hopefully the audience understands that. It is merely a reduction in payables comparing the balance, as I said, from June to December, half-on-half, not a reflection of operating performance. But overall, the key message of this slide is performance continues to improve. And as you can see, has done so over the last five years. Thanks, Mel. So we move to underlying EBITDA margin. And again, that continues to improve, particularly whilst balancing the growth that we've invested in. Cash from operations, I've just spoken about, and the gross margins there remain stable. Although we expect that to improve in the second half, which traditionally has been the better half of the full year. That's all I'll say on this slide.

The most encouraging part of it is that the second half is always way better than first half. There's certainly seasonality in our business as well as growth that's traditionally back ended into the end of financial year. I suppose this is a real indicator as to the success that we're having within the business in terms of organic growth. A improvement of 12 new clients within the Tier 2 space, not only sort of derisks the business, as far as having such a large proportion of our business tied up in the 21 Tier 1 clients, what it's enabled us to do is to sort of position ourselves for rapid expansion within share of wallet. Yes. So these are the 2 things that whilst they're not being reflected in the first half numbers at all, given that they were closed in January this year and will effectively deliver 6 months and 5 months' worth of both profit and earnings to FY '26 results. And obviously, 12 months and 12 months into FY '27 results. There's been 3 new either initiatives or acquisitions made. The first which has been an internal launch of a service, which is the business processing operations. Now this is targeted at demand from existing clients at both offshore services through our Filipino business Nova Team Solutions, which has already been well established for the last sort of 5 years. That's due to expand offering new services in the BPO space to existing clients. And secondly, new clients who are looking to either onshore and offshore services, which really correlate to our core advantages, which might be the management of vulnerable customers, the handling of accounts receivables in a first-party environment, both leveraging our technology and people. The next one that we acquired was ARC Europe. ARC Europe has been known to our business for many, many years. They are a well-established traditional debt collection agency, very similar to the business that ARMA was 4 years ago before we brought Credit Clear and ARMA together. The reason why that's such a great target for us isn't just that they're operating in the U.K. environment that has probably 4x or 5x the total addressable market than we do in Australia. All of their clients are business-to-consumer clients, meaning that the Credit Clear technology will be easily deployed across those clients within the ARC Europe environment and the opportunity to cross-sell and upsell software and services to those clients are very, very good. Now I'll go into more detail around ARC Europe later. And then the third real I think achievement that was mostly worked on during last half was Digital Technology Solutions. That was an illion business originally, then sold to Experian close to 2 years ago. I've been speaking to illion for well over 2 years, trying to persuade them to release this business. I think it was just a matter of timing. And the reason why I was so keen to bring them into our business is that we're directly aligned in terms of the problems we're trying to solve in terms of accounts receivable through software. And this business has been at it for over 35 years, has just an incredible list of Tier 1 clients globally and also represents huge opportunities for us to sort of complement the Credit Clear services and expand our total addressable market across the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, U.S. and Canada. So I think an incredibly intelligent acquisition done at a level in terms of what we paid, which is well and truly below what it would sell in the sort of non-listed environment. So very pleased with that one. I think we go into more detail in the next couple of slides. So back to ARC Europe, U.K. based debt collection agency, as I said, been around since 2001, has really strong partnerships across financial services, health and leisure, insurance and utilities. This was very, very similar to the business that ARMA was prior to the acquisition. And adding that to the Credit Clear, I guess, family of companies only just replicates a very successful strategy that we've done in Australia, just in a bigger market. So whilst it adds scale, it's substantially more profitable as a percentage than what Credit Clear is. So we've added that to the group. The owners will and truly committed to us for the next 2 years through an earn-out, escrowed shares and not to mention their whole attitude and focus to adopt the innovation that Credit Clear has brought to the industry. So I think that that's a really smart acquisition, relatively low risk. Not a huge acquisition in terms of the size of Credit Clear, but represents such a great opportunity. And I've been over there, sat down with their clients, sat down with their staff, and they're all very excited and motivated as to what the future might bring under Credit Clear's ownership. All right. Now I did speak a little bit about Digital Technology Solutions, but it's just great to see that what we've got companies like EnergyAustralia, Virgin, O2 Telecom, HSBC, Vodafone, huge clients across a plethora of markets, as I said, Australia, New Zealand, U.K., Canada, U.S. And anyone who's been in business and in sales and knows what it takes to sell a technology solution to a Tier 1 energy provider or a bank will understand that this gives us such a huge leap into those markets. And in the meetings that I've had and others that have already had with those major clients, either in the U.K., U.S., New Zealand or Australia, will know that the opportunities that sort of exist in the future to expand the services that we already provide to them through DTS is huge. The other thing that came out in a lot of those meetings is that they're on 2, 3-year agreements. So not only do they love the product, this is really recurring revenue that we've been able to acquire in DTS that's also unlocking synergies for upsell and cross-sell. So super, super pleased and excited that we're able to get that deal done. And it's going to contribute certainly 5 months' worth of their revenue in FY '26, but 12 months' worth of full revenue and any growth is going to be fantastic. Whilst there will be investments that we'll need to make in that business from a sales perspective to be able to get them growing fast again, that certainly provides some wonderful opportunities for our outlook in '27 and beyond. All right. I thought this is a really good slide that continues to demonstrate that despite our growth, the digital growth in terms of payments that we're receiving in our core business is growing exponentially higher than the business is growing. So this once again clearly highlights that the market is really looking for smarter, easier ways to make payments. And when Credit Clear is offering up our technology either through a first party or a third party, i.e., through the ARMA services component, we're seeing more and more people take up the opportunity to pay digitally now rather than calling up and paying over the phone or going through one of the more other traditional methods. That obviously carries a huge improvement in our profitability and is reflected in terms of bottom line gross profit margin. So whilst half 1, a lot of that improvement is put back into the business in terms of growth initiatives. But overall, we're seeing a very impressive curve as to the take-up of digital payments. Where that's going to land as a percentage of payments across the group, I'm not sure. But as people become more and more tech savvy, I think that we'll just see that increase to close to 85-plus percent, I'd say. So overall, really, really good signs there. Now I did allude to this earlier around an increasing share of wallet. What dictates that increasing share of wallet is typically our performance against our competition. And quite frankly, at the end of last year, we've never been in a stronger position as we have in terms of our performance against our competition. That's typically derived through recovery rates, also supported by compliance and service, but it's usually recovery rates that really dictate that increasing share. So what we've seen across all our major segments, both insurance, consumer and also utilities is that our performance against that cohort have been increased substantially justifying a communication by our clients that we're getting an increased market share in the half 2. So some of those have already kicked in, which is great. Some of them are due to kick in the future, but that will also really drive not just our half 2 growth, but also growth in FY '27 as well. Back to you, Victor.

Thanks, Andrew. I think most of you have seen this slide, the same layer I've used in previous periods, which is effectively the bridge between underlying EBITDA and the EBITDA reported in the statutory accounts. So starting with the revenue, we've already discussed, that's 8% up on the previous corresponding period. Employee benefits, we've managed to keep that increase down to 3%, which has been quite challenging in an economy, which I consider to be at full employment. So one, recruiting is difficult; two, retaining, remunerating them, and we've got to go way beyond remuneration into training and career development to keep our staff here. But nevertheless, a 3% increase, notwithstanding that in addition we've invested further in the BPO expansion, which Andrew has touched on, but also in our sales team. And in particular, sales around the selling of our SaaS product, remembering DTS has come across effectively with a SaaS revenue operation there. So we're expanding that side of the business in Australia to sell the SaaS product, which is obviously linked to our digital collections and produces higher profit margins. In addition, we've hired a very senior manager in the BPO space. Some of you again will know we've got an office in the Philippines, which is now at capacity. But that team of 50-odd has serviced solely our onshore team. Whereas now we're moving to expand that office, just entered into a new lease agreement and looking to offer that to external clients as well as our internal clients. The gentleman we recruited has run a BPO office of 300 to 400 people. Route 55, it will take a little bit of time, but we expect some very good earnings to come out of that business over the next 12 to 24 months and beyond. So that's the employee benefits line. The other expense line there, we can see has increased a little as well. The only outlier there is in relation to system enhancements. And again, as we've continued to generate Tier 1 and Tier 2 clients, that does require customization of systems that they request. And to give you some examples, it's around functionality. It's around the reports they request, more analytics and data security. That's just an ongoing requirement, particularly as we continue to bid for tenders from Tier 1 type clients. So data security is an ongoing investment there. That left us with underlying EBITDA of $3.6 million, which I mentioned earlier, improvement of $2.9 million PCP. And that left us with a 37% flow-through of each incremental revenue dollar down to that underlying EBITDA result. Moving on to non-core expenses there. They did hit $1 million, which is higher than PCP. And that's largely due to acquisition costs. You're aware now that we've completed 2 acquisitions in January. There was a third DD that we conducted, which we did not proceed with as criteria was not met, but those acquisition costs applied as well. Also included in that number there is some systems consolidation, the last of the client migration from previous acquisitions where we have multiple systems and some additional work there on client compliance risk management. Share base was down on PCP, but we see that as an important incentive for our senior management team and that we consider that the vested interest in Credit Clear shares is obviously important. And that leads us down to EBITDA as per the stat accounts, which is at $1.9 million, almost double PCP. Depreciation and amortization, same as previous periods, largely the amortization of capitalized tech development as well as the office leases. And that gives us an NPATA of $626,000, again, higher than PCP. That bottom amortization line for acquisitions is predominantly ARMA acquisition related, and that will fully amortize in February of '27. So another 12 months to go, which will take the load off that line. And at the bottom there, you see net P&L as per the stat accounts. But overall, again, as I said earlier, solid financial result whilst continuing to invest in the future. So that balance is always difficult, but I think it's working -- it has worked well to date. I'll stop there on this slide and hand back to Andrew.

Thanks, Victor. Yes, I'll sort of try to move quickly through this particular slide. The trading conditions are certainly supportive, high inflation, high debt levels, obviously, continues to focus for a number of businesses around credit and collections and making sure that they're staying on top of their accounts receivable. So it's clearly a focus for many of the organizations we work with or want to work with improved performance in terms of accounts receivable. Debt recovery is absolutely critical for most large organizations or government bodies at the moment. We're seeing large increases in debt levels and also the time which people are taking to repay accounts. Hence, that's sort of really conducive to using our technology as a way to engage with customers to make sure that they're maintaining and able to self-serve when it comes to changing their arrangement. Growth, as Victor alluded to, is going to come through lots and lots of areas, new horizons being BPO, new markets in the U.K., U.S., New Zealand. And certainly, that's underpinned by strong growth focus on our digital SaaS platform as well. So whilst SaaS doesn't seem to be hot in the market at the moment, still a very core part of what we do, and it's underpinned by some very, very strong client relationships. Once again, we're investing in the sales, not just across Australia, but in the U.K. and New Zealand. And we want to really unlock those markets and see if we can replicate the successful strategy that Credit Clear has done through the ARMA acquisition, bringing that more hybrid offering, not just straight SaaS, not just trade traditional, bringing it together in terms of a hybrid offering. All right. Victor, do you want to have a kick off here?

Yes, sure. Okay. So with the guidance, you can see there, we've got revenue guidance for the full year of $57 million to $59 million. We've explained that we expect second half for the existing Australian business to improve on first half as it's done over the last couple of years as well as including in those numbers, the acquired businesses. And what's made it challenging is we can go on the numbers that we've [ DDed ]. However, it's very difficult to anticipate at this very early stage what the growth might be out of revenue for those acquired entities. So on that basis, we're assuming flat line, but we'll get a better idea as we work and progress through second half. But at this stage, it's $57 million to $59 million and keeping in mind the existing business was on track to meet the original guidance. Underlying EBITDA, that was even more difficult. We've obviously got -- you can see the numbers there of $9.5 million to $10.5 million. We got a very good handle of what we think we can achieve for the existing business, again, the Australian business. What became challenging here is the investment required in ARC Europe and DTS. So the areas we've highlighted thus far is in sales, particularly for DTS, it's been starved of any investment for a good couple of years there. That business has been sold twice now in a 2-year period. Team there is very excited to join us as we have got like core businesses. So they're finally coming to a business they can relate to. We'll invest in that, but sales does need investment there and probably for ARC Europe as well. DTS is coming across without much of its infrastructure, tech infrastructure systems because all of those were provided by Experian. And again, I'm providing some detail here to give context in the justification for investing, all right? So my point there is there will be expenses incurred in the second half of the year for the 2 acquisitions. However, all that said, we're expecting underlying EBITDA to come in at $9.5 million to $10.5 million with the majority -- the great majority of that to come from existing business and less so from the acquired businesses. So that's where we see it at this stage.

Yes. No, I think it's a very solid result, once again, underpinned by the core business certainly reaffirming its guidance and then adding certainly revenue and a proportion of the EBITDA for the 5 and 6 months coming from the 2 acquisitions. So once again, it puts us in a very good position for FY '27. We won't talk about what the guidance would be or the pro rata numbers. I think that no doubt the analysts will do that in the next couple of days, but it certainly positions us well for future growth. Yes, it's always interesting to look at company performance against share price. And it does once again, frustrate and confuse not just the Board, but the executive team, just how well we continually improve on half-on-half, year-on-year from a fundamental perspective, not just in terms of growth in revenue, overall profitability, expanding our total addressable market, improving our technology capability, opening up into new expanded markets yet. I think we're up against some tailwinds from a sector perspective. No doubt everyone is aware of the technology challenges in Australia recently. We just continue to focus on the things that we're in control of, which is driving good strong organic growth, making very smart acquisitions and executing on projects that we're engaged by clients. So hopefully, this turns around. But if it doesn't, we'll just continue to do what we're doing, which is deliver really strong fundamental results.

Thanks, Andrew. We might start with some questions. Larry from Shaw is online. So I might just ask Larry to unmute and ask his questions.

Well done, guys. Andrew, can I refer you to Slide 6 with the Tier 1 and Tier 2 clients?

Yes.

That is a fantastic performance in Tier 1 and Tier 2, particularly looking at the $1.3 million annualized revenue up from $1.1 million. And likewise, in Tier 2, it was about 10% annualized revenue. So as Victor said, really working with those existing clients. I guess the overall revenue -- given those 2 numbers, I would have thought revenue could have been yet even higher than what you've done based on those 2 numbers. What's going on outside those Tier 1 and Tier 2 accounts? Are you walking away from, say, smaller customers to focus on those and put resources against those accounts?

Well, look, there's certainly a bit of that. We made the strategic decision probably 12, 18 months ago to no longer provide services to support those one-off SME type businesses. So that naturally results in less new clients coming on board as a total number of new clients. It also I think creates a bit more of a recurring revenue model within the business. So there's definitely a component of that dropping off. But then again, half 1 sometimes can be a bit slow because our customers aren't as focused on accounts receivable as they are in the back half of the year. So there's definitely seasonality within the business. And like we saw last year, there was huge growth in Q4 especially, and that was reflected in the numbers. And I'd be really interesting to sort of see how this compares this half to next half as well as overall revenue numbers naturally.

Okay. So I don't need to -- what you're telling me is as you kind of walk away to a certain degree from some of those smaller customers, I don't need to think about this chunk of revenue that may unwind over time. You're still doing it. There's a bit of seasonality in it. But it's not -- there's not a chunk of revenue that's unwinding over time.

No, not at all, not at all. There are certain sectors within our cohort of clients that go through different focuses around when they are really pressured to drive down their accounts receivable. These are in the sort of essential services space like water. There's been a real holdback from those organizations in half 1 based on sort of cost of living pressures. Same goes within the sort of council cohort. But what you'll find with those organizations is that the amount of work just increases and increases and increases. And then suddenly, they'll sort of flood us with huge amounts of work and you'll see a real spike in our revenue. What we've been able to do is keep that really steady growth consistent despite the fact there's been obviously a slowdown in sort of the SME type businesses and some sectors like water.

Andrew, we have James from PAC who's asked, with respect to the U.K. market, should we expect or view the first year of operating in that market as a prove yourself to the market? Or do you fully expect to be pitching, bidding and winning tenders?

Look, I think that certainly the next 6 months will be very much an understanding of the market and feeling out. We haven't built in, as I said, much growth, if any growth from those 2 acquisitions. But the early signs from having sat in front of those clients are very good. But at the same time, we all know that there's quite a long lead time between when a client starts to think about or decides to provide a proportion of their portfolio to you to when they start to sort of contribute substantial revenue. So I certainly think the next 12 months will be absolutely selling as hard as we can. And the signs already are very good from a synergistic perspective. But in terms of moving the needle from an accelerated revenue growth certainly will be at least 6 to 12 months and beyond.

Thanks, Andrew. And maybe, Victor, sticking with the acquisitions, Evan has asked what is the amortization allowance of the 2 Jan 2026 acquisitions?

Yes. Look, that's still to be calculated. However, keep in mind, we paid for ARC Europe $8.8 million. DTS was around $7.7 million, just above. We need to deduct from those amounts the net assets acquired for both those acquisitions. Then we need to go through what's called a purchase price allocation for the accounts out there. And then that will leave us with that purchase price allocation figure that gets amortized to the P&L. That's still unknown at this stage. It's just too soon. We only completed in January. I'll have that task completed in the next couple of months. So it's going to be something below the figures I've just shared, not a direct answer. It will be lower than the ARMA amortization that you've seen on the P&L in the last 4 years, but all this will be quantified by the time we get to year-end.

Victor, maybe if we can switch to growth. Michael has asked, can you explain the difference between the growth of active debt files and the revenue growth rate of 8%? How should we be thinking about the split between growth in the new business versus growth in share of wallet?

Well, it is an interesting one and it does change from quarter-to-quarter and half-on-half. Sometimes you might be spending a whole lot of time onboarding new clients and then you get a large cohort of new work that can contribute the majority of that growth. And then like the last period, the majority of the growth has come from mainly expansion of work from existing clients. So as I said in the presentation, we just got some really, really good news about share allocation increases from a bunch of our really large Tier 1 clients, which kick in or have already kicked in, in half 1 or should kick in throughout half 2, which will drive really strong growth in the back half to half 2. So there's always a combination of brand new, new business, new logo revenue and also existing business expansion of wallet. Naturally, the expansion of wallet revenue is the most profitable. But at the same time, we know unless we're bringing on new logos, then next year and the year after is going to be a struggle to continue to grow at 10% plus organically. So I know that doesn't answer your question as an exact percentage, but it changes so frequently.

Just 2 more points I'll make there, Andrew. First one is remembering when we sign on new client and onboard them, the revenue tends to ramp up slowly initially and then it starts to take off. So given we're in the first half of the financial year, all clients that we've onboarded in this half will show less revenue, obviously, than the second half, okay? So that's why the PCP increase will have a smaller percentage of new client revenue as opposed to revenue growth from existing clients. In terms of growth going forward, as the revenue base increases, of course, the percentage becomes a little more challenging, which is why we're trying to look for ways to expand and diverse our revenue streams. For example, that BPO expansion, look, BPO is a proven business model. It's been around for many years and it's quite lucrative. We've got the advantage -- 2 advantages. One is existing clients wanting to use BPO services that they're currently utilizing with their own external service providers. They've indicated they want to put their BPO requirements through us. And the second is when you think about collections and that digital capability and what our point of difference will be in the Philippines, it's that digital collection capability that we've got. A lot of those collectors that are offshore are very much traditional phone calls. We will add to that our digital capability, which will give us we think the advantage over our competitors in that BPO space, all right? So we expect BPO to be a huge revenue stream for us going forward, whilst continuing to grow our existing business onshore.

Thanks, both. Can we just go to revenue guidance? Anoop has asked, can you clarify the revenues that are included from the 2 acquisitions in FY '26 guidance?

Yes. As I touched on a little earlier, we're expecting consistent run rates with what we DDed. So that's going to be around -- what have we got, around the $1 million, slightly less, around $800,000 to $900,000 at this stage coming out of the acquisitions.

Thanks, Victor. If we just go to the platform and how you're deploying AI, there's a couple of questions here in terms of the business. How are you deploying AI within the business? And how do you envisage it affecting future expenditure, including wages, platform development and the debt collection market overall? And then just added to that, can we just talk about any role for AI efficiencies, particularly in Philippines or BPO?

Yes, very good question. Obviously, very topical at the moment. Look, Credit Clear as a group are looking to use AI in a couple of areas. That 9 months, we actually reduced our headcount within the tech team because of the benefits provided us by AI, doing a lot of the heavy lifting around the coding and the lack of need so much for those code writers. So we've really been able to sort of produce, if not more, on a smaller budget and expenditure within our tech team. So that's the first area that we're really utilizing AI. The second is how we can adopt AI and deal with the large cohort of clients that -- and their customers that call us when they received the debt to set up a new arrangement or to speak to some on the phone. So utilizing and adapting AI agents as a way to reduce the need for headcount within the call center. That's also a very, very focus area for us to be able to adopt inbound call traffic being managed and supported through an AI agent is absolutely next level for us. Now that will definitely be able to sort of be rolled out not just in Australia, but the Philippines. So it has huge ramifications I think for future profitability within the business. But once again, I think having assessed a lot of those AI agents as a third-party offering, I don't think they're there yet, right? Whilst the marketing collateral is out there and the sort of noise around what's being offered, there's nothing that's going to sort of solve 40% or 50% of inbound calls using an AI agent, even if a presentation says it can. So we're ready to adopt that, integrate it within our business, see the benefits to our clients, our business, our shareholders, but it's still a little bit away. Whereas using AI to do a bunch of the coding within our software development team, that's been in and operating for well over a year.

And Eric has just added another question.

Sorry, Mel, can I just go back to Anoop's question and clarify what I said. I see, Anoop was asking about the revenue. I'll correct the numbers. So revenue from the acquisitions factored into guidance is $7 million to $8 million, not the figures I mentioned earlier. So it's $7 million to $8 million of revenue from the acquisitions factored into our guidance number there.

So it's effectively 50% to 52% was our original guidance within the core business and then we're adding that additional revenue from DTS and ARC Europe. So I think we see an improvement in our guidance driven through the acquisitions.

Just wanted to clarify that point.

Great. And so if we stick with AI, Andrew, are there any other competitors either domestically or in the U.K. using AI as extensively as you given the digital component of Credit Clear's business?

Look, there certainly is competitors in the private space that are certainly purporting to use AI to resolve overdue debts. Now those don't necessarily sell software as a first-party solution like we do or haven't in the past. And I would say that we have a much broader expansion of markets that we service, i.e., insurance, utilities, telco, banking and finance, general consumer. So look, absolutely, in other markets, we've seen competitors offer services, say, in the U.K., the U.S. or now New Zealand and Australia. But I think that we are quite unique in the fact that we offer first-party software solutions, third-party hybrid AI-enabled solutions and then supported by our legal business as well. So without buying debt, we offer a full life cycle service to our clients and especially those that can't sell debt, I think we've got a very unique offering and our moat around that being deep integrations, onboarding processes, long terms of contracts are certainly very protective of us for those new and emerging suppliers that are offering solutions.

It looks like Larry has another question. Larry, I'll ask you to unmute.

I got spurred, Victor. When you discussed the $7 million to $8 million factored into revenue for the acquisitions into the guidance, it looks like you're factoring in $0.5 million to $1 million in EBITDA for the acquisitions in the guidance, correct me if I'm wrong. But if that's the case, is that the sort of natural EBITDA margin of these acquired businesses or are there sort of one-offs being incurred or seasonality?

There will be some one-offs, as I alluded to earlier, Larry. As these businesses come on, there are some integration costs there, some infrastructure. But no, we would expect the earnings or the margins to improve beyond this financial year for a couple of reasons is we will get some synergies there, okay, on the expense side. And two, there are growth opportunities. So I don't think the next few months is a good reflection of what the ongoing EBITDA margins will be.

We've got our final questions here, Andrew and Victor. So both relate to share price and the buyback. So given the share price weakness, would you look at restarting the buyback? Or alternatively, what is the consideration of buying shares versus acquisitions?

Yes. Look, I had a call from our Chairman this morning, Paul Dwyer, and he has a wonderful one-liner around when shareholders are looking for us to deploy capital through share buybacks, acquisitions. And he said, look, would you rather us spend fast or spend well? And I think that what we want to do is ensure we protect the money that we've got, look for really good investments in the future and ensure we're not just buying for buying sake. And I think that's the position we're in now. We've got a really good strong core business growing well. We've got a couple of great acquisitions that I think are going to be very accretive for us now and in the future. And we still have a very strong appetite to look for new acquisitions, both domestically and abroad to bolt-on and complement our business in the same market. So I think we know who we are as a business. We're there to help, resolve our customers with their debt solutions. And whilst the share price absolutely is disappointing to us, it doesn't necessarily matter right now because we've got plenty of capital off the back of a 4x oversubscribed capital raise late last year, cornerstone by our Chairman, Paul Dwyer. So I think we're in a very good spot. And look, at some point, the market will respond to our results.

Andrew, that brings us to the end of our questions. So I'll pass back to you for final comments.

Yes. No, thanks, everyone. It's really sort of fantastic to get everyone's engagements. I once again feel very, very proud of our achievements in half 1. The 2 acquisitions are hugely transformational to our business based on our expanded total addressable market. There's been a lot of work that goes into it. As Victor said, we looked at one very closely. We almost did a deal. And I think the fact that we said no to that, I think, demonstrates that sometimes you're as good as the ones you say no to, not just saying yes to all of them and hopefully build some confidence within the group. So thanks, everyone. I appreciate those who have been shareholders and stuck with us, especially due to the -- some of the sell-offs that have happened in Australia. But I think you've got a fundamentally strong business with a wonderful outlook in the future.