Data#3 Limited (DTL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Data#3 Limited H1 FY '26 results webinar and investor presentation. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Brad Colledge, CEO and MD. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for this briefing of Data#3's interim FY '26 financial results. I'm joined by Cherie O'Riordan, our CFO, who will cover our financial highlights a little later in the presentation. For those of you not familiar with us, Data#3 is an ASX 200 listed IT services and solutions provider in Australia and the Pacific Islands. Our vision is to harness the power of people and technology for a better future and we have 48 years of experience in evolving our solutions to enable customer success and we partner with world-leading technology vendors. We are delivering the digital future for our customers through our solutions, which you'll hear more about throughout the presentation. In terms of the agenda, we will first review the first half FY '26 highlights and key operational updates. Then Cherie will provide a more detailed overview of our financial performance. I will cover IT sector trends and round out with our strategy and outlook before closing with Q&A. Let's begin with the financial highlights. Gross sales was a record $1.5 billion for the first half of FY '26, up over 9% on first half FY '25, driven by top line growth across most business units, particularly Managed Services, Infrastructure Solutions and Software Solutions. Gross profit was consistent with the previous corresponding period at $144 million, with software gross profit impacted by Microsoft channel incentive program changes this half as expected, but pleasingly offset by solid performance in our Infrastructure Solutions business, which achieved almost 17% gross profit growth. The average gross margin of 9.3% for the first half was down against PCP of 10.2%, predominantly impacted by the Microsoft incentives. Given the Microsoft incentives took effect on 1st of January 2025, the impact is largely behind us and should be immaterial in the second half of this financial year. First half profit before tax of $33.5 million was up 4.5% and reflects our improved operating leverage of the relatively flat gross profit. Earnings before interest and tax was up over 6%. We delivered earnings per share growth of 3.6% and we are pleased to announce a healthy fully franked interim dividend of $0.135 per share, which is an increase of 3.1% on PCP and represents a total payout ratio of 90.3%. Our solid first half highlights -- performance highlights our ability to adapt quickly to rapidly evolving technology, changes in incentive programs and the changing needs of our customers. I'll now touch on a few of our operational highlights for the first half of FY '26, as shown on Slide 6. The growth in sales of over 9% outperformed calendar year 2025 Australian IT market growth rate of 8.7% and supports a 5-year compound annual growth rate of 11.5%, a solid achievement for a $3 billion turnover company. Our recurring business is steady at 70%, underpinned by growth in Managed Services, Maintenance Services and Software Solutions and the ongoing shift by our customers to multiyear subscription and as-a-service offerings. Our customer satisfaction rating also remains high as we continue to enable customer success. We're pleased to report that sales of our end user computing -- end-user computing were up over 30% this half with overall growth across device vendors such as HP, Dell, Microsoft and Lenovo. This strong performance was driven by Windows 11 upgrades and device refresh cycles, including AI PCs. Data center sales were also up 30% as customers optimize their service and storage through a hybrid cloud approach. AI is now a core operating capability throughout our business, embedded across our digital platforms through both our vendors and our own internal developed solutions. We are seeing clear measurable impacts. For example, we've achieved a significant reduction in our human hours across product pricing management, ordering and invoice-related processes, supporting scalable, cost-efficient growth and improving customer service. At the same time, AI is accelerating how quickly we can build and deliver solutions. Proof of concepts can now be delivered in days instead of weeks or months, while AI agents are streamlining solution design and testing, significantly reducing delivery time frames. Our customers are benefiting from AI on a PC, network and in the data center. Software solutions such as Microsoft Copilot and Azure AI are redefining how customers engage with their data and business processes. AI continues to be a significant opportunity for Data#3 across software, infrastructure and services. Our world-leading vendor partners are investing heavily in new advanced technology solutions. Our expertise in implementing and managing these solutions is key to enabling our customers and Data#3 success. Growth is increasingly broad across the vendor portfolio, reflecting the breadth and resilience of our partner ecosystem. Cisco has recently updated its 360 Partner program, which redeploys incentives to partners with preferred partner status across its networking, security, services, collaboration, cloud and AI solutions. Data#3 has preferred status in each of these areas, and the program aligns with Data#3's ongoing focus of driving greater value across the customer life cycle. Our vendors are important to Data#3 and Data#3 is important to our vendors as recognized by our top-tier status with our various chosen partners. In the first half, Data#3 was rewarded with local, regional and global awards, including Microsoft Country Partner of the Year, HP Australia Services Partner of the Year and 6 awards with Cisco, including the ANZ Partner of the Year and Global Awards for services, software and collaboration. There are thousands of partners in Australia and tens of thousands of partners globally eligible for these awards. They are significant and demonstrate the deep expertise Data#3 has in providing world-leading solutions to our customers. Data#3 is recognized by vendors and customers as a partner they can trust. I'll now pass to Cherie to provide you with more detail on our first half FY '26 financial performance.

Thanks, Brad, and good morning, everyone. It's my pleasure to now take you through our financial results for the first half of FY '26. This first slide shows the consistent trend in growth of gross sales, gross profit and net earnings over the last several years as we continue to strengthen our competitive position through ongoing capability investment and our ability to adapt to new technologies and vendor programs. As Brad already noted in the highlights, we saw record gross sales of $1.5 billion this half with demand for infrastructure and software remaining strong, while parts of the group services business have been impacted by ongoing challenging market conditions. Our PBT of $33.5 million was up 4.5% on the prior year and we achieved EPS growth of 3.6%, with net earnings supported by improved operating leverage, which I'll provide further detail on later in the presentation. The Board declared an interim fully franked dividend of $0.135 per share, resulting in a payout ratio of 90.3% for the first half. Moving on now to the results by line of business or operating segment. Slide 13 provides an overview of the first half FY '26 gross sales generated by each of our services business units as well as the services gross profit, gross margin and management profit. Services gross sales of $205 million was up 0.9% on the PCP, driven by mixed performance across the business units. Managed Services achieved solid growth of almost 16%, boosted by new contract wins and a high renewal success rate. Business Aspect consulting was up over 9% to $16 million with improved pipeline across key accounts and practices such as information analytics, security and transformation. Project Services sales of almost $37 million were down around 13% on the prior half. This reflected prolonged lead times and project delays as customers delay larger projects and closely manage IT budgets, even as the underlying pipeline remains healthy. People Solutions gross sales were down 4.8% on PCP to $30.7 million, impacted by a reduction in contractor numbers across some key accounts as customers reprioritize their IT budgets. And lastly, managed -- Maintenance Services gross sales of $90.6 million represents modest growth of almost 4% off the back of a solid FY '25 and supported by a strong rebound by the infrastructure business. A strong second half pipeline of Cisco enterprise agreements should see this improve in the second half. Services gross profit was down 4.2% to $69.5 million, largely driven by the sales performance being in line with prior year and lower rebates generated by maintenance services. Management profit of $12 million was down almost 14% due to lower gross profit, but offset in part by disciplined management of staff and operating expenses. Taking a look now at our Infrastructure Solutions first half FY '26 financial results. We're delighted to report infrastructure gross sales growth of almost 18% to $275 million, underpinned by strong sales of end-user computing, which were up over 30% on PCP. This was driven by Windows 11 related upgrades and device refresh cycles and should continue to deliver some tailwinds for the remainder of this financial year. Pleasingly, growth in sales of data center storage and servers was also up 30% as customers move to hybrid cloud and accelerate their adoption of AI. Infrastructure gross profit of $36.8 million represents growth of almost 17% and gross margin is consistent with the prior comparative period at 13.4%. Both were supported by a continued focus on maximizing individual deal margins in addition to the achievement of some accelerated rebates given the strong sales performance. Management profit of almost $11 million was up over 105% on PCP, demonstrating improved operating leverage and benefiting from the automation and restructuring initiatives implemented during FY '25. The next slide provides an overview of our Software Solutions results for the first half. Gross sales of $1.1 billion were up almost 9% on the prior comparative period, driven by demand for security products, enterprise agreement to cloud solution provider conversions, Azure and growth with non-Microsoft vendors such as Adobe and VMware. We've seen significant growth in sales of CSP agreements and are gaining momentum with licensing consulting and management offerings. Gross profit of $37.5 million was down over 4%, reflecting the changes to the Microsoft incentive program, which impacted margins, most notably in the December 2025 half as expected. The financial impact of these changes is largely behind us given they came into effect on 1 January 2025. Gross margin was down to 3.5% from 4% this half and management profit of $19.7 million was down over 9% on PCP, both impacted by the Microsoft incentive changes, while staff and operating costs were consistent with the prior year as costs are managed closely through this transition period. We have successfully implemented a number of initiatives to mitigate the impact of the Microsoft incentive program changes on the Software Solutions business and we expect the software business to return to gross profit growth in the second half of FY '26, resulting in a full year contribution to gross profit for software consistent with FY '25. Slide 16 presents a summarized view of our interim FY '26 statement of comprehensive income, noting that statutory revenue, which is up over 8% on PCP to $423 million, includes adjustments to present our software licensing and vendor-delivered maintenance support sales on a net revenue basis. Operating expenses, including internal staff costs were down 1% on the prior year, driven by tight cost control and some vacant roles that were not backfilled this half. The prior comparative period was also impacted by higher restructuring costs. In addition, operating expenses benefited from a nonrecurring lease adjustment this half relating to an upcoming office relocation. The first half earnings include $6.3 million of interest revenue compared with $6.5 million in the prior half year, reflecting the company's sound working capital management and sustained high cash rate. We are currently forecasting interest income of about $9.6 million for FY '26, assuming seasonality in our cash position is similar to FY '25 and no further changes to the cash rate in the second half. This next slide shows our summarized consolidated balance sheet as at 31 December 2025. Key callouts include the usual inflated cash, trade receivables and trade payable balances at 30 June each year, resulting from the May, June sales peak, which subsequently reduced in Q1 of the next financial year as debtors are receded and vendors are paid for the products sold. The cash balance at 31 December '25 was $125.4 million compared to $131 million at 31 December '24. Our net cash outflow from operating activities in the first half of FY '26 of $204.3 million compared to the prior year outflow of $123.8 million reflects the difference in timing of customer collections each financial year. Investing activities in the current year included some IT project costs capitalized as software assets, including those relating to the cloud solution provider platform and our data and reporting modernization project. The last call out on the cash flow and our working capital are that our average daily cash balance of $347 million is up almost 12% and we have maintained our average day sales outstanding at 25 days. The final slide in this first half FY '26 financial overview supports our internal focus in recent years on steadily improving our internal cost ratio, a key internal measure of operating leverage. ICR improved this half to 81.2% compared to 82.2% in the PCP, benefiting from the restructure of our infrastructure business in the first half of 2025 and various automation initiatives and system improvements in addition to effective cost management. Thanks again for your time this morning. I'll now pass back to Brad.

Thank you, Cherie. Let's take a few minutes to review IT sector trends and strategy and outlook. In calendar year 2026, Gartner expects Australian technology industry spending to increase 8.9% to approximately $172 billion. Software will be the largest IT spending category in Australia in 2026, overtaking IT services. Gartner forecasts software spending in Australia to reach almost $60 billion in 2026, a 13.6% increase from 2025. Devices, which includes smartphones, tablets and PCs, is expected to grow by 6.6%, although memory chip price increases and availability may create risk of a slowdown in this sector. According to our vendors, price increases and restricted availability could last for up to 18 months with now the best time to buy. IT services growth is forecast to grow at 5.6% with IT communication services relatively steady at 3.6%. Within communication services, we anticipate stronger growth in networking, where demand and our competitive position remains solid. Investments in AI-related infrastructure continues to accelerate and is expected to drive data center growth of 22.5%. While much of this investment is occurring with hyperscalers such as Microsoft, we are also seeing renewed interest from customers in hybrid cloud as they determine the optimal environment for both their AI and non-AI workloads. Let's explore a summary of our FY '26 strategy before reviewing the outlook. Our strategic priorities drive our strategy. This includes our solutions, developing solutions and services that deliver customer success, customer experience, differentiating Data#3 through the experiences we deliver to our customers. Operational excellence, connecting and simplifying Data#3 to deliver an agile and efficient business and people and community, connecting Data#3 with its people and the communities in which we operate. Our customer experience combines customer segmentation with an enhanced digital platform, ensuring customers can access the right expertise and solutions at the right time. This provides a secure unified gateway to Data#3's full solutions capability. Importantly, customers are seeking a combination of digital and in-person engagement. And in FY '26, we are delivering a model that integrates both. MyD3 is our digital customer experience platform that combines multiple functions into one easy-to-access environment. It provides secure access to information such as real-time pricing and stock availability that is updated through live vendor connections. Dashboards highlight the most relevant information in the procurement process, plus there is access to service delivery and support. The platform supports the operational needs of our largest customers and provide self-service functionality for all size customers. This supports our customer segmentation model of matching the right solutions with the right customers. This has been a key tool in helping us to scale and service our Microsoft cloud solution provider customers with high levels of automation and efficiency, improving the customer experience. Our solution sets and life cycle services capability are where we are focusing and investing in FY '26. It is our ability to integrate these solutions and manage them through the solutions life cycle that is one of our competitive advantages. Let's look at a customer case study that integrates 2 of our largest partner solutions with Cisco and Microsoft. Griffith University set out to modernize its campus by implementing a Smart Campus concept that optimizes space utilization, improves energy efficiency and enhances security while supporting hybrid learning and collaboration. Partnering with Data#3 and Cisco, Cisco -- Griffith University deployed an intelligent campus solution to achieve its business outcomes. The solution optimizes space utilization by providing better visibility of available resources while enhancing the student and staff experience and provided a more secure and manageable environment. With Cisco Smart Spaces technology and Microsoft Outlook and Teams, Data#3 was able to facilitate a fully integrated solution. The initiatives implemented in response to the Microsoft channel incentives changes on 1st of January 2025 and a focus on CSP, Copilot, security and Azure has significantly mitigated the financial impact on our first half FY '26 results. The software business is expected to return to gross profit growth in second half FY '26, resulting in a full year contribution to gross profit for software consistent with FY '25. With software expected to recover to PCP for the full year, we anticipate continued momentum in infrastructure in the second half, particularly across devices, the network and multi-cloud solutions. Rising memory chip prices and some supply uncertainty may provide some short-term uplift as customers bring forward purchases to get ahead of the price increases. However, it could also provide delays in order fulfillment in Q4, particularly supply constraints emerge. Cisco launched its 360 Partner program in February 2026. However, we don't expect these program changes to have any material effect on the company's FY '26 performance. We expect growth in Managed Services as we continue to expand our capabilities and offerings. While demand for contractors and some larger projects remain subdued with protracted sales lead times, the business remains agile in responding to areas of high customer demand such as security, data and AI. Consistent with previous practice, we're not providing specific FY '26 earnings guidance. In line with previous years, we continue to expect a sales peak in the months of May and June and an earnings skew to the second half. Our goal remains to continue to deliver sustainable earnings growth for our shareholders, consistent with our long-term strategy. An active market and strong solutions portfolio provide opportunity for further growth. Thank you, and we'll now open for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Apoorv Sehgal from Jarden.

First question for me, just could we unpack the gross profit performance and outlook a bit more? So first half gross profit was flattish year-on-year. But at the AGM, you were expecting sort of slightly up year-on-year, so a little bit soft there in the first half. But then also into FY '26, at the AGM, you were talking to high single digit growth in overall gross profit for full year '26. I don't think you've reaffirmed that today. So if you could just talk about what your expectations are now for full year '26 gross profit growth, please?

Okay. Good to hear from you. So just in terms of -- I guess, the first part just say the gross profit, we did say that we were aiming towards a slight gross profit increase and we did because I think it was 0.3%. So -- but we -- also remember, we said that software would be impacted in the first half because of the Microsoft channel incentives. That was the remainder of the full year of Microsoft channel incentive changes. So the fact that we got to where we said that we were going to get was absolutely a fantastic result from our perspective. I think the second part of the question was more around the outlook. And the outlook is still really unchanged from what we said at the AGM as well. It's the fact that we see that our software business now that we've gone through the full 12 months of Microsoft channel incentive changes and we've managed through that fairly well that the -- it will return to growth in the second half. And we also continue to see growth from our infrastructure and services businesses as well. So we are still expecting single digit growth in the second half.

Just to clarify the gross profit outlook for the full year. So if I go back to the AGM in October, it said high single digit gross profit growth for full year '26. Are you saying that's unchanged?

That's unchanged.

Okay. So that means sort of probably low double digit for the second half. If you're going to get high single full year, that's sort of what it implies is like second half will be pretty strong.

I'll let you do the math on that.

Okay. And just to clarify, sorry, just [indiscernible] on about this. But with high single digit, is it sort of 7%, 8% -- like are we talking sort of 7%, 8%? Is that high single digit? Or are the range of outcomes a bit wider than that?

Look, if we achieve 7% to 9% growth this year, considering what we've had to deal with in the first half with Microsoft channel incentive changes, that would be a great result. As you know, we don't give specific guidance because we do have significant months in the months of May and June. And we -- while our underlying business can be very strong, we are also subject to market factors as well, which is why we call out some of the potential headwinds with regards to supply for memory. So I think at this stage, the main takeaways is a strong underlying business. We are performing to expectations in every market in which we're operating from a line of business perspective. And we expect that growth to continue in an accelerated form over the first half into the second half for the full year.

Okay. Last question for me, please. Services business. Gross profit was down 4% year-on-year in the first half. I was just a bit surprised by that performance, just given there should be like an AI boom playing out at the moment. So I would have thought services would be pretty strong. So is AI potentially underperforming expectations on the services side?

AI is pervasive right across the board. And when I think about some of the larger projects that we have been involved in the first half where some of the -- and I've spoken about this before, the decision delays on some of these larger infrastructure projects continue to take effect. In fact, we just closed a deal that we had been working on for 2 years last week. So that was nice. And that actually had nothing to do with AI. So -- and there are other, I guess, project-related IT services projects that wax and wane depending on the nature of where customers are at with their purchasing decisions. So I guess our strategy has been to move more of our services to Managed Services in terms of supporting annuity revenue, which is more predictable. And that's occurring. We've had another growth half in our Managed Services. Our Managed Services revenue continues to grow and we are providing AI services across both managed and professional. So I think that from an AI perspective, even though we've been talking about it since the release of OpenAI and ChatGPT that there is -- we're still at the early stages and there's still so much more that we can help our customers with from an AI perspective. We've been helping the customers identify whether their data is secure, whether their data structures are relevant for AI and then helping them in their AI readiness. And more recently, we've been helping them with their deployments of AI and change management. So we are deeply engaged in AI, but there's certainly more benefits to come in our professional services area, which I think is the question that you're asking on the back of AI.

Okay. And just to quickly clarify, on Slide 30 of the outlook, the outlook slide in your [ present ], where you say services growth in the outlook, do I interpret that as you're expecting services GP growth for full year '26 or just second half '26?

So that is a sales outlook statement. So we're expecting growth at the sales line. As you know, we're less focused on the GP for services rather than the net earnings because of the mix of contractors and where those sit in the services P&L. But yes, we're expecting gross sales growth probably low to mid-single digits for the full year, given we've got some unders and overs across the business units.

Your next question comes from Olivier Coulon with E&P Financial Group.

Can you just clarify a little bit? So the Cisco changes sounds like I suppose they're leaning more towards the preferred suppliers, which sounds like you are, which is helpful. [Technical Difficulty]

Since we've lost the participant, we'll move to the next question that comes from Chenny Wang with Morgan Stanley.

I mean, maybe just firstly, in terms of some of the project delays on some of these larger projects, can you give us some more color on what that's actually driven by? I guess kind of interested in just getting a feel on maybe delays from economic sentiment versus potentially the impact from memory and some of these projects having to re-spec.

Yes. It's a good question, Chenny, and it's good to hear from you. So the -- there's a number of reasons. Budget and interest rates have certainly not done any favors and particularly with providing uncertainty in terms of which directions they're heading. And we've had a few customers that had to rebudget a few times. But also it's the complexity in the technologies. And we -- Apoorv asked the question about AI in services earlier. There's certainly opportunity, but it also provides a little bit more complexity for customers. So that takes a little bit longer for the customers to work through what is the right solution for them right now. And then there's also more people involved in the decision-making process, as we've spoken about in previous briefings, where there's the security manager and the sustainability manager and the procurement manager and a lot of people, I think it's up to -- I think Gartner reports that it's like 9 to 10 people involved in the decision-making process now where it used to be 3 to 4. So that continues to affect the more complex purchasing decisions, which is -- and services is where the more complex projects are in services. If it's just buying 1,000 devices, for example, that's an easy decision, whereas there's more complexity, we're seeing that's where the delayed decision-making is.

Got it. And then -- sorry about that. And then you guys, I guess, called out the infrastructure momentum into the second half. How should we kind of think about maybe from -- sorry, from volume versus price? And you talked about the scope for some pull forward to get ahead of price increases. Are you seeing that come through already?

Yes, we are. February, we started to see price increases already coming through from our vendor partners. And we expect that to continue right through the calendar year into next calendar year. So it is a bit of a challenge because customers will have a budget for -- particularly for this financial year in Australia. And as prices increase, they may spend the same revenue, but they may end up getting less for that revenue and having to rebudget into the next financial year. So it is -- it may provide a challenge for our customers' budgets moving forward.

Got it. And then just one last one. Just on software GP. I guess good to see that you guys reiterated the flat software GP for FY '26 given the incentive changes. But maybe how should we think about this into FY '27? And can we get back to a scenario where software GP grows, let's say, more in line with revenues?

So we certainly will see software grow into -- that's the plan into FY '27. We've set the team up and our strategies and results support that. Whether it's in line with revenue is a separate question, Chenny, because as you know, that some of the revenue growth even this year was 8.9% versus 3.5% or thereabouts for the GP growth. So our revenue in the software area could quite easily grow faster than our profit growth, but our goal will be to continue to grow our profit at our previous levels that we have in previous years before the Microsoft channel incentive changes.

Your next question comes from Nick Harris with Morgans.

Just wanted -- I'll just stick with my 2 questions really. The first one was just for Cherie in the context of Software Solutions. You mentioned you're getting some positive momentum with licensing and consulting side of things. So I'm just trying to understand, does that mean there's a meaningful number of enterprise customers who are paying Data#3 for licensing advice? And it sounds like if that's the case, that's a fair bit better than, I guess, we feared, I guess, 12 months ago. So that's my first question. Are you making some money out of the consulting side of licensing advice? And the second one was actually just what Olivier, I think, started to ask, which was on the Cisco side, maybe for Brad, the license, the Cisco 360 changes to partner program, I think it was January of this year. I know you said it won't have any impact in this year. But could you just give us a little bit of color around what it would look like on a 12-month basis? Is it material or not meaningful?

I'll quickly answer the first question. So short answer is, yes, we are starting to see some meaningful numbers coming through in our software advisory team, which means that we are getting the customers to pay for services that were previously covered by the Microsoft incentives. So we're getting some really good momentum there with our fee-for-service model. And do you want to take the Cisco?

Yes. So yes, with the Cisco ONE, the -- I guess we're fortunate that we've been ahead of the game a little bit with this because of all the partner advisory councils that we sit on with Cisco and getting early visibility to their program changes and have been able to pivot already even before the launch of the program. So it's nice that Cisco were very consultative about what they were doing. So while it will have an effect just for a -- through our transition period, it's not going to be material. And in terms of FY '27, we will be in a better position to comment on that at our next update, I'd say, rather than this one as we'll monitor the transition and the effects during this half and be able to talk a little bit more about that in a few months' time.

Your next question comes from Apoorv Sehgal with Jarden.

Maybe for Cherie, just on the operating costs, some good cost control in the half. I think your OpEx was down like 1% year-on-year. My understanding is you've made some kind of new hires at the back end of the half, which will kind of give a full kind of cost contribution in the second half. Is that right? And could you just give us some indication for OpEx growth in the second half? I mean, I was kind of thinking closer to 10% OpEx growth in the second half, but happy to be steered by you.

Yes. So if I just break down staff and OpEx separately, you're right, we did have some roles that were vacant for the majority of the half and then we backfilled towards the end of the first half, which was not all vacant roles. So we are still obviously managing costs very closely and we're looking at each new role individually to assess whether it's directly replaceable, whether that budget can be reallocated to other specialists or sales solution type roles. So managing that very tightly. But for the full year, I would say the staff costs will likely be up around 2% on PCP, which is a really good result compared to previous years. And our OpEx is probably going to be about 5% up on the prior year, provided there are no sort of one-offs in those numbers.

Cherie, that OpEx up 5%, that's total OpEx, up 5%?

So that's ex staff costs.

Ex staff costs. Okay, right. So staff was up to --

Yes. General operating...

-- the other OpEx up kind of 5% and total OpEx in between those 2 numbers basically.

Yes.

Okay. Okay. That's I guess pretty well controlled costs then. Just one other thing as well. Just on Slide 16, there was -- you did mention on the call earlier, $900,000 of lease accounting adjustment benefit nonrecurring in the first half. Just what is that, please?

So it's basically the release of our lease liability and right-of-use asset relating to one of our interstate offices, which is -- we're going through a relocation process with that office. And effectively, the way the lease accounting works is you make certain assumptions about the extension options that you're going to take up at the end of the lease term. So when you are certain and you're no longer going to take up those options, you release those balances to the P&L. And it just relates really to the timing difference between the amortization of the lease liability, which is on a P&I basis versus the right-of-use asset, which is straight-line depreciation. So it means we've over-expensed in previous years and you get the benefit adjusted through once you -- once that lease is negated effectively.

Got it. But it's nonrecurring. There's nothing to factor in for the second half with that?

That's right. Yes. Yes. I mean, there will always be lease adjustments as we move around. We've got a number of office leases coming up for renewal in the next couple of years. So there might be some more one-offs, but certainly for this year, it's nonrecurring.

Okay, sure. And just one final one for Brad. Just beyond the infrastructure-related shortages you talked about how it provided a tailwind for potentially the next 18 months. Did that give you guys a benefit in the first half already? Or is it sort of only coming now?

It's really only evolved over the last couple of months. So the -- it didn't have any effect on our first half. And as I said, it could have a short-term tailwind in our second half, but it could also provide some slowdown in Q4, depending on how rapidly some of these price increases occur and the availability of the memory as the hyperscalers consume all the memory that's available for the market.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Adam Dellaverde with Taylor Collison.

Apologies, I missed most of this because we're kind of busy day. But if this hasn't been asked, can you maybe give us an update on licensing and rebates, mainly around your confidence on market structure and position in CSP as that becomes Microsoft's go-to-market or preferred go-to-market? And then also just the competitive intensity when the stuff you have on EA is rolling off. We're hearing that it's sort of very, very aggressive out there on that stuff.

Nice to hear from you. So our CSP business, I'm pleased to say, has been growing very well. And it has -- I'm not sure how -- I guess what that means is that it takes the pressure off the lower-margin EAs as to plan. But you are right, in the CSP world, there are a lot more resellers that can sell CSP than there are -- they can sell EA. So if customers move from EA to a CSP, in theory, there's more competition. However, that's why we've invested in our systems processes and maintained our 100-plus people in expertise in our software team to be able to compete with all players in CSP. And I'm pleased to report that, that is working. And particularly with any Data#3 enterprise agreements that roll into CSP, we're also an Azure -- I'm going into too much detail here. We're an Azure expert MSP, so a managed service provider. And what that means is as customers move over from the EA construct to the CSP construct, it's not just licensing, they're actually moving their instances as well, for example, their Azure and Office 365 instances. And we have the -- we're one of the few Microsoft partners in Australia that has the certification and the expertise to migrate those customers' environments from EA to CSP. And so that's why we're continuing to win very effectively in the market.

Okay. And just in terms of AI, the -- just some of the -- I guess, some of the early winners in terms of revenue aren't the traditional software vendors you're dealing with. So I'm just kind of curious what you're seeing in pilots and what you're seeing with early adopters if you have like a bundle or any product sets that are getting traction?

Yes. So as you know, we still invest very, very heavily in Microsoft. And while the -- I guess, the public face of a lot of the Microsoft technologies is Copilot and there's a lot of different variations of Copilot, including Copilot Studio that provides the agents that you can build agents in -- build agents into business processes and help customers with their automation and business process engineering effectively. There's also a large amount of AI capability within Azure and Azure AI. And that's where we're seeing our engineers being able to lean in a lot more with our customers and help them to apply Azure AI across the data that they have stored in Azure, for example.

So are you seeing -- so a lot of the pilots that you've talked about in the past, are there any comments in terms of commercialization of them? Or are we still in this trialing and learning?

Various levels of deployment. So a number of them have moved forward and implemented solutions. And it's still a very rapidly evolving area and we continue to see a lot of opportunity.

All right. Last one for me. On the services side, just as I think about the scaling of that, is the infrastructure, at least as it has in the past, is big infrastructure project wins the precursor to more services work as part of your bundle as part of your solution? Or is there like a separate go-to-market now for services attached to software or something else that drives volume in that business?

In terms of our project services, Adam or...

Yes, even hardware Managed Services and Maintenance Services and all of it.

Yes. Such a broad -- it's a good question. It's a broad question to answer succinctly. The -- from a -- what would be a good way to answer this? So from an -- same devices, devices -- rolling out devices across the network and deploying software on those devices, that used to be like a 3-month project. And with a lot of the automation from tools such as Microsoft Intune, for example, that 3-month project is now a 3-week project. So that's reducing the opportunity with project services. However, if we look at more complex environments, particularly enterprise networking, data center storage and AI within the customers' business processes, that's where there can be -- continue to be larger, longer projects. You're also familiar with, I guess, some of the larger -- it still fits within the enterprise networking area, but say a stadiums fit out. So if we're fitting out a new stadium, for example, there's actually just a lot of people installing thousands of wireless access points. So those larger infrastructure projects, they're few and far between. But when we do secure them, they're typically larger prolonged higher revenue businesses -- projects rather.

Your next question comes from Nick Harris with Morgans.

Just wanted to follow up on the memory and laptop side of things in the second half. Brad, I think you said volumes are lifting now in the Q3 as businesses are scrambling to get laptops, but there is a possibility price rises could negatively impact volume in Q4. So what I heard was sort of broadly up Q3 and then maybe down in Q4. So I'm just trying to get a feel for the most likely outcome for the second half of '26. If you had to kind of go one way or the other, would you be thinking that devices are kind of net neutral or a net positive outcome in the second half?

Yes, it's a good question, Nick. At the moment, we're backing on that still being a positive growth for us and that it's just something that we will have to manage with our customers. I guess from a customer's perspective, a device on the 30th of June 2026 is going to be cheaper than a device on the 30th of June 2027. So my concern is just whether customers have budgeted sufficiently to be able to do what they need to do. So I guess the main reason for mentioning it is there's the price -- there's 2 issues. There's the price increase, which affects the customer's budget. And we may see customers ordering in advance, for example. And the second issue, I guess, is as customers are ordering in advance and memory prices are increasing and then supply gets more and more restricted, if a customer orders, but we can't get hold of the stock in time during Q4 to deliver an invoice, then that could be potentially a headwind.

Got you. So it could theoretically end up a bit like Cisco did a few years ago where you got a bunch of preorders as people were trying to get their hands on equipment and it was a positive contributor initially and then you work through it all and it had a bit of a negative impact a few years later as things normalize. Is that essentially what you think about it?

Yes, potentially. We're trying to educate our customers to either move into more of a more manageable environment like the Device as a Service offerings that I've spoken about previously, which is more annuity revenue for us and annuity operating expenses for the customer, which is a little bit easier to manage. And some customers don't replace all the devices at once either. They might replace 1/3 a year, so 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. So there it's just -- it's very difficult to tell exactly what customers will do moving forward, but we'll try and help to smooth that process out for the customers. But this is probably going to go on as has been reported in the industry press for the next 12 to 18 months. So the question is what is going to happen when. And only time will tell, which is why we sort of just need to call it out that it may occur in Q4, but we don't really know.

Your next question comes from Chenny Wang with Morgan Stanley.

Just one follow-up. Just in terms of the missed rebates in Maintenance Services in the first half, can you just give us some more color on what happened there? And yes, how much do you guys actually miss out on?

So we don't give exact numbers, Chenny, but the lower rebates were really just off the back of the lower sales performance, as I called out in the commentary. So we achieved less than 4% growth. A lot of those rebates are volume-based. Therefore, if you're not hitting the numbers, obviously, the rebates are softer. As I said earlier, we do expect that to rebound in the second half. We do have a really healthy pipeline of enterprise agreements in the maintenance space. So hopefully, we can make that up in the second half.

Your next question comes from Apoorv Sehgal with Jarden.

Cherie, just a follow-up on the staff costs only being up at 2% for the full year. That's very kind of modest growth versus prior years. Just unpack what's actually driving that? Why is it so slow in cost growth, staff costs?

So if I break it down by department, we obviously called out that we implemented some restructuring initiatives in the infrastructure business in the prior year in addition to various automation and efficiency initiatives. So those 2 things combined have meant that we've been able to manage headcount in the product side of the business. The software business, as we called out also, we are keeping headcount as flat as possible there as well while we manage through the transition and just work out what our future staffing requirements are. So yes, it's just effectively managing vacant roles, restructuring teams and redeploying resources rather than bringing on incremental new headcount and leveraging those automation and efficiencies that we've implemented internally.

If I can just play devil's advocate for one moment. There's a lot of opportunity in AI that you talked about. I just thought in an environment like this as a business, you might be in like labor hiring mode to capitalize on the industry -- to capitalize on the opportunity you see in AI. But it seems like you're kind of in cost saving mode. Yes, just sort of your thoughts on that statement.

Yes. I guess it's not really -- when you talk about such staff cost across the business [indiscernible], we are hiring in our services businesses in -- across consulting, project services and Managed Services for AI. So I guess the -- some of the savings are coming from more of the cost centers where we've got operational efficiencies through automation and AI.

Your next question comes from Olivier Coulon with E&P Financial Group.

Apologies, I got cut off before. I did hear your answer on Cisco, but I did have a follow-up there. So you mentioned FY '27, you're going to wait until you see how it plays out in the second half. What are the swing factors as to what the impact could be? Because it sounds like you're kind of weighing up the potential for market share gains versus GP hit? Or yes, what are those swing factors?

Yes. It's really just seeing how the program -- if the program actually rolls out and deploys as Cisco have modeled it really, Cisco have advised that there's no decrease in the channel incentives across the channel. And we just need to make sure that the -- that we're continuing because we've been able to work with Cisco and their programs so well in the past being Cisco Gold and leveraging the programs that they have had in place. It can take some time to make sure that we're maximizing the programs as they release and deploy them. We're fortunate that we've been involved in the development of the programs, but having just been released in late January, early February, we're just a little bit cautious until we see how that plays out that there's typically a bit of a transition in terms of what the vendor is paying for versus how the customers are adopting the technology. But in terms of any partner in the Cisco community, we'd be one of the most advanced that there is aligned with this program.

Okay. So there's a possibility that there's a kind of short-term transition impact in FY '27, but it sounds like you feel in the medium to long term, it shouldn't be as meaningful impact on the potential appropriate returns out of that channel, that price?

Absolutely spot on.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Colledge for closing remarks.

Well, thank you very much. There's been some great questions that went to all the topics that we expected. So thank you. And we'll just close it off there in the interest of time. I know you are all very busy. Appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thanks all.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.