DSW Capital plc (DSW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the DSW Capital Interim Results Webinar. [Operator Instructions] This webinar is being recorded. I now hand over to James Dow, CEO. James, over to you.

Thank you, Tamzen, and good afternoon, everybody. I'm delighted to welcome you to the half 1 results for FY '25. We will start with introductions. I'm obviously currently the CEO. I was a founding partner of the business back in 2002. And I'm delighted first to introduce you to our new Chief Finance and Operating Officer, newly promoted, Pete Fendall.

Thanks, James. So as James mentioned, I'm currently CFO and both Chief Finance and Operating Officer as of Monday. So I joined DSW 3 years ago, having spent 8 years prior at Deloitte, where I left as a senior audit manager. Joined DSW at a really exciting time, pre-IPO. And since then, I've been working with all of our licensees to drive value for the license fee that they pay and also looking at ways to enhance and improve the business whilst being heavily involved in the finance function. I'll now pass over to Shru, our newest member of the team.

Thanks, Pete. I'm Shru Morris, the CEO Designate of DSW Capital. So I joined the business about 4 months ago. Prior to joining DSW, I spent 20 years in professional services, so trained as trust accountants in the mid-market, so RSN, and then held senior roles within professional services in legal, construction and private equity-backed businesses. Most notably, I was Chief Executive of a regional law firm and led that strategy and growth to be one of the most successful law firms in the Northwest.

Thank you, Shru. I'll do the recap, the overview of DSW first, just to remind everybody of our business model. We regard ourselves as a challenger big-4 mid-market professional services provider. We operate as a network, and we have 112 fee-earners licensed to trade as DSW across 12 locations in the U.K. Our revenue model is that we take a license fee, which is typically a percentage of the revenues built by those 112 fee-earners. And our business proposition is we provide those businesses with the infrastructure of basically ambitious professionals to build the business within the DSW network. It's a very scalable model. It's a very predictable cost-based model with effectively 10 full-time people at head office, DSW Capital. And during the time since we've floated, we've increased the professional headcount from 82 to 112 in the last 12 months, that's an 8% growth, but growth has been consistent throughout the M&A cycle. I have to refer to it being a cycle as we've seen our fee-earner ratio is now at GBP 150,000. It peaked at GBP 220,000. And I'm delighted to tell you at the end of the H1 that we've seen an increase in those revenue figures, which is really important for shareholder value. And as we stand, we have a 67% revenue exposure end of half 1 in terms of exposure to SME M&A marketplace. Just a very simple recap of our business model. Typically, we will ask people to form a limited liability partnership with a new service line, be partner A like a partner B will join together in a partnership that will then trade as DSW. To trade as DSW, we provide them with the back office and regulatory support, working capital funding and an opportunity to participate in cross-referral opportunities across the network. And in exchange for that, we have a license fee arrangement up to 22% of their fees will be paid to capital for those support and funding services. From our perspective, the strength of DSW Capital is that we have recurring license fees. So we have 112 fee-earners who operate on a daily basis to generate fees themselves primarily and also we benefit from that. The model means we have minimal exposure to property and employee costs. We're a provider. Those risks reside with our licensee partners, our owner-managers. Because they're owner-managers, they're very much self-starters. Our objective is to provide the back office support. We're capital light, and we're very flexible arrangements on LLP structure, which means we can have partners come and go. It's easily scalable as a business because essentially, we're only recruiting people and providing them with IT and tech support in terms of capital investment. And from the licensee, the strengths are really about credibility and credentials. So we are providing a start-up business with the opportunity and the perceptions of being significantly greater in scale and also the credentials of significant backlog of work -- back catalog of work done. Also as a licensee, you have the benefits of cross-referrals, the opportunity to work with other disciplines. It's a key metric for us that we have cross-referrals. Our ideal scenario is effectively that the cross-referred fees outweigh the license fees. So it's stronger to be together, which is our mantra. Being part of a larger business means it's easier for our partners to recruit and it also means we can centralize the marketing and other support we give them. So those services that we give them is to try and develop their people and the back office support around compliance and other areas. But the main benefit, I suspect, is startup with the credentials and capability, and we underpin our new partnerships with start-up funding to get them up and running. An overview in terms of the size of the business and scale. So the 112 fee-earners are broadly operating in M&A, as I've indicated. So that's 40 in corporate finance, 17 in related financial due diligence. And then our other big service line is business recovery. And then we've added on additional service lines, which effectively are opportunities to roll out in each of those locations. So that's a brief recap on what we do and how we're situated at the moment. I'll hand over to Pete, who will take you through the first half numbers.

Thanks, James. So first of all, from the headline network revenue, we ended the half year with GBP 7.8 million network revenue, which is around a 6.8% increase year-on-year. Now that increase is due to 2 main reasons. We started the year with a record number of fee-earners and licensee businesses, but also we saw a slight shift within the period towards non-M&A activity, reducing from 68% down to 67%, and that's largely due to the timing of the Bridgewood acquisition. So that transaction completed in July last year. So we had 2.5 months' contribution last year versus 6 months' contribution this year. In terms of our results, they are typically weighted towards the second half of the year. And just as a reminder, that is due to the profit share income and the timing of recognition. So we obviously only recognize profit share once thresholds within the relevant licensees have been met, and therefore, that is all back-end weighted. This year, we are expecting our H2 results to be more weighted towards the back half of the year, and that is due to an exceptional trading month in October, which we reported early in the month, but also due to the contribution from our new acquisition, DR Solicitors, which you'll hear from Shru about shortly. Income from licensees was broadly in line with prior year at around GBP 1.1 million. So there is a slight reduction there with our effective license fee falling from around 15.4% to 14%, and that's largely due to timing and sales mix across the licensee portfolio. That slight adverse variance year-on-year is more apparent when you look at EBITDA. So we were down 24.3% year-on-year, and that equates to about GBP 46,000. Our cost base within the period remained broadly consistent year-on-year. So that is, again, purely due to that top line reduction. We closed the period with GBP 2.3 million of cash. And overall, there was about a GBP 300,000 outflow within the period, and that's after paying a GBP 200,000 dividend. We are proposing to pay an interim dividend of 1p, which we're intending to be around 1/3 of the total dividend for the financial year. That gives a dividend yield of approximately 4% based on the current share price, and that will give total dividends declared post IPO of around 10.98p, which includes that H1 FY '25 proposed interim dividend. As James mentioned, we've seen -- we've got 112 fee-earners as at the end of the half year, which is a 7.7% year-on-year growth with growth coming now in the below-partner grade, and I'll cover that in our recruitment slide shortly. In terms of the income statement, so as I mentioned before, portfolio income is GBP 7.8 million versus GBP 7.3 million. And helpful context for that as well is around we are still 67% weighted towards M&A within the first half of the year. And per Experian, in the first 9 months of 2024, there's been a 7% reduction in deal volumes compared to the previous year. Now that is actually in line with the level of deal volumes we had back in 2020 during COVID. So we're seeing very few deal volumes, but we are still seeing portfolio income increase. And obviously, as I mentioned before, there was a momentum built in September. So our teams got a lot busier, and that lended us up with some strong half year results, and that momentum then surged in October with some exceptional trading results as well. Jumping down to central overheads. As I mentioned before, those are broadly consistent year-on-year. So last year, we took a decision to invest in recruitment. We've continued to invest in recruitment during the first half of the year, but we're going to pivot towards our marketing spend, increasing marketing spend whilst our partner recruitment is potentially a bit tighter as our partners are busier in our -- in the big 4 and other firms. Finance income, that purely relates to the funds received on IPO and a bit of interest on some of the loans from the transactions I mentioned before. And then the only other thing to bring your attention to on this slide is the share-based payment charge. So last year's charge of GBP 253,000, that reflects the gross shares that were issued on IPO, whereas this year, it's GBP 52,000, which relates solely to the management LTIP and is at a more normalized level that we'll continue to see going forward. In terms of the balance sheet, so just as a reminder, our intangible assets, those represent some of our licensed brands that we've acquired over the years. And then the investment balance and the noncurrent prepayments and accrued income balance, those largely relate to the investments in Camlee back in FY '20 and Bridgewood in FY '24. And just due to accounting reasons, those are split over 2 balances on the balance sheet. Our trade and other receivables rate to our debtors from our licensees, and we have a quarterly billing cycle, so the highest at September. And then also within there, we have the other receivables in relation to loans issued to some of our start-up businesses in the period. We closed the period with GBP 2.3 million of cash, as I mentioned before, and we have a robust balance sheet with net assets of GBP 7.5 million, and there was capital available, obviously, to deploy in the second half of the year. From a cash flow perspective, as I said before, the headline is a GBP 300,000 cash outflow within the period, which again is after that GBP 200,000 dividend. One of the things just to draw out is around our cash generated from operations figure, which is showing an outflow of around GBP 170,000. That is obviously due to the performance of the business with the business growing. So obviously, our debtor balances also growing. But also within that figure, there's a GBP 200,000 outflow in relation to new start-ups. So just as a reminder, we give a loan to new start-ups in the first 12 months in the trading. And in FY '24, we saw a record number of new licensees, and therefore, there's around GBP 200,000 outflow going through -- net outflow going through in relation to new start-up loans. As you can see, there's some adjusted cash conversion stats on the right-hand side of the graph, so showing that our adjusted operating cash conversion before start-up loans is around 17% in the period. So this slide just gives you a bit of an overview of some of our network KPIs. I think it's really helpful to help understand and remind you how we operate as a business and what's important to us. The graph on the left-hand side is our last 12 months portfolio revenue versus fee earners. So that is the revenue generated by our 24 licensee businesses. As you can see from the left-hand side, in the H1 FY '23 LTM network revenue was at a peak of just over GBP 20 million, and that is due to FY '22 and FY '23 being our record years of around GBP 18.3 million network revenue. Obviously, we had the mini-budget from List Trust back in September 2022, which then had a knock-on impact on M&A activity leading to a period of subdued activity. And that led to a GBP 16 million network revenue in FY '24, and that slowly ticked up, obviously, with the performance we've just talked about for H1 of FY '25. So the key thing here to differentiate and to pull out is the line around fee-earner growth. So despite that downturn in economic activity and the performance in the M&A market, we've continued to add heads across the business. And we've seen, obviously, revenue per fee-earner fall from a peak of GBP 227,000 back in FY '22 down to the GBP 151,000 we've seen here today. And that sort of demonstrates the opportunity gap between the GBP 227,000 and GBP 151,000. So as the M&A market comes back, we expect to see that revenue per fee-earner continue to tick upwards back to a more normalized level going forward. Some of the other stats to pull out on this slide. So a typical licensee business now has around 4.7 fee-earners, which you can visualize the 2 partners and 3 employees. That number has steadily started to grow as we've seen our licensees pivot from -- we've seen us pivot from adding new partners to the business and those new partners are now trying to recruit into their teams and grow their teams. We also have an average age per partner of 49 with our new partners being typically towards their early 30s. And that's, again, part of our recruitment strategy and our ideal candidates fit in that demographic. Our female partner stats has fallen and continued to fall due to a number of departing licensees in the previous period, as previously mentioned. So that is a stat we're disappointed in, but it's an area of focus for us going forward. So in terms of some of the headlines on the recruitment. So H1 FY '25, we had closed with 112 fee-earners, which is about 7.7% growth year-on-year. As I mentioned before, we have seen partner recruitment tighten with no new partners in the last 6 months, and that is a consequence of the upturn in M&A activity. So we believe as partners in big 4 firms and the top 10 accounting firms are busy, they're less likely to move. However, we have a countercyclical recruitment. So when everyone else was -- when M&A activity was subdued, we invested heavily in FY '24 into our partner recruitment, and that led to us increasing partner numbers in the previous year from 42 to 50. Now M&A market has slowly come back and we've seen some momentum build. We pulled back on the partner recruitment, and we're now supporting our licensees with the organic recruitment, and that's starting to show in the stats we've seen for H1 FY '25 with a net increase of 5 fee-earners. So that investment in FY '24 created a platform for growth. So we now have that database of over 7,000 partners. So we're continually using that list and going through the list, keeping warm leads, so marking out what partners we have for the future and building that pipeline. And we're a lot better in terms of the way we manage and process our recruitment funnel. Post period end, so after September, so coming up to November, we've seen that organic recruitment continue. So we've added on another 3 heads within our existing licensee businesses. But we also completed the DR Solicitor's acquisition, which brought another 18 consultants into the business. So our headline fee-earner figure as of today is 133. I'll now pass on to Shru to cover the DR acquisition.

Thanks, Pete. So just looking to the future and just recapping on some of the opportunities for growth. So I'll just start with the right-hand side and breakout where we have teams breaking out of larger firms and mid-market firms who want an alternative to what they've got at the moment and to significantly enhance their earning potential, perhaps be in control of their own destiny. So this has been a real success story for us over the last couple of years. So we've got more of that to come. Service line extension, we've obviously got a lot of M&A work. And alongside those teams, we believe there is more to come in terms of other service lines that we can offer those clients as well. Geographical expansion, DSW is probably known in more locations than ever before. We're about 12 locations. The Big 4 in about 40. So there's a lot more to come around existing clients and more service lines and geographical spread across the U.K. as well. As Pete mentioned, organic growth is starting to pivot into -- as teams become more established, they are now recruiting beneath partner level. And as the M&A market has bounced back, we're starting to see -- be more comfortable in recruiting. So we'll probably see more benefit of that and further opportunities for growth in organic areas as well. Acquisition of license fees, this is really where we may fund an MBO, we provide the funding to a team and relicense the business back as we did in the Bridgewood acquisition that Pete mentioned earlier. And just looking to sort of target acquisition service lines. So we are looking for audit and compliance. We're looking for all that high-margin, high-growth advisory work in niche professional services, where there's a strong fit for both brands, for the team coming in and for our existing DSW network as well. So as I mentioned before, existing service lines in new locations. So teams sitting alongside each other in key accommodations would be a target for us. Tax-related services and family office, we do a huge amount of M&A-related work and alongside that work comes a lot of tax work as well. And it's a real opportunity for growth for us. We've got 6 professionals in 2 locations, but we're operating in 12 locations. So again, a high priority and a high growth area for us as well. Other big 4 non-audit service lines. So the big 4 has always been a great breeding ground for DSW and identifying new service lines to our existing clients. So again, it's an area that we'd like to focus on in terms of other service lines that we can provide to our network and our existing clients. And then niche legal services. So just on the accountancy sector, there are lots of lawyers who are perhaps working in larger firms that want an alternative to what they have at the moment. And we believe this is an area of growth for us and a way to penetrate that legal sector. So continuing that theme, I'm really pleased to talk about a key milestone in the acquisition of DR Solicitors. So just a quick overview of DR. It was founded around 22 years ago by another pioneer, Daphne Robertson, who saw a gap in the market for providing quality legal services to primary care and also creating a consultancy model for lawyers who are working in perhaps larger firms, but wanted to increase their earning potential and retain a proportion of the billings. So it was really a first of its kind at the time, and she's grown -- her and Nils have grown that business over a period of 22 years. And now they are a one-stop shop for legal services for primary care, so GPs and primary care networks as well. They have 18 consultant fee-earners delivering work for DR and who keep a percentage of their revenue. And they tend to recruit in magic circle firms and those lawyers who may be at certain levels who want an alternative and a flexible approach to working. It's recurring clients, so clients who generally instruct DR Solicitors over every 3 or 4 years, and they've built up a large database of those primary care clients as well. It's certainly a scalable model across new service lines to those existing clients, but also they're primarily based in the Southeast and there, of course, primary care across the whole of the country. So new service and geographies. They've got mature systems and processes, which makes it very easy for lawyers and consultant lawyers to plug in and play, which makes it very attractive for lawyers who want to go out on their own. Just some financials around DR. So revenue around GBP 3.1 million and EBITDA of GBP 1.2 million and highly cash generative. Revenue per fee-earner is about GBP 182,000. So a very, very strong business in DR Solicitors. So this is very much a transformational acquisition for us. So just to recap on the detail of the acquisition. So 1st November, we completed for a consideration of GBP 6.1 million, satisfied by GBP 1.8 million of consideration shares and GBP 4.3 million of cash, funded by a revolving credit facility of GBP 3 million, which gave us flexibility around our payment profile. DR will be our new Legal Services division. And the DSW network now has 133 fee-earners, representing 28% growth year-on-year. So as I say, a very transformational acquisition for us. And very much a strategic fit. So when we were considering DR, there was a lot of similarities between the models. So first of all, it's significantly earnings enhancing, as you can see from the figures outlined previously. It gives us a real step change in growth for us, balances our portfolio, so it does reduce our dependency on M&A in that cycle to around 1/3. It's a legal platform for growth. So there are lots of consultants out there who want to work in this way. But DSW is about enabling entrepreneurs to set up their own businesses. And again, that's another area of growth that they can plug into DR in our new Legal Services division. It's very much brand-enhancing for both DSW and for DR and a lot of cultural synergies in the way that the model works as well. I'll hand you back to James.

Thank you, Shru. Yesterday, we made some announcements regarding, effectively, the executive leadership of the business going forward. So the first one I want to draw attention is the appointment of Pete Fendall as the Chief Finance and Operating Officer. Obviously, he's been acting in that role for some time now since Nicole left us, and it was an easy decision to appoint Pete on a full-time basis. He's an exemplary character, and he leads the business extremely well. The second announcement obviously refers to Shru Morris. I mean, Shru has only been with us 4 months. She made a fantastic impact on the stakeholders of the business and was instrumental in delivering the DR business deal and bringing that over the line. So effectively, from yesterday, she is the CEO designate with a clear signal that she will be taking over from myself on the 1st of April. So that will mark, effectively, the transition of leadership of the business to Shru. My role will still remain as an Executive Director, slightly nuanced in terms of what am I supposed to do. My role will be to support and hope that make Shru and Peter as successful as possible, transitioning relationships and also continuing to add value wherever I can in terms of helping grow the business on a more strategic level. I'm very excited by those appointments. I'm really pleased that we've got very capable, ambitious visionary executives who will continue to drive the business forward and take the full advantage of the opportunities that will present themselves to us with our very different business model. I summarized the changes. I'll summarize the performance of the business. It was a very solid half 1. Network revenue grew gradually. There was clear momentum shift though as the budget approached, gradually improved with momentum building in September and frankly, October was exceptional. We ended the half on period with 112 fee-earners. As I said, we've continued to increase fee-earners. I regard that as a key metric to building shareholder value. So that's a 36.6% increase since admission to a -- since we started the business, we've always added fee-earners. We attract people to our business model, and we keep them. I have to say from a partner recruitment perspective, things are tighter. And I think that is a reflection on the fact that it's been busy. So my partners have been busy on all sorts of opportunities. And frankly, that means partners elsewhere are focused on their internal careers. We very much need our candidates to be disappointed where they currently are and then attracted to the strength of our model to make the big jump. I'm also pleased that we were able to increase the dividends per share. It's a really important metric, I think, for an underlying business that it can pay out dividends. So we've now come to the accurate 10.98p per share since the IPO. And this year, the full year outlook is a 3p dividend. Now the outlook for the year. We're in a very strong position at the moment. October by any metric was exceptional from our licensee partners. They work really hard. They're dedicated to the services that they provide, and they would reap the rewards in October. Generally, there was a rush to beat the budget in terms of what might come in terms of CGT. Now we factored in more subdued activity in terms of the rest of this quarter and probably into the start of next year as you've got to recognize that has dragged forward transactions to people trying to get things done by the end of October. But notwithstanding that, we still thought it's appropriate to uplift guidance for the full year. And strategically, very significantly, we've added on DR Solicitors. It gives us a more diversified business, a more substantial underpinning to those earnings and less impacted by M&A. So M&A was 2/3 of our business at H1, going forward into H2 effectively becomes 1/3 of our business. So where are we now? We're a much more diversified and robust business, record number of fee-earners, record number of licensee businesses. And for the rest of H2, we are cautiously optimistic because of the springboard that we've achieved in October. So I think that concludes our presentation, Tamzen, and we look forward to receiving your questions.

The first question is, what do you think the impact of the recent budget will be on both M&A activity in the next -- well, let's start with on M&A activity in the next 1 to 3 years.

I think the increase in CGT by the 4% to 24% was sufficiently light that it won't significantly impact on MA volumes. And our confidence is underpinned probably by the fact that the treasury figures that came out with the budget suggested they expected take -- the capital gains tax take not to be materially impacted or to go up, which means that -- that means the volume of transactions they expect to be unchanged. So I think it's been neutral from that perspective, it obviously has a dampening effect on people's propensity to transact. Beyond that, I would say there is an apprehension building, I think, amongst entrepreneurs and owner-managers as to whether that increase in capital gains was actually the last likely increase in the medium term. So at the moment, I would say the balance of risk that owner-managers are looking at is that it will go up again. So I think on balance, it's probably going to be more positive for our business in the medium term. Continued increases will not be good for us in the long term. But I think in the medium term, it's been a very positive budget, bearing in mind the threat that it could have gone up to 40%, which would have been, I think, quite catastrophic for transactional activity.

And what's the impact of National Insurance contributions for you, the increase in those?

So from a Capital perspective, it's fairly limited. Obviously, we have a very lean team here at Capital, 13 heads, including James, Shru and myself. And from a licensee perspective, again, those -- the National Insurance contribution would be impact -- affecting the individual licensee businesses. Again, you operate quite leanly and they are very flexible and agile to be able to respond to it going forward.

If I could add to that. I think it will mean scale rate inflation. Almost all of our competitors, whether they're dealing in corporate finance, business recovery or due diligence services have an employee model, which means their cost base will go up, which means their fee rates will go up, which means effectively the marketplace rates for the work that we do will also go up.

And are there any other impacts of the budget that we might not have thought of?

I mean, I guess the advisers change is quite good. So if we also take DR Solicitors, it's more investment in primary care as well. So that does give an opportunity for legal work and investment in real estate, which again is quite a big part of the legal work that DR do. So change does always bring restructuring activities and tax planning, which is a benefit to a business like ours.

Great. And how do you see recruitment activity in the next 6 to 12 months in the underlying DSW licensees?

So I think from a partner recruitment perspective, I think partner recruitment will slow down quite significantly. We have seen, obviously, in the first 6 months, we've not added any new partners. And that's because, as I mentioned before, from an M&A activity perspective, people have seen momentum return. So partners are sitting comfortable in their current roles and the current employees. However, from a recruitment perspective at a below partner grade, what I think we'll see is we'll see our existing licensees and businesses begin to recruit into their own teams. And that is a consequence of confidence in the future and the pipeline going forward, but also as a consequence of during the subdued M&A activity, some of our existing businesses had some attrition, normal levels of attrition, but they did not then backfill into those roles. And now hopefully, with a bit more foresight on the pipeline going forward, they are beginning to actually recruit as we've started to see in the numbers post the end of H1 with a further 3 fee-earners added on in that time.

Great. Congratulations on the DR Solicitors acquisition. What's the ongoing M&A pipeline like? And can we expect further transformational acquisitions in the short or medium term?

The pipeline is strong and I can say that with some confidence partly because the execution of the DR Solicitors deal means our strategic shift -- executing our strategic plans influence others to come forward and suggest that we'd be good partners for them. So from our perspective, it's probably a bit of focus on making sure DR Solicitors integrates well with the business, but there are significant opportunities going forward. So strategically, we still think there are opportunities to move the dial on our professional fee-earners. But time will tell.

Tremendous. And who is your biggest competitor or strongest competitor?

In terms of business model in the accounting area, there isn't one. DR faces different competitors in terms of its business model. There are quite a few comparator businesses, but they have got a very unique model in terms of controlling particularly the sales function. But with regard to the individual competitors faced by our licensee partners, they are very, very varied. So typically, the corporate finance businesses will be in competition with the likes of Grant Thornton, BDO, Livingston, Clearwater, probably the mid-market providers of corporate finance. The due diligence teams, to some extent, again, mid-market accounting -- mid-market accountancy firms and the business recovery teams with a variety of different independent and larger providers. So all the businesses face different competitors. And finally, DR faces a new batch of specialist lawyers focused on the health sector. So the business models face little competition. The individual businesses, unfortunately, face a bit more competition.

Great. And on DR Solicitors, is the acquisition all going as well as you'd planned and hoped?

So we are nearly 4 weeks in and so far, so good. So it's been a real success story for us. And we're working very collaboratively to both from an integration point of view and from a cultural point of view as well, but also to work together to grow it beyond what it's achieved so far. So 4 weeks in, I would say, so far, so good and lots of opportunities that we're working on together.

Fantastic. And Shru, what attracted you to DSW? And what's the biggest opportunity from the group from your perspective?

I've known DSW over a number of years, having worked in professional services. So I've known DSW as a client and a receiver of services as a referrer, but also as a follower of, I guess, challenger brands in professional services. So when the opportunity came along, I was really delighted to join. It's really the fact that we can unlock potential for entrepreneurs, and there's nothing really like it out there in the accountancy sector. So you have the support of a big brand like DSW, but you're able to unlock potential of those individuals as well. I think the quality of the people that we've got in the businesses was a big attraction for me. So working alongside really talented people is what drives me to come to work every day. In terms of the opportunities, I think we've got a lot of opportunity to attract people from those mid-market and big 4 accountancy firms because we've shown how successful those businesses have been over the last few years. And I think the story is getting out there. So a lot more opportunity to attract those people is where I see the next stage of this. Similarly, with the legal side of things, I think there are so many lawyers and having worked in legal and accountancy who want to work in a different way and perhaps are stuck in the larger firms, and they've got a huge amount of potential and entrepreneurial spirit, and this is really a great home for them now, and we're able to provide them an alternative to what they have at the moment. So yes, really delighted to be here today.

Very good. And are there any plans to change the name of the business away from DSW Capital?

Not that I'm aware of.

Not that I'm aware of.

And James, one for you. Have you achieved everything you set out to achieve in the business?

It's a very interesting question. The answer -- short answer is no because I'm constantly driven to try and build the business to meet its full potential. I don't think I'll ever be satisfied until we're clearly in shoulder to shoulder with the big 4 in every territory in the globe. That might be outside my lifetime. But from my perspective, I haven't met any of my personal ambitions. I am relentless [ what I think are ] the opportunities. I'm passionate about the wonderful people we've got in our business and are drawn to what we do. I'm really keen to support them to meet all their personal objectives.

Great. And that's a lovely point to end it on. James, do you have any closing remarks?

Thank you, Tamzen. Thank you, everybody, for listening to a lot of our presentations. I have to say, it's a very exciting time where we are at the moment. We have had an excellent springboard on the back of the October budget, which I'm sure will invigorate all my partners to really drive and grab the opportunities that are available to them. The acquisition of DR Solicitors is going to open significantly more doors. We can clearly execute on our acquisition strategy, and I think more opportunities will flow. We're in a really good place and added to which we clearly strengthened the management team with some really good hires, stand-out candidates. I'm very confident for the future.

Tremendous. Many thanks, James, Shru and Pete. And to all listeners, you'll now be taken to a web page to give feedback on today's presentation. If you can't complete it now, you'll get a follow-up e-mail. We would be really grateful if you could take a few minutes to complete. Many thanks for joining. This is the end of the webinar.