Energy One Limited (EOL.AX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you all for coming first, and I welcome those who are joining via the screen. If you're joining by the screen, could you please mute your microphone so that will improve the quality of the recording. Joining myself, Andrew Bonwick as Chairman of the company in the Sydney office are nonexecutive directors, Ian Ferrier, and Leanne Graham. The Group Chief Executive, Shaun Ankers; and the group CFO, Guy Steel and our assistant Company Secretary [indiscernible] as well. We confirm that the notice of meeting was duly given and the meeting has been properly convened. Please note that shareholders, proxy holders or shareholder company representatives may vote. I note that there is a quorum present, either by proxy or online, and I declare the meeting open. I'll now give the Chairman's address. It is with pleasure that I am able to report that the Energy One group has achieved its 10th consecutive profitability and continuing growth of organic revenues. In FY '23, the Energy One group continues to demonstrate the benefits of the strategy of organic growth and synergistic acquisitions made in previous years. Revenue was up 39%, annual recurring revenue is up 19% and a bit. Underlying earnings, EBITDA were in line with expectations at $12 million. This performance is a strong affirmation of the strategy pursued by the company and delivered by its management to improve the quantum and proportion of recurring revenues earned by the company. This year was marked by the return of customers after the interruptions to economic activity during the COVID period and the following period of business conservatism. The globalization project with a forecast program expenditure of $1.5 million to $2 million in FY '23 and '24 actually $1.6 million with [ $0.3 million ] capitalized in this year is helping to design new business processes that improve business resilience and improved leverage, allowing assets to be managed with improved compliance and with process automation. This program has been very well received by current and future customers and the ISO stream of work is strategically very important to large international customers. We have discussed the broadening of our expertise from software to software and services, both critical to wholesale energy companies. The service offering is critical to the new entrant renewable participants, retailers or customers with wholesale market obligations, transitional or generation asset owners focusing on efficient and robust market interfaces, gas and electricity storage operators looking to sophisticated trading capability, and asset, which generation companies seeking efficiency or flexibility. As we move to a broad global enterprise quality services capability, the company's existing automation products and our automated trading tools in this region and in Europe will provide scale and scope efficiencies not available to smaller regional competitors. The expansion of our potential customer base and the synthesis between software services and process automation mainly addressable market for our services has increased enormously. Feedback from the private equity firms in discussions over the last 6 months as independent parties with a wide experience in growing businesses were consistently of the view that our strategic direction was correct. The cyber attack. The criminal attack on our company was very disappointing. The attack was disruptive to the business. And while customer operations were not affected, it's been very stressful for our employees. I apologize to the employees affected and thank a wide cross-section of our staff who worked with CyberCX to close out the criminals and restore our situation. The NBIO process. As announced, the company has experienced inbound interest in a variety of corporate transactions over recent years. About a year ago, the Board formed a view following advice from advisers that we should conduct a successful sale -- we could conduct a successful sale at or about $6 per share. Therefore, we embarked on a sale process. The process, which was all consuming for a small group of our executives and the board was undertaken while the company was embarked on our innovative expansion of our global offering for our SaaS business in the northern and southern hemispheres. The result of that sale process was disappointing with an offer emerging of $5.15 rejected by the Board last month. Looking forward. The distraction of management time from running the business to dealing with due diligence, et cetera, was very costly in the sale process. And the outcome was further impacted by the hacking, which took place during August due to the need to protect our customer and employee data and manage the company's response. Now with certain changes to management, we have resumed normal business. The distraction of the sale process and the setback will have adverse consequences for this year's result compared to our initial budget. But the Board has confidence in its core management and market position. We will resume the previous upward trajectory, the benefits of which will continue to become apparent over the next 12 months. The timing of the attempted sale was unfortunate and costly with consequence that there will be no dividend for financial year '23. The Board will consider providing an FY '24 outlook after the release of the 2024 first half results in February. Our core business remains strong, and our presence in the Australian and European markets is continuing to improve. Vaughan Busby. Vaughan Busby retired from the Board earlier this year. I'd like to take a moment to reflect on his extended service to your company. Vaughan joined the company when it was still an SME, small to medium enterprise energy retailer within Ferrier Hodgson. After a review of its operations and strategy, he worked with Ian to consolidate its marketing strategy, expand its reach and in 2006-'07, bring it to the Australian Stock Exchange. After the pivot from retail into software, he moved from an executive role and became a Nonexecutive Director. Vaughan has been involved with the Board in the evolution of the company and its expansion to the U.K. and Europe as well as to move into services. The Board has considered a number of major decisions over the last 15 years, and Vaughan has been a crucial part of that process. The Board members and I thank him for his contribution, wish him well in his future endeavors and look forward to welcoming him to future shareholder meetings. The Board will be adding directors early next year and we will adopt a similarly robust process to that which we used prior to Leanne joining us in October of last year. In closing, I would like to thank my fellow directors, your management and the staff for their continued support, dedication and strong efforts throughout this busy and very difficult year. In particular, I'd like to highlight the quality of this year's results and the strong organic growth in recurring revenues and projects in Australia and Europe, which occurred while Shaun and Guy were busy with the initial months of the potential sale process. This is a testament to the leadership of your CEO, Shaun, our group CEO, and the quality of the managers and the leaders he has developed in his team. Thank you. Moving to the resolutions. The resolutions today can only be voted on by shareholders, proxy holders and shareholder company representatives. I propose to call a poll on each of these resolutions. Those in attendance who have not submitted a proxy vote may only vote on the provided AGM voting form, and that form is to be handed in at the end of the meeting. Resolutions 2 to 4 set out in the notice of meeting are to be considered as ordinary resolutions and, as such, must be approved by a simple majority of the votes cast by shareholders, entitled to vote and voting on the resolution. Resolution 1, the financial statements and reports. There is no requirement either in the Corporations Act or in the constitution of the company for the shareholders to approve these reports. I will, however, move that the shareholders approve the director's report, financial statements and independent audit for the financial year ended June 2023. And there are no questions that have been provided in advance. Are there any questions from those present? I note that presence here from the auditors, if you have any questions for the auditors. If there's any questions from those here.

My name is [indiscernible]. I'm a joint shareholder with my wife. You were talking about the cyber hack, was that a ransomware attack?

It's hard to characterize it, Alan. What mostly happens with these processes is someone breaks into your sites, hands it off to another agents and you wait for an e-mail to come back. And if no e-mail comes back, you sort of never know why they did it, basically. So in this case, the process was close up the systems, get them out, scan all the way through the system, make sure they're gone. And then we received a report from CyberCX, please we need to look at over the next 12 months. So that's the process we've gone through.

Which is right on the...

Yes. Look, the ISO process as part of Global is really helpful in terms of thinking about the sort of things that are relevant from a cyber point of view. So some of the vulnerabilities that might have been there before we started the ISO are now gone. We've got additional things to work on, more by way of continuous improvement than radical change. So yes, I think it is such a ubiquitous threat that is just part of continuous improvement.

And Andrew, just to add to your comments, the motivation of the hacker was to be paid money. But it's almost characterized the business.

So it wasn't ransomware attack?

Yes, it's true. I think they ask for money, the ransom.

Was the ransom paid?

That's not something we can disclose, but we will talk to whether we did or we didn't. That's not something we disclose.

And it's worthwhile pointing out to Chairman that the executives of the company had arrangement. The company had insurance to cover the prospect of a hack and the cost of the hack and the insurance proved to be something in the back along was a God send and quite good in the [indiscernible].

Yes. So particularly in that period or maybe after the hack, where you need a lot of consulting help and a lot of arms and legs. The insurance was fantastic. But -- and that had been set up a couple of years, 2 or 3 years ago. Yes.

Yes. I mean, we -- I mean we have multiple lines of defense. Insurance is, obviously, the last stop, but CyberCX [indiscernible]. So they're effectively on ground, probably within an hour or 2 it was -- we're noticing the attack.

It was extremely disruptive to executives because they needed to protect our employees and our customers. From the Board's point of view, it was very uncomfortable. I think is the most helpful with the concern to the company's security [indiscernible] employees and staff and customers. And it was very costly measured by time of our employees.

It was -- how many weeks were in...

Over 2 months really. I mean, obviously, a lot of activity early on, but then there's -- again, you've got to trace the path. You've got to make sure that you've evicted the actor and then there's obviously all of the and notifications that go after that. So it's a 2 to 3-month process handling, so which is now in complain.

What was the nature of the data that was stolen?

I mean as we said in our release, it was corporate data so they got into our corporate drive. So lot of corporate data, some employee identification documents. So I think licenses and passports, that kind of stuff. So not for all employees, a limited subset. So that was probably the main concern to us.

Some here, some in the U.K.

Yes. Didn't -- so it did not get into our customer facing systems.

I mean, from our point of view as an observer, it is extremely disruptive for the normal course of business. So it's obviously the opposite the normal course of business and the time that was taken by senior executives, particularly the ones around the table here, was -- I think 2 months is from the attack. 2 months that will hard.

Yes, absolutely.

By the way, from my point of view I've got -- the stress on our executives [indiscernible] because they fear about the criminals, of what the criminals will do. So I've known most of the people around this table, including myself, I've got no experience of dealing with criminals and it's frightening, it's confronting and it's time consuming. So the effect of the company cope with it in my view I think, in an extremely confident way with the assistance of SIP, particularly CyberCX is there any credit.

Yes. And so obviously, it's complimentary about the way your management dealt the situation and so on and so. Is there any other questions from those here before I ask -- is there any questions from those on the call, please?

So what's the strategy going forward now? So where are we taking the company forward? Where do we seek to grow the business?

The prospect for growth in Europe and Australia are enormous. So combination of software and services provides us access to a wide variety of size of customer, right, as well as the segments within the electricity -- the energy industry that, that customer is servicing. So we now have much more points of entry into a customer which has always been something we've been planning -- continuing to expand from multiple products in the software. It's now multiple products in the software and multiple types of service. So we've got a wider range of customers. The industry expansion is obviously enormous. And we will provide services to all of those different customers. So the strategy is very much about the next couple of years, making sure that we make the best of that market possibility that we have, selling into large industrials, medium-sized and small sticking to the knitting, I think would characterize it pretty well in Europe for the next 12 to 18 months easy.

And geographically?

The question that we're most often asked is the United States because we are very strong in the way that we're growing in Europe and in Australia. United States is another country that has a competitive energy market. The United States is from an electricity point of view, 6 to 8 different markets, not one. To go there would take a lot of resource of what is basically a small to medium company. And it's not worthwhile to do anything about that. I think until a customer takes us there, I think that will be the point that one of our large enterprise customers will say, look, can you come and do it over here. And I think that would be a sensible entry point. I can't see that happening at the moment, but you never know what's around the corner. Other geographies that have competitive energy markets, which is what we serve. There are some in Asia, but they're smaller. Again, some customers might take us into those. The Philippines might be a possibility with one of our customers. But the focus is Australia and Europe, particularly definitely. And Europe is 10x the size of Australia?

Yes, sure. Also, I might ask that global customers as well. So obviously, a lot of the investments we've made is about being a global business and offering global capability to global players. We are not constrained by geography who may have assets in any part of the world, particularly renewables. And so one of the capabilities we were building out have been for a while. So it's a continuation of the strategy is to enable us to service these large accounts. We're very pleased to announce we had a framework agreement with Shell earlier this year, in which the idea was as Shell rolls out their assets, we roll out our services and that's part of the strategy for us as well to address a global offering for global customers.

If there are no further questions. Okay. So we'll move on to resolution now. Anybody on resolution no one, no. There being no further questions, I'll seek approval from those present at the annual report containing the financial statements for 2023 on a show of hands. The annual report is adopted on show of hands. Resolution 2 is the adoption of the remuneration report. So there have been no -- I move that the remuneration report for the financial year '23 be adopted. There have been no questions provided in advance. Are there any questions from those present here? Are there any questions from the video conference? Okay. As there are no further questions, we'll put the resolution to a poll. For those in attendance, please vote for your resolution on the voting form. Undirected proxies will be voted in favor of the resolution and the final results of this poll and all of the other polls will be announced to the ASX later today. The poll will close 5 minutes after the closure of the formal part of the meeting. Resolution 3 is the election of Leanne to the Board. I now move that Leanne Graham, a Director of the company appointed to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Mr. Ottmar Weiss, who retired at the financial year '22 Annual General Meeting in accordance with the EOL Constitution as well as listing rules, and being eligible, offers herself for reelection be elected as a nonexecutive of the company. There have been no questions provided in advance. Are there any questions from those present?

Could Leanne just tell us who you are, where you come from? And what you're going to bring to the board?

Okay. I'm Leanne Graham, I'm 35 years in the technology sector. I have founded a couple of software companies myself listed one on the New Zealand Stock Exchange. I was in the executive team at Xero and I designed Xero's go to-market strategy. I've had a long history in go-to-market channels, go-to-market in global markets going out with product strategies. I -- one of the companies that I owned was in the ERP mid-tier enterprise markets. So I've done a lot in the vertical product space and the enterprise product and around enterprise -- complex enterprise rollouts in global markets. So what I believe I bring to the table for Energy One is looking at the complexity of how we take this business to the next stage from the medium business into a full global player and how we take the products -- the businesses that we've acquired as well as products that we already have and that with home grown products and how we globalize those, bring them and take it and add more to each of our clients and more products per client and really look at how we maximize our growth per client and how we get more penetration in the countries that we already are in market and then take more regions from here. So I think we've done a really great job of globalizing over the past 12 to 18 months. There's a lot more work to do there, and building with the team joining them and adding my experience to theirs. And I'm looking forward to doing more of that. And we've had a really challenging year, my first part of being here, but I think there's more to do, there's a lot more to do there. And it's really exciting to work with such a great Board and management team as we go ahead and do that, we're looking forward to it.

Thank you. I certainly, personally have found Leanne's contribution after a difficult year over a short period of time has been exemplary. So really pleased to have her. So do I have any other questions from the video conference? No? Okay. Thank you. Thanks for the question. There being no further questions, we put the resolution to a poll. For those in attendance, please vote on the resolution -- on the voting form. Undirected proxies will be voted in favor. Resolution 4. I now move that for the purposes of Section 200B and 200E of the Corporations Act 2001 and for all other purposes, to approve payments under the Energy One Equity Incentive Plan to the Managing Director, Shaun Ankers. It is noted that the nonexecutive directors will not receive any leaving benefit and will simply be paid directors' fees due up to the date of any resignation. It is noted that as the nonexecutive directors will not receive any termination benefits on them leaving office, apart of any fees accrued to the date of the resignation, they have not been excluded from voting on this resolution, which is in accordance with our announcement on the 19th of October. There have been no questions provided in advance. Are there any questions from those present?

Talk a bit about the background to this resolution, especially in the light of the sales process, what the motivations were?

Yes. It's unrelated to the sales process. So if you look back over the last any number of years, this resolution has been here principally around the share benefits earned by, in this case, Shaun. And what happens if there is a change of control, the ability to pay those out is affected by Section 200B and 200C of the Corps Act. You can't pay any future benefits. So if there was a change of control, all of those would lapse. So this is an approval to pay anything that's been earned in equity and therefore transacts afterwards through to Shaun. So if he was to resign as a good lever for example, then all his past benefits could be paid out. So it's a mechanistic thing, Section 200A has very strict limits on what you can pay an executive that hasn't -- after they leave.

Executive only?

Yes, in previous years it's been the directors as well because we were paying -- we're taking half of their in shares and half in benefits. So it will apply to us as well. This year, because of the STG process, the sale process, we're not taking our fees in fact. Do I have any other questions?

I also should say, I did a number of annual meetings, and it's a very good thing if you ask questions. But it should never be backward in asking questions because it's a very [indiscernible] business of the meeting is whenever you [indiscernible]. So you should be pleased. So I'm pleased doing that.

Does that spark the question from anybody on the [indiscernible]. No one? If no further questions, we will put the resolution to a poll. Please vote on the form if you're here. Undirected proxies will be voted in favor. The final results of these polls will be announced to the ASX later today. That concludes the formal business of the meeting. I will now take any further questions. So I have no advanced questions on general business. Any questions here from the floor, please?

You were talking about the expansion and how our customers lived. Now you've got a strong business in Europe now. How is that coming down this year?

Shaun investigated buying a company in Europe a couple of years before we bought Contigo and found Contigo was an ideal target for acquisition. 2015...

'19.

'19?

Yes.

Yes. And that acquisition led to a good understanding of what some of the other companies in Europe were doing and Contigo had worked with eZ-nergy over a number of years, and they were open to a change of control and so we bought their company. And similarly, those organizations, both new exes and that I know was commendable to a change of control at a reasonable price as well. So it was incremental steps in Europe. You would have got from my comments about America. We're very careful with them, the way we spend your money. This company was listed with 20 million shares. And I think we've now about 30 million and a bit of change. And all of that has been to acquisitions. So we're very careful about the way we spend your money. So small steps.

And with the sale process that you went through, were you tempted to do that because it would have got a better value than the current share price. Is that why you were [indiscernible].

We had a lot of people knocking on the door the last couple of years, and we said to them, we're not for sale, basically. We had an organization provide an offer which the Board considered very carefully. We had engaged Rothschild and said, okay, if somebody's prepared to make an offer, let's have a look at who else might out of that field of people who had already taken the interest in us. The end result of that was STG, making an indicative offer of $5.85, I think. We provided exclusive due diligence. And in my opinion, they stuffed us around, okay? So no, the sale process came from a specific formal approach to the Board, albeit nonbinding and the Board was very strongly of the view that the shareholders should get an opportunity to examine that offer as to whether it was in every shareholders' interest. It's an obligation in the Corps Act. It's a moral obligation on the Board to communicate with shareholders with something like that, which you should decide about. And at the end of the day, in my opinion, STG had shown an inability to confirm to us that they would be able to deliver, basically. So that's why, we terminated discussions.

This company is growing through a number of acquisitions. So how is the integration of those going?

Superb. Much of our growth in the last -- all of our growth in the last year came from organic growth. So a mix of organic and acquisition is very important. Integrating the companies, you'll notice that in every case, the vendors stay with the company for a period of time. That helps with integration. It helps with knowledge transfer. It helps with us challenging those processes and integrating our different organization together. We are selling Australian developed automation products into customers in Europe. We are operating the European services market from Adelaide. We will shortly be operating the Australian services market from Europe. So those process are working well. The globalization is the next sophistication in that ISO, automation of services around the world, [indiscernible]. So I think those are indicators that the integration went very well. And that attributes to the executives you have sitting around the table.

This is one most favorite interest to mine is what percentage of revenue do we spend on R&D in developing new products in taking these forward?

[indiscernible] 12%. It's been pretty consistent over the years with it. So by R&D, we mean development capitalized versus revenue. So the reality is already higher than we actually capitalize all of our development. So -- but that's approximately is.

You need more investment in that global product coming in FY '24. Do you envisage further investment levels at that level beyond that or that's going to drive platform for a while.

Well, there's obviously a number of things to get us to globalization in really global way. But there's also a lot about the processes involved in innovation and making sure the solutions are higher in fact, suitable for a number of jurisdictions. And for the changing market in the long run because market is changing from a few big players in the old base or a lot of smaller players. And that's where the explosion in the market is coming from renewables to the like supported by strong traditional business like that we've done for many years with big customers. So yes, in this business, if you're not investing, you're going backwards. So you must always be investing to stay ahead of the curve because of an innovation-led industry. It sits on a product, your service, you're going to go backwards. So the answer is yes, we'll continue to invest constantly to improve and to take advantage of opportunities. And we've shown over a number of years that, that investment in product at least has been consistent. Well, the globalization piece, yes, we're investing. Yes, continue to invest in the years to come. But those big bumps that we've had [indiscernible] as we got into place.

Yes, it's very much an uplift, in corporate systems, ISO, a numbers of items in it.

The decision not to pay a dividend, could you run us through the thinking on that?

It's a balancing act, a judgment call. The company has been very focused on paying that shareholders as a result of previous investments. The uncertainty created by the STG transaction -- in the initial phase, STG, we offered them no dividend as a basis of getting an improved price. They thumbed their noses at that, I think, in my opinion. At the moment, we'll keep the cash. We'll invest it in the things that we need to do, and we'll have another look after the half year results.

And what's the new franking credits [indiscernible].

We've got a -- I think it's about trying to retain accounts. So again, it wouldn't be a fully franked dividend. That's for sure. Partially here we're just yes, by way of background, the company receive a lot of R&D credits early on in its development and that's why the franking credit balance is quite a lot.

We also have -- the income that comes to from outside Australia isn't eligible for franking credit spend also.

Jump back to the STG proposal, valuing a company is really difficult. I guess, they indicatively said $5.85 and the Board is open to recommend that price. How do you come to that kind of conclusion that $5.85 would represent value for shareholders?

We had professional guys from [indiscernible]. We had an overview and an understanding of other transactions that occurred in our sector. We had a knowledge of where the company's share price has been over the past 12 to 18 months. And at the end of the day, we felt that it was a price that shareholders should be able to opine on and do it formally. You move it to $5.15 and cast get severe doubts about deliverability and that equation changes.

Could you talk any specific points that made STG lower? Because I think there are some comments of some minor items that they're trying to use to justify. What's the difference in across their initial offer. Yes. Could you show specifically to anything?

In my opinion, the due diligence process is given to an organization that has said, in good faith, we think this company is worth X, right? And the due diligence process is supposed to confirm that opinion, right? All due diligence processes will find stuff that they didn't expect on the upside or on downside. In my view, STG counted one side of that equation. So they saw the ability to grow the company. They saw the things you could do with additional investment, acceleration of the global process large total addressable market, but they only put the highlights through the ones on the downside. And then they put the highlighted through things that were known unknowns, right? We don't know what's going to happen out of Cyber. Cyber process has finished. There are no more costs. We know cost going to be, "Oh, no, couldn't get worse and went to $5.15. I think my opinion is that was a deliberate part of the strategy.

I actually said, have to have the approval in their finances.

No, no, I think [indiscernible].

So if we have to do that at the end of the process in due diligence, it's take the front.

Yes, yes.

And how disruptive was it, I mean you talked about it in the AGM comments, but how the strategy was it in terms of profitability and cost, but in terms of specific contracts? And are there certain things that we can lay because [indiscernible] was it really just a cost issue?

We're a small company. And we rely very heavily on a small number of high-quality executives, right? And basically, since before Easter, they've had to do 2 jobs then we sided and had to do 3. So you can see the growth in the annual recurring revenue, 19%, right? While that was all happening, the company was still functioning very well underneath operationally, right? There's a lot of people in this organization that are focused on their jobs, doing their jobs really well. However, having senior execs and that broadens once the exclusivity thing is provided. It just means that there's stuff that's put aside that we now have to turn back to and get back on it. So it's more about cultural changes we've made, things that we should have been looking at that sort of stuff rather than the specifics of the company per se. I'd have to say this is the best annual general meeting for questions that I've sat in, in 15 years. For a company of this size, okay? I mean...

Are you able to expand on why Mr. Ottmar Weiss is still holding his shares.

Yes, he is still holding his shares. Ottmar is still holding his shares as well. The executives that took this organization -- sorry, the Board members that took this organization through its first 15 years were directors for a company of a certain size. And particularly with smaller companies, the directors are required to actually roll up their sleeves as well. So skills that may have in terms of the way the banking system works and some of those things, Vaughan analytical capability and his attention to detail in that have been incredibly valuable to this company, but the Board needs to grow and change and evolve. So it's part of a process of adding new directors with international capabilities and capability is relevant to the way the company is sitting up now that, that process will occur. I won't be here forever. He might not be here forever as well. This company will outlast its existing directors.

So why don't we keep Vaughan on the Board for his experience?

Vaughan made a decision himself. I've talked to Vaughan about all the circumstances around what he's doing now and his interest in his career is moving in a different direction.

So that was his choice to move on?

At the time, it was his choice to move on. Yes, without question. Yes.

In fact, personally, as an investor, I'd like to keep experience on the board because, obviously, you've got all that background of it. And so you know what works, you know what doesn't work. And it's also good to bring new thinking, new people on to the Board because obviously, they can help you grow. I have -- I don't like...

And that's a balancing act, ideas and that's what we're trying to do. I think the measurable way evaluating the capability of the people we bring on will be next year and putting the same blowtorch, what do they bring? What's their experience? How will they contribute to your board as a measure of whether we're hitting in the right direction.

And again, what are your intentions?

I'll stay as long as I'm adding value to the Board. As long as other Board members have given me feedback that I'm doing a good job, I'm finding this incredibly satisfying, difficult, an interesting organization to be involved with. I'm proud to be involved with an organization that's taken Australian capability to the world, right? It's fantastic. So yes, I'm very delighted to be here for as long as I'm meeting that.

I'll actually ask Ian, what Ian's intentions are.

Yes. My intentions are mirror in some way, so that -- and I [indiscernible] since day 1, of course, and have been a very patient shareholder. When the sale process, it came up, I was obviously in favor of it along with rest of the board. And I found the relationship with STG to be adversarial as opposed to someone trying to acquire the business. And so when the offer was made at $5.13 after having indicated they will pay $5.85, I was only disappointed. I was also upset because of the way in which they handled it. It was like a boxing match with somebody who wants to buy the business. And that's exactly the opposite of what should be done in terms of acquisitions, merger, and so on. I've been involved in many of them years of very large companies and very small companies. And the matter to taken by CG was one of [indiscernible] executives. And so it was just -- it was obviously being constructive in my opinion. In terms of my situation, I too am proud of the company. I've been through the ups and the downs of business in many ways. And I have absolute confidence in the management. And that added is the core attribute of the company in which I've invested. In terms of Andrew as Chairman, I'm of the view he is a good Chairman because he is objective. He is robust in terms of his expectations of management and he is realistic in terms of what's possible as opposed to [ probation ]. And so I'm very happy with Andrew continuing as Chairman. As you probably know, being chairman of a number of companies at some very large, so otherwise. He's reasonably experienced in understanding what Chairman should and shouldn't do. And it's my view that Andrew manages to handle that relationship as Chairman and CEO very well, where you have to be realistic and you have to be an arm's length, then you have to be [indiscernible]. And that's challenging in relation to all of those particular standards. I think the relationship between the Chairman and the CEO, it's actually what it should test when you're talking about a Chairman and as a CEO. And in his case, I think he qualifies in terms of the criteria I'm talking about, being outstanding I believe and intimate. All somewhat contradictory, but all very important [indiscernible].

So what I was really getting at was what are your intentions in relation to the Board?

I'm getting to...

I mean, that's all fantastic. That's great.

Ian will continue as a director. Thank you very much. If there are no further questions, I would thank you for your questions and participation in the meeting as a firm and draw the meeting to a close. Thank you.