essensys plc (ESYS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the essensys plc Half Year Results Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Mark Furness, CEO. Good morning, sir.

Thank you, and good morning, and welcome, everyone, to essensys' Half Year Results Presentation. Alongside me, as always, I've got our CFO, Greg Price. And joining us today is also our COO, James Lowery. So let's take you through the results as we see them so far. So really, for us, we just want to reiterate the reason essensys exists. So we work with the world's largest real estate brands and companies to help them meet the evolving needs of their tenants in a world which is much more flexible and much more dynamic as we're all facing into this changed environment of hybrid work post-pandemic. And our companies are some of the largest brands and operators of space in the world, people like Legal & General, JLL, Tishman Speyer across the U.S., the most well-known and respected brands. Our ambition and our vision is to power the world's largest community of flexible, tech-driven spaces. And today, we'll share the progress we've made and how we look to meet that ambition. So how has the last 6 months been for us? Well, firstly, I'm delighted to announce that we have returned to profit in H1. And following that, we expect our run rate cash to move into positive territory by the end of FY '25. Today, we're on track to meet our full year revenue expectations. And with EBITDA moderating and becoming slightly lower due to a reduction in profitability based on an extension of our data center decommissioning program. Now that's a legacy part of our business and the extended program to decommission those data centers was taken -- the decision was taken on the basis that we felt a better commercial outcome could be achieved in the longer term if we took those -- that program of works into Q3 and Q4 of this financial year. We're delighted that we've launched elumo, an exciting new product, which we believe underpins the growth ambitions of the business over the next 5 years and even beyond. And that's really about delivering against -- for the requirements and the challenges that our customers are facing today. As our customers meet the changing needs of their clients, really the real estate industry needs to find ways of better monetizing space, and we'll talk to elumo for that later on in the deck, and also to better understand how these spaces are being utilized. And finally, I'm delighted to announce the appointment of James Lowery as CEO, who will be replacing me as of the 1st of May. And this is really a culmination of a long-term succession planning initiative we undertook about a year ago. About a year ago, I started to look the things that the business would need from its CEO in its next phase of its journey but -- all of the things and the routines and the disciplines and the approach to execution that a business like essensys needs from its CEO. And so it was clear that some of those skills would be better served by a new CEO. And seeing James operate firsthand in the 3 years I've been working with him, seeing him drive the business forward on a day-to-day basis, seeing him gain the trust of our customers and our people meant that there was clearly no better option than James to take the position of CEO. So I'm delighted. And perhaps, James, you can briefly introduce yourself now.

Yes. Thanks, Mark. Well, first and foremost, I'm excited to take on the role of CEO and lead the next chapter of essensys, which, as Mark said, is one of execution. A bit about me, my background is a strategy consultant. And prior to joining essensys, I worked for British Land, one of the U.K.'s largest landlords, where I co-founded and scaled their flexible workspace business story. That gave me first-hand experience of the flexible workspace sector and landlords, which is ultimately the target customer of essensys. I've been at essensys now for 3 years, just over 3 years, initially joining as the CEO of the U.K. and European business. And since transitioning into a global role as Chief Operating Officer, this journey has given me a good understanding of all parts of the essensys business. And I have also been fortunate enough to work with Mark during that time as well. So lots to do, but excited about what's to come.

Great. Thanks, James. And you'll obviously be hearing more from James in the future. So moving on, let's just talk about our progress and specifically how we think about our go-to-market motion. Our strategy is really around 3 pillars. It's about landing the right type of strategic customer. Think of those big blue-chip landlords and workspace operators. It's about making sure that our offer can be deployed and adopted across a large portfolio of spaces. And it's about making sure that we have plenty of upsell potential. And so how have we done in the half year to date? Well, we've seen the continued acquisition of those new strategic customers. That really is about our move to a pure-play SaaS proposition. So that evolved value proposition is beginning to land with new logos and new customers. So a large landlord in the U.S. is a recent example and also a very large publicly-listed landlord in the U.K. Again, it's all about the right type of customers and winning those to build the opportunity to expand and grow with. And we've seen that expansion happening with one of our big U.K. customers who actually started out with just 1 or 2 locations with us, and they've grown to near 20 locations in the last 12 months as our new offer with essensys Platform and Intelligence Engine are really hitting home and landing to meet their needs. So we've seen in action this evolution of our value proposition delivering results with strategic customers. We've seen the same in the U.S. and also across APAC. So we've announced previously a large global landlord based out of the U.S. who signed a big MSA. They've continued to expand across their portfolio as we expected. And in Australia, we've seen a large listed REIT expand rapidly, again, under the MSA umbrella we previously announced. And finally, we have the products that now meet our customers' needs. They are essensys Platform and recently, I mean, last week, launched elumo. They will provide us with further upsell potential. So not only do we see a growth opportunity in terms of our expansion revenues with existing customers, i.e., more locations, but we see an opportunity to increase yield per location, too, with a wider capability and more functionality. So who are essensys today? So essensys, we see ourselves as a digital experience company for the commercial real estate industry. Now, the commercial real estate industry is very well based on how they deliver a physical experience, but increasingly, the quality of the digital experience in these environments is key to the success of their offers. People want to work in digitally-enabled spaces that are not just great physical locations, but also really easy to operate -- to use on a day-to-day basis via digital experiences. And so that breaks us down into 3 real pillars. We think about physical and digital access, how we can help our customers deliver with that and manage that in this dynamic, flexible, hybrid world. We think about using insight and intelligence from our platforms to be able to truly reveal the relationship between tenants in these spaces. We all want to know about space utilization. Are we efficient? Are people using these spaces as we intended? And finally, we want to deliver transformational experiences in these locations, digital first and mobile wallet activated. So they are the 3 real driving forces behind how we think about products. And those products that we developed, we talked a lot historically about essensys Platform. It's really the on-ramp to a very powerful intelligence tool that helps people understand space utilization with a level of fidelity and resolution that's not yet been seen. And secondly is elumo, which is really about delivering a dynamic bookings and access experience that is designed completely from the ground up to meet the requirements of shared meeting rooms and shared spaces in multi-tenant environments. So we're excited about where our business is today and what we can see for the future. So with that, now, I'll pass over to Greg, who will talk us through the numbers.

Thanks, Mark. So when I think about the numbers for the first half of this year, I think the key message that I want to make sure people understand is the return to profit. So our adjusted EBITDA, at GBP 800,000, is a near 300% improvement versus the similar period last year, where we made a loss of GBP 0.5 million. Now our revenue, at GBP 10.4 million, saw a decline of 11%. That was expected as we have been announcing in previous sessions like this, following the downsizing of a single strategic customer. And I'll come on to talk about what our numbers look like without that customer and how the growth is still strong, particularly with our strategic customers, where we're still growing at about 5%. Our margins, at 59%, are up compared to the last full year, and our cash balance at GBP 2.2 million still gives us plenty of runway to make sure that we can grow in the way that we plan to. And I will talk about how our growth journey is going to unfold and how our revenue mix is changing in the next couple of slides. So if I focus first on ARR, our ARR, our annual recurring revenue at GBP 16.8 million is seeing a decline of 16%, which, as I said, is a factor of that one customer. That's a reduction in our network services business predominantly. So that's a lower-margin business. So the way our revenue mix is changing is that we are seeing growth in our platform, and we just launched elumo, as Mark said, and we expect a lot of growth to come from there, but we have declines in some of our more legacy products. When you look at that from a strategic customer basis, our strategic customers represent 80% of our total ARR. That's comparative to 81% last year. So even though we lost that one customer, our strategic customers as a whole are still representing the same proportion, which really shows the growth that we've been able to achieve with our other strategic customers. And underlying, that represents 5%. Our recurring revenue declined by 9% and our total revenue by 11%, as I said before. And that, again, is less than the ARR, which reflects the fact that, while the ARR is reflecting that customer downsizing, the recurring revenue will have some of it in the second half as well. So when we look at the ARR bridge, you can see the effect of that single customer. I guess the key things to pull out here are new customers coming in, so 2 new customers representing GBP 200,000, and also new sites from other customers showing growth as well. We had some declines from our legacy products operating in the marketplace. But overall, as our revenue mix changes, we would expect that ARR to stabilize now and to grow from here. Looking at the rest of the P&L, gross profit of GBP 6.1 million in the first half represents a margin of 59%. That's slightly behind where we were this time last year, but ahead of the full year from last year, which was 57%. And that reflects an increasing proportion of recurring revenues, which are higher margin, as well as the benefits of our data center decommissioning program that Mark was talking about before. We started the year with 13 data centers. We've already closed 4 of them. We have a plan to close another 6 in the second half of the year. And that will really transform our margins that, when we look ahead to next year, we'd expect margins to be closer to 70% versus the 60% they are now. Operating expenses at GBP 5.3 million reduced by GBP 2.2 million. That's 29% versus the same period last year. That reflects some of the organizational change that we did last year. We've now got a really strong emphasis on cost management. We see the benefit of our simpler operating model, which means we can be closer to customers and more nimble. All of that results in adjusted EBITDA returning to profit with a margin of plus 8% compared to minus 4% last year, and we expect that to lead to an exit run rate cash generation by the end of this year. So one final slide from me on our cash performance. So we started the year with GBP 3.1 million of cash, and we closed at GBP 2.2 million. That reflects our profitability with EBITDA of GBP 800,000, as I said. We did incur some restructuring payments at the start of the year. We would expect exceptional items in the second half to increase as part of that data center decommissioning program, but then they shouldn't recur in future years. Working capital was negative by GBP 600,000 in the half, but we do expect that to unwind in the second half and to be positive for the full year. Tax reflects R&D tax credits of GBP 900,000. That relates to FY '23 and the R&D tax plan for FY '24 we'll see a benefit for in the second half. Capital development costs of GBP 1.1 million we would expect to continue, but the lease payments of GBP 800,000 largely reflect our data centers. So as we decommission the data centers, we expect that cost to reduce by at least half, if not closer to 2/3. And all of that will mean that I expect our cash position at the end of the year to be around GBP 2 million. So we will be -- and that will leave us in a good place to be generating cash into next year. On that note, I'll hand back to Mark.

Thanks, Greg. I'll take us through a bit of operational highlights and then dive into the products. So really, how do we see momentum building? I think Greg mentioned it, but the key thing for us is to make sure we optimize our organizational structure globally to make sure we can meet the demands of our strategic customers and really underpin the core elements of our value proposition, i.e., elumo and the essensys Platform. And so we absolutely at every part of our organization optimized that so we can absolutely prosecute the opportunity in front of us. And that means that, as we've removed ourselves away from some of the legacy parts of our business, the old Connect platform, which was related to that single significant customer downgrade as they were on legacy product and again, away from our network services, has allowed us to be much more efficient in our overall organization design. So a great platform as we look out. The data center decision, as Greg again alluded to, was really a response to the changing nature of the requirements of our customers. And so the decision to decommission the data centers, again, simplifies our business, improves the customer experience and our ability to deliver for our customers and, obviously, will significantly improve our gross margin performance as those costs come out of our business. And finally, if we think about those key things about our strategy, the fact that elumo and essensys Platform are standout products really solves the key industry challenges for the real estate industry as it moves to a more flexible hybrid world. And we think we have the right products now to really push growth across our existing customers and to new customers and markets. So just on elumo, if I can, I'd just like to give you a sense of what elumo is and how it can help for your businesses -- for our customers' businesses. [Presentation]

So hopefully, that gives you a sense of what we've been working on for the last 5 years and I guess, more importantly, how it solves some really big challenges for our industry. So shared meeting rooms in the world of flexible work spaces or multi-tenant buildings, they now represent probably the most valuable inventory in any building. And why is that? Well, the rise of flexible and hybrid working means that many companies are choosing to have a smaller demand space and rely on additional amenities and shared meeting room spaces to deliver for their employees. And so we've all seen, in our own offices and our own spaces, that how we use these meeting rooms is really challenged. Either the doors are left open all day and we see people squatting in them from morning to night. The doors are always locked, so we can't actually use the spaces. There's really no thought to the user experience. And the choices for the user experience, always locked or always open, inevitably lead to very low levels of monetization for the operators of these workspaces and all the landlords. And that's something we really wanted to solve. And so we solve that with elumo by firstly converging 3 different approaches, so access control, the booking system and also the experience mobile first. And that's a brand -- delivering a brand-new way to manage and monetize these shared meeting spaces. Now, we had to create every element and every component from the ground up. We had to reimagine the hardware, the software, the firmware to deliver this solution. And so it's -- again, we have very early first mover advantage, but we're solving a big problem, we believe, for our customers. So what is elumo in terms of the reality of it? Well, as I say, it's the hardware which we've developed and we now produce ourselves because there was no fit-for-purpose hardware solutions to deal with access control. So the reader, which is mounted outside of the room, allows you to simply tap your phone on the reader, and it will check your booking status and your availability and your balance and then allow you to enter the room. In basically under half a second it will make that decision. It has a real-time availability indicator. You can see the lighting to let you know if it's free and how long it's available for. The hub, which connects to the reader and actually releases the door lock, so it has the relay in it, is also being enabled for a future that allows us to start integrating things like IoT sensors. So is the room too hot? Are the CO2 levels too high for a productive meeting? To allow the room to start making autonomous decisions about whether or not anyone's turned up, let's release the bookings to allow that room to be reused. And to support that and perhaps most importantly, we had to think about how the software layer would really deeply integrate here and what it could -- what it needed to deliver to manage the journey across all of these different buildings with lots of different occupiers in real time, create billing outcomes and allow people to meter it. And then finally, working with primarily Apple, it's how do we create an app experience that allows simple, easy booking and also the delivery of the wallet credential to the phone so people can just tap in real time? So we're so proud of what we've managed to deliver to the market with elumo. James Shannon, our Chief Product and Technology Officer, and the rest of the product team and the development team have done an amazing job bringing this to life over the last 5 years. And we're excited to see what it can do for our business and our customers, more importantly, going forward. So where does this leave us and what does the future look like? We know the office market is continuing to evolve. We know there's clear market bifurcation. Great office products in great buildings are being hugely successful, rental growth, high levels of occupancy, clear demand. And that's the evidence of this idea of a flight to quality. And we see the demand drivers continue. The idea of flexible hybrid spaces that allow us as an organization to be most efficient and most productive, and that's a key demand driver for the real estate industry. And underneath that, of course, goes alongside the fact that meeting rooms become the most in-demand spaces. Collaboration spaces, shared workspaces become hugely valuable in these amenity-rich buildings. And the enablers for those buildings are digital experience. I need to understand deeply the relationship between my tenants and my building. Are people using the spaces as I expect them? Who's in most often? What's the working day look like? Have we got quiet spots? How do we think about pricing structure and strategy? And is this product, is this building -- does it really have product market fit? And finally, making sure we maximize the space monetization opportunity, and so as we think about the sensor platform with elumo, we clearly have a huge opportunity across the global real estate industry with all owners and operators of multi-tenant office space. Utilization is key, we help. Monetization is key, we solve. Premium product with a great digital experience outperforms the market. And whilst there are headwinds as we move to a compelling ROI model for our solutions. So let me give you that in real terms. If you deploy elumo today, a less than 2% increase in meeting room utilization will translate in a 100% ROI for this solution within 26 days. We think that's really compelling for our customers. And so to just look forward, a big moment as we move back to profitability, a great customer base with some of the world's largest global real estate brands and companies, but we start the next 6 months and into the next financial year from a position of profitability and, shortly, run rate cash generation. We have the products to meet the requirements of the industry for the next 5 or 10 years. Both elumo and the essensys Platform are powerful solutions in their own right. But as you converge them, the benefit of those is incrementally more for our customers. And most importantly, as I finish this slide deck, is the quality of the people in essensys. They bring our products to life. They deliver for our customers every day. And handing over to James on the 1st of May is another example of delivering, of our business having great people and that can push forward for the next 5 to 10 years. So with that, I'd like to pause there and perhaps we can hand over for questions shortly.

Thanks very much for the presentation. [Operator Instructions] I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via your investor dashboard. As you can see, we have received questions throughout today's presentation. And if I can hand back to you to read out those questions where appropriate to do so, I'll pick up from you at the end.

Great. Thank you. So let me catch up on some of these questions. The first one is great. Thanks, [ John ], for this one. He notes that it's great to see the company return to profit after a big period of investment over the last few years. And he questions whether, as profitability grows, would we consider moving the company, the listing, from AIM to main market or even NASDAQ to increase the marketability of your shares? I think we might be getting a little ahead of ourselves there, but I like the ambition. I think our business has huge potential and opportunity. And as its largest shareholder, I am hugely invested in making sure we deliver the best possible outcome for shareholders. And that could take one of many forms. And I expect James and Greg and the Board, over the coming months and years, to always be looking at how to maximize the returns for shareholders, whatever that looks like. And NASDAQ, AIM or main markets should always be in those conversations. Moving on, thanks, [ Christopher ]. With Mark stepping down and James Lowery taking over, will your strategic priorities remain unchanged or where might we see a shift in focus? I think one of the great things about working alongside James for the last 3 years is actually our strategy has been developed collaboratively and together. And again, with Greg in that conversation, we see ourselves, for the last year and certainly for the last few months as Greg has joined us, as more of a triumvirate. We each bring to the table something unique, but we're very clear on the direction and the strategy of the business. And the alignment means that the business and our people are really clear on how we push this forward. So you won't see a shift. You'll just see a move to absolute execution, which really plays into James' skill set. And I've seen that firsthand over the last few years. Okay. [ George ], George asks, and I might pass this to Greg, ARR was lower as a large strategic customer downsized. Are there any risks of other customers doing the same? And what strategies are in place to mitigate this happening to other customers? So I think let me just color in what was behind that decision. So that customer was actually on our legacy platform, Connect, which was IT services provisioning software and was deeply integrated to essensys Cloud, so a lower-margin solution for us. So they actually hadn't migrated to essensys Platform when they made that decision. So there is always -- and we should always recognize there's risks of other customers making those decisions. But what we are clear on is that essensys Platform and Intelligence Engine really meet the challenges for our customers. And actually, that's been evidenced, as we can see recently, by the renewal of one of our largest other customers on a new 3-year agreement. Now, that 3-year agreement actually sees the software revenues increase and the reduction in those network service revenues. So we think, whilst we're always at risk and we should always be paranoid about customers and market and competition, we are well placed to mitigate this happening to other customers. And the more we bring in -- look, the conversations such as elumo, I think the more we can deal with that. I think that covers that. And the next one is, how does elumo differentiate from competitors? And what level of revenue contribution do we anticipate over the medium term? So I'll take that in 2 parts. So elumo is -- has been imagined from the ground up. There are no current solutions in the market, and I -- please, I implore you to go and look and see what you can find. That conveys real-time bookings and access control into a solution that meets the needs of dynamic, flexible workspaces. We actually had a great example of this. We have been very much operating in stealth mode with elumo. We only launched last week. And one of our target customers in the U.S., a huge U.S. landlord, the Chief Technology Officer received one of our teaser e-mails and actually directly contacted us and said, you know, I've been in the market now for about 18 months looking for a solution, and I cannot find anything. And I've looked across APAC and across Europe as well as the U.S. I'm really excited to see what you're going to launch. So we think we have first-mover advantage. It's really important we prosecute that advantage and make sure that we make the best of it. And so -- but again, we're meeting -- and we saw the need, and we're meeting that in a very innovative and unique way. How does that impact our revenues longer term? Well, if you think about elumo, we expect that elumo can be deployed in every building. And every user, every tenant, whether they're a flexible tenant or a traditional tenant, could be a revenue contributor for us as they use elumo in a building. So we think, medium term and certainly expecting through next year, we expect to see a really positive momentum as we look to ramp elumo revenues in the next 12 months and beyond. I think -- I'm just checking. I think that covers all of our questions.

Perfect. Mark, thank you for answering those questions. And of course, the company can review all the questions submitted today, and we will publish those responses out on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, Mark, could I just ask you for a few closing comments?

Of course. Well, listen, thank you all for taking the time out of your day to join us today. I just want to express my thanks to you supportive shareholders. And my thanks to James and Greg, and I'm excited for the next phase of the essensys journey. And as its largest shareholder, who is expected to remain and hoping to remain its largest shareholder, I'm really excited and looking forward to seeing the progress over the next few months, half years, years, and hopefully even decades. So thanks a lot, everyone. We'll see you next time.

Mark, Greg, James, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of essensys plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.