FINEOS Corporation Holdings plc (FCL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the FINEOS Corporation Holdings plc Full Year Results Briefing. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Michael Kelly, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Mel, and welcome, everybody, to our financial results reporting for FY '24, that's the calendar year January to December last year. I'm joined here today by Ian Lynagh, our CFO. And we're going to go through the results and walk you through what we published today on the ASX. So hopefully, everybody has a copy of our presentation because I'm going to walk through that page by page and give you some narrative across each of the kind of the key points we wanted to make in the presentation. So if I can get started, please turn to Page 2 of the presentation. Here, we're just highlighting that FINEOS is very, very much run from a cultural perspective, where we have our employees heavily engaged in the why. And we rely on a culture playbook, which we call the FINEOS playbook. And this is really what drives us in FINEOS in terms of building this business, and very much focused on life accident and health in a global sense and employee benefits, particularly in North America. If I move on to Slide 3, you can see the page there in terms of the highlights. Firstly, I'd like to say that last year was a very solid year for FINEOS in terms of a lot of achievements and a lot of the goals we set out for ourselves, we've accomplished. So we're very pleased with the set of results that we've come out with on the financials and so on. But more importantly, we're very pleased with the way that we've advanced our platform and the huge customer success that we've been having with Tier 1 carriers, particularly in North America who are household names and very, very sticky as customers who have this insatiable appetite for FINEOS and for getting more and more of the FINEOS Platform into their organization. So just in terms of the operational highlights. Subscription revenues, we landed on a EUR 69.9 million total revenue in terms of the year. That was up 6.6% on the calendar year '23. And now subscriptions are 52.5% of our total revenue. So very much reflecting that SaaS business growth, particularly in North America, where our underlying growth for our SaaS product is even higher and stronger than that. So pleased with that, particularly as well in that we had some one-off churn through the year. Very sad to see one of our big customers leaving us, but they've been with us 28 years and actually sold off the insurance business several years ago. And then there were a couple of Limelight customers as well on the old product that we're tailing off. So a good result given the kind of unusual year that we phased into. We're walking into FY '25 with a EUR 71.2 million ARR, and our total revenue is -- was EUR 133.2 million, which was 6.9% up on the calendar year, CY '23, and ahead of every analyst prediction who covers FINEOS as well. So pleased with that result. But even more pleasing, I think, is the margin and the way this business is growing its margin. So gross margin being EUR 100.4 million, 75% of total revenue. And that's a target we've actually set out for ourselves for FY '27. So you can see that we're kind of doing very, very well on the margin -- from a margin perspective, up from 70.8% last year. And the same for the EBITDA margin, it's gone to EUR 20.2 million, and it's up 7.6% on the calendar year. And we finished up the year in a strong cash position of EUR 19.8 million and no debt. So December is actually the lowest month of the year for cash in FINEOS. Our cash bags start to fill very strongly in January and into the new year as most of our subscription revenues are actually billed in January and February of the year. And then there's another chunk of subscription build in the second half around June, July, August. So a good cash position as well in terms of the finish of the year. In terms of the other operational highlights, we mentioned at the start of the FY last year that Guardian going live with AdminSuite was a major milestone. And very pleasingly, again, they launched their new business on FINEOS towards the back end of last year in the last quarter. We also mentioned that New York Life was going to go back into the voluntary benefit space and launch voluntary benefits on their EUR 4 billion premium AdminSuite that runs -- has been running in production now for 3 years in the cloud, and they went ahead and did that as well. So that is a really important couple of milestones, particularly as well the voluntary side because I think over in the States, there's a move towards the voluntary becoming more and more important in flexible employee benefits. And this is kind of probably one of the fastest growth areas in the States, particularly around the benefits industry. So having group and voluntary on the same platform really does help the customer experience in terms of employees and employers being able to deal with carriers. Today, most carriers have their voluntary benefits on a separate platform to what they have their group business on. So those were all important milestones in terms of the main product AdminSuite. The other thing we did during the year and the previous year was we rewrote our new business underwriting system to become part of the SaaS platform. And we very much took the opportunity as well to modernize and to really go for the latest and greatest on the AWS tool set and platform. So that product is now available for sale. And it's an integral part of the FINEOS AdminSuite or it could be sold separately. And then, of course, we mentioned as well last year. Another big milestone we were aiming for was to launch our FINEOS Absence for Employer by getting the 2 employers that we've won in the U.S. up and running, and we achieved that as well. We've had continuous success as well in terms of cost reduction and efficiencies around driving and investing more to make our platform more and more automated, but also there's a number of other strategies, and Ian will probably refer to those later. And that will continue as well. We won 2 new name deals in the second half on the IDAM side, which is the integrated disability and absence management. Voya, which is the former ING in North America, one of the larger employers, has bought FINEOS for absence and for our integrated disability and absence and Equitable has also done the same. Both of those were done in head-to-head battles against competitors. And in both cases, the competitor was the underlying absence system. So we've actually taken 2 other clients of them. And again, really pleased with that. It took a bit longer than we would have liked. But at the end of the day, the clients saw the superior software that FINEOS has and the total focus on their industry and gives them a long-term future as well to go for in terms of our platform. And then we've also mentioned over the past couple of years that we've been growing our SI partners. And indeed, both of those wins that we got there in the last couple of quarters, they've been implemented by SIs. So we've now turned that corner as a company and the SIs are actually trained and putting people into our programs. So we're pleased with that as well. If you turn to Slide 5, this slide just gives you kind of an overview of our people. And not an awful lot has changed, a little bit lower on the utilization due to a project kicking off a little bit late. Ian might touch on that as well, and we're certainly happy to answer questions on it. But generally pretty much the same. But underlying here, our people numbers have changed in the sense that they're located in different places. And we'll continue to use the kind of lower cost places for people and for certain types of roles and so on, and we'll grow that cost base at a lower rate than some of the higher cost regions that we've been operating in. So again, I'll move you on then to Slide 6 and the graphical mix of our revenues. Again, there's no surprises there. North America is very much the dominant player in terms of where FINEOS is focused and where we focused for the past 5 years since our IPO. And as I said earlier, we're growing our SaaS revenues there faster than anywhere else. APAC hopefully, will kick in for us as well. And we did announce ACC last year as moving to the cloud with the New Zealand accident scheme. And more of our clients are getting interested now in the cloud. In all honesty, on-premise software is really very much legacy and these carriers and government agencies really need to move forward. So things are happening in a very positive sense but slow in the region, but still pipeline is building and becoming more solid. I'm going to hand over now to Ian and he'll take you through Slide 8 onwards, and I'll come back and talk about our future in the next section. Over to you, Ian.

Thank you, Michael, and I also extend my welcome to everybody on the call as we call out our results for FY '24. So I'm on Slide 8 and just looking at the income statement. In terms of subscription fees, as you can see, up 6.6%. It's a mixture of activities that's driving that. It's customers upscaling in terms of the deployment of FINEOS. It's some new names, as Michael mentioned there, Voya, Equitable. And it's also some further transitions to the cloud. That's still going very well. It's an activity for us. There's still some customers out there, particularly in the Australian region. But we still have some product lines in North America that we still need to push across and everybody is moving in that direction, which is very positive. And that's despite -- that growth is despite the churn we had in customers, particularly as a consequence of the Limelight acquisition and that major client that Michael mentioned there in the U.K. And also due to some level of M&A activities out in Australia, we had some churn. That churn now, we see very much has been behind us. We can always anticipate a level. We hit a tough patch there over the last 12, 18 months or so. So that growth is still very welcome. In terms of services fees, we've seen an uptick on that. As I've said before, our services is something that is volatile and so far as we have SIs that will take on some level of work. We have customers that may wish to take on more self-service activity themselves. So predicting exactly what that's going to look like is always dependent on the actual customer you get and the relationships you have with SIs. So it's pleasing to see that it kind of grew year-on-year. Part of that is due to activity in terms of new potential clients or existing clients participating in studies with us, as well as the new names and the expansions that we have ongoing, plus the fact that we have very large customers, as Michael mentioned earlier on their household names that effectively have multiyear projects with us, programs with us as they continue to move from their legacy systems across to our new systems and also bring on the new business onto our platform. So it's good to see that. Initial license fees, that's part of the residue of customers that exist on-premise. So we don't actively sell to them so far is trying to extend their usage on-premise. Our selling approach is very much moved to the cloud. But that said, if they need to extend their usage of our platform on-premise, we then -- they'll pay for that. So that's the initial license fee, but those numbers have come down year-on-year. Yes, it's gone up a little bit from last year, but it will always be a lower level of revenue that we're going to see there. In terms of cost of sales, you've seen that decrease. And obviously, that has helped very much in terms of increasing that gross margin. And already, we're at the target that we set ourselves for FY '27. And we're very focused in terms of that commitment we made during our November road show last year in terms of targets we wish to achieve. So they're very much top of mind for us as we look at how we want this business to perform as we move forward. And part of what we've done in terms of our cost of sales is you'll notice on this slide that Michael showed you earlier on, that the number of contract staff we have has gone down slightly. So we're always looking at that mix of resources, whether we employ people directly, whether we use contractors, sometimes employing people directly in lower-cost regions gives us a better price point, also greater longevity with those people and commitment from those people in terms of FINEOS. But likewise, you also need to have the flex in terms of resource modeling. So resourcing and how we scale in terms of product development as well as project delivery is something that we're always looking at and continually monitoring and moving forward with in terms of our operational trials. Gross profit has gone up -- sorry, EBITDA has gone up as well to 15.2%. We've set ourselves a target there, as you know in terms of FY '27, up to 25%. So the fact that it's moved from 7.6% now to 15.2%, shows very much that we're very much on that trajectory. So we see that trajectory moving forward. So as we're also controlling our costs, we're also driving efficiencies in the organization as we committed to do, to help us grow these margins as we move forward. And of course, this is all on our journey there towards getting back to being cash generative and certainly in terms of FY '25, getting that positive free cash flow target achieved. EBITDA then in general, what you're seeing that there's a reduction in costs. But I'll talk a little bit later. There's a couple of slides down in terms of operation expenses where you see that going up, I talk to that a little bit later. But overall, the costs have gone down. So that's very encouraging for us. And ultimately then, our NPAT situation, you can see that the loss for the year is EUR 5.8 million. So that's a significant improvement on CY '23, again, indicative that journey back to profitability that we've been working on over the past 2 years, having very successfully invested in the product and rolled out the product to many major clients who are very happy with what they're receiving from FINEOS. If we can then move on to the next slide. Again, this is a slide that we showed during the road show in November. And what you're seeing here is the big cost increases that we saw, particularly during calendar year '21, '22. That was partly due to the acquisition of Limelight, also very much due to the fact that we're investing very much ahead of the curve in terms of the suite and also addressing the needs of those very large customers. And very large customers have a requirement, which tends to be more extensive than smaller customers. So we had to address those needs. But what we were always positive in our minds about and which is true, is that if you address the needs of the very large customers, you can also inherently address the needs of smaller customers. So we did invest ahead of the curve. With that said, the product has matured out very significantly over the last few years. And it means that the level of spend that we need to put particularly into R&D has reduced and then the mixture of resources that we use is also -- and where they're located has also helped in terms of our cost management. So you can see that kind of pincer movement coming in as the revenues continue to increase, and the costs continue to reduce. So we're going to see some further cost reduction as we get into FY '25, and we're going to see some extra revenue expectancy as we get into FY '25. And that's what's going to help us achieve that positive free cash flow position. You can see the key revenue that we're very focused on is the annual recurring revenue, the subscription fees that we have in the organization. And you can see from the CAGR perspective, that's running at 16.1%. And you can see that trajectory there continually growing, more flatness in terms of the service fees. So we do expect to see service fees grow, but just at a smaller rate, as we've indicated before, year-on-year, but it's very much the annual recurring revenue that we want to see growing. And we're very pleased despite the churn that's occurred in the organization to see that year-on-year, it's up 9%. And as I mentioned earlier on, we expect that churn level to significantly reduce as we move forward. And so we expect to see that ARR grow further as we move forward. If we move on now, I mentioned a moment ago, operational expenses. If you look across the line there, you're seeing a slight reduction in R&D. Our real commitment in R&D is not so much to reduce the investment that we're making within the product is to reduce it as a proportion of revenue. So you can see it's reasonably even there, but there is a slight reduction in terms of spend. In terms of sales and marketing, we've gone into a very pincer type of -- focus type approach there. We have a nice market. We have a sales team that are very focused in terms of new name acquisition, and that's delivering a dividend, as I've seen in terms of the new names we acquired last year. And also, we have a good pipeline moving forward in terms of new names. But we also have a customer success function, and we're very conscious of the fact that if the customer is happy with what we're supplying to them, they will buy more from us. So that customer success function is operating as well, but it's allowed us then to very much focus on what we essentially need to deliver good success to grow the business without having extensive sales activities, which are probably going to deliver no dividend. So it's very focused, very orientated towards what the customers need. And it's allowed us then to have a more practical pricing approach. Product consulting is up, as you can see there. Now when I look at it, if I look at the cost of sales and I put that together, it's up 2.6 there, but it's down 4.3, if you look at the cost of sales side of things. So really, what we're seeing is a EUR 1.7 million improvement overall. And as Michael referenced earlier on, and we did mention at the half year, we had a customer that had to go back and reevaluate the business case, and that stalled the project for a number of weeks, so we kept the resource on standby, which you also need to be conscious of as well. At any point in time, we're running about 35 to 40 projects. So we're always looking at resourcing and how to juggle that resourcing around different projects. And sometimes, things are supposed to commence on a certain date, they might get pushed out or pulled forward. But what we can't afford to do is to release those resources. We just kind of manage that as best we can. So that's the only reason really is projects moving around a little bit that's caused that operation expense bit to go up a little bit. It's also the reason why the utilization went from 87% to 85%, just small movements. But as I said, overall, product consulting point of view, we're seeing year-on-year improvement in terms of cost management. In terms of other incomes, obviously, we had the -- we took on Spraoi, and there was an earnout in CY '23. We don't have that this year. So that just made a slight difference in terms of the numbers. But overall, we're happy with the operational expenses in terms of the improvements that we're seeing in terms of how we move that forward. In terms of general administration, slight increase in costs. It's not a really -- we have run a very tight operation in terms of our finance teams, our HR teams, our general administration teams, et cetera. It's not really something or an area that we can look for redeployment in other parts of the world, et cetera. So it's always going to be impacted by third parties where we register a lot of the kind of software costs we use internally, salary, inflationary pressures, et cetera. So there's a slight movement there, but we would expect that as we move forward more so than some of the other areas, but it only represents a very small proportion of workforce overall, 5.2%. If you move on now to the next slide, Slide 11. Again, I referenced it a moment ago. You can see the investment that we've made in terms of R&D over the years, as I said, investing ahead of the curve, we now have a mature product suite. It's evidenced by the expansive use by New York Life. They move from not just using us for disability products, but they've now also extended into voluntary products and are progressively using it more so as we go into FY '25 for life products. So that's right across the suite, which is very encouraging. And then we also have Guardian who successfully went live beginning of this year in terms of full-scale go-live, soft go live in terms of September of last year. And they're working on a Phase 2 rollout now, which will allow them once they receive the investment we're making in product right now to start collapsing some of their legacy systems and not just take on new business. So very much we're seeing right now that the product set is very mature. It services the industry very well and the reputation is growing in terms of the capabilities it has and the ability it has to service the market, whereas others have not been as successful in terms of trying to service that market need. So our focus now is very much on as we move forward in terms of that investment to continue to mature as the product. The Guardian reference as they term it the day 2 requirements is part of that. But also how do we make the product easier to onboard, upgrade and integrate, really make this an easier play for our customers to adopt the usage of the FINEOS product set for a very complex set of needs within their core environments. How can we make that a no-brainer to move forward to that. That's the key focus of us right now is how do we make that simpler. And then, of course, AI. We're progressively building out use cases and discussing that with a number of customers right now about how can we have that assistance within our product set to allow them to do their job in a better way. I really like the term that Microsoft use in terms of Copilot, that's very much the way we look at that is the systems to help make their job easier, better automated and to trust the supply of information that FINEOS can bring forward. And a real advantage that we have as a company is that the volume of transactions that we're processing, the volume of data that we're collating to embed AI as integral to our product set as opposed to being externally supplied, it's a much easier solution because it's real time, it's in situ. And it means that you don't need to look at 2 different systems at the same time to deliver the same outcome. So we're really excited about the conversations we're having with our customers right now, and we see that as a continued investment area as we move forward, much like the rest of the industry does. If we move on now to the next slide, Slide 12, the balance sheet. The cash position is very much in line with our expectancy. The first half of the year, as Michael referenced earlier on, we see a lot of subscription fees going out. So the balance will go up in particular during the first half of the year, and then it will taper off during the second half of the year. But we are seeing ourselves transitioning from a position of burning cash to a position of generating cash as we move forward. So that cash position is in line with expectancy. And we're quite comfortable that we'll be moving forward into a situation where we're generating cash as we move into FY '26. The development expenditure you're seeing there is as expected as well. You've seen the increase in R&D expenditure. So the capitalized amounts in terms of what we monetized is going to be reflected in terms of the numbers that you're seeing there. But that's going to balance out because we see very much that the expenditure we have in R&D will remain reasonably flat. We'll see some inflationary pressures due to salary increases and so forth, but it's going to remain reasonably flat in the way that we're going to grow the margin on that in terms of the -- corresponds of that with the revenue that we got coming in is by increasing the revenue. And we set ourselves targets, as you know as well, in terms of what that would look like in FY '27 and FY '29, 30% and 25%, respectively. Deferred revenue is primarily driven by the increase in subscription fees because you see that increasing year-on-year. So that's positive. Again, we have the backdrop of the churn, but it still is an increase year-on-year, which is positive. So again, we're excited that, that churn scenario that we had to absorb is behind us. So we should see continued improvement in that particular area. If I move on now to Slide 13, again, just a little bit more conversation about the cash position. You can see that the net cash generated from operation activities has increased by a significant percentage of 18.8% versus 8.5%. Again, that's due to the business that we've taken on, the increased business we've taken on, and that's very positive. And then if you look at the net movements in cash, you've got to bear in mind that we did have a raise in August 2023. So that was AUD 40 million, that to EUR 23.6 million that you see there in terms of the euro value. So if that wasn't there, that will be a negative of EUR 18.6 million. So again, a big improvement there in terms of moving forward if we take the raise out of the equation. So again, we're comfortable with the cash position that we're in, we will increase it as we laid a moment ago in terms of the first half of the year, and we're continually looking at more cost efficiencies we go through this year, so in a good position in that respect. So that's it from me, Michael, in terms of the overview of the financials, and I'll hand it back to you.

Great. Well done, Ian. Thanks for that. So yes, look, in terms of finishing out this update to our investors and analysts. If we move to Slide 15, when we came down in November and did the reset, we very much went through the -- our total addressable market and also our serviceable addressable market to show the size of the opportunity that we have ahead of us. And indeed, the existing footprint that we already have in our biggest market and our total focus since our IPO. So as you can see, we have a serviceable addressable market of EUR 125 billion out of the EUR 200 billion that AM Best has recognized as the total market. What we mean by serviceable addressable market is that the products and the lines of business that we address currently service the market worth about EUR 125 billion in that North American market. And if we look at all our customers, if we look at the amount of total premium that they already have in this space, it adds up to about EUR 50 billion in premium. But we're only in a fraction -- when you look at our subscriptions, we're only in a fraction of our own customers' total premium. We're only addressing a fraction. And obviously, as Ian has said, like as we grow and migrate from old legacy systems and scale our system for the business lines we've already sold, we will improve that total that we actually manage in terms of our own clients, serviceable market, but also there's cross-sell and upsell opportunity across the whole piece. And we've kind of invested well ahead of the curve in terms of building out the full AdminSuite. So we have New York Life and Guardian Life with the full suite. But everybody else is very much using the integrated disability and absence and the claims part of the FINEOS AdminSuite. So we've got modules out there already. It's all the same suite, but some customers are only using parts for segments of their business. So there's lots of opportunity in terms of growth as far as we're looking forward, too. So I won't go through the detail of the next slide in terms of 16. Only to reiterate the free cash flow that we promised the market when we came down again in November. As Ian has said, he's covered the AI off very, very well in terms of our differentiator with embedded AI. And we've got a partnership with AWS here which is really important to us in terms of the innovation that we're doing with them. But we're also partnering with several clients as well in this space. So it's an exciting space. And very much, as Ian said, AI is really going to make systems smarter and more automated, and we definitely want to be in that zone with this platform. Guardian, you will see publicity from Guardian in the next few weeks in terms of the positivity of the implementation on time, within budget and they're delighted. In fact, they're scratching their heads and actually saying how did you do it? And it's because this is a cloud platform, we already had it running down the street from them in New York Life for the past 3 years with a EUR 4 billion book. So why wouldn't it work? This is the big difference between a SaaS cloud platform and the old on-prem or hosted type systems that are out there. Our system was already ready to go. It took us about 9 months of extra software product development for Guardian and Hey Presto, they had about 3 or 4 months of testing and they were into production. So that one has gone very well. As Ian has touched on, the customer success gone very, very well as well. We're very much building our SI partnerships. And I talked before about the history of the admin side in the benefits industry, whereby several vendors from other domains entered the market, and they really muddied up the water, there's a lot of casualties and dead bodies hanging around in terms of programs that have gone very, very badly. And that has created a bit of -- kind of a peculiar situation in terms of the benefits market. But I think the positivity of Guardian and the PR and all the positivity from New York Life already, and many of our big clients that are on AdminSuite for claims and absence I think will come through in the end in terms of giving people a bit more confidence moving away from legacy systems. And this is a big ambitious program. These guys have been hanging around these legacy systems for many, many years under stranglehold. And also, when you bring AI into the equation, as Ian has mentioned, I think he hinted towards the data side, AI is all about where you're getting your data. Is it good data. Is it wholesome in terms of true. And also, do you have kind of enough of it in terms of the front to back office operations of your business, and that's where FINEOS AdminSuite will play very strongly. Our pipeline is growing, and we're quite confident in terms of that. The absence for employer, a smaller market, much smaller than AdminSuite, but very complementary. And again, there's a pipeline there of large employers that we're talking to. And we will drive on with this strategy very much, as Ian said, driving up the operational efficiency and also growing our subscriptions and revenues overall. So the outlook for FY '25 in the usual way, we're basically pitching a EUR 5 million kind of toggle in terms of EUR 138 million to EUR 133 million is what we're projecting in terms of euros for this year, in millions. And we are pretty much confident in terms of the ongoing programs that we have. We're locked into most of this revenue, to be honest. And we've got program running and a lot of work already on our plate in terms of stuff that's happening with customers and implementations and so on. So all pretty good. In terms of the track record, we've got a great reputation bubbling up in the market. We've got the savings and the efficiencies driven -- driving in, and we're very much building out the pipeline now. And our reputation, as I said, and the platform itself is something that carriers will begin to kind of see and grow more and more confident on in terms of a full legacy elimination. So I'll turn to the last page, Page 18. We've mentioned several times, we've kind of invested ahead of the curve, well ahead of the curve, particularly when you add the Limelight rewrite and the employer market that we went after, the direct for employer. Probably people would look at it and go like we did invest heavily. We were losing money and burning cash and so on. The climate externally wasn't really great for that. But we think we did the right thing, and we're very well positioned for the future. So in line with the projections that we gave in November, I won't repeat them, but very much moving the business into the true SaaS product territory and a very strong, sticky long-term revenue with household name Tier 1 clients. So happy to take questions now. Hopefully, everybody still here, and Ian and myself are open for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Tim Lawson with Macquarie.

Just 2 questions. Just on the revenue growth targets you've set. Can you just talk to how much of that is already sort of contracted/known and whether you've still got any of that sort of churn to sort of cycle through that any of that was in the calendar year last year that you're still going to sort of get over that hurdle?

The vast majority of this is already in front of us, Tim. We're in a business that most of our revenue each year when we come into a year, we can see it. But this year, probably more than any year, I think we're in an even stronger position. Ian, do you want to answer that in any more detail?

Yes, I think, as Michael said, quite a high proportion of the revenue is either already as we would term it in order book, booked, contracted, or we're closing out deals with customers at the moment. So we're in a very strong position at the front end of the year. There's still more to be closed to make the number range that we've set there. But at this stage, we're quite confident in high proportions there. In terms of your question, Tim, as well about the impact of the churn, that's behind us. We tidied that up by the end of FY '24. So there's no more impact now as we go into the new year. So we're pretty comfortable about that particular situation, too.

So was there any revenue in the calendar year '24 year from clients that are no longer with the group?

No, there isn't.

Okay. And then just question on costs. You sort of touched this, but just to confirm, so you talked about lower cost in FY '25 versus FY '24. Can you just talk a little bit about sort of how much of that is already in place, how much needs to be done. And I think you're saying it was flat, if I caught it, it was close to flat, if I caught your comments correctly.

Yes. We have the vast majority of it in place. We have a little bit more work to do in terms of getting that cost distribution into a better place. But it's also -- it's already built into our plans in terms of how we manage that. But we're reasonably strongly on track in terms of that. We know exactly what we need to do to execute. We have the plans in place.

And so -- an absolute cost reduction, but is it closer to sort of a flat number that you're targeting?

It won't be significantly less than what you've seen in FY '24, but we are expecting a cost reduction. As I said earlier on, in terms of achieving positive free cash flow, we need to see both the level of cost reduction, but also an increase in revenues.

Maybe I could add the color there for you, Tim. I think you'll see the cost reduction coming through the year. So in the first half, there's actually some investments that we need to make in the first half. So our costs will stay a little bit higher in the first half, but the reduction then comes in the second half. So we've got all of that planned in. And that's very much based on the revenue growth that we see this year. So we hit the free cash flow. So we've pretty much got our hand on all levers there in terms of making things happen. There are some investment as well around resourcing in lower-cost places and replacing some of the people in higher cost places. So that has to be done as well from June, July onwards. And then we very much will look at our revenue growth because we're in a situation where revenue growth could hit us stronger maybe than we've kind of currently projected. And in that case, we may need extra resources. So there's contract teams and stuff like that, that we have in our first half that we need for deliverables to customers and so on that we won't need in the second half. And so we'll be able to reduce our costs in that second half. So watch out for that. But we're saying on an overall year perspective, yes, we're coming in on the free cash flow side and profitable next year and thereon.

Your next question comes from Siraj Ahmed with Citi.

I might ask 3 questions. So Mike, can you just touch on that first comment on revenue growth could be stronger than what you have? Like what are you seeing in terms of the pipeline that we think actually could be higher?

Yes. I think, Siraj, it's good to talk to you. Yes. We're seeing a lot of interest from existing clients. I think a lot of our clients were looking at Guardian and watching that as a kind of a pointer to is this platform real? Is it just a New York Life system? Or is it something that somebody else can go on. Guardian addresses a totally different market or segment of the employee benefits than New York Life does. But then again, we have several carriers who address the same segment as Guardian. So we are seeing more interest in the full AdminSuite albeit that carriers are still kind of heads down, doing work on IDAM and the product we sold them. We're also in a situation as well where we've got carriers who are very much kind of were sitting on the fence with us, even though they have their -- our IDAM product, but they were sitting on the fence as regards further expansion, but now they're kind of coming around to the idea that this thing is actually -- it is our future. And so more legacy retirement, we've done deals where we're kind of building out migration software as well to help carriers go faster on the migration. We're working with one of the SIs in that, particularly, and we're using AI around that, too. So we've got some exciting stuff going on. The issue really is that these are oil tankers in terms of some of these big carriers. And they don't move fast, but they're big and they're very impactful. So one of the carriers could do something. And then all of a sudden, things could be a bit more positive on the revenue front. So look, it's going to happen. It's just a question. I can't say when.

Got it. And so secondly, Michael, just -- or maybe, Ian, just can you just give us a detail on the revenue guide, what services? What are you assuming for services versus subscription?

Services will be a little bit up, but the subscription is really where the main growth will be. And it's very much our focus, as we said over the past couple of years, Siraj. We are handing off services to SIs. So I did mention in my update there that the 2 implementations we're doing today are both SIs. In fact, I spoke to one of those customers on Monday, and they were out in India with one of the SIs, one of the big audit firms. Their management consulting team took them to India for a week to basically tour and to meet the FINEOS practice that they've built. So we're very much turning the corner and really becoming a true SaaS player, and that's where we see the faster growth coming on the revenue side in the subscriptions.

Got it. And last one, Michael and Ian. So I'm just trying to understand how you get to free cash flow positive for the year, right? So I mean, very simplistically, you burned, I think, close to EUR 9 million to EUR 10 million this year. Your guidance is for -- if I use the midpoint, I think it's maybe for $7 million or EUR 7 million of better revenue. So is the view that you will -- but you just said cost might be slightly lower. So should you be -- are you going to cut costs by EUR 3 million or something? Is that how you get to free cash flow positive?

Yes. I mentioned to Tim, Siraj, that we're cutting our costs. We're pulling our costs in the second half, particularly. We're doing investment in the first half that gives us that opportunity to pull it in. So in terms of the costs, as Ian has said, they'll come down. And the revenues will go up, and we basically have -- we've modeled all this out in the detail and we definitely will hit the free cash flow. And as I said, profitability next year.

Just to augment that response, Siraj, you got to bear in mind also that in terms of the way that our revenue flows, the reference Michael made there in terms of our revenue growth being more subscription fees and services fee. We invoice subscription fees yearly in advance, and we invoice service fees monthly in arrears. So that helps as well in terms of the pattern of cash flow depending on the type of revenue that we're gaining.

Got it. So you think receipts will be higher than revenue recognized, right? That's cash collection will be a bit stronger. Okay.

Yes.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Sinclair Currie with Moelis Australia.

I was just interested in the Guardian Stage 3 starting off in '26. Can I clarify, is that what you're referring to as migrating customers' legacy business onto the new platform. Is that what you're talking about?

No, 2026 is allowing Guardian to put every scrap of new business onto the system from the first of next year. Right now, they've segmented the new business that's flowing into FINEOS. And there's functionality that we're building, which we deliver in May, which allows them then to effectively take everything in terms of all the new business. So we'll have several hundred million on the platform by the end of this year and then further into next year. We're also looking at the migration then in terms of the data and getting it out of the legacy. And that will probably be more towards or through 2026 into, '27, '28, '29, and allow them to kind of sunset that legacy, that mainframe system that they have. But their business is actually -- they're growing extremely well, and the product is doing really well in the market. So new business is actually growing better than they expected. So -- and just generally, I'd say, absence management has been a game changer in the employee benefits in North America. And it is seen now as the first cab off the rank when an employee benefits carrier is looking to update their legacy core systems. They want that absence first. And then that is the trigger to allow all the other types of products and lines of business that they currently service.

Okay. That's great. And just if I can understand a bit better -- sorry, the impact for yourselves in terms of revenue of getting that data and that additional share of the new business. Is that already in the scope of the volume commitments they already have? Or is that further upside that you'd be talking in terms of revenue for FINEOS?

And that would be in the scope of where we're going. We are expecting our revenues to -- particularly our subscription revenue to grow substantially in terms of the big books of business that we're migrating. It just takes time. I think largely, it would be in our forecasts. And again, we've tried to forecast relatively conservative given the nature of the beast we're dealing with in terms of the life insurance carriers. They are very, very conservative, much, much more conservative than the P&C side. But they do move in herds when things because -- when things are kind of confident and they are in a very competitive environment. So there's a huge amount of heightened I suppose, paranoia going on in the market at the moment, particularly with AI and stuff like that.

That's great. And maybe just one last question. The U.S. market itself, has there been any sort of talk of change with the administration, which could you think might impact on that absence management and claims side of the business?

I haven't heard anything, Sinclair. I mean, all we're seeing is a very competitive environment for employee benefits very positive in terms of employers want them to look after their people and keep the level of engagement and the benefits up. Paid leaves and absences are coming into 4 new states over the next year or 2. So I don't see anything changing in any dramatic way. I don't think that's going to be a priority. I think there's other things that are far bigger and we're all watching that on a geopolitical sense and seeing it play out. But we're not seeing anything and we probably don't suspect anything will change much in our space.

Your next question is a follow-up from Siraj Ahmed with Citi.

Just a quick question. Gross margins, I think in the second half was 77%, pretty good pickup. I know full year at 75%. Just trying to see, is that 77% the way to think about it going forward? Or is there some one-off nature in there?

Well, as I said, we set our expectation in terms of FY '27, around about 75%. I would think more like that. That was a bit of a one-off in terms of what you saw there, but we want to stay very much on target for retaining that 75% mark up on to FY '27. If we can do better, great, but I don't want to set expectation that will be higher than that.

Your next question comes from Claude Walker from A Rich Life.

What is the main competitive advantages that should allow your absence management offering to win contracts that are competing for against competitors? And I guess, who are the main -- what competitors do you admire the most in that product line?

Claude, yes, our product is the market-leading product today. We have more lives on our product today than anyone else. So that's a really important milestone that we've achieved. And we've done that because out of the absence market, about 40% of absence management is managed by employee benefits carriers. And we are the market leader in the employee benefit space with some of the very big carriers already using us with -- on the absence side. So the important point about our absence product is that it's fully integrated into our full suite. Initially, the first point would be that it's fully integrated into our disability claims product, which is the next area that if an absence develops into any kind of an injury or illness then the customer experience needs to go straight into a disability claim, short term and maybe long term in the future and maybe a voluntary benefit could be pulled out of that as well in terms of the employee. So the experience is really important around the claims process. So we're the strongest in the carrier market for that. And then what we'll see as things play out is our full AdminSuite and billing and policy and everything comes into it, even our new business quoting and underwriting will all play into expanding and building on our absence capabilities. So I think it's because we have built it out from day 1 as a purpose-built solution, and it's also -- it's part of the full suite. And we keep it up to date. It's full of the regulatory compliance, it's all in line. In terms of competitors, we have seen -- I suppose with ClaimVantage who've been out there for years. I mean they fell out of FINEOS as a start-up, and they have been in the absence space a long time. The product is built in Salesforce and that was acquired by Majesco a few years ago. So Majesco are in many lines of business, many different industries and very much a player in the P&C space, and they've been growing their footprint through acquisition mainly. And we don't really see that product developing any further. It's not part of any suite in a kind of coherent kind of seamless way. There is another player that is in the absence space, but mainly on the employer side called AbsenceSoft and they've come up as a start-up, and they do the regulatory compliance stuff just for the absence and they're doing some work around disability as well I hear. But again, we're not seeing them in any way competitive with us on the absence side either. So I think our kind of USP is very much that it's a full suite, fully baked out, fully compliant, and we have a strong team on it and we're winning the deals. And as I mentioned, the 2 deals we won in the last half last year was actually where the -- our competitor in the space has lost both of those books of business of their product.

Great. And just following up on that line of questioning. On the occasion when you do bid for a deal or go for a tender or something, but then if you don't get it on the times when you lose it, what's the reason for losing it?

Yes, great question. Sometimes you get IT teams who are still in the zone of wanting to build everything themselves, particularly if there's an IT team that loves Salesforce and loves to build in Salesforce. In that case, we might kind of come up against an IT team that would be wanting to develop and take over the product. It tends to be more of the smaller companies. So we might lose out there, and that's fine. If they don't want to work with us and take a product out of the box, that's okay. As I said, normally, though the business really just wants something that will go in easy and that they can kind of rely and be confident on and obviously be something that the competitors don't have an advantage over them on. So that's why we would lose -- is on a billed basis. But generally speaking, I think we're winning now. But as I said, there's been a bit of a hiatus in this market because of quite a few project failures with vendors who just kind of moved in opportunistically with core systems from different industries. So hopefully, we're seeing that settling down now.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Kelly for closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you, Mel, and thanks, everybody, for listening today. We appreciate obviously the analyst coverage we get. And Ian and a couple of our senior leaders will be down in Australia next month, and we'll be having the one-on-one meetings. Obviously, I won't be there because I've got commitments in North America. But Ian is, as you heard yourself, he's very capable of taking all and fielding all the questions and giving more details to investors and analysts. So we're looking forward to that and seeing how things go, but appreciate everybody's support. And yes, we're in a good position looking forward. Thank you.

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