Fintel Plc (FNTL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. Hello, and welcome to the Fintel 2025 Full Year Results Presentation. I'm Matt Timmins, CEO of Fintel, and I'm delighted today to be joined by David Thompson, CFO of Fintel. 2025 has really been a seminal year for Fintel. We delivered strong tradings with earnings up 17%. And in addition, we have simplified and streamlined the structure of the business, moving from three operating segments to two clear distinct divisions, giving us clarity and conviction going forward into 2026. We've continued to invest in our own proprietary data and software services. and technology platforms, including Matrix 360, which is now up to over 23 new clients and GBP 1 million of ARR delivered through Matrix 360 in the year. For those of you who are less familiar with Fintel, we operate in the U.K. Retail Financial Services segment, providing software and data and services to this important market. We have two divisions, and they have distinct and complementary capabilities. We provide software and data into the market, and we also provide professional services. Those two divisions are made up of customers from product providers, intermediaries, consolidators and aggregators. As I said, the two divisions have distinct expert capabilities within our Software and Data division, we provide market-leading software. We provide financial planning software to over 9,000 intermediary businesses, and we research and rate [ 43,000 ] financial products, providing both software and data to the insurance market and the aggregators. In the Professional Services division, we provide compliance and regulatory support services to over 3,000 businesses, comprising of around 15,000 financial advisers. Both of those divisions are built on recurring revenues. In our Software and Data division, it's predominantly made of Software as a Service and Data as a Service revenues. And within our Professional Services division, it comprises of membership subscription revenues, where intermediary businesses pay a percentage of their turnover for compliance and regulatory support. Those two divisions, as I said, are complementary, and we have this wonderful flywheel effect where the more intermediaries we serve through our membership business, the larger our distribution footprint becomes and therefore, the more product providers and product manufacturers want to work with us. And the more manufacturers we work with, the more products we review and rate, and this drives recurring revenues for both our Professional Services division and also our Software and Data division. And this flywheel effect is fundamental to the ongoing success of the business. Within our Software and Data division, around 90% of revenues come from the sale of software products and data products. And within our Services division, 80% of the revenues are driven from compliance membership services and our Distribution as a Service proposition. We delivered 30% EBITDA margin in the year, 102% cash flow conversion and around GBP 50 million of revenues comes in the form of recurring revenues from either software, data products or professional services. Our customers are large and varied. We provide services to the leading financial advisers within the market, both small, medium and large-scale financial advisers. And in the product manufacturer space, we provide support services and technology across banks, films, societies, insurers, pensions, providers and asset managers. And we also provide data and software to 17 of the leading price comparison websites. So a large and varied customer base with the average tenure of our intermediary customers being over 9 years. In terms of 2025, we delivered almost GBP 86 million of revenue, which is up nearly 10% on the previous year. We delivered GBP 26 million of adjusted EBITDA with earnings up 17% and almost GBP 50 million of that came from SaaS and subscriptions revenue. We delivered earnings per share of 13.7p with GBP 17 million in cash and a recommended dividend of 3.8p. In terms of operational progress, we made huge progress during 2025, transforming the business from three operating segments to two clear distinct divisions. We've embedded that new operating structure within the business, and we've integrated nine acquisitions as part of that move towards a two-divisional structure. This gives us huge confidence that we are set going forward in 2026 and beyond for an increase in organic growth in the business. We integrated six acquisitions last year, including VouchedFor, Synaptic, Competent Advisor, ifaDASH, AKG and MICAP. These are -- they are primarily products that are SaaS-based and have moved into our software and data division, creating a single operating platform and moving from nine development and engineering teams to a single development and engineering teams operating across the whole of the Software and Data division. This gives us a single road map going forward and ensures that we focus on our capital allocation in the right areas. We now have a unified sales strategy and a single sales team across all of those products. with a single CRM and a single customer view. And this creates a unified platform for us currently under construction called Defaqto Unity. That platform is expected to be launched in Q3 this year, and we will provide financial advisers with a single solution across nine different individual product sets. We have a common operating model now driving efficiencies going forward. We've integrated our back office, HR and finance systems across the business. We've moved our acquired businesses onto a single unified technology stack, and we've also strengthened our digital capabilities in the Service division with the creation of a single Financial Services Technology team. In addition to that, we have developed our compliance service offering and delivered digital compliance tools with AI at the heart of those compliance tools. This means that we are ready to deploy those across the customer base, taking the trust product that we inherited as part of the 360 acquisition and building AI capabilities into that product, allowing us to provide remote compliance checks and monitoring across our firms on a regular basis. We have continued to invest in Matrix 360, which is our platform primarily for insurers and price comparison websites. We've grown that service up to 23 institutional customers onboarded inside the first 12 months and a further three customers at the start of this year. This product delivers data and data services into the insurance market, allowing them to compare insurance products against each other and also the pricing now of those products with the addition of Pearson Ham. We've invested and expanded into our data assets, allowing us to bring in three different data points into that software, enabling insurers to have a more comprehensive view on what's happening in the market. We have also invested into Omnicore. Omnicore is our whole of market proposition for mortgages, protection and investments. We've taken the distribution solutions that we offer within Simplybiz and expanded those to 360 and across the entire market. This enables us to go out and provide mortgage panels and protection panels to non-Simplybiz firms, which is an extension or a possible extension out into the entire market of those key panels that we operate within Simplybiz. Currently, Omnicore has been launched to 360 and will be launched to the wider market later on this year. We've continued to invest in our data assets. We've acquired Rayner Spencer Mills, which extends the asset management capability within Defaqto from multi-asset products through into rating single strategy fund research products. We've also increased our stake in Plannr from just over 20% to 49% in the year, and we've acquired Pearson Ham market pricing business, which has further capability to the Matrix 360 proposition. We now look forward with 2 clear divisions. We have the Software and Data division and a Professional Services division. In 2025, the Software and Data division delivered GBP 37 million of revenue and GBP 48 million of revenue in professional services, both of those coming through at strong EBITDA margins and both based on monthly recurring revenue from either software and data licenses or subscriptions. As we move forward and we look into 2026 and beyond, the strategy for the business is clear. Within our Professional Services division, we will increase the number of additional services and technology solutions across our huge footprint of over 3,000 businesses. We will expand the membership of large firms, including consolidators and wealth managers through the 360 brand, which is well set up to deliver compliance and regulatory support services to those larger intermediary businesses. We will grow our distribution revenues, investing in and developing our mortgage and protection propositions, and we've started to do that through the 360 business already. We will also deliver a highly profitable wealth platform strategy into the business and build value through the distribution of those platforms. In our Software and Data division, again, the strategy is clear. The strategy is to expand the Defaqto product and provider ratings. For the first time, we're able now to bring pricing data into our product data asset. So as well as rating and reviewing products based on the underlying capability of those products, we're also able to bring in value for money ratings using the pricing data on top. We will deploy Matrix 360 across the banking market and the asset management market. Currently, it's deployed only on the GI market. I say we've had 23 customers inside the first year, and we'll now expand that into banking and asset management. We'll deliver Defaqto Unity, which is a connected platform that we will operate in the market, allowing advisers to use all nine components that they currently buy from lots of different vendors through one platform solution powered by Fintel. And we will increase our data services into the insurance market, starting with the Pearson Ham market pricing division. So with that, I'll hand over to David, who will take you through the financial results for 2025 in more detail, and then I'll come back and summarize at the end. So David, over to you.

Thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. I hope you're well. I pause a reflection there. So you've seen thus far, 2025 has been a transformational year for us. We've integrated acquisitions and realigned into two operating segments. And again, hopefully, those last two slides, you can see the business is positioned really well for organic growth. And Matt took you through the four key growth drivers in both divisions. There is quite a lot of activity to cover. So this section will just focus on key revenue and profitability drivers and about leverage and capital allocation and what we do with our cash. So because there's a change to the new segment reporting, we've also included a pro forma 3-year track record of how that operating segment reporting works. Going back to 2023, so you can get additional context for any changes and look at the momentum half period to half period. So on the first of the slide on Slide 20, you can see group revenue is up circa 10% to GBP 85.9 million. And there's a series of sequential revenue bridge slides coming up that show the contribution to growth from organic acquisitions and the makeup of the new operating segments themselves. In the middle, we continue to deliver on profitability with adjusted EBITDA up to GBP 25.9 million, up 17%. And pleasingly, the margin improving 180 basis points to take over that 30% for us. And again, that's driven by '25 being a year of internal reflection, realignment and driving operating synergies across the business. And that's what gives us the confidence for organic growth going forward into 2026. And again, as per the announcement, we've had a good start to the year. So on the next slide, if we take one step down into revenue, you can see how the constituent parts have grown over the prior year. And organically through acquisitions, there was organic growth of GBP 0.6 million and GBP 7 million of growth from acquisitions. It turns out growth by operating segment. You can see that software and data is up just under 10% to GBP 37.1 million and services up just under 10% to GBP 48.8 million. But importantly, both parts of the business growing year-on-year. And next slide, we break that down into more detail again, and you see the key drivers of growth in each segment. So software and data elements being software, data and marketing consultancy. And what I call it again is all 3 areas have grown year-on-year. Services, again, consistent membership and compliance being revenue driven directly from wealth advice and mortgage firms distribution that's marketing revenues from product manufacturers, and they're attracted by the significant membership base that we have and commissions on mortgages and protection products written by our member firms. And finally, the top gray part is surveying income, and that's from our independent valuation business. And again, as you can see, all parts of the business grew period-on-period. So zooming again on the next slide, one of the key performance measures is the quality of the revenues that again, Matt talked about a couple of times. So what we do is we aggregate the revenues generated by SaaS products and subscription products together and express that as a percentage of total revenue as that as an underpin of quality of the business model. And during the year, 57% of our group revenues came from this revenue stream. So again, year-on-year, pleasing that that's just under 10% up to GBP 48.8 million. So on the next slide, there's underlying profitability in each division, Software and data up just over 14% to just over GBP 50 million. And you can see that the proportion from organic and acquisition sales has also grown up just under 10% to GBP 14.8 million and a modest reduction in central PLC costs as a part of that ongoing cost focus that we have. So an important part of the change to the 2 divisional structures, and it's off the back of significant investment that you saw in prior years on new group-wide ERP systems, CRM systems means that we can report the operating segments at an EBITDA level. So previously, we can only report a gross profit level and we had a significantly larger unallocated central costs bucket. So that way we can segregate the true central and PLC running costs from the embedded costs required to run both operating segments independently and separately. So you get a good feel for what the underlying profitability is of each. So you can see central costs were GBP 4.2 million. And again, that was largely PLC board costs, brokers, financial PR, listing fees, audit insurance and 10 people that have truly central roles. So basically, all of our costs in the business are allocated to either operating segment. So again, good cost control during the year. So on the next slide, we bring that together in the 2 segmental P&Ls. You can see the income statements for both the segments. We disaggregate the revenue here into organic and inorganic, so you can track the performance of the segments on a like-for-like basis and see the relative contribution. You can see the EBITDA margin improvement in software and data up to 41.3%. And in services, the margins remained mainly flat at 30.3%. So again, a good performance by both segments. And then on the next slide, so go beyond the income statement, you see adjusted EPS grew circa 4% to 13.7p, and you'll see that our dividend reflects that similar growth in EPS in terms of shareholder return. Cash conversion is strong at 102%. And our net debt position, you'll recall, we've been in a significant investment phase for the last 3 years turned the corner and decreased slightly from the half year position. Again, I'll stress that's after 9 acquisitions, 2 further minority investments into strategically important businesses and all of our own infrastructure to give us all that new reporting power. And we've got a net debt-EBITDA ratio of 1.2x, which the board is entirely comfortable with. And on the next slide, just expand out how that leverage has progressed over time. So you can see in FY '19 when the business acquired Defaqto, it took out a mixture of debt and equity to fund the acquisition and it strategically set about paying down the debt and improving synergies in that business, and we accomplished that very well and ended up our gross cash position in FY '22. And then we again in terms of the programmatic M&A, and you'll see that, that leverage has peaked at 1.2x, and we'll start to delever absent any other acquisition activity. Also important to note that in July this year in '25, so we increased our revolving credit facility from GBP 80 million to GBP 120 million. That's part of our planned refinancing. We wanted to bring an extra Bank into the club and give us additional flexibility. And we also managed to negotiate a 20 basis points reduction on the margin in 3 months. So that's a great refinancing for us. So on the next slide, like to sort of present a sources and uses view of cash generation. And so you can see, as we continue to invest, we'll give you greater clarity of how that investment is being made. So we start on the left with GBP 6.3 million of cash, generated GBP 26.6 million from operations in the period, and we drew GBP 17.5 million of the debt facility. That gave us a gross cash resource of just over GBP 50 million in the period to deploy. So we invested the majority of that into the business, acquisitions, internal software development. We returned GBP 3.9 million to shareholders by way of dividend, the GBP 6.8 million tax, leasing costs and debt service costs, and we ended the year with a closing cash balance of GBP 17.3 million. And you'll recall, we used that shortly after the year-end to fund the purchase of Pearson Ham in the middle of January. So next slide, we can look at cash conversion. And again, you can see the operating cash conversion at 102%. So the key driver of that was a normalized inflow from working capital in the year. Again, I would stress that 2025 is a year of internal realignment, integration, et cetera. So we worked hard on the internals of the business all year. We've also with the deployment of Matrix 360 at the start of FY '25, seen a modest reduction in Dev Ex investment. So that's GBP 4.5 million in the period, down from GBP 5.7 million in the prior year. Normalized cash conversion should sit between 90% and 100%, and we're pleased with the operating cash performance of the business in '25. So on the next slide, again, being so acquisitive with the programmatic M&A stream, we show what the value accretive nature of any acquisitions that we've made. So you can see two elements to inorganic RSMR software and data. So a net initial cash consideration of GBP 5.1 million. We fund GBP 1.1 million of EBITDA in the year. So that's a 4.5x multiple clearly accretive in our view. And in the service side, 360. The full year effect was GBP 1.4 million, and that was a net consideration of GBP 11.9 million. So not only given us significant reach into larger IFA firms to deploy further cross-sell and upsell, we did an EBITDA multiple of 8.3x. So hopefully, you can see both those acquisitions have been value accretive in that regard. Then on the next slide, from a capital allocation standpoint, basically, we continue to invest for organic growth. We moved to a highly targeted M&A now that the programmatic acquisitions are substantively complete, improved the balance sheet flexibility with increased facility and maintain our progressive dividend policy, as I say, growing in line with EPS growth and an ability to carry out targeted buybacks should the circumstances be with the resolutions that we put in at the AGM in May 2025. So in summary for me before handing back to Matt, again, continue to invest in service offering. We get the benefit of strong cash generation from a highly recurring business model. And then there's that 4% growth in the full year dividend to 3.8p in line with the policy. And with that, I'll hand back to Matt for summary and outlook.

Thank you very much, David. And in terms of the summary, we have delivered a strong performance in 2025, realigning the business to two distinct divisions, giving us clarity in our strategy going forward. We've completed the integration of those nine acquisitions, and we are now operating at significant scale with a huge customer base across both our Services and Software and Data divisions. We have multiple technology solutions within the business with thousands of clients. We have established and powerful brands within the sector, including Defaqto, VouchedFor, Simplybiz, 360. Those businesses have long customer tenure with the average tenure of our intermediary firms being over 9 years. And we've invested into the technology solutions and the platform to set us up for the future. The business operates on high levels of recurring income with really strong cash generation, operating at a 30% plus EBITDA margin. Going forward, we have a focused and clear growth strategy, and we believe we are well positioned to accelerate organic growth in the business from 2026 and beyond.