Hansen Technologies Limited (HSN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is David Trude, and as Chairman, I welcome you to the 22nd [Audio Gap] This is the second year AGM has been held virtually, and we are very pleased with everyone participating online through our virtual meeting platform provided by our share register, Link Market Services. We -- if we experience any technical issues today, a short recess or an adjournment may be required depending on the number of shareholders being affected. If this occurs, I shall advise you accordingly. Voting on resolutions is open and will remain so until 5 minutes after the end of the meeting. If anyone has questions through my or the CEO's presentation, please submit them, and we will answer them at the end of the AGM. Now for the formalities of the meeting. The Notice of Meeting has been duly given and the meeting has been properly convened. We will turn to resolutions later in the meeting, but please note that only shareholders, proxy holders and shareholder company representatives may vote. I note there is a quorum present and now declare the meeting open. Slide 3, Board of Directors and the Company Secretary. I'd like to introduce my colleagues joining me at this AGM: Mr. Andrew Hansen, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer; and our other Non-Executive Directors, Bruce Adams, who's Deputy Chairman; David Osborne; Jennifer Douglas; David Howell; and Don Rankin. I'd also like to introduce our Company Secretary, Julia Chand; as well as representatives of our auditors, RSM Australia Partners. Slide 4. Today's meeting will comprise 3 components. I will begin with some high-level commentary on Hansen's financial year 2021 performance. Our CEO, Andrew Hansen, will then go through some -- in some greater detail the year's highlights in the context of the longer term as well as talk to current trading and the company outlook. Once we have completed the presentations, we will move on to consider the formal business set out in the Notice of Meeting. Voting on the resolutions will be conducted by way of poll. Shareholders attending the meeting online will be able to cast their vote using the electronic voting card received when online registration is validated. As previously advised, voting on resolutions is open and will remain so until 5 minutes after the end of the meeting. Please refer to the virtual meeting online portal guide and use help lines specified. [Operator Instructions] I encourage shareholders who have questions to submit their questions via the online platform now or as soon as possible. Questions via the phone will be dealt with once questions welcome -- are welcome on the items of business. Shareholders' questions that are specific to a resolution will be responded to as the applicable resolution is introduced. General business questions received either prior to the meeting or during the meeting will be responded to at the end of the meeting. Slide 5. To start with, let me provide you with a high-level overview of financial year '21 and how it sets us up for the future. Financially, the financial '21 year was another record year across all key financial metrics, exceeding guidance and showing the strength of our business model in the new COVID normal environment. On a reported basis, revenue was up 2.1%, driven by new customer wins and successful project upgrades with existing customers. Underlying EBITDA was up 40.3% due in part to the recognition of the Telefónica contract and efficiencies from our Indian and Vietnam development centers. Similar to last year, Hansen received immaterial government rent or other support related to the pandemic. Net profit after tax was up 55.9% due to the continued Hansenization of Sigma as well as other cost-saving initiatives. EPSa was up 54.9%, driven in part by the use of debt to lower the cost of capital with group margin expansion driving significant EPSa upside. Hansen's profit performance was underpinned by strong cash conversion with free cash flow up 58.6% for the year. The Board's confidence in Hansen to generate cash consistently has translated to a decision to pay a final dividend of $0.05 per share, an increase of 25% on the prior year. Combined with the interim dividend of $0.05 per share, the total distribution for the year was $0.10 per share. As Andrew will talk later, Hansen will continue to focus on profitability and operational leverage, particularly as the business continues to grow in addition to identifying potential M&A opportunities that meet the company's key selection criteria. Slide 6. Hansen's strong cash flow for the year have led to a reduction in net debt by $49.9 million to $66.6 million. Our leverage now stands at 0.55x, down from 1.46x for the year ended the 30th of June 2020, providing significant headroom for future aggregations. I've previously mentioned the Board have paid a final dividend of $0.05 per share for financial year 2021. The level of dividend is at the discretion of the Board, subject to available cash and activity being undertaken at the time. Having reviewed the company's cash balances and activities for the year, the Board have maintained their target of $0.05 base final dividend on an ongoing basis. This strategy demonstrates the confidence the Board has in our cash generation while still allowing for significant investment and the potential to fund growth through acquisitions. I attribute the group's success in the unique conditions we are experiencing to our strategy, which has been executed consistently by our leadership teams around the world. Hansen's business strategy is fit for purpose and all encompassing. On behalf of the Board, I sincerely thank all our people around the world for their commitment, adaptability and determination to bring projects in on time and on budget and so in achieving excellent results for the financial year '21. Before concluding my address and hand over the presentation to our CEO, Andrew Hansen, I would like to thank each of our shareholders for their continued loyalty and support. There is much to look forward to at Hansen as we continue to grow the company in the years ahead. I would also like to thank my fellow directors and the entire Hansen team for their continued passion and commitment to building a strong and sustainable business that delivers long-term value to our shareholders. I will now hand over to our CEO, Andrew Hansen, who will present the year's highlights in the context of the longer-term strategy. Thank you, Andrew.

Thank you, David, and may I also extend a welcome to everyone that joined in the AGM today, certainly, our shareholders, other interested parties; but also staff, which are largely shareholders in the company but also interested in how our business is going. I suppose we'd need to start off that this is our 50th year as a business, and I wonder how many companies get to talk about having a business going since 1971. So a great testament to not only the longevity of this business but the fact that we've kept on renewing ourselves as we go forward. So up until now, David has quite probably held the good slides to talk about. So I will do my best to race through to the last slide, which everyone wants a bit of an outlook statement to get to, but let me just point out some things of how we've gone. There's no doubt, on Slide 8, you'll see that our revenue was a record. Very, very proud to the top of that revenue. I think as has been discussed a couple of times now, I think one of the things about Hansen, the diversification, 600 customers, 80 countries, multiple verticals, et cetera, has been the saving grace of this business. We went into COVID with all a great deal of uncertainty only to find that the fundamentals of our business, the reasons we actually structured our business that way, have actually played out to our hands. A great year. You'll hear the word Telefónica used a few times because it's a bit of an outliner into the way we normally run our business, and it did actually give a big uptick in both profitability and earnings per share, which I'll touch on, but we enjoy an 8% organic growth revenue. Telefónica did contribute $21 million, and I know that's been discussed before where they chose to want to pay the license fees upfront, and we had to actually recognize that, and our revenues across all those customers, et cetera, is actually derived from IP, which the company owns itself. So that 97% of the revenues from Hansen are derived from applications which we own. The other pleasing thing was the EBITDA. I think that the EBITDA where we got to and from the $128 million really came from, I think, the Telefónica contract, but when you even take that aside and you take those dollars out of it, it's the underlying part of our business, which is probably at the top end of our long-term forecast where we've come from, and some of it has come from the efficiencies in our business, another way which we run our business; margin improvement across some of our development centers in some of the lower -- the lesser-cost areas, et cetera, and we're proud to do it; and things like travel, which have not really come back into the business, and here we are sitting doing this on a Zoom meeting like most of us now are having meetings on Zoom, Teams, et cetera. I've got the other directors here, in this case, the new way going forward. We've got our Chairman sitting up in sunny Queensland who, during our lockdown here in Melbourne, frequently told me what restaurants he was going after and what [ bar ] and asking the same question, "Where are you going tonight, Andrew?" So I have to choose between the study or the living room to my own, but thank you for that, David. Underlying NPAT. I think we talked at Hansenisation. The Sigma acquisition is fully integrated to the Hansen business. It's the same business now, and that certainly led to some efficiencies across the business, which, once again, underlying to the NPAT as it did the EBITDA as we're going forward. Next slide. Certainly, earnings per share, once again, the EPS driven by Telefónica beyond, but we did find that the margin expansion in our business was something which we did focus very much on at the very start of this as we went through COVID, and as much as we'd all like to relax, we're seeing what's happening in Europe at the moment now, what's happening in places like Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany going to lockdowns. It's not ready to unlock the old ways of doing business. We have adjusted the way we do our business. As I've pointed out in the past, we've been running projects. We've been doing demonstrations, contract negotiation, even closing the deal or remote, and we do think some of this behavior will be long term and changes into the business, and we're adopting those as much as possible as we review in our organization things like staffing, but we're only allowing maybe for 60% of our staff to come back to the office. We're very open-minded around where people can actually work from home or work from another location, et cetera. So we would like to think we're well paved for the future. David touched on net debt. I'm not sure what other companies have a track record as Hansen does on paying down debt as quickly as what we've done. I think our capital management has probably been at the forefront of the way Hansen runs its business. We have cash. We have bank debt. We also have script to go and play with. But the fact that we've done so well, and there's a number of shareholders, I'm sure, which have been over the journey with us, have actually seen the growth in our business at 21% CAGR, which is growing on the back of good business principles but also capital management. Paying down debt to Hansen has always been a very important part of our business. So it sets us up for what could be that next acquisition. And outside of that, as David alluded to, we will be paying dividends. If we've got no use of the money, it is your money, and we should be paying it back to our shareholders. Hence, this year, we did increase our dividend up to $0.10 for the year. Next slide. Without driving back into too much detail for this call, I think it's a testament, once again, to the team. If we just look significantly at the new wins, which we've got there on Slide 10, we got Telefónica and [ Vision ], Western Power, et cetera, as we've gone forward have just been great to be winning deals like that, but just the embracement of our technology which we're actually meeting the market with. I think our development centers, on top of that, to be able to have a diversified team globally adding to that software. So we are a true global team, and bringing people on board has been one of the mainstays, notwithstanding that Hansen's mind, there's a lot of technical jive and sometimes spoken about, but all of our software is normally offered to our customers on premises, which means where they run it on their own location. It can be provided as a SaaS solution. It could be in a cloud solution or as a SaaS offering because there's no one size fits all, and Hansen has an absolute open mind to doing that. We are investing more now with the global way we are making sales on a global team and focus on our Head of Sales, which is new to the organization, and also the M&A team, once again, is finding opportunities. We're not going to be silly guys. We've always said, "Eat what we kill," and that we're very, very focused on buying acquisition business because the long-term contribution to this business and our customers is our absolute focus. Profitability and cash flow. We do believe that our -- the EBITDA long-term margins now, I've sat here for 20 years talking about a 25% to 30% goal where now we're saying it's 30% to 35%, and we're now delivering upon that at the moment now, and we do think some of the decisions we've made in our business, and that means like financial systems, HR systems, delivering systems are all part of what Hansen is trying to do to actually optimize our business going forward. Hence, we're confident in making those comments about long-term margin of our business. So we do actually see, whilst we're still, I think, in a pandemic, we still have COVID issues tricking us, Hansen is stepping up to a new norm going forward at the moment now, which is an adoption of probably pre-COVID and during COVID as we come out of this at the moment now. So once again, we do ask all of our staff please to stay safe as much as possible. On Slide 11. Look, we've spent a significant amount of time talking in the past and those which have attended, our CTO, Guy Tennant, on the Capital Markets Day, we've spent a lot of time drilling down to the drivers of the industry, the digital transformation, but from our point of view, it's all about having products, getting products to market, which are actually at the right time where our customers need them. We do know there's a lot more focus now on bundling. We know there's a lot more how our own customers wish to deal with their customers about retention is just fundamentally important to them as well; and also lack of disruption to their business, which is all about around cloud and cloud native, which just means we don't have to have great, big episodes of monolithic software, which needs to be changed in and out. It's a more modular approach. So the view is that our customers can take fresher modules from us without having to do a massive reconfiguration of their applications. So we think we're really uniquely positioned on what is that digital transformation as we see is happening in the global markets at the moment now, and I'll touch on that a little bit towards the end. Look, our strategic customer momentum, which is on Slide 12, is really rather than going through the names there, but it's -- once again, I use the word testament. The Telefónica is our customers which are buying because they run a cloud-native journey or they wish to go modular or whether it's a service enablement or just the changing ways that power is consumed. We've got the answers for our customers. Our customers aren't looking to leave us. They're looking to stay with us, and we work very, very hard to make sure that the R&D money, which Hansen constantly spends, is going to get a return on that investment. We're not here to develop software, which does not see the light of day. We spend a lot of time in making sure, in consultation with our customers, that what we are developing is what people have an expectation to help suit their business. If we go to Slide 13, the guidance slide. Look, we'd like to start off by I want to reaffirm what is our long-term guidance. The biggest issue Hansen's facing at the moment now, and I'm happy to talk about it because this information could be found, I currently have close to 200 open positions at Hansen at the moment now. We have open positions because we have additional work. We have a natural churn in our business, et cetera. But the issue I have at the moment now, we have those 200. 100 of those were able to join the company. Those 100 people all have work to go to straight away. We've got pent-up demand with all of our customers and new sales. It is the biggest issue Hansen is actually facing, but it's just not Hansen. You heard Gerry Harvey yesterday. You hear every other business talking at the moment now. It doesn't matter whether you're hiring staff in a cafe, taxi delivery drivers, et cetera. The IT industry is not immune from it at the moment now, and that's global labor shortage is something which has caught us a little bit by surprise. It's not necessarily the cost of labor, which is an issue for Hansen. It's just the availability of labor. We've had an enormous amount of success. Unfortunately, from time to time, some of our staff are tapped on the shoulder. People are trying to understand the success of Hansen, and for that reason, some of our staff are taken and leaving Hansen, and we always wish them well, but they actually take some of Hansen's know-how, which people are trying to find out a bit. So what are we trying to do to counter this, which is I think is the biggest issue which I deal at the moment now? Never before have I had such great demand with limited amount of supply. So we're increasing the size of our recruitment team. We're now appointing a head of just recruitment, HR, like most organizations, concentrates on the hygiene matters with HR management, also recruitment, but we're now going to be having people focused specifically on recruitment. A lot of time has now been spent on our training programs. You hear the words speed to competency, but the quicker we can have someone join Hansen and join the team and be productive to us makes money for us going forward. New labor centers, we're looking to expand some of our labor centers. As you know, we have development centers all around the world, but we are now looking at places in South America where we already started to expand, expanding in Vietnam, India and also in nearshore into Europe. So as far as we're concerned, we think we've got the right answers. It's taken us all a little bit by surprise. There's lots of press about this, the resignation from one of the names people actually call it. We are feeling it. We're running about 1,500 staff around the world now, but as I said, we've got work for 1,600 people as we speak. So notwithstanding our labor shortage and the deals we'd love to close, we are still expecting this year's revenue to be marginally improved over the financial year '21, excluding, naturally enough, the Telefónica since that was just -- all those revenues were paid up. The other things going forward is certainly our technology outlook. We will continue to develop our products. We are seeing what is interesting, just the greater adoption of our technology. I'm not drilling down to too much detail because I've answered these things before, but we seem to be at the right time in the right place. We deal predominantly with Tier 1 and Tier 2 customers around the world. They're looking to retain their customers. They're looking to have new products, looking at new bundling, whole digitization, and that's where Hansen is actually focusing. We've been around for such a long time, but you just have to see 100% of all the new customers which we have won all are installing our very latest versions of software, meaning that they could actually be conservative and go a version behind, but there's so much faith in what we're doing at the moment. Now they want the very latest of our technology. And just another interesting note I've actually put up there. I was actually just having a discussion with our President of APAC yesterday. I quickly added this point here that out of 55% of customers who renewed in this last 12 months, all of them elected to renew and take up the latest version of software. So that, too, was not about being conservative using the software, which actually serves them, but they are wanting the latest parts of our technology. Another interesting note, and then 67% of those took our software either SaaS or cloud. So I give you some indication of just how modern and fresh our software is and why we're not losing customers and continue to maintain a long-term average of less than 3% of our customers are actually churning from us, and I'm not sure many companies can actually hold their hand up and make those sort of comments. On that basis -- so I come back and reiterate the point I did at the very start of this, but we remain very confident in our forecast of financial year '25 of having $500 million of revenue delivered by a combination of organic growth and inorganic growth via acquisitions as well with our margins staying above exceeding 30%. So on that note, before I hand it back to the Chairman, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Hansen management team and each of the staff members around the world. It's been an outstanding contribution and commitment to this year, and I thank them dearly. I also have to thank our clients, not only for their loyalty and staying with us, but also taking their faith and trust in coming with us on their journey going forward at the moment now and also to our shareholders. Normally, we're doing this face-to-face. I see familiar faces which have been there for a decade or so. Once again, my thanks go to you for staying on the journey with Hansen or joining the journey with Hansen. This is a long-term, very successful business, and we welcome you to stay on the journey with us. This does conclude my presentation. I know any questions which will be answered at the end of the meeting. If there are any, I'll look forward to answering those, if I can. I'll now hand those back to -- hand the meeting back to the Chairman. Thank you, David.

Thank you, Andrew. Ladies and gentlemen, we now come to the formal part of the business, matters requiring resolution, which are outlined in the notice of meeting. The resolutions for consideration today may only be voted on by shareholders, proxy holders, sorry, and shareholder company representatives. The shareholders online through the virtual meeting website can ask questions via text on each matter being put to shareholders. Those joining via the phone may also ask questions verbally. Slide 16, accounts and reports. I wish to start by tabling the 2021 annual report containing the directors' report, the financial report, company declaration and independent auditor's report. Copies of the 2021 annual report were either distributed by post or made available online to shareholders. So for the purposes of today's meeting, I intend to assume shareholders have had sufficient opportunity to review and consider the contents of the annual report. As previously commented, representatives of our company's auditors, RSM Australia Partners, are present and available to answer questions. Are there any comments or questions regarding the various reports and financial statements contained within the 2021 annual report?

Thanks, David. No questions received.

Thanks, Julia. That is our beautiful Company Secretary, Julia, that's putting all the questions together. Now moving on to the resolutions. Votes can be submitted throughout the meeting and for 5 minutes after the close of the meeting, and I intended to vote the open votes given to me as Chairman of the meeting in favor of all resolutions. The results will be announced to the ASX after the conclusion of the meeting. I would now like to deal with the formal resolutions contained in the Notice of Meeting. Slide 16, Resolution 1, adoption of directors' remuneration report. The first resolution relates to the adoption of the remunerations report. At this time, I wish to advise that all directors and the executives named in the remuneration report as well as any personal party associated with any of them are excluded from voting on this resolution in respect of shares they own or control. The resolution for consideration as a nonbinding resolution is as follows. In accordance with the requirements of the Corporations Act, adopt the remuneration report for the year ended the 30th of June 2021 as it appears in the directors' report within the annual report 2021. Are there any questions regarding the renumeration report via the online platform? Julia?

Thanks, David. No questions received in relation to the remuneration report.

If there are no more questions via the online platform, I may ask the moderator if there are any questions via the phone.

We have no questions via the phone.

Thank you. You can see on screen the proxy position for the resolution prior to today's meeting. Thank you. I will now move to the remaining resolutions, each of which is an ordinary resolution requiring a 50% vote in favor to be successful. Slide 17, reelection of David Osborne. We shall now consider Resolution 2, that Mr. David Osborne, a director retiring by rotation in accordance with the company's constitution and, being eligible and having signified his candidature for office, be and hereby elected a director of the company. Are there any questions relating to this Resolution 2 via the online platform, Julia?

Thanks, David. We received no questions in relation to David's reelection.

Thank you. If there are no more questions via the online platform, I will now ask the moderator if there are any questions via the phone.

There are no questions via the phone.

Thank you. You can now see on the screen the proxy position of -- for the resolution prior to today's meeting. Thank you. We move on to Slide 18, Resolution 3, the grant of performance rights to the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director for the financial year ended 30th of June 2021-- sorry, 2022. Moving to Resolution 3 that for the purposes of listing Rule 10.14 and for all other purposes, shareholders approve the grant of 11 -- sorry, 111,785 performance rights to Mr. Andrew Hansen under the Hansen Technologies Employee Performance Rights Plan on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory notes. I move to pass the resolution to approve the grant of performance rights to Mr. Hansen. Are there any questions regarding this Resolution 3 via the online platform, Julia?

Thanks, David. No questions received in relation to this resolution.

Thank you. If there are no more questions via the online platform, I'll ask the moderator if there are any questions via the phone.

There are no questions via the phone.

Thank you. You can see on the screen the proxy position for the resolution prior to today's meeting. Slide 19, Resolution 4, nonexecutive directors' remuneration. Moving on to Resolution 4, that for the purposes of Listing Rule 10.17, the maximum aggregate amount of remuneration to be paid to all nonexecutive directors in any financial year be increased from $630,000 to $750,000 per annum. I will move to pass this resolution to approve the increased aggregate amount of remuneration to be paid to all nonexecutive directors. Are there any questions regarding this Resolution 4 via the online platform, Julia?

Thanks, David. We have received no questions in relation to this resolution.

Thank you. If there are no more questions via the online platform, I now ask the moderator if there are any questions via the phone.

There are no questions via the phone.

Thank you. You can see on the screen the proxy position for the resolution prior to today's meeting. Thank you. Shareholders are reminded they can submit their vote online until 5 minutes after the meeting closes. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the formal business of the meeting. We'll turn to any questions posed during the meeting. Julia?

David, there has been a couple of questions asked. I should probably best paraphrase. It was just any further update of what happened with BGH. So look, I know we've actually addressed this a couple of times. So all I can say is let me go back to reiterate from what we know. To the best of our knowledge, BGH had completed their due diligence or thereabouts. We were not privy to their financing, their financial modeling, et cetera, which took place, but they just elected not to pursue the matter any further. It all ended friendly. There was not a large amount of time Hansen -- it was a bit of management time. So you'd be assured the company didn't spend a lot of money on the process. I'm sure BGH didn't. It was an interesting experience, but we also know there was no -- nothing was ever pointed out to me or any of the executive team of any issues they found inside the organization. So I really can't provide any more information than what we've given to the market so far, but as said, if someone knocks on the door with a 20% premium, of course, the Board and the independent Board would have to consider that in the interest of all shareholders, and if it was to happen again, we're all probably a little bit smarter for the next way around the place, but as I said, there was no great ill feelings towards the end. If it wasn't right for them, we just kept on going. So we did not want it to disrupt our business too much at all, and I think that really answers the couple of questions which have been lodged a couple of days ago in regarding BGH. Julia, is there any other questions being lodged?

No. We've received no further questions during the meeting.

Thanks, Julia. If there's no more questions via the online platform, I'll ask the moderator if there's any questions via the phone.

We have no questions on the phone at this time.

Thank you for that. If there are no more questions, we'll turn to the closing of the meeting. On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank you for your support, and I now declare the meeting closed. The results of the poll will be announced to the ASX later today. Thank you all for your attendance and participation in this meeting.