Hansen Technologies Limited (HSN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Hansen Technologies Limited HY'25 Results Briefing. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Andrew Hansen, MD and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome everyone to the first half of 2025 results presentation. I am joined here with Richard English, our CFO and we will look to answer and address the results forthwith. Just a bit of housekeeping. If we have any technical issues today, look, we will just take a short break and we will kick things off again. So we have a bit of a busy agenda today, so we will move through as quickly as possible so we can get to some calls at the end of the session. Always just a little bit of an overview of Hansen. I am looking a lot of people on the call have followed Hansen for some time. But I think it's just before we go over some of the financials with Richard, Hansen, we are a global provider of award-winning software, and we service the energy, water, and communications industry. We have our software operating in over 80 countries around the world and we basically manage revenue and customer support. So from the grabbing of the customer, the products they buy to the billing and the rating of those customers. Our communications software, which we will talk a little bit about today with our recent announcement, is probably in many of the top CSPs, which is communication service providers. We also our revenue, which we are pretty proud about since 2008 has been growing at CAGR of 15%. Low customer churn, most of our customers 10 years and which really adds -- and to see this result when we start talking about just continue to add new customers to Hansen's mix is what it's all about, but also some of the work we're doing with existing customers about extending those licenses because our refreshing of our software, which is probably a testament wouldn't be Richard to the R&D work we do is relevant. And also on other matters, this is now our fourth year in a row to be certified carbon neutral in Australia. So well done for all those people involved in achieving that certification. Operational highlights of the business, just to quickly touch on. Look, it's been a very busy 6 months at Hansen, and on Page 5, you'll see what the highlights. And clearly, the announcement we made just recently with the $50 million deal with Virgin O2. Look at a deal -- in fact, we've actually got Scott Weir, our President, which I might come to you, Scott, in a moment now just to talk a little bit about that deal. So I won't steal all your thunder, I will give you something to talk about. Also, Intelius, a Norwegian customer there going with us into the Danish market, which is expanding in the Denmark market for us. We're very keen about to go beyond the communications sector is fantastic. But then a bit of a client like the City of Kingston, been a customer with us for 26 years and an upgrade to our latest technology, just going to show that we try and never give a reason for any of our customers to have to leave us that we are providing the future for them. We have also made a small investment in an AI tool, which is part of our AI thesis, which we will go a little bit today and I've actually got Niv Fernando, who helped do that transaction. So I will invite Niv to talk a little bit about what we're actually doing with that one as well. And the topic and hopefully, probably last time we specifically talked about it would be Powercloud. Look, we have removed a significant amount of the cost, focusing it back just into the German marketplace, focusing our attention specifically on that software, and now getting the company to a profitable cash flow generative way forward. So very, very proud from the operational highlights in the first 6 months. Moving to Slide 7, a 6.1% increase in operating revenue. Most of the time, Hansen is fairly even between the 2 halves. But this year, there is a bit of a jump between the 2, a little bit to do with the timing, which Scott will talk about, but also just going through what is the licenses, the way they actually are falling at the moment, but it's actually normalized. And so I think that the second half will be significantly stronger with license fees, et cetera, but also allow us to recommit to the forecast we have put into the marketplace. Cash flow impacts building up of working capital is starting to unwind just the nature of our business. We have certainly funded the Powercloud turnaround and investing into Dial AI. But on that basis, we really want to reflect upon our optimism and maintain our dividend forecast of $0.05. But before I hand over to Richard, I might just hand over to yourself, Scott, and you might just like to outline the new deal we have done with Virgin, please.

Thanks, Andrew. Look, I think one of the things we have seen from our communications companies globally is the increase to upgrade some of their legacy systems. I think the advanced systems we deliver helps them improve the speed to market and really lower their cost to serve and reduce some of the complexity in their systems landscape. I think it's a testament to our catalog CPQ, order management, and provisioning products that they are best-in-class and they are seen as a destination for some of the communications customers we serve. Look, the recent win with VMO2 is a further demonstration of how well our capability is received. And I think it certainly gives us confidence in the number of people that we are seeing now with trying to replicate a similar strategy. Look, our pipeline includes several midsized and large-sized multiyear-type deals that we are working through. But not all deals at the same scale and size as VMO2 or Telefonica. But I think the TCV varies by structure and scope and strategy of what we deliver to our customers. So look, that's a bit of a brief pot of history. Richard, over to you.

Thanks, Scott, and thanks everybody, for joining the call. Look, there's a bit to get through. I can appreciate the numbers would be a little confusing to some based on the half-on-half SKU. So just bear with me as I walk you through the results. But operating revenue, $178 million for the first half versus $167.7 million last year. So obviously, that's growth of 6.1%. But for those that follow Hansen, you would be aware that we did not own Powercloud at the same time last year. So the core business for the first half is actually down 14.8% but it's important that everybody understands that there are a combination of license fee renewals in the second half, which Andrew just talked through, but also significant upgrades and implementations that we have locked in now for the second half of the year. The implied second-half growth versus the first-half is now 23% to 25%. So it's important we don't look at this in isolation on just the first half. Andrew will talk to the guidance shortly, but we are still reaffirming our guidance of 5% to 7%. So despite being down in the first half, we only look at our business on a full-year basis. We budget full year. We don't look at half-on-half comparison as much as the market or the analysts do. We appreciate why they do it, but we look at the full year and we are on track for that. I think it's important to also mention that despite landing the VMO2 license, there was some feedback around our revenue target for the full year in our guidance. We have had some significant projects for large municipalities and Tier 1 customers slipping a touch. Some of them were supposed to kick off in the first half. They are now starting in the second half and some of them are actually delaying somewhat into FY26. So the momentum is there for FY26, which is great, but we're also reaffirming guidance for FY25. So despite some slippages in some large customer implementations and upgrades, including some new logos, we're still on track. I think when you look at the second half, we have got an indicative guidance bar there. You can see the red dotted bar. It's shaping up to be a record half for Hansen, well and truly in excess of $200 million. So we are confident for our full-year results. And in terms of FX, I have heard some feedback from shareholders and analysts that there will be some tailwinds. The reality is there's actually no tailwinds in the first half. The Aussie dollar has actually strengthened in the first 4 months of the year versus the Euro, the US dollar, and the Canadian dollar. And the only currency that's weakened against -- or the only currency that strengthened against the Aussie is the Sterling. So despite the rates changing significantly in November and I think we all know why the first half there are some headwinds of approximately $500,000 in revenue. It's too early to stay on the full year. We think there might be some modest tailwinds, but who knows where things go based on events around the world and also locally with interest rates. Moving across to underlying EBITDA. Again, this is a tale of 2 halves. You see the $38.1 million versus the $52.1 million last year. However, we're still guiding to our number of $92 million to $101 million, which implies that our second half is significantly stronger around the $55 million to $60 million mark. I think there will be some comfort in seeing our January year-to-date numbers, which are particularly strong off the back of obviously signing the VMO2 deal that Scott just talked about. But we also have significant services revenue that's unlocked in January and some other existing client renewals that have come through. So our January year-to-date number is particularly strong and therefore, we hope that provides some comfort for the full year. Not in the underlying EBITDA number, but worth noting is a final round of restructuring costs for Powercloud. We incurred $6.5 million for a second round of restructuring, we've taken the business from circa 400 staff down to 140. Andrew just mentioned then that the business is now cash-generative. So we are proud that we've managed to turn that business around in 12 months. So those normalization costs have been booked through the P&L, but you'll see them as separately disclosed items in the accounts and also in this chart here. Moving down to cash EBITDA, which is really a replication of underlying EBITDA aside from R&D. We strip out the R&D and look at the actual cash P&L impacts. We did have 5% or $9 million invested in R&D in the first half. We take it seriously. A lot of companies expense or capitalize all of their R&D. We have pretty high stringent hurdles to what we capitalize versus what we expense. And I can assure you, we've expensed many, many millions through the P&L via a combination of not capitalizing and also client-funded work. So the investment continues. We do talk later to our investment in Powercloud and the retail platform, the RCS platform, which has some significant new releases coming out later this calendar year. Finally, to underlying NPATA, and I think the key highlight here is around tax. So obviously, it's down half-on-half because of the reasons I just explained, but the effective tax rate is 98% for the first half versus our historical rates of circa 24% to 26%. The sole reason for this is Powercloud, where we have not recognized any tax losses since the acquisition. There are some complexities in Germany. We feel we're in a good position to assess those tax losses and potentially review that position at year-end. But at the half, we have not recognized any tax losses, and as a result, the effective tax rate is an elevated 98%. I think the go-forward rate would be around 24% to 26% as we've previously booked in prior years. Moving on to the next slide around diversification. Andrew and I talk a lot about not having all of our eggs in one basket. It does sound like a broken record, but it works. For many years now, we've had this strategy of diversifying across regions, countries, products, currencies, jurisdictions. You can see here one of our key areas that we talk to is our customer diversity. And customer #1, which represents 8% of our revenue, has been with us for a very long time. I've just been told that we were again awarded the #1 vendor scorecard approach from procurement, which is great that we are seen as such a true partner. And I think what it really highlights is that there is no real soft underbelly in the business. We are diversified and derisked across many, many different regions. Top right-hand corner, revenue by vertical. So there's a couple of call-outs here. The one is clearly, there's growth of 6.1%, including Powercloud. I did talk to the business declining in the first half by 14.8%, obviously growing for the full year by 5% to 7%. And it's important to note that the energy business was up 15% last year, excluding Powercloud. And I think we often forget, we look at these in 12-month increments, but 15% growth last year was exceptional. We weren't expecting it this year. We're not going to get it this year, but we do have strong tailwinds heading into FY '26 as well. The second comment is around Asia Pacific. You can see the decline of 34.9%. That is primarily down to a very significant upgrade for a large customer that we've been working through over the last 2 years. We booked a lot of revenue in FY '24, and that is slowly progressing towards completion, therefore, not as much revenue in FY '25. Quickly to the bottom left-hand corner, support and application revenue. I personally review this and view this as basically ARR-type revenue, annual recurring revenue. It is predictable. It is locked in. We know about it 12 months in advance, very low churn, and we can basically predict over 90% of this revenue well and truly in advance. The only area that fluctuates from year to year and from month to month is around new logo implementations, which are not, of course, predictable in nature. But once the customer is on the platform, they then roll into our support and application revenue and become another part of what we would define as ARR in the software industry. License revenue, unfortunately, is not predictable, and that is primarily due to an accounting standard introduced 7 or 8 years ago. Despite some views in the market that we've changed our accounting methodology around this, we haven't. It's been the same for 8 years. It's been audited every year. We comply with IFRS standards. And in some cases, we do need to take revenue upfront for certain customers depending on a term license. And in the case of VMO2, which we just announced, there was a portion of that contract, the $50 million contract taken upfront as a term license, which will renew again at the end of the 5-year term. But unfortunately, it is the land that we live in where we need to take some revenue upfront. And unfortunately, we don't always take the cash upfront as well. So you can see there that the license revenue bounces from half to half. First half, $13.2 I can give some indication that the second half will be in excess of $25 million. So you can understand, therefore, that the second half profitability will be well advanced on the first half. Moving on to the next slide around revenue by vertical. I don't want to spend too much time other than to say that we are now reporting 2 segments to the market. You would have seen that in our half-year release. We now have David overseeing Energy and Utilities and Scott overseeing Communications and Media. They run them independently as 2 verticals reporting into Andrew and both doing a fantastic job and both actually experiencing some industry tailwinds. So we talk a lot about energy, and we know our competitors do, and it is a broadly understood thematic that there is an energy transition underway, but also in communications, there is a real need to refresh legacy systems. Scott touched on it earlier, and it's genuine. We've been saying for over 12 months that there will be another large deal coming our way and very pleased to announce the VMO2 deal just recently with a strong pipeline ahead of us. Finally, before I hand over to Andrew and Niv, just wanted to talk through cash flow. And I suspect there were a few surprises on the call today. I'll be honest, I thought there'd be some of the accrued revenue would unwind in December. It hasn't. It slipped into the second half of the year. There is nothing untoward here. We have very large customers. They are safe blue-chip Tier 1 customers. We're finalizing some milestones. There will be significant cash inflows in the second half of the year. And we expect that we'll start paying down debt very shortly in addition to another dividend, which we declared today of $0.05, which equates to more than $9 million again. On the right-hand side, you can see investments made in the first half. Obviously, the R&D of $9 million, the $9.4 million for the full year '24 dividend was paid out. Niv will talk shortly to a small investment we've made in AI, a company based in Vancouver, Canada. And pleasingly, the restructuring for Powercloud is largely complete. We funded that business to $13 million, of which $6.5 million was restructuring costs. So that business is now standing on its own 2 feet and is cash-generative. So all in all, I appreciate that the first half cash flow would be a surprise somewhat. However, rest assured that the second half will unwind, and we're expecting FY '26 to be heading toward a net cash-positive position. So all going well. I think if I was to wrap it up in a few key themes, it's not about the half for us, everybody. We're looking at the full year, and that's always been our focus. FY '25 remains on track to guidance. The underlying business remains solid. We have some revenue that has slipped into FY '26 despite that. We are holding our guidance for the full year. Cash generation, weaker in the first half, that will rebound in the second half. And then finally, like Andrew said, probably the last time we'll talk about it, the Powercloud is on track, and we're looking forward to seeing where that goes in FY '26 and beyond. So we've got some calls coming out with the analysts, and hopefully, we can answer some more questions. But for now, over to Andrew and Niv on M&A.

Richard, thank you. Here we are talking about Powercloud again. As you said, look, I think our commentary now, I'm pretty sure the market now understands our thesis around Powercloud was really entering the German marketplace and the opportunities which exist there. Look, we have a very experienced team of people, and we have significantly turned this business around, which is fantastic. Cash generative, new management now. We've now hired new local management for our German and regional management, which have now joined the organization, which is freeing up our integration team to move forward. I think that we've got other opportunities we see inside that business, but the remaining thesis is 2030 going to smart meters. It's a massive change to that industry over there. In fact, I was over in Germany last week, they call it eWorld, which is a very German-specific focused industry group, and all are talking about the changes which are happening there, and there are 1,000 retailers. So we're extremely happy with our entry in the German marketplace and continue to work how we can even capitalize even further with some other initiatives we've got at the moment now. We're certainly enhancing the product, which is part of what we're doing at the moment. There's a major big release coming in June, which is the focus of the whole industry. So at this stage now, Powercloud is now being integrated into the Hansen business. We've got a vertical that reports into. We had a trade show last week where multiple of our products being displayed there across the business. So very exciting times for Germany and the rest of our business. So that's a little bit on Powercloud. But Nick, if I don't mind, I might pass over to you. I think a little bit of commentary on Dial AI and what it means to us. So please, Niv Fernando, welcome.

Thanks, Andrew. For those following, we're on Page 15 of the presentation. As you can see from that, Hansen has made a strategic investment of CAD 2 million for a 30% stake in Dial AI. The company has developed an AI-powered virtual agent that's designed for call center optimization that has an initial focus on the energy and utility sector, but we do believe it can be leveraged across the communications sector fairly easily as well. The product integrates with back-end systems and importantly, includes Hansen's CIS and enables the management of hundreds of simultaneous interactions across various channels, including phone calls, SMS, web chat, and e-mail. It's interesting. By initially focusing on the core domain of energy and utilities, that's allowed Dial AI to train and optimize the performance of its virtual agent compared to some others that we see in the market. We think this is a game-changing AI solution that allows call centers to reallocate human agents to high-value interactions, which not only drives efficiency but importantly, improves performance and the quality of customer satisfaction. Look, it's still early days in terms of bringing this solution to our customers, but the investment does underscore Hansen's commitment to cutting-edge solutions. And we're pretty excited by the opportunities that collaboration with Dial AI will bring over the long term. Back to you, Andrew.

Yes. Thanks, Niv. And there's no doubt about it. It's a small investment, Niv, but as part of our overall thesis the last couple of years, moving our applications to AI and having these different modules, et cetera. That's not an area which we largely concentrate on, but we saw that as a module to our customer base was going to be exciting and also good for some collaboration between the development teams of some of this technology. So well done. We're very, very excited about the opportunities, which go forward. So just wrapping up now some of the guidance. There's no doubt we've got some good organic growth across the verticals. Certainly, the transition, which is happening across the energy market and the innovative solutions has been what we've been talking about, and that's just unwinding at the moment across that business. Great to see winning new customers and new licenses across our technology across the communications sector, which, as I said earlier, we expense a lot, but we capitalize a lot of our R&D, but to see it come to fruition and see it being used by people validates the decisions we make. Certainly, the turnaround of Powercloud, I've mentioned again, that's about the fourth time I can't help myself. I'll have to have a new name in the next 6 months. We'll do our best to do that for everyone. The German marketplace is very excited about being there other than their trains don't always run on time. Certainly, AI is becoming an integral part of the Hansen business. It's transforming the way we're looking at R&D, our customer interactions, and early days talking to our customers about how it improves their business. Hansen -- I will come back to the Dial AI business in that. M&A focus, look, that's a long-winded conversation, but Hansen has always proven we've always bought very well. We are patient, and we're very, very target-driven inside of our business. So in wrapping up, guys, we are very confident in achieving our '25 guidance for the year. We certainly anticipate and it is, hence, I think, Richard, just we're talking about January alone is new logo implementations in the second half, unwinding the Virgin Media, which could have dropped like we probably thought in November or December, which is purely a timing issue. But as Richard said, we don't even think about the full year, to be brutally honest. We've worked long and hard with them to close it in December or close it in January or July or June. We're never going to compromise our business by trying to close something early for the business. It will come in its own right. Certainly, some tailwinds in the industry, the demand. FX is certainly going to be immaterial. But as Richard said, adding January into the mix, our year-to-date revenues would be at $230 million and EBITDA at $67 million just shows how the 2 halves have normalized already. So Richard, thank you for your hard work in the first 6 months. Great having Scott, our President of the Communications sector here to talk about Virgin Media and Niv and to outline Dial AI as our Chief Strategy Officer. So I thank everyone for what we're doing here. And I think if there are any questions, we could put to questions, please.

[Operator Instructions] The first question today comes from Josh Kannourakis from Barrenjoey.

I've got a few, so I'll be quick. The first one, obviously, was a super strong start to January. Can you just give us a bit of a reminder in terms of that, how we should sort of consider what contribution came from Virgin? And also just in terms of that contract, how we should look at staging that over this year and next in terms of the other non-license revenue?

Yes, Josh. So per our previous announcement, it's a $50 million 5-year deal, the way we look at it, it's $10 million per year is as simple as that. However, we did need to take $15 million of license revenue into January. So that is part of the reason why the January numbers are so strong. And I hope nobody out there annualizes our January year-to-date numbers to get a full-year result because that's not going to happen. But going forward, you'll be recognizing $10 million a year or thereabouts less the license fee for the 5-year period.

And in terms of that, is that effectively pure profit, like is that sort of flow through to close enough to EBITDA as well?

No, we have some costs to support the product. So there's a term license upfront, but then there's also a support and maintenance agreement that we need to resource behind, and that's been costed into the deal as well.

And so into January, though, if we're looking at that EBITDA, the net is sort of around that or just slightly below EBITDA contribution then just for January?

Correct.

So even if you back that out, though, and look at that for the next few months, that still suggests a pretty high run rate for the remainder of the second half. Is there anything else in January in terms of service implementation? Or is there anything else towards the end of the year that would suggest we shouldn't look at that run rate even ex the license fees?

We did have another renewal in the first month, in January that was circa $3 million. But we do have a lot of work, a lot of pent-up demand that I was referencing before. So there have been some delays from the first half now kicking into the second half. In particular, in the energy space, we have some significant pieces of work underway or lined up to be commenced in April through June. What that also means, Josh, is we've got some latent capacity. So we call it our bench. We've got a team of developers on the bench ready to get going with this as well. So once we deploy those staff against the second half revenues, you'll see our margins improve further as well.

The second one is just about Powercloud, I know Andrew loves talking about it, so I'll jump to that one. Margin expectations are going better than what we and the market would have expected and well done on the turnaround. If we look at where that business could be over the next few years and assuming growth coming back, do you still think it's a business we should be looking at being similar to Hansen Group margins within the next sort of 12, 18 months? Or how should we think about that staging based on where it is now and how quickly the turnarounds come about?

I think it's a good question. I think we want to invest in the German marketplace, to be honest. We are getting the benefits of the Powercloud business as we move that business into the -- using the General Hansen Corporate Services. I think the next 18 months is probably a little bit too ambitious. But certainly, the thesis in the business over the next 3 to 5 years, it was going to move into a traditional handsome run rate.

Okay. Got it. No, that makes sense. And then final one, just with regard to other renewals, like if we look at some of the other big contracts out there, Telefonica Germany, obviously, was a little while ago now. How should we think about some of those larger renewals and timing? Is there a possibility that contracts like that may see their renewals drop into the FY '26 year?

[indiscernible] enough, we were actually talking about that yesterday with Scott, President of Communication. So Telefonica was signed back in 2021. It's a use-based license arrangement. So the more subscribers they have on the platform, then obviously, the more licenses that they use. They are now really ramping up their migration from existing platforms onto the new stack. I don't think there'll be any renewal in the next 12 months. We're looking probably 2 years out, Josh, before we see any sort of renewal for that one. The other ones -- look, we don't even talk to the other ones, to be honest. There's plenty of substantial contracts out there that typically just renew every 3 to 5 years. Yes, it's pretty straightforward.

Got it. And then final one for me, just around license expectations for the full year. Like I know you gave a bit of context previously, but if we put it all in, is it sort of in the low 30s? Is that sort of what we're looking at for full year license?

I think, it will be higher than that. We've got 13 in the first half, at least 25 in the second. So you're hitting sort of 38, potentially slightly higher than that depending on how the clients recut their renewals.

The next question comes from Evan Karatzas from UBS.

Okay. Hope you can hear me okay. Can you -- maybe just a quick one on the major swing factors for the low end to the top end of the guidance range. Any major callouts we just need to be, I don't know, watchful of or mindful of coming into this second half, please?

Sorry, Evan. It just dropped out for a second. Can you just try that one more time?

Yes. Okay. Hopefully, you can hear me. I'm just trying to get an idea of the major swing factors for the low end to the top end of the guidance range. Any, I guess, major callouts we just need to be watchful of or mindful of in the second half?

I think we were talking about it again this morning. So we're 7 months in, Evan. We've got a few months to go. We are cautiously optimistic of where it's going to land, but we've still got 5 months to go. So I wish I could give you more, Evan, but we're just ticking along at the moment.

And then I'll just ask one on Powercloud as well. I mean, Andrew, you just spoke about a major release coming in June. What sort of additions or changes will that be bringing there?

Just further refinement of the business to be brutally honest. There's a big change happening in the next 6 months in that industry. One of the first rollouts is some of the new rules and regulations, which is probably where our focus is. Certainly, looking forward, we've got new management in there, new German people, which are now running the business. We're pretty optimistic about what they bring to the table. But this -- what's happened here? It's still got this 2030. That's where all the eyes are on where people are going to have to change their ways, which will largely mean having to upgrade or install new technologies.

The next question comes from Gary Sherriff from RBC.

Three questions, one on customers, 2 on pipeline, and one more on Powercloud. Starting with customers, Rich, you talked about some large customer delays and implementations going into the second half of '25 and into '26. What are the drivers of these delays? Are they sector-wide? Or are they customer-specific? Just trying to get a sense, is there a risk of further delays?

People probably watching the election in America and what's happening overseas. Look, these just happens. We probably sometimes shouldn't call them out. I think it's just some of the projects, just the natural flow. You might have a customer going to be undertaking an upgrade only to find that there's going to be some industry change that need to be added into the program of works, which we're working out. There's always -- it's not really resource-based. It could be there. Every single one, so it's not one single issue, which has actually caused them because it goes back to the very -- the whole thesis of Hansen. It's across many countries, many entries, many products. So it's just probably a generalization. But there's no one single thing. If you could fix that will change. It's just across the board.

So more customer-specific. There's no underlying theme. Secondly, the pipeline, Telefonica, a great customer for you, second deal with that JV on Virgin Media. Are there any active discussions with other Telefonica geos that you can talk to? Or is it more a medium-term opportunity?

Look, without probably putting it all out there, it's a bit commercial in confidence, but we would be talking to major communications companies all the time. We would be in discussions about proof of concepts with people all the time. And that expands it also to Telefonica, which is a very large group. There's no doubt the good work which we did in Germany has probably helped us expand and selling more licenses into the business. But Telefonica is the one large telco around the world. We have operations in AT&Ts and all the big telcos around the world use some of our software. It's fair to say the accolades we've got, in some segments, specifically around, say, provisioning or CPQ and catalog, we have a market-leading product, investing significantly in there, and they are seeing some of those works, which we're going. So our cart is not hitched specifically to Telefonica. It's far broader than that. But they're a great customer of ours and a great reference side of ours. But as we're in conversations with many people all the time. It's just a slow-moving. You don't present to them and the decisions made the next day. I think, Scott, if we went back, I think your first talk was at 2020 when we started the conversations.

Yes. Look, it has been a long road to get there with VMO2. I think with these large transformational deals, as you say, Andrew, people don't make a decision on this thing overnight. And often, there's a lot of proof of concept that we run through. And look, it's a testament to the great work we've done with Telefonica that we have such an avid pipeline at the moment.

And I think it also comes down a little bit to refreshing of tech stacks. We could be a piece in a puzzle Telefonica is quite unique because they were retiring all of their legacy systems to deploy standardized systems, but they didn't want to have a legacy system. So it's great. So long answer to your question, sorry you may.

No, all good. Understood. Sorry, was there another -- was someone going to add something to that? Or do you want me to keep going? Powercloud, now cash generative, well done. You streamlined the staff from about $390 million to, call it, $140 million. Is there any more restructuring needed in the second half? Or are we largely done? Just trying to quantify any potential further restructuring costs into the second half.

No. Look, the restructuring, it sounds an thing about restructuring. This is a business which had lost its way on technology, lost its way about being a world product, and it's not a nice thing. I think most of Hansen's work is all about being efficient. This was a wholesale change to the business. And we knew that at the very start, we had to make these changes to the business, but we're now back hiring again. We're back demonstrating. We're back looking prospecting again. It's -- we've gone -- the hard work has been done. The structuring has been completed, and we're now -- it's a business-as-usual process we're now looking to adopt.

The next question comes from Lafitani Sotiriou from MST Financial.

A couple of minor in relation to Slide 10 and then one in relation to the R&D profile. Just on Slide 10, apologies if I'm missing something, just with the support and application revenue and the consistency of it. I'm just trying to understand for the APAC region, the step down by $11 million-odd over the last year, what's behind that? And just more broadly, historically, you used to talk to the level of churn in your presentations, even though it's very low, it used to be 2%, 3% across the business. Can you just update us on what the actual churn is at the same time?

Yes, thanks for joining, and thanks for your question. We always appreciate your feedback. Support and application revenue, you've talked about Asia Pacific, that includes the services work for the large upgrade that I referred to on the call before. So you'll see the 34.9% decline in the top right-hand box. That is part of that decline that you referenced in the support and application revenue. In terms of churn rate, look, we look at it every year. We always talk to 2 digit or 2 single digits to 2%, 1% sort of rate. Nothing's changed. In fact, we've got more customers now than we did have last year. What we don't do and maybe we should do it more often is publicize exactly some of these wins and potentially, we might do that as a bit of an update to the market between now and the full-year results.

And can I just clarify? So for the license revenue, you've indicated broadly around $25 million for the second half. Can I sort of unpack that a little bit? So how much of that would be for 5-year contracts being recognized upfront, so in the second half?

Yes, sure. Yes, so I talked to $38 million plus for the full year, including $25 million in the second half. Other than VMO2, which is a 5-year deal, the others are sort of a 2-year renewal. And to be honest, Laf, we don't want to take them upfront. We really don't, but that's just the accounting standard. So we do take them upfront. But likewise, we had license fees last year that we took into FY '24 that are not replicating in FY '25 or '26. So it's a tricky thing to look at the Hansen profile year-over-year with licenses in 1 year and not in the next. It's just unfortunate that that is the accounting standards we play by.

And do you think that this would be a high point? Or do you expect the license fees based on your pipeline to accelerate? Or would you expect that to be bouncy continuing to be volatile from period to period?

It's certainly the highest we've reported. And it does come down to these big deals that Scott talked to VMO2 where they did want to buy a term license. We could have offered them a SaaS-type deal for 5 years. They asked for a term license. So that was the situation. You can see on that chart on the bottom right-hand corner that it does bounce around. And I can't say with any level of certainty what it will be next year because it does come down to how we negotiate with our customers, how we try and close the deal. And often, they do want to capitalize something upfront, and we will do our best to maximize their opportunities to close it. It's all cash to us. So I know for you guys, it's important to look at the year-on-year comparison and half-on-half. But ultimately, the contract and the VMO2 contract is the same. It's $50 million of cash, and it's recognized over 5 years in our minds. But unfortunately, for accounting standards, we're taking some of that revenue upfront.

It's happening more and more. Maybe it's slowing down a little bit. I think the accounting -- there's some companies no doubt see the investment they make. They just want to capitalize it. So it's not saying we put on the table. It's actually more interesting when the finance people get involved and they ask to do. I think when we -- I know we explained it before on the Telefonica deal in Germany, 2 weeks before the contract was signed, they flipped it completely to SaaS wanted to pay some license upfront. So we are a little bit beholding. If you look traditionally for the last 40, 50 years, we much prefer to have an annuity stream going forward. The accounting standard we have to adopt and some of our customers are forced it down direction. We probably wouldn't want to go ourselves, but it is what it is.

I totally understand that. But what I'm trying to do is understand what is the true underlying EBITDA for the second half if you were to just book it as it was accrued, right? So '25, as you stated, would be a record amount for you guys to achieve in a period. And so if you were to kind of back out some of that or spread it out over the next 5 years or 2, 3 years as the other contracts or you've written average renewals 3 to 5 years if we were to push that out, then the EBITDA guidance for the second half actually isn't that great because a big component of it.

It is tricky. I get it laugh. I get it. I can almost pitch you a spreadsheet, but it's like Telefonica 5 years ago or 4 years ago, we took that license fee upfront. That revenue should be sitting this year. So you're trying to line up profitability in the second half of the year, stripping out license fees. Well, you've got to strip out the license fees from prior years as well and amortize those as though they--

And just one final question. So the R&D profile, roughly $10 million-odd per half at the moment. Is this the new sort of level you're talking to maybe needing some more investment in Powercloud in terms of the capitalization that is? Are you expecting that to be broadly where it will sit here on in with a little bit of growth? Or how should we think about it?

Yes, it's not dissimilar to sort of how we've been tracking for a few years now. We bounced around 4.5%, 5% R&D as a percentage of revenue. We have been deploying more capital into Powercloud to get them ready for these significant market changes in Germany coming this year. But Andrew alluded to before some of the work we're doing now in the AI space, and there will be some investment made into that space, potentially some R&D redeployed to these exciting new areas as well. But for your models, et cetera, it's fine to run with 5% for the moment.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Nick Burgess from Ord Minett.

A couple of questions on your favorite subject, Andrew, Powercloud. Just reading in the accounts, it looks like Powercloud delivered $22 million of revenue and a loss of $7.3 million in the first half. Is that equivalent to sort of an underlying EBITDA? Or is there an equivalent underlying EBITDA number for PowerCloud for the first half?

I'm impressed you got to that back page, Nick, but I knew you would. So you've also got amortization running through the books. You've also got no tax asset taken up. There's depreciation there as well. And of course, the R&D that I referenced before, which has been capitalized. So the NPAT loss is $7.3 million, you're quite right. There is no tax credit going through the books, and there is significant amortization, including acquired intangibles amortization running through the books. So EBITDA is not similar at all to NPAT. We haven't disclosed it for the first half. Our view is it's part of the vertical of energy and utilities. So it's just part of that CGU going forward. I think it's reassuring to say that it is now cash-generative. So that's a proxy. It's EBITDA positive as well.

So I just wanted to -- so Slide -- so let's go back 6 months, you said that Powercloud would have EBITDA losses embedded within the guidance of $5 million or less. And on Slide 14, you're saying it's now EBITDA positive. I just wondered whether that was on a run rate basis or you expect it to be a positive contribution to EBITDA overall for the year.

So when we came out at the start of the year, we'd owned the business for approximately 6 months. We've become more and more confident in our views of what we needed to do with that business, and we brought forward the second round of restructuring to October. So that loss of $5 million that we flagged at the full year results has been dramatically closed. In fact, we brought forward restructuring by many, many months. So the underlying EBITDA that we flagged of a loss of $5 million is now turning into a profit that Andrew talked to and was brought forward by 5 or 6 months. The full-year number, Nick, just to be clear, will be EBITDA positive on the underlying--

That's clear. I didn't quite get that. So that's clear. I guess how should we think about -- so that's obviously very positive news on Powercloud. But over the same time period, your overall guidance for the group hasn't changed. So is $5 million or slightly more benefit to Powercloud being offset by some of the contract slippages that you mentioned? Or are there other things that we should think about as the offsetting factors given that overall guidance hasn't changed?

Look, I think overall guidance, you can imagine, I think we take guidance very, very serious. We're 7 months into 12 months. It's pretty early. We knew the first half was skewed to the second half. I think you'd be very happy, Nick, we gave you an indication of what January was like. You'd love that bit of information. But in all fairness, we're 7 months into where we are. And I think the market would be pretty happy we reaffirmed our full guidance for the year.

So just on guidance, just one final question, if I can. So the range is still -- so I understand contract slippage and all the reasons you've given and still a fair bit to play. Just the range on the EBITDA line, on a dollar basis is actually slightly higher than the range on the sales line. So are there just a couple of variables on the cost side that we need to be aware of specifically that perhaps are separate to sort of contract renewals falling, et cetera?

Yes. To be honest, no, I know what you're saying there's a bigger gap on EBITDA. We're just very cautious, Nick. We always are. We like to hit the numbers. So you're sort of alluding to we brought forward the Powercloud restructuring. Therefore, the underlying business should be more profitable than what we said at the outset. And I'm sticking with what Andrew is saying as well. We've got 5 months to go. We'll keep the market informed of any changes if required, but we feel like we're in a really strong position to deliver on our results that we came out at the start of the year.

At this time, we're showing no further questions via the phone. I'll hand the conference back to Andrew Hansen for any closing remarks.

Once again, I thank everyone for joining the call today and also our other special guests having a bit of a word today, which was also good. Look, reaffirm business is going really well for us, guys. The long-term looks fantastic. Management are all aligned with the 5% to 7% growing. Their LTIs are aligned to it. We're in a very, very good place in our business. We welcome your inquiries. We welcome your investment and the partnership we enjoy with everyone. So thank you everyone for joining the call today, and I wish you have a good day. Thank you.

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