Infomedia Ltd (BGLOBAL.BO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Infomedia's half yearly results. This is Jim Hassell speaking, interim CEO of Infomedia; and I'm joined today by Infomedia CFO Gareth Turner; and Head of Investor Relations, Tanya Thomas. If you joined through the web link, you'll see the presentation attached, and I will refer to the slide numbers as we move through this. So moving on to Slide 3. We're going to break the session up into 3 parts this morning. Firstly, I will cover the highlights of a strong performance in our half year together with an update on our investments, which are contributing to growth. Secondly, Gareth will provide a financial overview, which includes some new reporting insights, showing some of our operational efficiencies. And thirdly, I will provide an outlook for the business together with our updated and tightened guidance for the year. Moving on through the presentation on to Slide 5. I'll start with a short overview of our business, especially for those investors that are new to the company. We are a leading Software-as-a-Service provider, which serves the global retail automotive industry to help automakers or OEMs, national sales companies and dealership networks generate customer engagement and profit from vehicle servicing and genuine part sales, collectively described as aftersales. The sale of genuine parts is very important to the OEMs and helping the OEMs and dealers realize the opportunity in the aftersales market is high value to them. Our set of offerings include: Microcat, a powerful suite of electronic parts catalogs to drive original manufacturer part sales and dealership profitability; Superservice, which is VIN-precise, data-driven service quoting and vehicle inspection selling solutions; SimplePart, online e-commerce consumer websites and digital marketing support the cross sales of automaker parts and accessories; Infodrive, which are data analytics, predictive marketing and connected car solutions for customer retention. With over 95% of our revenue recurring and our business split across Asia Pacific, Europe and the Americas, we are one of the few truly global technology providers that covers automotive parts, service, data insights and e-commerce solutions. We've previously talked about having over 220,000 users in 186 countries. With the addition of SimplePart, that has grown to 250,000 users of our products and services around the world. Moving on to Slide 6. Infomedia provides solutions to each part of the vehicle aftersales life cycle with customers at the automakers OEMs, the national sales companies and the dealerships. We have deep relationships across our customer base. Our global footprint and localized solutions empower automakers to offer a consistent brand experience in every dealer regardless of size or location around the world. At the regional level, data-driven solutions provide critical parts and service information to run effective part distribution operations and drive customer experience programs across the dealer network. Locally, Infomedia provides dealerships with integrated technology powered by genuine OEM data to boost aftersales productivity and sales. Dealer teams can deliver digital-first customer care that promotes trust, pricing transparency and brand loyalty in the dealership and online. Moving on now to Slide 7 and to the highlights of the first half of fiscal year 2022. We've had a strong set of results in a period which has seen considerable change in the leadership of the company. Revenue has grown by 24% over the prior corresponding period to $59 million, which includes the acquisition of SimplePart completed at the end of May last year. Revenue growth in the core business, excluding SimplePart, for the first 6 months of the year was 7% over the prior corresponding period. My comparison today with the prior corresponding period, but you will see through the presentation that we provide numbers both for that and sequential growth for completeness. Underlying cash EBITDA grew by 45% to $13.3 million for the same period, and excluding SimplePart, grew by 25%. We use underlying cash EBITDA as that gives the most accurate picture of the operating performance of the business. Underlying growth -- underlying EBITDA growth of 15%, lower than the underlying cash EBITDA growth, reflects reduced capitalization of software following completion of the Next Gen transition. Net profit after tax was $3.5 million following the impact of depreciation, amortization and earnout for successful acquisitions, which Gareth will cover in detail in his presentation. All regions showed revenue growth with 15%, 6% and 57% growth, respectively, in Asia Pacific, EMEA and the Americas, and I'll cover this in more detail in the next slide, Slide 8. Before moving on to that, though, our acquisition investment in Nidasu continues to contribute very positively to our results with 20% growth of our Infodrive products over the prior corresponding period. As just noted, the success of Nidasu is reflected in the earnouts. We have also been delighted with the acquisition and performance of SimplePart in its first 6 -- full 6 months as part of the group. Revenues for SimplePart are tracking in line with the acquisition case, and we're ahead of the acquisition case at the contribution level. We expect to see further benefit from SimplePart with new EMEA and APAC opportunities delivering additional future revenues. The investment in our Next Gen platform has improved our product offering, enabling us to sustain our high customer retention, introduced price increases in some areas and better position us for new opportunities. The fundamentals of Infomedia are very good. We are one of the very few genuine global providers to the automated aftersales market, and that is becoming an increasing competitive advantage. 95% of our revenues are recurring and customers tend to be long term. We are trusted partners in all regions we operate. Revenue split roughly across APAC -- evenly across APAC, EMEA and the Americas, and we're highly cash generative and debt-free. We've had 5 years of continual dividend growth, and the Board are pleased to announce an interim dividend of $0.026 a share, an increase of 21% over the prior corresponding period. They will be franked to 70%. I'd like to provide a little more color now to the first half of the performance with a view into our regions and products. Moving on to Slide 8, growth in the Asia Pacific region, APAC, over the prior corresponding period is 15%. We continue to see strong demand for Infodrive and Superservice with Superservice wins at Nissan Thailand and Ford New Zealand. Our successful Infodrive connected car solution for BMW Australia has now been extended to BMW New Zealand. And we've seen our first e-commerce win in APAC after the acquisition of SimplePart at Ram Trucks Australia, which we expect to go live in the coming half. Growth in Europe, Middle East and Africa, EMEA, over the prior corresponding period was 6%. Despite challenging conditions over the last 2 years, we've seen some good successes in the first half of the year which position us well going into the second half of the financial year. The win at Master Europe for online service bookings, which we talked about at the November results meeting will go live in the second half of this year. In addition, we've seen our first European win for e-commerce from SimplePart Hyundai Ireland, and we have Infodrive wins at Audatex and GTMotive. In the Americas, the addition of SimplePart to our business has led to a 57% revenue growth over the prior corresponding 6 months. When taking SimplePart out of the Americas results, the first half showed flat over the prior corresponding 6 months in local currency. We have taken actions to address the issues which precipitated a decline in the Americas business in previous periods and the business is now stabilizing. The addition of SimplePart also helped to build scale in the Americas and we believe we will be able to benefit from this increasingly as we complete our integration. On to Slide 9 and moving on to a product snapshot. The first thing I would like to highlight is the positive impact that the acquisition of Nidasu has had on the Infodrive business, represented by the light blue band at the top of the chart. The Infodrive solutions in our business have grown from less than $2 million annual recurring revenue or ARR in December 2018 at the time of acquisition to over $19 million ARR in December 2021, a 9.5-fold increase over the period. If you look at the slide, you can see the inflection point in December 2018. I would like to make it clear that Nidasu has been a major part of that growth story, but other solutions that are part of the Infodrive offerings have also contributed. Both Gareth and I refer to annual recurring revenue or ARR and the growth in that as that is the best measure of the success of the business in revenue terms. This slide also shows the impact of the acquisition of SimplePart just over 8 months ago, represented by the orange band at the top right of the chart. SimplePart has performed to planned for revenue and better than planned for contribution in its first full 6 months as part of Infomedia and continues to see strong demand for the e-commerce suite of products in the Americas as well as new opportunities in EMEA and APAC. Further, we have what we believe is the first automaker about to go live with a global e-commerce site for their parts in Lotus Cars. We believe this scope for continued strong growth in both Infodrive and SimplePart for the foreseeable future. In addition to growth opportunities afforded by improvements to our Superservice products following investment in them in 2020 and 2021. Moving on to Slide 10. Momentum continues to build in the company. We have a good leadership team, which has been enhanced through recruitment and acquisitions, and we see benefits ahead from joining and sharing capabilities and experience between the existing Infomedia teams and the SimplePart teams in customer engagement, branding, product innovation and operational matters amongst others. Recruitment of our new CEO is progressing. Like many companies in the technology sector, we have been impacted by intense competition for our people, particularly in the technical and development fields. We have made considerable efforts to ensure that Infomedia is well positioned as an employer of choice with enhancements in working conditions, flexibility and reward to build a strong employee value proposition. During this time, we have maintained our service to our customers and are focused on continuing that while making sure we attract and retain great people. Despite the significant challenges in the recruitment marketplace, we are confident we can continue to attract and retain new talent to the organization. And with improving efficiencies, we can achieve this while keeping control of total costs. In terms of capital management, we are free of debt and generate a high level of cash flow. We're also optimistic about the future for Infomedia to keep growing as a company and to expand our offerings for our customers. While we have not announced any M&A transactions in SimplePart last year, we remain fully committed to our M&A strategy of pursuing acquisitions, which expand our capabilities and offer additional functionality or access to new market or customers. We've seen an increase in M&A activity since the beginning of calendar 2022 with some exciting opportunities coming to market, which we are actively engaging with. Dividends will continue to reflect steady growth in underlying cash EBITDA. We're committed to continue our track record of doing good, strategically on point deals in M&A on terms that will be accretive to our shareholders, and that means we won't do short-term transactions, which we don't believe are additive to the company. This is especially relevant in an environment of high valuation expectations, and we have declined opportunities in the last period as values being sought were too high. Where we see the opportunity to expand our product platform and there are no suitably priced acquisitions, we will invest to build new capability internally where appropriate. Moving on to Slide 11 and future growth. Having spent the last 4 months immersed in the business, I believe Infomedia has an excellent foundation for the future. We have long-term deep relationships with our customers. 95% of our revenues are recurring. We have good presence across a global market, a perspective which is increasingly important to our customers. We're cash generative, have excellent opportunities for growth, especially in e-commerce, Infodrive and some of our Superservice offerings, a solid highly retentive customer base with Microcat, and we have an excellent team of experienced and market-knowledgeable leaders and staff. This is a company with great opportunities ahead of it. Finally, for this section, as I hand over to CFO, Gareth Turner, it's appropriate to highlight the focus that Gareth and his team have brought into updating and improving our financial and management reporting. This has improved insights into the business that have already enabled us to drive efficiency, which is reflected in the growth of underlying cash EBITDA, and that will continue well into the future as we drive optimal deployment of our teams and investments to take advantage of the opportunities for growth before us. Gareth?

Thank you, Jim, and good morning, everyone. Before getting into the financial highlights for the first half on Slide 13, I'd like to talk to the call out to the bottom of that page. At the AGM in November, we provided additional revenue metrics and spoke about further reporting enhancements to come. In the results we released today, you'll notice that we've made changes to Infomedia's financial reporting as a further step on our journey to providing enhanced visibility on our business. We have overhauled our internal reporting to facilitate better visibility and management of costs, resource capacity and resource allocation, which is helping us to drive further efficiency and accountability within the business. We moved our P&L formats from presentation by function to presentation by nature, and this has allowed us to disclose many more profit and loss line items than we had before, providing more granularity on the nature of our cost base. These changes are effected in our updated segment reports and statutory reporting. Given significant nonoperating items flowing through the statutory results, such as the expensing of earnouts through employee expenses, the operating segment presentation of our results is very useful as it focuses on underlying operating performance, excluding these items. The underlying measures presented in the segment notes are fully reconciled to the statutory reported numbers within the segment note itself. Underlying cash EBITDA is a key operating measure we are focused on internally. This measure is before CapEx and is as close to a cash earnings number as we can get. It is also clean of nonoperating items such as earn-out expenses and is expected to track the operating cash generation of the business much more closely. Underlying cash EBITDA is similar to previous cash EBITDA measures that Infomedia has disclosed in the past but has, for example, been updated to exclude noncash unrealized foreign exchange gains and losses and noncash share-based payment provision movements. We are conscious that these changes are quite significant, and so we provided additional slides in the appendix that help walk between the new statutory P&L by nature and the underlying results in the segment note. In addition, we've also provided the previous statutory P&L and previous operating segment formats in the appendix. Turning to the highlights. Infomedia had strong revenue growth this half, reflecting ongoing positive momentum in annual recurring revenue or ARR which was $115 million at the end of December '21, up from $111 million at the end of June '21. Revenue was up 24% on the previous corresponding period with the inclusion of SimplePart. Organically, revenue was up 7%, excluding SimplePart. Our FY '22 revenue guidance range has been tightened to $119 million to $123 million. Previously, this was $117 million to $123 million. This half has demonstrated good operating leverage with underlying cash EBITDA up 45% in total and up 25% organically, both of these exceeding the corresponding increases in revenue. Reported net profit after tax of $3.5 million was heavily impacted by $9.9 million of higher noncash and nonoperating items during the half. I'll go into more detail about these items impacting reported impacts in subsequent slides. Infomedia's balance sheet is robust with net assets of $150 million, cash on hand of $66 million and 0 debt. Infomedia has shown strong cash generation in the half with free cash flow that is cash generated from operations and after CapEx, up 28% in the second half of FY '21 and up 150% on the first half of FY '21, the prior corresponding period. Our directors have declared an interim dividend of $0.026 per share, which is up 13% on the 2H '21 dividend and up 21% on the 1H '21 dividend. The dividend is franked to 70%, which is consistent with the franking rates of all the dividends I've mentioned. Turning to Slide 24 (sic)[ 14 ], this shows Infomedia's annual recurring revenue or ARR and highlights the positive momentum continuing on trend. The step change in ARR this half shows the strong contribution of SimplePart to Infomedia's recurring revenue profile. Turning to Slide 15, one can see the diversity of Infomedia's ARR globally. The inclusion of SimplePart into the Americas has added further scale and opportunity into that region with Infomedia's ARR now approximately 1/3 between each of the 3 regions. This global diversity is a key strength of the business, showing Infomedia's global reach and reduces any regional concentration risk. Slide 16 shows the diversity of Infomedia's ARR across customer cohorts. This shows that Infomedia supports customers right across the spectrum of industry participants globally from the very large OE relationships through to large national sales companies, dealer groups and down to individual dealers. In percentage terms, the mix of ARR between customer cohorts has been stable over many years, highlighting the stability in Infomedia's market position and coverage. Slide 17 shows Infomedia's strong revenue growth since FY '16 and how this has contributed into the first half of FY '22 that we've reported today. Revenue for 1H '22 of $59 million was up 24% on 1H '21 and up 7% organically, excluding SimplePart. Again, our guidance range for total revenue for FY '22 has been tightened to be between $119 million and $123 million. Turning to Slide 18. This shows Infomedia's new statutory income statement presentation by nature rather than function. One can see the additional granularity in the P&L line items that this provides. SimplePart is included for a full 6 months this half but wasn't there for 1H '21, thereby impacting the comparability between the periods. Also of note is that statutory reported results include significant amounts expensed in relation to earnouts. These are expensed to the employee benefits line item and account for a significant component of the increase in the employee benefits expense on that slide, along with the inclusion of SimplePart. Moving to Slide 19. This shows Infomedia's operating performance as detailed in our segment note. In addition, we've shown a pro forma for Infomedia without SimplePart to the right. This has been provided as it is considered useful to investors to see the organic performance of the group without SimplePart. We only expect to provide this pro forma during FY '22, after which the results inclusive of SimplePart will become the baseline for comparison in FY '23 and beyond as SimplePart becomes increasingly integrated into our group. Total revenue was up 24% in the first half last year, with underlying cash EBITDA up 45%. This performance reflecting the inclusion of SimplePart for 6 months of this financial year. On an organic basis, revenue was up 7% and underlying cash EBITDA was up 25% in the first half last year, with earnings rising faster than revenue, both in total and organically, this shows strong positive operating leverage in our business. The granularity in our new reporting is providing enhanced visibility around Infomedia's cost base and core underlying performance. Looking at the group, excluding SimplePart, underlying people costs have increased slightly over the 3 halves presented but with that increase coming slower than revenue growth. Other underlying operating expenses have been stable at $12.4 million throughout the 3 periods. The strong operating leverage is also evidenced in the underlying cash EBITDA percentage to revenue increasing over the 3 halves at the same rate, both for the total group and organically excluding simple parts. Moving to Slide 20. This focuses on capitalization and amortization over the periods presented. People costs in our product development and management area and data management area are the people cost categories which drive capitalization of development expenditure. As one can see in the table, these costs have been quite stable over the 3 periods. The type of work these teams focused on has shifted since the completion of Next Gen towards other products and customer projects. As we continue to progress on enhanced internal reporting and cost analysis, we have introduced some changes to our time reporting processes to provide more granularity internally on the different types of work our teams are doing going forward. With Next Gen now complete, the table also highlights how the capitalization and intensity has taken down, dropping to 73% this half from the high 80s in prior periods. This doesn't mean that the work the teams are doing is less valuable, only that it is less likely to meet the accounting criteria for capitalization outside of a large-scale project like Next Gen, and this lower capitalization does have an impact on EBITDA. With a lower capitalization in the half and increased amortization now that Next Gen is complete, amortization exceeds capitalization for the first time in some years. Moving to Slide 21. This table is taken from the lower half of our new operating segment notes and walks from underlying cash EBITDA to reported statutory net profit after tax. This highlights several noncash and nonoperating items that have a significant impact on our reported NPAT. Capitalization of development expenditure is lower in the half due to the completion of Next Gen as explained in the previous slide. Depreciation and amortization increased by $5.7 million from the first half of '21. Almost all of this was due to increases in the noncash amortization of previously capitalized development expenditure and higher amortization of new intangible assets from the SimplePart acquisition. The net increase in nonoperating items of $4.8 million is almost all driven by the expensing of earnouts on the Nidasu and SimplePart acquisitions. Both of these acquisitions have been highly successful purchases for Infomedia. And paradoxically, as these businesses have performed better and their earnouts have increased, so has a charge against our reported impact. Altogether, these have been a significantly negative impact on reported NPAT despite the positive operating performance in the business. Moving to Slide 22. Infomedia has a robust balance sheet. At the end of December '21, net assets were $150 million with $66 million of cash on hand. Improved cash collections and lower days sales outstanding or lower DSO have helped to keep -- have kept receivables relatively flat despite the higher sales. The completion of Next Gen with lower capitalization and higher amortization has driven the reduction in the intangible assets balance. The amortization of right-to-use assets has driven the reduction in other noncurrent assets. The significant increase in accruals for earnouts on our highly successful Nidasu and SimplePart acquisition, as discussed in the previous slides, are visible in the second components of employee benefit liabilities shown on the balance sheet. Infomedia has no debt and the drop in retained profits reflects dividends paid. Slide 23 highlights Infomedia's strong cash generation with free cash flows, that is cash generated from operating activities after CapEx, up 28% this half compared to the second half of '21 and up 150% on the first half of '21, the prior corresponding period. Our directors have declared an interim dividend of $0.026 per share, which is up 13% on the second half of '21, and up 21% on the first half of '21. The interim dividend is franked to 70%, which is consistent with the franking of the other dividends mentioned. The increased dividend paid to shareholders in respect to this half reflects the improved underlying cash EBITDA and free cash flow performance of the business. I'll now hand back to Jim. Thank you.

Thanks, Gareth. And just in conclusion, moving on to Slide 25, that the first 6 months of fiscal year '22 has seen strong growth in both revenue and underlying cash EBITDA, and we've been delighted with the addition of SimplePart to the Infomedia Group. We see opportunity to continue to expand the growth of e-commerce across the global auto market and benefits in cross-pollination of ideas operational capability from the acquisition of SimplePart. Improvements in our visibility reporting have allowed us to drive efficiencies, which we believe we can continue and enabling us to better align our resources and investments to take advantage of the growth opportunities we see ahead of us. In addition to growth in the platforms we have, we also see greater activity in M&A and potential opportunities to expand our footprint and capabilities. Our approach to this will remain disciplined and focused on generating additional value for shareholders. As we do this, we'll continue to push for growth in the areas where we see opportunity notably, e-commerce, Infodrive and Superservice, underpinned by a very strong Microcat customer base. We're on track to deliver against our guidance at the start of the year and have tightened the range to $119 million to $123 million. Finally, on slide 26, I'll share my priorities for the next 6 months, and they are hiring and transition to a new CEO, delivering the FY '22 financial results in line with expectations, continuing to improve Infomedia's value proposition for both our customers and our people, improving the systems and processes to manage and scale the business effectively, aligning our teams and investment dollars to revenue and profit growth, and improving our transparency and reporting internally to drive ownership and accountability. Thank you for your attention. We appreciate we've given you a lot of information and detail today. We thought that was worth it that we have -- as we've gone through some changes in the way we report things and the way that we look at things. I think we're now going to open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Tim Plumbe from UBS.

Just a couple of questions from me, if that's all right. And then I'll jump back into the queue. Jim, just wanted to touch on that R&D spend. Overall spend is flat year-on-year and half-on-half, and that's post the inclusion of SimplePart. So should we be thinking of that [ 14.3 millennialized ] so call it, [ $28 million, $29 million ] as the sort of right level for the combined group going forward?

Yes. Thanks, Tim. Thanks for the question. And that's something that we're working hard on at the moment. As I mentioned through the presentation, we see a number of opportunities ahead of the business. I think we've seen, as we've come out of our Next Gen investment, we've seen a reduction, obviously, from that. And so you see the sort of fairly flat with the increase in revenues. And I -- so I think we've got opportunities ahead of us. We look very closely at that. We're looking to make sure we continue to drive efficiencies. But I think where we see opportunities for investment will certainly be very actively looking to pursue those.

Tim, can I just add, when you said it was flat, that's actually excluding SimplePart, so that Slide 20, we've shown the sort of organic view of those things. Yes. So SimplePart does add a little bit into that when you look at that in the accounts that includes it. So just watch out for that, that flatness is in the organic number.

Apologies, you're right, that is in the heading of the title of the slide. The second question just is around Nidasu and apologies, there's a couple of results on today. I think you mentioned Lotus. Is that -- are they -- is Lotus taking on the Nidasu product?

No, the Lotus mentioned was in relation to SimplePart. So apologies for creating confusion there. And Lotus Car is going live as the first global e-commerce site for an automaker. So they'll be offering their parts. They have the SimplePart electronic parts catalog and are adding country by country to be able to -- the e-commerce products to have a global parts e-commerce site, and that's the first global automaker e-commerce site.

Got it. Apologies. So then in relation to Nidasu, can you maybe talk about the business outside of Australia? Where are we in terms of securing some of those potential customers? How does the sales pipeline look outside of Australia, please?

Yes. Outside of Australia, we've got some really interesting opportunities in terms of the Nidasu offering. EMEA or Europe is probably the strongest at the moment in terms of the opportunities. And we are actively, at the moment, building our Nidasu offerings or Infodrive offerings, I should say. Infodrive covers the whole range of things that we do in there. Nidasu is an important part of that, and I mentioned Nidasu because, of course, it's an acquisition, and I know people are interested in that, and we want to be clear about that. And so yes, so we see some opportunities building in Europe, and we're quite excited about that.

Right. So just confirming at the moment Nidasu still remains -- Nidasu revenue just still remains within Australia?

No. There's revenue outside of Australia. So that's both Australia and New Zealand, the connected car -- BMW Connected Car extension in New Zealand. And there are some small revenues in Europe, and we are -- we've got some good opportunities to increase those. And [ map of ] Europe, of course, is a big Nidasu win.

Got it. fantastic. And then just very last question. The U.S. business, you mentioned some headwinds there. On my numbers, it looks like the constant currency half-on-half is down kind of 6% or 7%. Are you able to talk about the business loss there in terms of -- was that a couple of key customers? Was it Superservice? Was it Microcat? And then maybe just the changes to the business where are we in terms of finding a new head for the business? If I remember correctly, I thought you guys were potentially looking to leverage a third-party sales team and also potentially pursue white label strategy with some of the major dealer management system providers. So just a bit more detail in terms of the U.S. business and where we're at, please?

Yes, sure. Do you want to just take the numbers, Gareth?

Yes, just quickly, some on the numbers in U.S. dollars. And as Jim mentioned in his script, half-on-half in terms of prior comparable period, it's actually flat in U.S. dollars. If you look at the sequential, it dropped a little bit in U.S. dollars in the second half, but it's bounced back to where it was in the first half. So there's a sort of a different U.S. dollars and then back to where it was. And in fact, on a sequential basis, the U.S. has bounced back in U.S. dollars, which is obviously clean of any of the exchange changes. And even at the earnings level, that's been a little bit better just because some of the efficiencies that they've brought to bear in the U.S. So that's a picture of the U.S. numbers, and I'll let Jim talk about the [ CEO bit ].

Yes, sure. And in terms of the person heading that up, that's Debbie Johnson. She's doing a very great job in helping to stabilize that business, and we're pleased with that. We had some -- we did have some issues, and I know that's been reflected in the numbers. I think those issues were specifically around some of our partner agreements that we had. And so that was where we saw some of the decline previously. Those, I believe, are now addressed, and that's why I think the business is stabilizing. And we have the addition of SimplePart to that business and that adds people and adds some scale and critical mass in the U.S. And we're looking at the ways in which we can bring those 2 organizations together to make a much more effective sales and coverage and presence in the U.S., and we think that there's good opportunities there.

The next question comes from Chris Savage from Bell Potter.

Just on the upgrading guidance, like congratulations on that, obviously. But I'd just note, if you take the low end, the $119 million, it only implies the second half revenue of $60 million, which is only up a touch if not flat on the first half of $59 million. So just given the momentum in the business, I'm just slightly surprised that the low end is pretty flat half-on-half. So is there any reason why you'd expect to half -- a flat second half to the first half?

Yes, Chris. I mean it's one of those things when you're setting a guidance range. You've got to be able to make sure you can live with a lot of uncertainty ahead of you. Obviously, there's exchange rate uncertainty. There's global uncertainty, all the things that you see on the news at the moment sort of in our mind, I think you'd figure us we're being somewhat conservative in those things. But in setting that range, that's exactly where we expect to land given all of those things, as obviously new CEO, recruitment and train, and we're mindful not to put something on the table that we can't deliver. So all those things entered our mind in setting that range. It was important to upgrade the lower end, but we obviously expect to be somewhere within that range. And that's the thought process that went into our mind as we set that. I don't know, Jim, if there's anything to add.

No, I think you covered.

But just outside of exogenous impacts, there's no headwinds that -- internal to the business that are on the horizon in the second half?

There's nothing -- no, there's nothing especially apart from the ones that Gareth has mentioned.

Okay. And Jim, I mean you gave us sort of a brief update on the CEO search, suggested that it will be some time in the current half. Can you give us any sort of further update or color on that, please?

Just the things that I'd say, Chris, we've been pleased we've got some good quality and candidates. It's been fairly short in terms of these searches. We started off towards the end of October, middle to the end of October. So it's kind of 4 months and you got Christmas and the summer holidays in the middle of that, which really doesn't help on these types of things. We've been pleased that we've seen some good candidates come forward and some strength in that. And yes, we're progressing with that to find the best person for the role.

Can I clarify that you do expect the CEO to be appointed this half?

That is certainly what we're aiming for, yes.

Okay. And last question, probably more so for you, Gareth. Just the tax rate in the first half around that 15% mark. Can you give us a guide on what you expect it to be for the full year?

Tax is a tricky thing to sort of predict. But I'd give you a sense of some of the modeling that we do as an effective rate of roughly 22%. That's the sort of numbers that I used in some models. There's also -- if you get into the detail of the accounts, some of those nonoperating items that are below the bottom part of the operating segment note, some of those have a tax impact and we split the tax effect of both of those things. So have a look out for that. But just in a modeling sense and the sort of normal rates, sort of 22% is what we use at the moment. Obviously, there can be variability in that and wouldn't want to be held to account on that number, but that's kind of the modeling number that we'd use if that's helpful for you, Chris.

Yes, it just implies the 27%, 28% tax rate in the second half, which obviously is quite different to the first.

Yes, things move around a bit with R&D claims. There's been uplift in some of the rates, you can get on some of those things as well. So there's a bit of -- there's a few moving parts, but if I was modeling it, that's what I'd be using.

[Operator Instructions]

I guess if there's no more questions, we might wrap it up. Thanks, operator.

The next question comes from Tim Plumbe from UBS.

So I thought I'd try one more in there. Jim, maybe just in terms of the pipeline of opportunities for SimplePart in APAC and EMEA, obviously, you've had your first signings there, which are positive. How do we think about the pipeline of opportunities there?

Well, I suppose as I've mentioned, Tim, we are excited about that. That's -- if you think about SimplePart, effectively, it's a U.S.-based business, and they've been very successful in the U.S. The acquisition by Infomedia opens up a more global market in terms of EMEA and APAC. The products, which -- the solutions which SimplePart sell are equally applicable, so it's not like you're sort of coming to a completely different market and you have to change them. And then with the journey together with SimplePart and Infomedia, you get access to those bigger markets. So we're really excited about that, and we see some opportunities building. It will take a little while to build up a really big pipeline. But already, we see some really good opportunities coming out. And we think that's got a lot of runway.

Got it. And who heads the sale opportunities? Is that APAC management? Or is that SimplePart management that are coming over and pitching into Australia?

No. It's done between the teams. So the APAC management headed up by Warren Brugger, that is really driving the sales and opportunities and need to work closely with the SimplePart team as we build up the skill set throughout the organization and the same in EMEA.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand back to Mr. Hassell for closing remarks.

Well, thanks, everybody, and thanks for coming on the call today. We really appreciate that. And I know we're going to talk to a lot of you over the next couple of weeks, and we look forward to that. And as I mentioned earlier, we're very excited about the opportunities ahead of the business. I think it's -- we're pleased with where and we are pleased with the results in the first half and look forward to talking to you in more detail in the next -- in the near future. Thanks very much for attending.