Integrated Research Limited (IRI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the 2021 Annual General Meeting of Integrated Research Limited. My name is Peter Lloyd, and I am the Chairman of the company. To start proceedings. We acknowledge the traditional owners of country from which we are presenting today, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We recognize their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. We pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging. The health and safety of our shareholders and our people is of paramount importance. In consideration of the potential health risk posed by the ongoing coronavirus epidemic and associated restrictions on public gatherings, we have elected to hold the AGM as a virtual event. Every effort has been made to ensure the meeting is delivered in a way which allows our shareholders to participate. Today's meeting is being held online via the Lumi platform. This allows shareholders, proxies and guests to attend the meeting virtually. All attendees can watch a live webcast of the meeting. In addition, shareholders and proxies have the ability to ask questions and submit votes. Shareholders who were on the register on the 22nd of November are eligible to vote at this meeting. We encourage online attendees to submit questions using the text question process, and online attendees can submit questions at any time. [Operator Instructions] Please note that, while you can submit questions from now on, I will not address them until the relevant time in the meeting. Please also note that your questions may be moderated or, if we receive multiple questions on one topic, amalgamated together. For those shareholders who wish to ask a verbal question, an audio questions facility is also available during this meeting. [Operator Instructions] If you have any issues using this system, please return to the Lumi platform. And finally, due to time constraints, we may not get to answer all of your questions. If this happens, we will answer them in due course via e-mail or posting responses on our website. Voting today will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of business. In order to provide you with enough time to vote, I will shortly open the voting for all resolutions. At that time, if you are eligible to vote at this meeting, a new voting tab will appear. Selecting this tab will bring up a list of resolutions and present you with voting options. To cast your vote, simply select one of the options. There is no need to hit a submit or enter button, as the vote is automatically recorded. You do, however, have the ability to change your vote up until the time that I declare voting closed. I now declare voting open on all items of business. The voting tab will soon appear. Please submit your votes at any time. I will give you a warning before I move to close the voting. Thank you. We will now commence proceedings. I have determined that a quorum is present, and as it is past 10 a.m., I declare the meeting open. Once again, welcome to the 2021 Annual General Meeting of Integrated Research Limited. I'm pleased to extend a welcome to all shareholders who are present online and also to guests representing brokers and analysts who are also present online. I would like to introduce my fellow directors who joined me today for this virtual meeting: John Ruthven, CEO and Managing Director; Anne Myers; Allan Brackin; James Scott. And also Peter Adams, the CFO; and David Purdue, the Company Secretary. I also welcome representatives from the company's auditors, Ernst & Young. The auditor is represented here today by Julian O'Brien, Partner of Ernst & Young. And now to the formalities. A number of validly signed and completed proxies have been received by the Secretary, and their voting on each resolution will be disclosed prior to the resolutions being put to shareholders. I will now deal with the items of business in order in which they appear at the 2021 AGM notice of meeting. For expediency, I will take that notice of meeting as been read. I advise that the minutes of the previous AGM were signed as a true record at a subsequent meeting of directors. A copy of the 2020 AGM minutes is with the company Secretary. I table the following documents for consideration by members: the financial statements, the remuneration report, the auditor's report, directors' statement and the directors' report. These documents are available for inspection and are held by the company Secretary. Presentations will now be given by myself, Peter Adams and John Ruthven, Questions will be addressed after all presentations have been given. I will now give the chair's address. On behalf of the Board of IR, I would like to express our gratitude to all our shareholders, for your support in what has been a challenging year of change and opportunity. FY '21 has been a difficult year for IR with our overall revenue declining from the prior year. The first half in particular presented many challenges that ended up in a disappointing result for us. The second half saw a renewed focus on customer-first strategies, the release of new SaaS products, the execution of key strategic partnerships. The second half was a significant improvement on the first, with revenue up 30% to $44.4 million and $7.8 million in NPAT. Nevertheless, the recovery, although pleasing, was not sufficient to make up for the full year shortfall. Full year revenues declined by 29% to $78.5 million. NPAT for the year was $7.9 million after a near-breakeven first half. Cash receipts from customers were $78.8 million, down 18% on the previous year. The company remains in a positive cash net position. Our CFO, Peter Adams, will be covering our financial results in much more detail during his presentation. Over the past 2 years, corporations have had to adapt to many changes as the effects of the pandemic define a new world. Not the least of these and of relevance to IR has been the shift to hybrid working, a trend that is likely to become the new normal. As larger enterprises deal with this new reality, they are becoming increasingly aware of the need to manage large user communities with disparate technologies. Our Collaborate product line is designed specifically for these environments and is in use at some of the largest companies and managed service providers in the world. In fact, our average number of seats per customer is over 25,000, which validates our marketing strategy of targeting the world's largest corporations. The shift away from cash payments and general disruption of payments market also strengthens the value proposition of Transact product line, which provides analytics and monitoring for card-based transactions. Our development of our SaaS platform has enabled the implementation of payments analytics. Further development is underway to enhance support for high-value and realtime payments. The uncertainty of the global economy has also affected the buying cycles of our target market, which is the large enterprise. During the first half, several sales campaigns were delayed as companies adjusted their operations to cope with unexpected external influences on their business. Technology is also evolving. Enterprises are now embracing cloud-based solutions, where once they were skeptical of moving critical applications away from their proprietary on-premises infrastructure. The trend towards cloud and SaaS has significantly accelerated over the past 2 years. And there has been a significant shift in the way software is licensed. The move from a CapEx to an OpEx model has been in play for some time. We have met this demand through the evolution of our business model. Today, a large part of our customer portfolio has signed multiyear noncancelable contracts with annual payments. Pleasingly, 65% of our FY '22 cash receipts is underpinned by these committed contracts. The average tenure of these contracts is around 3 years. Like many other businesses, our world is changing. At IR, we have initiated a program to make sure we are positioned to adapt to and make the most of these changes. The transform IR program includes 19 separate work streams covering every aspect of the business, including company strategy, pricing and packaging, go-to-market, product relevance and differentiation, R&D and sales productivity, amongst many others. A key finding was that our -- for our target market, the large enterprise, our Collaborate and Transact product lines have not only maintained their relevance, but with product enhancements released during FY '21 and our road map for the next 3 years, we have become even more aligned with our customers and our prospects' technology strategy. This is especially true as our customers contemplate their own journey from on premises to cloud. Another outcome of the work was a need to recalibrate our go-to-market model. During FY '21, we began reinvigorating our sales organization, shifting the emphasis towards a -- our SaaS-based solutions. Our channel strategy has also been under review. Over the next 12 months, we will be refining our go-to-market programs to adapt to our changing market and our customer needs. Part of this program includes the introduction of flexible pricing model to make it easy for our customers to move from an on-premise private infrastructure model to a cloud-based model without the need to renegotiate complex contracts and budget approvals. Perhaps the greatest change to the business is the way we measure our success. As customers move to subscription-based pricing and cloud solutions, we are in a blended model of some revenue streams recognized upfront and others over time. In anticipation for the challenge to measure underlying performance, we introduced pro forma subscription reporting for the last 4 reporting periods. These numbers are much more aligned to cash flow and provide better insight into recurring revenue. We have also introduced new metrics such as total contract value and free cash flow. Peter Adams, our CFO, will be discussing this in more detail during his presentation on company financials. Our commitment to innovation both through the enhancements to our existing products and the development of new products is evident in our continued investment in research and development. Net spending on R&D was up 10% to $19.1 million. We completed the next phase of Prognosis Cloud, our cloud-based processing platform that is the basis for new SaaS-based products and services. We released a total of 4 new products on this platform across Collaborate and Transact, with early sales wins and market interest proving a positive sign for the future. New functionality and enhancements to our existing on-premise solutions allow customers to choose the flexible operational environment that aligns with their growth and digital transformation strategies. FY '22 will see a continued emphasis on product development as we build out our product road map to provide additional products and services to better serve our customers and to expand our market reach. During the year, a significant focus was placed on the company's approach to ESG. Acknowledging that this is both topical and a corporate responsibility, we have for the first time made available on our website information outlining the company's focus and performance in this area. We are pleased that our MSCI ESG ratings assessment moved up from a BB to an A. Across a broad range of attributes, the company showed year-on-year improvements, customer satisfaction and employee engagement being key. And we are once again WGEA compliant and maintaining a strong focus on a diverse and safe working environment. There were no whistleblower complaints received during the year. The Board and specifically the Audit and Risk Committee have stepped up their focus on security and cyber-related matters. This in part is tied to our strategy for the growth of our SaaS platform and products. We are pleased to advise that we have achieved SOC 2 Type I certification. During the year, we began a process of Board refresh. And I welcome Allan Brackin and James Scott to the Board. Their experience, expertise and a fresh perspective has been a valuable addition. At this meeting, the Board will be recommending the reappointment of Allan and James to the Board. We intend to onboard additional directors over the next year to ensure that we have an optimum mix of industry knowledge, diversity, governance competencies and international experience. Our investment in new products and our program of transition, as previously outlined, positions the company to take advantage of strong growth in our target markets. The Board remains confident in the future of Integrated Research and our ability to remain the preeminent supplier of user experience and performance management solutions for payments processing and collaboration environments. The company does not provide forward guidance. John Ruthven will provide a trading update in his presentation today. On behalf of the Board and management, thank you for -- to our customers, our shareholders and our partners, for your loyalty and commitment and trust during these difficult times. I would also like to acknowledge the extraordinary dedication, professionalism and efforts of IR's management team under the leadership of John Ruthven, IR CEO; and of my fellow directors. Thank you. I will now hand over to Peter Adams to provide us with his CFO address. Thank you very much. [ Thanks, Peter ].

Thanks, Peter. As our Chairman just referenced in his opening address, FY '21 was a difficult year with disappointing financial results for IR. Revenues declined by 29% to $78.5 million, driven by a shortfall in license fees that are recognized upfront. Our NPAT result came in at $7.9 million, with virtually all the profit coming in H2 after the near-breakeven first half result. The annual result is driven by the fall in revenue and partly shielded by a reduction in operating expenses. The result was negatively impacted by the increase in the Australian-to-U.S. dollar exchange rate. Net profit in constant currency would have been $11.9 million for the full year. The cash flow story, shown on the right-hand side, is down but highlights the fundamental strength of our business model. Our contracts with customers are noncancelable term-based arrangements. Cash receipts from customers was $78.8 million, down 18%. Operating cash flow was $21.1 million, a stark contrast compared to the $7.9 million of reported profit. The company remains in a positive cash position. Our CEO, John Ruthven, will provide an FY '22 trading update in his address. As we reflect on the second half performance of FY '21, it is clear we have regained positive momentum in the business. Compared to the first half, both revenue and profit are up 30% and 210%, respectively. Cash flow from operations was down 14% compared to the first half and naturally a flow-on effect from lower first half revenues. Importantly, the EBITDA margin bounced back to just under 40% and broadly consistent with FY '20 performance. Cloud solutions are an important driver in our growth strategy to deliver excellent customer outcomes with high-quality recurring revenues. As we transition to SaaS with our new cloud and hybrid solutions, that will represent an increasing proportion of the overall revenue mix. Our revenue recognition policies for these 2 income streams remain consistent with our previous approach and are fully compliant with both Australian accounting standards and International Financial Reporting Standards. They are different, though. As a reminder: Revenue from license sales are recognized upfront at the commencement of the license term, whereas SaaS-based revenues is recognized over time to the -- correspond with the service delivery. The chart on the business evolution slide shows that -- revenue and cash flow streams compared to a hypothetical on-premise license contract and a hypothetical SaaS-based contract across a 6-year period. The assumptions for the on-premise example, as represented by the bars, is the 3-year total contract value of $360 that renews for a further 3 years at the same price. The assumption for the SaaS example, as represented by the orange line, is a $120 per annum subscription over a 6-year period. The chart shows that there is a timing difference in revenue recognition, but the total cash flow is the same. The sum of the 3-year period and 6-year period is the same between each hypothetical example. Of course, this is a simplified example to illustrate the mechanical differences in accounting. In reality, there are other commercial differences that will play out over time. This slide was shown at last year's AGM, and I wanted to re-present it to facilitate your ongoing understanding of the business. Management will continue to report pro forma subscription revenues and introduce other key metrics as our SaaS business becomes more material. Turning to the slide on geographic and product revenue analysis. We have continued our 7-year series of revenue on a statutory basis, represented by the line on each chart, compared to pro forma revenues, represented by the bars on each chart, so what insights do we glean from these charts? There are a few points to make. Firstly, FY '21 was a difficult trading year. The impact was global and is clearly seen by the downward movements of the lines on the chart. What the charts don't show is that we have seen a positive momentum return in the second half, which I will explain later. Exchange rates have also impacted the reported results. The geographic charts are in natural currency to eliminate this consequence. The products charts show pro forma subscription revenue in both Australian dollars and U.S. dollars to provide a view to underlying performance. As I said, there is greater volatility in the upfront revenue model compared to the pro forma subscription model. The upfront revenue model is impacted by the time length of contracts. The average deal term in FY '21 was approximately 3 years compared to 4 years for the preceding year. The pro forma subscription model is not impacted by deal length. Revenue from new cloud products released during the year have not come through yet in the upfront revenue model or the pro forma subscription model. The reason for this is that it takes time for the delivery of those cloud revenues to come to fruition. The good news is that we have $5.5 million in cloud bookings to be released as revenue over coming periods. Further, we will continue to build the bank of bookings in coming periods through the addition of new customers and the sale of new products to existing customers. More on that later from John. Lastly, blended upfront and revenues recognized over time from the new and hybrid cloud solutions will increase, so we will continue to report pro forma subscription revenue to assist you. Further, we will commence reporting total contract values or TCV at each reporting period to provide further insight into performance. We've introduced the concept of total contract value or TCV as a key driver of underlying performance. TCV facilitates driving performance through the sales organization, as now there is no difference to incentives on selling on-premise or cloud-based solutions. To facilitate a benchmark for future performance, we have disclosed on this slide the TC values by half for FY '21 and FY '20. On this same slide, we've also disclosed the cash operating expenses for FY '21 and FY '20. Again, moving forward, we will be assessing performance based on TCV values relative to expenditure. These concepts are a fundamental move away from traditional measures and critical to transition the business. Investment in innovation, as measured by capitalized development in the cash flow statement, was $12 million for FY '21. The quality of this spend was high, 94% attributable to innovation and with only 6% attributable to maintenance and currency updates. There were 4 new cloud solutions released to market, all built from the new cloud platform. These new solutions and ongoing investment in development is critical to the growth of the business. For FY '21, virtually all the cash flow from -- generation from operations was from our established business lines. That should not be a surprise given the relative short time that our cloud solutions have been in the marketplace. As I referenced on the preceding slide, investment in innovation is the key to future success and growth of the business. John will now take us through an update on key markets and our strategy. Thank you.

Thank you, Peter. And good morning all. As I've messaged in previous earnings calls and presentations to the investor community, IR is a company in transition. The simplest way to describe this transition is self-funding a new SaaS subscription product suite to complement IR's established on-prem business. Today, I would like to provide you with a detailed insight into how we are doing this and the progress being made. Let me start with providing context to what is driving the change in IR's business model. The 2 primary market segments that we serve are collaboration and payments. Both of these segments are experiencing significant structural market changes, hybrid working and cashless payments, in both cases accelerated by the pandemic. In this customer-led transition, IR has the opportunity to both create and respond to customer demand. Our relevance and competitive strength with large enterprise is enhanced with new products that we have and are bringing to market. We continue to refine our way of working across product and development to accelerate time to market and innovate faster. This all builds towards scaling the business to accelerate growth and profitability. We're executing a clear plan to move the business to higher-quality SaaS subscription revenues. This will take some time and is broadly defined in 3 phases. In FY '21, we brought a number of new products to market, a year of innovation. FY '22 is a year of execution which is about getting these new products into the hands of our existing customers and winning new customers. In doing this, we will earn the right to scale the business in FY '23 and beyond and aggressively chase market share. At the same time, we are transitioning the company's revenue model, as Peter has spoken to, upfront revenue to TCV and ultimately ARR. We're working hard on a project that we call unit economics in order to report and provide transparency of the underlying performance of the business. This will take time, and we are making good progress. The future of work is evolving rapidly as organizations set their course for employees' work location and work environment and how they engage and collaborate. Whatever an organization's strategy, hybrid work is here to stay, and with it comes even more complexity and challenge in supporting the collaboration environment to provide a reliable and rich user experience. This is even more so in larger enterprise. And IR's average collaborate customer has more than 25,000 employees. IR has been in the collaboration market for some years. We started with products that voice and data teams use to monitor and troubleshoot on-premises environments like Cisco, Avaya and Microsoft Skype for Business. We've recently brought new products to market to provide the same capability for hybrid and cloud environments like MS Teams, Zoom and Webex. On the road map, we will extend into predictive analytics and digital user experience. IR's sweet spot is the big end of town, large enterprises with an average of more than 25,000 employees. These environments are generally globally distributed; multi vendor; and hybrid, meaning the applications and infrastructure are on prem and in the cloud. This all adds up to complexity. In the hybrid working world, the collaboration environment is the workplace. It is mission critical. Now if we take the complexity we have described and the mission-critical nature of the environment, if you're responsible for the uptime and performance of this environment, you need tools to monitor, troubleshoot, proactively identify pending issues, resolve issues, predict problems and resolve them before they occur and ultimately enhance the employee experience. This is what IR does. Over the last 12 to 18 months, we've experienced the rapid acceleration of hybrid working. IR serves large enterprise with significant existing investments in technology infrastructure. They have robust selection and procurement processes. In February, March last year, enterprises had to react very quickly to their organization working remotely, almost overnight. They did whatever it took to make it work with existing tools, processes and workarounds. We are now in a phase where enterprises are evaluating and implementing management tools to bring order to their environments, deal with new challenges and demands and enhance their employees' experience. In many cases, they're adding Teams or Zoom or Webex to the environment, so effectively having a hybrid environment. In this phase, it is natural to evaluate the vendor tools, but these have their limitations. Generally they are designed to manage the vendor's own tools and are focused on the application. They don't account for many enterprises having up to 3 different collaboration tools. I have Teams, Zoom and Webex on my laptop. They don't account for all the infrastructure between your laptop and mine, maybe a dozen potential failure points, network, routers, the telephony provider, et cetera. Gartner captured it well: These tools are helpful, but when your customers have thousands of employees, you need specialist tools. Gartner sizes the unified communications market as 550 million users, of which 185 million are the high-value, more sophisticated conferencing users. This segment is projected to grow at 7% CAGR out to 2025. We have a strong on-premises market position supporting Cisco and Avaya, where our average users per customer is in excess of 25,000. There will be a long tail to this business due to the nature of our large enterprise customer base. As a proof point, we recently did a media release announcing over 200,000 users added since July. The vast majority were on-premises with -- and net new customers. With new products launched in FY '21, we have coverage of up to 60% of the market with Microsoft, Cisco and Zoom. Further innovation is underway to support enterprises and carriers to integrate existing telephony solutions with new UCaaS applications. Our first such solution will be in market next half, initially supporting MS Teams direct routing, through a wide range of telephony systems from AudioCodes, Ribbon, Oracle, Avaya and Cisco. Through new products, we have the opportunity to cross-sell and upsell existing customers as well as win net new customers. We have announced integration with ServiceNow to extend the relevance in the enterprise. We're also actively pursuing partnerships to expand our TAM or target addressable market to address new requirements and use cases that hybrid working presents. For example, rooms and collaboration spaces have become part of the expanded workplace boundary. These are sophisticated and complex environments, particularly when done at scale. Let me start with a definition. Cashless payment is effectively the digitization of payments, which has given us -- given rise to a plethora of new payment methods. IR started in this business monitoring the infrastructure that banks and payment processors use to facilitate payments, and we still do. We then moved into monitoring and troubleshooting card payments and transactions. We further extended into card payment analytics, and we've just launched solutions for realtime and high-value payment environments. Our future road map will take us into predictive analytics leveraging machine learning and AI. To bring this to life, I'll briefly talk to 4 payments use cases. First, monitor the availability and throughput of your payment channels and partners. The objective is for our customers to have full -- a full end-to-end view of a transaction and the payment hub to ensure everything is working. This allows users to anticipate funding requirements, manage counterparty banks and other system integrations and identify issues in the processing chain. Second, provide insights into payment transactions to maximize business value. The objective is that users can see trends and patterns to enable better business decision-making and understand their customers. These insights can maximize business value by increasing revenue, reducing attrition and lowering operational expense. Third, ensure rapid detection of blockages in high-value payment processing. The objective is to be able to investigate and action any payments that require attention, see buildups in queues that could indicate processing problems or bottlenecks and monitor the overall health of payment flows. Without this, errors and delays in high-value processing could result in SLA penalties, regulatory action and decreased customer trust and retention. And last, actionable dashboards for next-generation payment types. The objective is to be able to view the detail and action required within an operational dashboard. This streamlines processes by highlighting exactly what the user is expecting to view and monitor. Without targeted insights, users will not be able to make good business decisions and manage the different payment types that are being introduced. Cashless payment has been accelerated by the pandemic and the resultant growth in e-commerce. New regulatory standards are driving the requirement for financial institutions to upgrade their realtime and high-value payments environments with a move away from traditional clearance methods. This plays well into IR's position and value proposition, monitoring and analytics of card transactions and expanding support for realtime and high-value payments. The part of the overall payments market that IR addresses is the 737 billion noncash payment transactions, defined as noncash transactions excluding checks. Per the Capgemini World Payments Report, these volumes are growing at 18.6% CAGR. The average transactions under management per transact customer is 2.5 billion per annum. IR's growth opportunity can be simplified to 3 vectors. Firstly, we have a significant customer base of financial institutions and processors like Fiserv, FIS, JPMC and Barclaycard. As transaction volumes increase, our revenue from these customers will continue to grow based on volume metrics in contracts. Secondly, new products like payment analytics, this gives us the opportunity to upsell existing customers as well as win new ones. Further enhancements to the Prognosis Edge also provides the opportunity to expand the existing customer base by integrating to a broader range of payment switches and environments. And thirdly, realtime payments continues to gain traction globally, with growth projected to be 23.4% CAGR out to 2024. It's the simplification of the payment process from initiation to reconciliation. As these new segments develop, new and sophisticated customer use cases are emerging. The architecture of our platform allows us to quickly respond and, in doing so, increase our TAM or target addressable market. IR's target addressable market is $1.2 billion and growing. We offer solutions that deliver deep domain data to a broad set of customers, with increasing intelligence in the products. Deep is about domain data, leveraging our know-how for extracting meaningful information from critical systems and surfacing it and extending our reach using the Prognosis intelligent edge. Smart is about evolving our platforms to leverage newer technology like ML and AI to solve higher-value customer problems and emerging complex use cases. Wide is about extending the platform with an open API interface, surfacing more data and expanding beyond traditional IT operations. It opens up the platform to democratize value creation in the medium term. We have a significant global blue chip enterprise customer base across diverse segments. Our innovation strategy is to map our solutions to the customer journey, whether they are on premises, hybrid or pure cloud. We establish and maintain long-term relationships, as can be seen by the customer tenure, many of them over 15 years. The average weighted life of our contracts has typically been greater than 4 years. However, we have seen a shortening of this in FY '21 driven by more cautious buying behavior and in some cases less certainty by customers on their own strategy for on premises or cloud. Service providers account for nearly 20% of annual revenue and an important part of IR's go-to-market. In many cases, they are large global companies that extend our market reach by bundling our products into their services and on selling to their customers effectively, a one-to-many model. We added a number of new customers year-to-date, many being well-known organizations and brands. These new customers are across all environments on premises, hybrid and SaaS. On this slide is a sample of wins this year that can both validate our strategy and strength of our value proposition. A few key themes emerge. Existing customers are bundling-in SaaS products to support their hybrid environment, a good example being The University of Utah. Large enterprises are working with service providers to provide a managed service across a hybrid environment. A good example is HCL. We are getting traction with larger PCA customers, example being NYPD. And existing infrastructure and transact customers continue to grow and extend their footprint with IR, example being Westpac. Last earnings call, we introduced this performance indicator table and advised we would keep the market updated on our performance. Through Q1, we have performed well on the customer and revenue retention front. We also did well in winning new business TCV and new customers. Strategically we made good progress on extending partnerships like ServiceNow as well as the work being done on unit economics. We still have work to do in getting newly released products into the hands of both customers and prospects. We expect that new, to existing and capacity will be back to plan by the end of the half. As Peter covered earlier, we've moved to running the business on a TCV and cash flow basis while still reporting statutory results. On a year-to-date basis, TCV is up on pcp, with early traction of new products being licensed in hybrid environments. Reported revenue and NPAT year-to-date are broadly in line with pcp, with some impact of a change in revenue mix as SaaS contracts are recognized over time. Cash flow is positive. And the balance sheet is solid to support the ongoing development of our future road map. Our strategy is clear and targeted to leverage the structural market changes of hybrid working and cashless payments. In line with this, we continue to transition the business, effectively self-funding a new SaaS business to complement our established on-prem business. In doing this, we remain confident that our market relevance increases. We can expand our TAM, accelerate delivery of new products to market and drive revenue growth and profitability. We remain focused on our FY '22 priorities as we execute the plan to win new customers, launch new products and grow our SaaS business. Thank you. I'll now pass you back to Peter.

Thank you, John and Peter. The first item of business is consideration of the company's FY '21 financial statements and reports. There is no formal vote required on this item of business. I now invite shareholders to ask questions or make comments on the financial statements and reports or the operations and management of the company. David Purdue, company Secretary, will act as moderator today. Moderator, are there any text questions on this item?

Yes, Mr. Chairman. There are 5 at the moment, so if you'd like, I can read those or start through those.

Thank you.

So the first question is from [ Sally Mellick ], who's asking, will the company continue with online meetings at future AGMs?

Our preference is to have face-to-face meetings. We are pretty much driven by what's happening in the world around us today, and as I mentioned in my discussion, it's of paramount importance that we recognize safety of our staff and our shareholders. Our aim is to have an online (sic) [ face-to-face ] AGM next year. If circumstances come the other way, then of course, we'll have to have it online rather than face to face.

Okay, the next question is from [ Mr. Oscar Tollison ]. He's a long-term shareholder of the company. And he's saying, with our SaaS platform, the transition to SaaS, based on how long other companies have already made that transition, it appears that IR is -- it will likely take IR several years at least. He's asking, is there a time frame for our move -- to move most clients to SaaS?

I think I can refer to John's presentation on that. We are very much driven by our customer base and what their strategies are. As John pointed out, a majority of sales that we're making at the moment [ to ] our enterprise customers is in a hybrid environment, so we're going to be driven by the progress that they make in moving their own environments to the cloud. We have the products and the technology available now to be able to move, but it's really up to our customers and the time frame that they have in place to make that happen.

The next question is from [ Peter and Kerry Cooper ]. And they refer to Slide 11, which is to do with TCV and cash operating expenses. They say that there's been a significant reduction in costs in H2 FY '21, as a percentage of revenue. "And firstly, congratulations. Secondly, can the CEO tell us how this was achieved?"

I'll pass that over to you, John.

We've had a number of initiatives. And in fact, in a prior earnings call, we described a 4-point plan that we had which was including reducing costs. This has been broadly across the board. We've certainly made some savings on the basis of staffing levels and we're just being quite disciplined. A natural and obvious one that has provided us with a saving is the fact that, during the pandemic, travel hasn't been available or permissible both internationally and domestically. And the -- one of the knock-on effects from that was that trade shows and conferences were largely unavailable. So those used to be costs that we would have had.

The next question is a second...

[ Before we go on ], David, I'd just like to add to that, if I could, that one area of costs that we are not reducing is the area of product development. We want to ensure that we still maintain our investment in product development so that we can meet with -- our strategic goals going forward. So that's just an addition to that, John.

[ Sure ].

The next question is a second one from [ Sally Mellick ]. She's talking about security risks from people being connected online. How does the Board view and approach the company's security threats? And secondly, has the company had any significant security issues?

Good question. I'll answer the second part of that question, first. No, we haven't had any security breaches or significant security issues within the company. We have [ chartered ] our Audit and Risk Committee to work with the development and our security people within the organization to develop a strategy to ensure that we don't have any breaches in the future. So we have a program in place that is being well and truly implemented, and I think we're in a pretty good position to ensure that, that doesn't happen going forward.

And the final question is from [ Peter Richardson ]. Do any IR solutions cover cryptocurrency transactions? Is it a space that IR is considering?

First off, no, none of our solutions cover cryptocurrency at this stage. It's an area that we probably have not strategized for it. It doesn't fit with the strategy of our main customers at this stage.

Okay, I've got another 3 questions. [ Mr. Richard Leong ] asks how a contract is structured. i.e., are they fixed price or seat-based? Do annual uplifts increase in line with CPI or something else?

I think I'll pass that one over to John.

Generally our contracts are fixed-term noncancelable contracts. Those contracts generally define a usage metric, be that users; number of transactions; or in our infrastructure area, [ course or servers ]. And our contracts generally provide for a true-up within the life of the contract if the customer exceeds the licensed threshold.

Thanks, John.

The next question is from [ Peter Richardson ], asking, does the company expect to pay a dividend in FY '22?

Good question. We are currently -- we, as you know, didn't pay dividends in FY '21 -- the funding of our further development, of our R&D in FY '22. At this stage, we don't know. That's a decision that we'll be making at the Board at the time, but we will be putting additional development effort in to complete our 3-year road map.

And I've got 2 questions on the same theme, one from [ Richard Leong ], and the second one, from [ Benjamin Rich ], both asking, who is our main competitor? And what is our key differentiator or unique selling point?

[ Pass that ] over to John, I think.

I'll try and keep it brief. It's not a simple answer. We have 3 product lines across Infrastructure, payments and collaboration, so we face different competitors in all of those areas. The greatest competitive intensity is in the Collaborate space. And as a general rule, we would face 3 classes of competitor across both payments and Collaborate. That would be, first and foremost, large enterprise, solution-type players that offer an end-to-end solution, maybe a company like [ Splunk ], where a customer would be required to potentially write their own scripts, et cetera to integrate into that. There is a host of specialist dedicated players that we would face in each of Transact and Collaborate; as I mentioned earlier, probably more intense in Collaborate. These could be companies like [indiscernible], [ Vyopta, Nectar ], et cetera. And thirdly, we would face, as we've referenced on one of the slides, competition from vendor tools which are generally suited to a homogeneous, not a heterogeneous, environment. What differentiates us in most instances and use cases that we serve is a customer's realtime requirements. So if the use cases need to be realtime versus just getting a batch upload or report overnight, that plays to our strength. So mission critical; real time; large, complex environments. And we've referenced several times in the presentation today that our average enterprise customer is greater than 25,000 employees, so we -- our sweet spot and our value proposition gets stronger the larger the organizations, which is why you've seen on our logo slide that we have such a strong blue chip customer base. That's generally what we define our competitive advantage.

Okay. Please remember that shareholders and proxies can submit their questions at any time during the meeting when logged on to the Lumi platform. Moderator, are there any audio questions on this item?

No, there are none at this point in time.

Thank you. In accordance with the Corporations Act of 2001, Mr. Julian O'Brien, partner of Ernst & Young, is available to answer questions relevant to the conduct of the audit or the preparation and [ content ] of their report. Moderator, are there any text questions for the auditors?

No, Mr. Chairman.

Moderator, are there any audio questions for the auditors?

No, there's no audio questions.

Okay, thank you. With regards of dividend, I advise that directors have not declared an interim or final dividend during the year. We're moving now to matters of resolution. There are 4 separate resolutions before the meeting. A number of proxy votes have been received prior to the meeting for each of the 4 resolutions. A summary of proxy votes received is shown on the current slide on your screen. As previously advised, voting on all resolutions is being conducted by poll as a means of providing transparency on all voted capital. This is in line with best governance practice. Voting continues to be open and will remain open after all resolutions have been put before the meeting for consideration. I appoint representatives of Computershare to act as returning officers for the poll. Results of the poll will be announced to the ASX as soon as practicable following the conclusion of the meeting. Resolution 1, advisory resolution to adopt the remuneration report. In accordance with section 250R of the Corporations Act, the company must put to the vote a resolution that the remuneration report be adopted. The full remuneration report is contained in the company's 2021 annual report. I remind members that this is an advisory resolution and refer you to the explanatory notes accompanying the notice of meeting. The motion to be voted on by the shareholders and proxies present is that the remuneration report for the company for the financial year ended 30 June 2021, forming part of the 2021 annual report, be adopted. There are a number of proxies cast, which are displayed on the screen, for resolution 1. As Chair, it is my intention to vote all open proxies given to me in favor of resolution 1. Moderator, are there any shareholder text questions with regard to resolution 1?

Mr. Chairman, there are no text questions in relation to resolution 1.

Are there any shareholder audio questions in relation to resolution 1?

Mr. Chairman, there are no audio questions for resolution 1.

Resolution 2, issue of options for Mr. John Ruthven. As required by the ASX listing rule 10.14, shareholder approval is required before issuing any securities to a director under an employee incentive scheme. I refer members to the explanatory notes accompanying the notice of meeting. I confirm that Mr. Ruthven may not vote on this resolution. The motion to be voted by the shareholders and proxies present is that, for the purposes of ASX listing rules 10.14 and for all other purposes, approval is given to the company to grant up to 655,809 options over ordinary shares in the company to its Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, John Ruthven; and the acquisition of up to 655,809 ordinary shares in the company by John Ruthven on vesting of those options, in accordance with the Integrated Research rights and option plan and on the terms set out in the explanatory notes accompanying the notice of meeting. There are a number of proxies cast, which are displayed on the screen, for resolution 2. As Chair, it is my intention to vote all open proxies given to me in favor of resolution 2. Moderator, are there any text questions with regard resolution 2?

Mr. Chair, there are no text questions on resolution 2.

Are there any audio questions as regards resolution 2?

Mr. Chairman, there are no audio questions on resolution 2.

Thank you. Resolution 3, reelection of a director. In accordance with company's constitution, a director during the year, to fill a casual vacancy, must resign and stand for reelection at the next AGM. Mr. Allan Brackin was appointed an independent nonexecutive director in February 2021 and offers himself for reelection. As Allan is a new addition to the Board, I now invite Allan Brackin to address shareholders. Allan?

Thank you, Peter. And good morning, everybody. I guess I'll just give a bit of background on myself. I have 35 years in the technology industry; the first 18 years of that, I spent as Founder and CEO of a IT services company. That company grew to over $500 million in revenue. It's focused on recurring revenues, listed on the ASX and grew by -- both organically and through M&A. And the next 17 years, I've spent in board roles across the technology sector. Through -- I spent many years as Chair of companies like RPMGlobal, GBST and OptiComm. All of those companies had a big investment in their technology. They all had a focus on a recurring revenue model. All were [ moving into ] SaaS-based revenue and all had a focus on strong cash generation. So I believe that the experience I have obtained at both the CEO level and at board level is very relevant to Integrated Research. And I look forward over the next several years being part of -- being able to work with management and with the Board to be able to achieve the goals that we're after, especially around as we drive into the recurring revenue and that SaaS model that John has spoken about today. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Allan. The motion to be voted on by shareholders and proxies present is that Allan Brackin, a director retiring in accordance with article 6.1(e) of the company's constitution and, being eligible, offers himself for reelection, is reelected as a director of the company. The Board considers that Allan's candidacy in respect to his individual merits, his background and experiences plus overall Board composition; and recommends that you vote in favor of this election. There are a number of proxies cast, which is displayed -- which -- I'm sorry, are displayed on the screen, for resolution 3. As Chair, it is my intention to vote all open proxies given to me in favor of resolution 3. Moderator, are there any text questions regarding resolution 3?

Mr. Chair, there are no text questions for resolution 3.

Are there any audio questions with regard resolution 3?

Mr. Chairman, there are no audio questions on resolution 3.

Thank you. Resolution 4, reelection of a director. In accordance with company's constitution, a director appointed during the year to fill a casual vacancy must resign and stand for reelection at the next AGM. Mr. James Scott was appointed an independent nonexecutive director in May 2021 and offers himself for reelection. As James is a new addition to the Board, I now invite James Scott to address shareholders. James?

Thank you, Peter. Good morning, everybody. It is an honor to be appointed nonexecutive director to Integrated Research. This is a great Australian technology company with an excellent customer base, strong market presence and solid underlying business fundamentals. I see my role in helping the Board and management team to shape Integrated Research's future, to help it thrive and prosper in the technology sector for many years into the future. Further to Peter's introduction, yes, I have over 25 years experience in working with emerging and disruptive technologies at the start-up and enterprise levels. On top of my 16 years at Accenture, working with many global industry tech and telco leaders, I have been involved in a number of start-ups from a software and services perspective. I know how critical it is to ensure you have a differentiated product and service. I also bring strong directorship experience to the table, having previously been Chairman of Skyfii, a data and analytics business; Chairman of technology services business Seisma; Chairman of Merchantwise Group; and a nonexecutive director of Orbx, a flight simulation software business. From a corporate perspective, I was also a partner in KPMG's advisory division; and the Chief Operating Officer of Seven Group Holdings, where I was also a board member of WesTrac and Coates. I look forward to working with my fellow directors to support the management team and represent the best interests of shareholders as we continue to build upon IR's leadership position in the global market. Thank you, [ Peter ].

Thank you, James. The motion to be voted on by shareholders and proxies present is that James Scott, a director retiring in accordance with article 6.1(e) of the company's constitution and, being eligible, offers himself for reelection and -- is reelected as a director of the company. The Board considered James' candidacy in respect to his individual merits, background and experience plus overall Board composition; and recommends you vote in favor of his election. There are a number of proxies cast, which are displayed on the screen, for resolution 4. As Chair, it is my intention to vote all open proxies given to me in favor of resolution 4. Moderator, are there any text questions regarding resolution 4?

Mr. Chairman, there are no text questions on resolution 4.

Are there any audio questions on resolution 4?

Mr. Chairman, there are no audio questions on resolution 4.

As previously advised, a number of proxy votes have been received prior to the meeting for each of the 4 resolutions. A summary of the proxy votes received for all resolutions is now shown on your screen. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our discussion on the items of business. Shortly, I will close the voting system. Please ensure that you have cast your vote on all 4 resolutions. As Chair and as previously advised in the meeting, it is my intention to vote all open proxies given to me in favor of each resolution. I will now pause to allow you to complete your voting. [Voting]

Ladies and gentlemen, voting is now closed. The results of these votes will be released to the ASX later today. There being no other business, I declare the 2021 Annual General Meeting to be closed. Thank you for your attendance.