Integrated Research Limited (IRI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. My name is Abby, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Integrated Research Limited First Half Fiscal Year '24 Results Investor Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. And I will now turn the conference over to Mr. John Ruthven, Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Ruthven, you may begin.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and welcome to the first half FY '24 Results Briefing for Integrated Research. My name is John Ruthven, and I'm the CEO at IR. With me today is Matthew Walton, our outgoing CFO; and Christian Shaw, our incoming CFO. I will open the presentation and then hand the presentation to Matthew to take us through a detailed financial review. He will then hand back to me to talk through strategy and key priorities for FY '24. At the conclusion of the presentation, we will open the call for questions. This morning, we posted our results presentation to the ASX website, which we will be referring to during this call. You can also find a copy of it in the Investor Relations section of our website at ir.com. Moving to Slide 2. Integrated Research, or IR, as we're better known is a global software company, providing performance and experience monitoring solutions for critical business systems. We have 3 product lines; Collaborate for Unified Communications and UCaaS, or Unified Communications as a Service; Transact, which is in the payment space and our Infrastructure product for Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE Non-Stop environments. Common to the customer use cases that we support are complexity, mission criticality and scale. Slide 3 highlights the underlying strength of IR's business model, our customer base. Our customers are large global enterprises across a range of industries, including technology, telecommunications, financial services, government, healthcare, higher education and retail. Key to our business are multi-year non-cancelable contracts with mission-critical requirements. I'm on Slide 4, CEO key messages. We are on a turnaround journey and having improved our working capital position for the company with cash at bank and a level of profitability, we now turn our attention to growth. In the first half, we benefited from our strong renewal base of blue-chip customers. This, coupled with cost control has improved our profitability and cash position. Transact and Infrastructure performed very well in H1, leveraging several large contracts, along with some good run-rate business. At the same time, our Collaborate product line faces some headwinds as we maintain our focus on large enterprises with complex environments, as well as industry segments where our value proposition is most relevant. Against this backdrop, our cash position now gives us the opportunity to pursue product-led growth opportunities. On Slide 5, we summarize our statutory results. The company achieved profit after tax for the half of $11.2 million. Statutory revenue for the period was $40.8 million, up 6% over the prior half. The strong performance was a consequence of improved sales execution, a larger renewal book and healthier external trading conditions. Cash receipts from customers totaled $32.4 million, up 2% over the prior period. The company continues to benefit from term-based non-cancelable license contracts with a high-quality customer base, driving an increase in cash receipts and an increase in cash at bank, which continues due to a strong focus on cash management. Now on Slide 6 and switching to pro forma results. The performance indicator, total contract value or TCV, was $41.3 million for the half, up 6% on the prior corresponding period, or PCP. We continue to report revenue on a pro forma subscription basis, which we believe is more reflective of the long-term underlying performance of the business. Subscription revenues for the period were $32.9 million, 4% down as a result of lower new business sales and lost clients. Revenue increased from services, partially offsetting the period-on-period decrease in total pro forma subscription revenue, with pro forma revenue down 2%. Pro forma EBITDA dropped 6% as a result of lower recurring revenue and cost increases due to inflationary pressure. Our cash conversion rate for the half improved to 87% as a result of the strong cash collections. Slide 7 captures the priorities we set for FY '24. At the halfway point, we provide the following update. Good performance in the Americas and Europe in the first half, which was underpinned by a solid renewals book with TCV growth expected for the full year. We won 13 new customers, which was behind our expectation and anticipate an improved result in the second half. Good sales execution on renewals in the first half, benefiting from the ongoing process improvements and discipline. NRR or net revenue retention, improved to 95% in constant currency. Expenses were down 21% in the half, and we expect operating expenses to be down for the full year. We maintained our customer-centered approach to product development. And at the same time, we've brought on a new Head of Product to ready us for the next phase of product-led growth as referenced earlier. Our working capital position has improved with statutory profit and cash for the full year is expected to be up on PCP. I will now hand over to Matthew to take you through a detailed review of our financial performance.

Thanks, John. We're on Slide 9. Slide 9 shows the linkage between total contract value, statutory revenue, pro forma revenue and annual recurring revenue. It's worth unpicking this for a moment. Total contract value, the black line, is the total value of a revenue-generating contract written in the year. This includes software license and related maintenance, cloud, testing and consulting services revenue. TCV is a function of the term of the contract, and the annual value of the contract. For example, client TCV can reduce significantly if the term is reduced, even though the annual value of the license subscription has increased. Statutory revenue, the red line, is revenue recognized per the accounting standard. This has a strong upfront revenue recognition profile, with less revenue recognized over the life of the contract. As a consequence, there is a strong alignment with TCV. Pro forma subscription revenue, the middle blue bar, is the license and maintenance revenue from the contracts spread over the life of the contract. It's a non-statutory and unaudited view that we believe represents the recurring nature of the contracted revenue streams. Pro forma revenue, the left purple bar, is pro forma subscription revenue, plus other non-recurring revenue streams, typically professional services and one-time through testing services. Recurring revenue, the blue bar is the end-of-period subscription revenue multiplied by 6 and best represents the ongoing recurring value in the stream. This chart highlights that while there is more volatility in TCV and statutory revenue, there is more consistency in the revenue streams over time as represented by pro forma and recurring revenue. Furthermore, while TCV and statutory revenue may grow, pro forma and recurring revenue may decline as renewals and new business are more than offset by churn and down-sell. Two key points to address in this slide are the convergence of TCV and statutory revenue over time is driven by the shift to SaaS, with less upfront revenue recognition. And the recent relative stability of pro forma and recurring revenue compared to the volatility of the lead indicators of TCV statutory revenue highlights the growth of pro forma and ARR occurs as new clients and TCVs added to the renewal base and the renewal base is extended through price increase, offsetting any lost revenue through client exits and down-sell, adjusted for foreign exchange movement. If we turn to Slide 10. Slide 10 presents our TCV, stat revenue, pro forma subscription revenue and recurring revenue on a geographic region and by product set. This revenue should be considered in conjunction with more detailed slides in the appendix. Points to highlight include; the Asia Pacific chart shows the consistently strong pro forma recurring revenue growth has plateaued with the downturn in TCV stat revenue from a high prior period. Collaborate headwinds continue on both lead and lag measures. New Transact sales will grow future pro forma revenue and recurring revenue. New leadership in the Americas and Europe is focused on driving TCV license growth. On Slide 11, we focus on the key metric underpinning value, namely the change in components of recurring revenue. Total recurring revenue declined 5% to $64 million. New logos in Collaborate, upsell in Collaborate from new capacity and price increases and Transact were overshadowed by the loss of clients and down-sell price reductions in Collaborate and Transact, and foreign exchange headwinds. Collaborate is experiencing headwinds in all geographies. Further information is in the appendix. We turn to Slide 12 titled operating costs. IR has continued to manage costs tightly. Costs have decreased 21% on the prior period. This is a result of managing the headcount and active cost management. Natural attrition continued through the period as the market for technology staff was competitive. Pleasingly, IR continues to replace all critical roles quickly with high-quality candidates. Our innovation agenda has been reset, with focus on customer-driven solutions focused on near-term opportunities. We're on Slide 13. This slide on additional metrics underpinning value, namely the level of recurring revenue, the contract length and the proportion of new business to renewals in the period. Recurring revenue has remained constant as a proportion over the prior period. Contract length has remained constant over the prior period, with the average length of the contract written up period stable at 4 years. Renewals dominated the half, with circa $33 million in renewal TCV, up from $23 million a year prior. Turning to Slide 14. Cash flow is illustrated on Slide 14, with cash at bank increasing $2.9 million or 16% over the period. Significant focus was paid to ensuring receivables are aged below 60 days. Cash paid to employees and invested in development reduced compared to last year, reflecting ongoing expense management discipline. We're on Slide 15. While the company had statutory EBITDA of $11 million, $3.5 million of cash was generated from operations. The primary drivers of this difference are; over time revenue/cash conversion compared to statutory upfront revenue recognition, combined with improvements in working capital of $600,000 as a result of a lower cost base and improved collections, offsetting historic debtor factoring of $2.1 million, which is now concluded and income tax paid. We should emphasize that the company is not factoring any receivables and the current factoring completed in December 2023. The balance sheet shown on Slide 16 shows a pleasing 19% lift in net assets to $71 million. Cash and trade receivables increased $7.5 million on the prior half. Receivables remain a strong source of cash flow in the current and future years. The company remains debt free. I'll now pass back to John for the rest of the presentation.

Thank you, Matthew. Now moving to strategy progression on Slide 18. As we reflect on our journey, it's pertinent to both project the path ahead as well as the progress being made. We're a company in turnaround. Phase 1 of this journey was to improve our working capital to earn the right to pursue growth opportunities. Coming out of H1 FY '24, we are pleased with the progress. Cash at bank of over $20 million, a solid balance sheet with an increase in net assets of nearly 20% and statutory EBITDA of $11 million. As we consider growth options, all options are available, leveraging our core capability as a platform company, you might ask what are the adjacent opportunities either from new products or simple product enhancements. We are well progressed with customer-led requirements in this arena. Our focus is now on how we can scale this. While M&A has not been a significant part of the company's strategy to date, there is an appetite to explore options to accelerate growth. Synergy to our core competence and customer value proposition is key to this vector. A lower risk growth opportunity is partnership in adjacent new product areas. Key to this is access to new market segments whilst leveraging IR's core capabilities. A good example is the recent product launch of Remote Insight through an expansion of an existing partnership with [ PathSolutions ]. Getting the growth phase right will inevitably lead to the scale-up phase. In this phase, fast-fail innovation is critically new ideas, new technologies. We will also need to flex our business model, including the revenue model, our go-to-market and our approach to product and engineering. We are well placed coming out of the capital management reset of the business to consider and pursue growth options. Now on Slide 19, we'll take a look at a couple of the key wins for the first half in the Collaborate portfolio, both the renewals and the sweet spot of large enterprise with complex communications environments. Airbus in Europe is a large complex organization with a workforce of over 100,000 users. They have been an IR customer for over a decade, and this renewal was for a rich set of products supporting an internal project called Smartphone For All. IR's Collaborate product suite provides end-to-end visibility of the multi-vendor ecosystem in a single product solution. Moving to the Americas. CDW is a large technology reseller and managed service provider who have been an IR customer for 10 years. This renewal and expansion of the full suite of Collaborate products for 135,000 users will assist CDW in integrating some acquired organizations, as well as meeting SLAs or service level agreements for their managed service customers. On Slide 20, we profiled 3 Transact and Infrastructure customer wins in the first half. Fiserv is a large global financial technology company who've been an IR customer for over 20 years and signed a new 5-year agreement that is a renewal and expansion. This deal was structured to renew existing products, increased capacity and add a newly developed IR product, Business Insights. IR provides critical insight to network performance in support of Fiserv's service to their customers. Worldpay are the second largest non-bank payments acquirer in the U.S., processing over 1 billion transactions per month. Another long-standing IR customers signed a 5-year renewal for solutions that help ensure their merchant networks are operating at very high availability levels. They operate multiple payment hubs with high transaction loads, and must achieve very demanding SLAs. Moving to the Middle East. Network International, or NI, are the largest payments processor in the region. They renewed and expanded their contract with IR for another 3 years. NI are expanding in the region and at the same time, modernizing their payment platforms to support new payment types and services. In support of this, they expanded their current IR solution by adding Transact Real-Time payments monitoring and upgrading to Transact Cards and NonStop Plus solutions. Coming to Slide 22. I would now like to remind you that IR does not provide specific guidance. However, at the halfway mark in FY '24, we've made the following observations to keep the market informed. Customer sentiment is steady, and we are not encountering budgets being cut or withdrawn. This gives us a cautious optimism for growth. The FY '24 renewal book is expected to exceed the prior year, which is now weighted to the first half following the strong renewal result in H1. The renewal book is also now weighted to Transact and Infrastructure following the successful closure of a number of large renewals. While we expect Collaborate churn to persist, we will increase our focus on large complex organizations better suited to our value proposition and price point. In the second half, we expect a larger contribution from new business, both new customers and upsell, noting that our new business pipeline is up on PCP. We anticipate growth in the Americas and Europe, with APAC a little down over a strong prior year. We also expect an improved cash balance at year-end based on higher sales, lower costs and ongoing collections focus. I'm on the final slide. And as I conclude today's first half FY '24 earnings announcement, I'd like to close with the same key message or messages that I shared earlier in the presentation. IR is on a turnaround journey, and we are at a critical stage where we move our focus to growth, leveraging our improved working capital position. We have cash in bank, are profitable and have momentum coming out of H1. Our first half results leveraged our strong renewal base, in particular, our Transact and Infrastructure portfolio. We again proved our ability to sign 7-figure deals with large global enterprises. Whilst our Collaborate product top line faces some headwinds, we maintain our focus on large enterprises with complex environments playing to our strengths. We are positive in our growth outlook, noting that the second half is more reliant on new business. Finally, as we look to the future, our cash balance provides the foundation for us to pursue a product-led growth opportunity focus. Operator, that concludes the presentation. We can now open it up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And we will take our first question from [ Peter Cooper ] with Teaminvest.

Congratulations on a terrific half results. John, I'm just wondering if you could sort of outline what are the headwinds that you're facing in the Collaborate business? Just a bit of an outline of those headwinds.

Peter, thanks for the question. We've certainly seen large enterprises surveying their options in terms of what their communications infrastructure is and moving that to UCaaS environments. So that's the primary shift, particularly at the larger end of market. I'd also make the observation that, that migration is more evident in certain markets than others. So it's more prevalent in the U.S., where in other parts of the world, it's a much more conservative approach to moving. That said, there is some protection for our business on the basis that large complex organizations tend to be heterogeneous in nature, so a multi-vendor environment. And that makes it more of a -- more aligned to what our customer value proposition is, highly complex environments, large volume environments.

Great. And look, John, I just got one other question. It involves cash generation. If you go back over the last 12 months, the business has actually generated approximately $12 million in cash, which added to the balance sheet. In your view, is that given everything that's going on in a steady-state business, a steady-state environment, is that $12 million per annum cash generation sustainable?

I might ask Matthew to answer that. He's been pivotal to the work we've done around repairing our working capital base. So, I think has probably a front-seat view.

Thanks. It's a good question. So, there are a couple of drivers of cash generation. One is the contracted nature of the cash flows from our clients. So, which cash flows come over the course of a contract and which cash flows are paid upfront. Typically, we'd expect about 70% of our portfolio to come over the course of a contract, so over the 3 years or 5 years based on the product type and about 30% to be paid upfront. There's been a little bit of a mix change in that over the last 12 months. And combined with the intense focus on cash collection and getting days sales outstanding to below 60 days, that's what's driven the significant improvement over 12 months. To look forward, we would expect to maintain the focus on cash and cash collection and the amount of contracts that pay upfront versus over time, probably you'd expect to stabilize at that 70/30. So I'm not sure I would necessarily say the degree of, say, $12 million. I think, it will probably be a bit less than that given some of the one-offs that have been in the period.

And we will take our next question from [ Matt Cook ] with Cashbook and Journal.

Can you hear me? Yes, sorry about that. Obviously, signaling a little bit of a change of strategy from sort of harvesting cash to an investment phase. Are you able to give a bit of color? Are you expecting to step R&D back up? What's the quantum of that and the sort of timing of any investment?

I don't know that it's so much a change in strategy. As I referenced in my remarks, we had to go through a phase of preparing our working capital to essentially earn the right to pursue growth options. What we've certainly covered today is that we're reasonably clear on our focus in that area around product-led growth opportunities, having accumulated some cash, and we certainly, as in answer to the prior question, that continues to be a key focus for us. The use of that cash is certainly going to be focused at our growth opportunities. We're also clear that there's many ways to achieve that, which we've tried to outline in the strategy progression slide. And at this point in time, all options are open. One of the critical things that we've done is hired new VP of Product to working along with our CTO to spearhead that effort to make sure that we're making the right choices and decisions in terms of we can -- where we can get the best bang for our buck in terms of R&D investment.

So could we expect any sort of changes to that investment level in the near term or is this more a medium -- like obviously R&D has been cut quite heavily. We likely to see that step back up in the next 6 months or?

On a business case basis it would. So once we lock in on an opportunity, we would obviously look at the funding required. But as we've previously communicated, we took a very conservative approach as we were rebuilding the working capital in terms of R&D. And the terminology we've used is that we were doing customer-led innovation, so less so speculative development. And that was certainly off the back of the write down that we took. And we believe that we're now in a position with cash and bank profitable, that we can again entertain growth opportunity and making sure that the investment we make has a pretty sure opportunity for return.

And so just one final clarification. With the customer-led stuff, are you getting some co-funding from your clients to help develop that?

In some cases, yes. So without naming the customer, we developed an entire suite of APIs relevant to the Genesys Contact Center platform, which was customer-funded. We've also done some further development in what I would refer to as road map acceleration. So things that were on the roadmap, but further out, where a particular customer signed a pretty large deal with us in the last 12 months. And in the process of doing that we agreed to bring forward some of those priorities. Now the good thing in that example is that it's not a one-off or they're not special requirements to that customer. It's a typical software model, it's a one to many. So what we're building for them is essentially core product, but they've essentially funded us bringing that forward.

[Operator Instructions] And we will take our next question from [ Brian James ] with [ B&R James Investments. ]

I'm Brian James, a shareholder. I just wanted to just talk to you about the new business. You mentioned in the reports the state about that new business didn't reach budget. At the AGM you talked about getting, when you did your presentation, you said you had 9 new customers and actually it was quite an upbeat presentation at that point and saying that there was growth signs there. At the latest one you talk about another 4 customers, 13 customers, and you didn't achieve your budget, you did state that in the second half that you expect to pick up on that, but I'm just trying to understand it. I know you're using numbers here instead of, I'm assuming the budget. You probably would have been budgeting from a dollar point of view. But how far for the second half? I mean, 13 customers to me, new customers, sounds like a good number. How far did you miss your budget? Have you got an extremely high budget in that area? And how confident are you of just getting the total budget for the year, so that the second half will pick up on the loss from the previous 6 months?

Yes. We don't generally budget on the basis of a number of new customers. So the way we would build our internal budgets is starting with either total TCV or revenue, and then you have a mix underneath that. And that mix tends to flex period on period. We can -- as we've already flagged. H1 was quite a rich renewals period. So we were very pleased with the top line result in which we achieved both TCV growth and statutory revenue growth. But the mix was much more reliant on renewals. What we're communicating is we would have liked a richer portion of that without a specific number to have been new business. As we go into the second half, again, we have the same objective around where we'd like to be from a top line perspective. And any mix of renewals, capacity, upsell and net new customers can contribute to that overall result. The point that we also make is that what we refer to as our renewal book and we know which contracts are coming up for renewal in which period. So you can get an idea. There are some things that can change the value of a renewal contract term, increasing the price, et cetera. And we've had reasonably good success in terms of approving -- achieving what we refer to as, renewal yield. A long way of saying that we would have liked more contribution from new business. We are aware that for us to deliver into our expectations for the second half that we are more reliant on new business. But the other point that I did make is that we have a richer pipeline compared to prior period in terms of converting that from a new business perspective, which includes both net new customers as well as upsell.

Okay. Just another question. Obviously an important question for a shareholder is dividends. You remark in the report that you will look at the dividend situation once the full year's results are on hand. Just -- I'm sort of looking at the cash flow -- I remember at the AGM presentation you were asked, someone was asked anyway, that question that what do you need to get to pay a dividend? And you responded, we need a credit line to be able to pay a dividend. But effectively the banks are not prepared to give you a credit line. Just looking at the current situation with your bank account balance, $21 million at the 31st of December, I estimate that at the 30th of June, your bank account is going to be around somewhere around about $26 million to $27 million. I may be out on that, but I think it will end up around that sort of figure. Taking into account your EBITDA of $10 million for the half year, of which you've only really [indiscernible] $3 million of that figure. I look back over as well your net cash flows over the last 10 years. And by net cash flows, I'm referring to cash flows prior to debt movement, but including all other movements. And the thing that does show up is the company does have a very substantial cash flow over those years. The lowest cash flow that I ever saw was actually in 2022, which got down to about $5 million before debt movement. So if you look at -- if I'm right on that estimate of around $26 million, $27 million in the bank account at the 30th of June, you've really got more than plenty of buffer there now where you don't need a credit line. I know you're referring to going forward and spending money on growth, but what -- how likely is it that you will start reinstating the dividend program to shareholders?

I'm going to ask Matthew to answer, but I will just make this comment. We are very carefully evaluating our capital management strategy and requirements. Dividend is a Board decision, and the Board met prior to our earnings announcement and decided that we would not pay a dividend for this period. In terms of your analysis of our cash flow, I think, it's quite comprehensive what you've done, but I think it's also important for us to share with you at least some insight as to how we think about cash and internal uses of cash and requirement.

Brian Matthew Walton, it's good to talk again, and no, I think you've got a very good handle on the cash positions. Probably some points I might use to enhance your thinking, and we may have discussed this in the past, but certainly you referenced the AGM. We don't have a debt facility, and we do constantly keep returning to our bank to understand appetite. And with this release of these results, we'll do so again. And part of that, I guess, is predicated on recent history where we've had a couple of losses, and that does impact on the credit worthiness. It also does impact on confidence. And as Directors look, to institute a dividend program, they don't wish to put it in and then pull it out after a short period of time, as that would be quite damaging. So confidence is key here. And I think, as John said, we're in a turnaround phase, and we've had a half that I think where -- there's a lot of positives within the half, but I think that it's matter of ensuring that that is sustained. If I look into some of the more specifics, I would suggest that given the nature of our business cycle, we tend to be very lumpy. And I think I touched on this at the AGM. We tend to be very lumpy in terms of our sales, whether they be renewals or new business to the back end of each period. So for this particular half, you would expect on that basis that May and June would be the bulk of any business written in this period, rather than, say, the first 4 months. And so, we need to recognize that lumpy cash flow that comes in the end, any receipts from that and from other prior periods are going to probably come within 60 days after that. So we will have to fund a drier period in terms of cash inflows for the first 4 or 5 months, perhaps, and that needs working capital, which in round numbers, I would suggest is in the order of about $15 million. And if we had a debt facility with some overdraft, we wouldn't need to sustain that cash balance. The second element, and I think I again touched on this at the AGM, is, and I touched on it earlier in the call, we have certain clients who pay us up front, and now our analysis shows that looking over the future period of clients who've paid upfront, we have an ongoing liability out to 2036. It gets a lot smaller as you go out to 2036. But looking beyond the end of this financial year, we would estimate that, that is in the order of, say, $7 million of ongoing liability that we need to support. So we could take a courageous decision and say, well, we've got the cash, we're just going to return it to shareholders now. But then, as we find, we need to pay that cash to support the business in 2026, '27, '28, '29, et cetera. If we don't have the cash, then that places a great deal more pressure on the business. And I guess the final point I would just draw your attention to is your calculation of $26 million or thereabout. I would just encourage you to think through my earlier point on the back ending of receipts in this particular half, or contracts written and hence receipts, perhaps in the first sector of the new financial year, FY '25, and maybe that's on the high side. That estimate would be something to think through.

Yes. Well, in doing that calculation, I just assumed that was -- during the second half you would probably break even. So I didn't think that I was sort of being over the top in an estimate of around that $26 million, but I guess time will tell. But can I just point out to you that over those 10 years, when I looked at the cash flow, the maximum bank balance got to about $14 million, and you were paying -- fairly large dividends in and out. Sorry. And I really do think at the present time you have a substantial buffer because the cash position is going to be somewhere nearly twice what you previously been. Your minimum position. But again, I know you've got. Sorry.

No, I absolutely hear you. And if we had a bank facility, I would totally agree with you, right? A bank overdraft facility enables you to smooth out those peaks and troughs in your cash flows and your cash balance. And given we don't have that, we have to factor on a worst case situation, which probably means holding more cash than some people would want us to. But we don't have an alternative because if we don't have the cash and we can't pay our suppliers, that places us in a particularly difficult position.

Maybe you should consider looking at another banker?

Indeed.

With $21 million in the bank account, and you can't get a facility anyway.

Trust us, we've worn out some shoe leather.

Okay.

It's a good suggestion. And we will continue to pursue those lines.

And we will take our next question from private investor, [ Stella Wang. ]

I got 2, please. The first one is regarding the potential M&A opportunities. Is there anything like imminent within the next 12 months? And is profitability of the acquiree any part of the consideration in addition to the product fix?

I would draw your attention to the slide that is titled Strategy Progression. And on the timeline below, the position of the dot is important. So we are early in the phase of evaluating what those options are. And I think the breadcrumbs I'd provide is the targets would certainly need to be synergistic to our business. And I think in some of my commentary today, I provided the view that they need to leverage our core competence for us to pursue those. But we do not -- if your question is, do we have something in play right now, the answer is no.

My second and final question is, when you talk about the collapse, down-sell. Are you talking about lowering your product pricing or is it more a downside in terms of volume or lower scope, smaller scope when you renew on the contract? If you did reduce pricing, what's the quantum?

So you're talking about the Collaborate product and the reduction in ARR due to down-sell?

Yes. That's right. Yes.

Yes, yes. Yes. So there's a few factors that drive that. So within down-sell it's a generic term, but you would have churn, so where clients are no longer using our product and leave us so they don't renew their contract at the end of the term. The second is where clients do renew, but for a lower overall contract price. And there are 2 drivers to that, and there's no simple rule of thumb on it. The 2 drivers would be that they use less capacity because, for example, Collaborate is sold on a per seat basis. So they're consuming fewer seats because possibly they're in the migration to a different supplier or a cloud product and they only need 10,000 out of what might have been an original 25,000 seats. And/or there is a competitive process for the contract renewal and there is a price reduction. It's hard to sort of put a number on it and say that there's a line of sight of X percent, but hopefully that helps with the drivers.

Yes. I asked that more, I'm trying to estimate because the last few years your ARR seem to be reducing at about 10% -- 9% to 10% if you do the opposite of CAGR calculation. I'm trying to understand. Of course there's churn losing clients. So some of that is just price reduction and some of that is losing clients.

Yes. So I think probably the slide I'll draw your attention to is the first slide in the appendix. And if you look at there's 3 tiers if you like, to the annual recurring revenue analysis in that slide in the appendix. The first is for all products, second is for Collaborate, and the third is for Transact & Infrastructure. And if we just focus on the middle section being Collaborate, the down-sell period on period is about 12%. Right from the opening ARR, down 12%. For the full year to June '23, it was down 26%. I'm conscious that at this point in time it's at the 6-month mark. You can't just double it, but you can expect it to increase. Now I haven't got a very clear view on a number, but I expect it won't be materially different from the experience we've had last year, just given the trends in the marketplace.

And we have follow-up questions from [ Matt Cook ] with Cashbook and Journal.

Really probably just a follow up from that question. Do you have an idea of what sort of proportion of the Collaborate book you think is at risk of churn, i.e., sort of customers that don't fit that highly complex environment that you're targeting currently.

We haven't -- Matt, we haven't quantified that. We're analyzing it very closely and we're also working closely with existing customers in the renewal cycle to understand their future plans. But we wouldn't have a number or a metric that we would be able to share with you to quantify that.

We have no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Mr. John Ruthven for closing remarks.

Thanks, operator. Again, thank you for attending our earnings call today. I'll just reiterate the key messages. We're a company in turnaround. We've done well in Phase 1 of that, improving our working capital, which really now gives us the right to change our focus and increase our focus on growth opportunities for the company. And as I've referenced in my remarks today, the half that we're currently in is a critical half and certainly new business. And our -- building our innovation capability is critical to this half. And we appreciate your support of us as a business, and we're working hard to deliver into what we would now refer to as the growth phase. Thank you, all.

And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call, and we thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.