Integrated Research Limited (IRI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Integrated Research Limited HY '25 Results Investor Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Ian Lowe, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. A very good morning to everybody. My name is Ian Lowe, and I'm the CEO of IR. Welcome to the half year FY '25 results briefing. With me today is Christian Shaw, our CFO. I'm going to open today's presentation, and then I will hand over to Christian to take us through the financial review. At the conclusion of the presentation, presentation to the ASX website, and we will refer to that throughout this call. And you can also find a copy of that presentation in the Investor Relations section of our website at ir.com. And so I'm going to refer to the presentation throughout the call today. And I'd like to start by going straight to the second slide. And this really just explains the business that IR is in today. And so as a software provider, the segment that we occupy is commonly referred to as observability. Let me just explain what observability means. It literally means the observation in real time of the behavior and the performance of enterprise IT ecosystems. And so the value proposition that we deliver to our clients every day [Technical Difficulty].

Sorry to interrupt. We are losing your audio. Ian, sorry to interrupt. We have lost the audio for your line.

Are you able to hear me now?

Yes, we can hear you now.

Okay. I'll just backtrack. I've gone to Slide 2 of the results presentation. And I'm explaining the market segment that IR operates within called observability. And so observability quite literally means the observation in real time of the behavior and performance of enterprise IT ecosystems. So the value proposition that we deliver our clients is around themes of performance optimization, productivity improvements, reliability and predictability across the IT ecosystem of the client. And we ultimately help our clients reduce technology risk and lower the cost of technology ownership. Moving to Slide 3. One of the great strengths of IR is our client base. So we are trusted by the world's leading organizations, and we have strengths across a number of verticals, including telecommunications, financial services, health, government, education and retail. So moving to Slide 4. I want to share with you some important context for the first half earnings result, which we'll go through in detail shortly. And the context here is really to talk about the journey of where we have come from and the strategy reset that we've undertaken that refocuses the business on product-led growth. But starting with where we've come from. I think the recent history of IR could be characterized in the following ways. Revenue performance has been heavily reliant on contract renewals. And the challenge associated with that is that we don't directly control the quantum or the timing of those renewals. And so the revenue we derive from renewals is lumpy. In combination with that, the revenue contribution that we've delivered from new business has been inconsistent. And ultimately, it's been insufficient to offset our reliance on renewals revenue. And in combination with that, there's been limited investment in building new products that will support new business growth and new business revenue. And so one of the ways that we might think about this is IR cannot renew its way to sustainable growth. And so with that comes a strategy reset that refocuses the business on product-led growth. And product-led growth really is a very simple strategy that consists of 2 primary pillars. The first is a commitment and investment to create and commercialize new products. And those new products are synergistic to the products that we already offer today. And the second pillar is new business; growing the sales pipeline and growing with it revenue contribution from new business. I should point out that when we refer to new business, that language refers to new clients in addition to upsell to our existing clients. And so the outcome of these 2 pillars, new product and new business, is we are targeting a transition to sustainable growth, the corollary of which is a future that is less reliant on contract renewals. And so I'm hoping that this context helps us understand the story of the first half earnings picture. Moving on to Slide 5, just a summary of those first half results. So very encouragingly, we've had good growth in new business revenue in the first half. So a $7.6 million contribution is an increase of 76% versus the prior corresponding period. And this points to some early progress against the strategic objective I've described to accelerate new business growth. Our softer first half renewals book, as per the guidance we've previously provided, led to a softer first half result on total contract value or TCV, and that really aligns closely with our statutory revenue, which was also softer. And that flows right through to our EBITDA, which at $4.6 million was softer by 58% against the prior corresponding period. So you can see here the evidence of being exposed to a revenue performance that is heavily reliant on renewals. Very importantly, the underlying performance of the business is steady. So pro forma revenue -- and we're going to talk about that a little bit more today. Our pro forma revenue is down by only 2%. And pro forma revenue is really apportioning the value of the client contract over the life of the client contract. And so again, we'll share some more detail on that shortly. And then some exciting news around new product. In the first half, we released a new product called High Value Payments, and we secured a foundation client in the form of a major U.S. bank for that High Value Payments product. And so again, this links back to the 2 pillars of our product-led growth strategy around new product and new business. And I just want to share a little bit of detail in relation to that new product and the foundation client that we've secured. I'm going to move to Slide 6. So High Value Payments is the name of the IR product. And I just want to start by answering the question, what is a High Value Payment. And the simple definition of this for the banking clients that we service, it is a large payment that results in a bank-to-bank settlement and/or a corporate transaction. And the way that these high value payments are managed today by banks all around the world is quite consistent. High Value Payments are flagged in real time. They're queued and individually assessed by the bank for compliance and commercial risk. And that is very much a standard operating procedure inside every bank today. What IR's High Value Payments product is doing, it allows the bank to assess all of their high value payments queue, both holistically and also historically to identify the status, the progress of those high value payments as it relates to approval and clearing. It allows them to monitor the real-time availability of their settlement tool set. So this includes platforms like SWIFT, which many of us are familiar with, and ultimately allows them to better assess liquidity risk and compliance risk. These are really, really critical areas for any bank. And our High Value Payments product enhances the bank's ability to manage liquidity risk, compliance risk and commercial risk. So with this major U.S. bank now signed, they become a reference client for us for our sales activity, which is targeted to both our existing bank clients, that's upsell activity, and also new clients. So with that as an outline, I'd like to hand over to our CFO, Christian Shaw, to take us through the financial review.

Thank you, Ian. And for those of you that don't know me, my name is Christian Shaw. I'm the CFO at IR, and I've been with the company for the past 12 months. It's my pleasure to take you through further details of the company's first half FY '25 financial results. Looking at Slide 8. Total contract value, or TCV, is our primary sales measure and is the total value of client contracts secured in any period. For first half '25, the TCV was $26.5 million, down 36% to prior corresponding period or PCP. The driver of this was the soft renewal TCV, which is shown in the blue area of the charts. Pleasingly, our new business TCV component, shown in purple, was 76% up to $7.6 million against $4.3 million for PCP and a strong early sign of success of the company's recently announced product-led growth strategy. New business TCV growth was achieved from new clients across multiple products and in multiple geographies. Slide 9. Turning to statutory revenue now. This is the revenue per the accounting standard. Statutory revenue has a strong upfront revenue recognition profile with less revenue recognized over the life of a contract. It tracks TCV and accordingly can be lumpy across reporting periods. The first half '25 result was $28.8 million, down 29% to PCP. The softer statutory revenue result reflects the soft renewal book for the current reporting period. The new business contribution to statutory revenue was 26% for the first half versus 10% PCP with growth achieved in multiple territories and across multiple products. Slide 10, pro forma revenue. Pro forma revenue is an underlying measure that alters statutory revenue only by apportioning the license fee revenue evenly over time based on the life of the client contracts. This is the company's preferred view as it provides the ability to look through the cyclical renewal book swings over time. At $36.6 million and down 2% to PCP, pro forma revenue was steady. It comprised 89% term-based revenue being largely consistent with PCP. More detailed information on the composition of pro forma revenue as well as a numerical example and reconciliation to statutory revenue is available within the appendix of today's presentation. IR is targeting a return to sustainable growth in pro forma revenue over the medium term. Slide 11, pro forma revenue by territory. The Americas being our largest market and APAC our strongest growth market in recent years, which in combination represent 90% of the company's pro forma revenue, delivered stable results in the first half of FY '25. Americas delivered strong new business, including a key new business win with an anchor client for a new product stream and completed the half with strong revenue retention, where APAC secured a large new business win as the company's second master reseller agreement within Collaborate. On the downside, our smallest market, Europe, underperformed with pro forma revenue being down 17% amidst the market refresh post the company's global sales leadership realignment in July 2024. Slide 12, pro forma revenue by product. This slide highlights that Collaborate, which represents 43% of our pro forma revenue, declined 10% to PCP, demonstrating that improvements in new business were more than offset by down-sell or downsize and churn. Contrasted against Transact, representing 19% of pro forma revenue, which increased by 10%, driven by a new business to new clients and upselling to existing clients. Infrastructure, our third product and 38% of pro forma revenue, was up 6% and driven by upsell. Slide 13, EBITDA. This slide highlights the first half '25 EBITDA, a common non-IFRS profit measure. This was down 58% to $4.6 million and reflects the softer renewals and consequent low statutory revenue performance and the company's largely fixed cost base, which reduced by $1 million or 4% to PCP for the half and which is well positioned to benefit from operating leverage over the medium term. And further information is available in the appendix to this presentation on expenses. During the period, the company's EBITDA result benefited from a $3.3 million of non-operating gains, comprising foreign exchange of $2.1 million and $1.2 million from a non-core business sale. Notably, there was no R&D capitalization during the first half '25, consistent with PCP. R&D focused locally on feature completions within the Prognosis platform and product sets with the work streams of the company's U.S.-based technology and innovation group, IR Labs, focused on ideation and research activities. Reconciliation from NPAT to EBITDA is available within the appendix of today's presentation. Slide 14, pro forma EBITDA. Slide 14 shows IR's pro forma EBITDA, which for the first half of 2025 was up 53% to $11.8 million. This slide bridges the prior and current period results. As a reminder, pro forma EBITDA is an underlying measure that uses pro forma revenue and deducts expenses after making commission adjustments to match the timing of revenue and expenses. It's also IR's preferred way of measuring underlying profitability as it looks through period-on-period TCV and correlated statutory revenue cycles. One point to note here is that other gains delivered a meaningful $3.3 million contribution from foreign exchange and the sale of a noncore business. A reconciliation from EBITDA to pro forma EBITDA is available within the appendix of today's presentation. Slide 15, net cash. IR's net cash at 31st of December 2024 was flat to the prior year-end financial year at $31.1 million. Our operating cash flow moderated for the half to $0.5 million. Our client receipts were $4.1 million lower to PCP due to a softer renewals book and timing, although payments to suppliers and employees were down $700,000 to PCP, this included $1.3 million of non-recurring people and office move costs. Investing activities contributed a net $1.6 million cash inflow, comprising interest receipts and proceeds from sale of a noncore testing business, partly offset by relocation costs for the new Sydney office. A further note, this half was the payment of a $3.5 million fully franked FY '24 final dividend as well as a $1.7 million foreign currency translation benefit due mostly to an appreciating U.S. dollar. And as an update last month, our cash at bank was boosted by the refund of a $1.1 million bank guarantee for the office relocation. And now lastly, on to Slide 16, balance sheet, to finish off from me. IR's balance sheet demonstrates liquid and tangible net assets of $91.8 million or $0.518 per share. Trade receivables grew to December '24 reflecting sales timing, as previously mentioned, and combined with IR's blue-chip client base and low doubtful debt risk, remains a strong source of future cash flow. And that concludes the financial section, and I'll now hand back to Ian Lowe, our CEO, for the remainder of today's presentation.

Thank you, Christian. I'd like to conclude the presentation portion of this call by just revisiting the product-led growth strategy and the key areas of progress that we are focused on arising from that strategy. And I'm looking here at Slide 18 of the presentation. So this is a restatement of the journey that we are on through the strategy reset that takes us from a recent history of reliance on contract renewals which are lumpy, revenue contribution from new business that's been inconsistent and insufficient to offset that reliance, and limited investment in building new product that support new business growth. The focus of the strategy reset is on product-led growth, of which there are 2 primary pillars: to invest in innovation to create and commercialize new products, and to grow our sales pipeline and with it, our revenue contribution from new business. And so these are the 2 pillars that we will reference as we look to update the market regarding our progress against this product-led strategy. Progress around the release of new products, the successful commercialization of those new products, progress around securing a greater revenue contribution from new business, both new clients and upsell to existing clients, and then starting to see that wash through to sustainable growth with a particular focus, as Christian has mentioned, on our pro forma revenue metric. So these are the pillars that will shape our focus and also our narrative to the market to help you understand the progress of the company. So that concludes the presentation portion. Thank you, operator. I'll hand over to you in the event that there are any questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Chris Savage from Bell Potter.

Ian, I appreciate what you're saying with trying to get away from this contract renewal cycle, so forgive this question. But you've got a big contract obviously coming up for renewal this half with JPMorgan Chase. Is there any update you can provide us on that?

Yes, we're not in a position to make any specific references or disclosures on that. So that remains commercial in confidence at this point.

Okay. And outside of that, what's the renewal book like for this half versus the first half?

Yes. Again, we haven't provided any specific guidance on that. We're not proposing to do that today. We have said is that the FY '25 renewals book is softer than FY '24 and weighted to the second half. So there's no change to that commentary.

Okay. I'll move on. So this new product, the High Value Payments product, Ian, is the revenue recognition on that the same as other Prognosis products where you're recognizing the revenue all upfront? Or is it more of a SaaS type model where you're progressively recognizing the revenue?

Chris, it's Christian here. The revenue recognition is per our dominant revenue recognition policy for on-premise software. And so it will have an upfront revenue recognition profile like the vast, vast majority of our revenue.

And given that initial client was secured in the first half, was that revenue, therefore, recognized in the first half result?

Yes, it was. Yes.

And can you say over how many years that contract was?

Yes. It was 5, Chris.

Okay. So it was a decent contract. Last question, Ian, you may or may not be able to comment, but no interim dividend, cash position still remains really strong. Was there any capital management discussion at a Board level around this result?

Yes. This is something that the Board discusses regularly. So there is no interim dividend. The capital management policy of the business has been described in previous disclosures, including reference made to it at the AGM. But it's certainly something that the Board is conscious of. It's discussed regularly and capital management will continue to be really important as we look for the best ways to ensure that we're returning value to shareholders.

Okay. Sorry, I know I said that was the last question, but I might just throw one more in, if I can. You obviously highlighted, Ian, the High Value Payments product in the first half. Can you say how many new products you hope to launch this half?

No. We're not going to give a number. What we have said is that you can look for future announcements from us in relation to new product releases. It's important to recognize that as we've scrutinized the new product development opportunity, there are certain elements of that, that we believe are deliverable in the shorter to medium term, and there are other elements that will take the medium term for us to execute. So it will be a more regular cadence certainly than it has been historically. That's a clear commitment and a stated objective. And we will be talking about those new product releases more openly than we may have done in the past.

Your next question comes from John Banos from Banos Asset Management Private Limited.

My question might already have been addressed in a small way. It was really relating to capital management again. But maybe I can just say a little bit more specific. You've got over $31 million in the bank. And in the last couple of years, you've had positive cash flow from operations every single year. And it looks to me like there's a very good perspective in the next couple of years that you're looking to expand your business. But from the point of view of the market, $31 million cash almost appears an extremely lazy balance sheet. You did say on your previous question that you might want to address that. But until the new revenue comes through, it almost looks so easy to buy back shares at a discount to NTA. And why would the company want to delay a couple of years? I wonder if you can just make any comment on what appears an easy way to leverage the balance sheet a little bit more.

Sorry, was that, John? I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. John, it's Christian here. Look, I think it's reasonable to say that the company is in pretty advanced stages of assessing its use of capital as that relates to its product-led growth strategy and certainly, I would say, the nearer term elements of that. So I appreciate the fact that $31 million is a lot of cash on the balance sheet. And certainly, the company is cognizant of its capital management options, including some of what you outlined there. But I would say that the first priority for the company is understanding the product-led investments that it can make to maximize the returns for shareholders. And that is the priority. But certainly, below that, it is something that is regularly considered and that we keep an eye on for capital management options.

John, do you have any further questions?

No further questions.

Your next question comes from [ Peter Staro ], a shareholder.

Christian, if I may make a couple of comments first before I ask my questions. The first is the 2 pillars: new product and new business. That doesn't seem terribly revolutionary. All businesses should be doing that anyway, but we'll leave that there. The second thing is with the capital management. Yes, as a shareholder at the moment with the share price so low, if you could pass this on to the Board, I think most shareholders would love to see a buyback ahead of dividends in a way to improve that EPS so that larger dividends could be paid out later on. So that's just a couple of comments. The first thing is this renewal. Can you give us a bit of idea of why clients aren't renewing? Is this just obsolescence of the software? Or are you facing stiff competition? Why is this renewal so poor at the moment?

Well, just to give some clarity -- it's Ian here. Thank you for your question. To give some clarity, we saw a very modest improvement in our churn for the half from 9% to 8%. And so if you consider that number in the context of churn more generally across software businesses of all shapes and sizes, this is absolutely not a terrible number, far from it. It's a number that we're absolutely focused on continuing to improve. So we think there is improvement opportunity on that churn. The primary challenge for us is the nature of the renewals revenue is volatile half-on-half, year-on-year. And that historically, we haven't had a large enough new business contribution to revenue to offset our exposure to that volatility. That's the primary challenge. And so the product-led growth strategy, whilst perhaps not revolutionary, is taking a new approach that we haven't in recent history to say let's actively invest, let's put our balance sheet to work to invest in new capabilities that are closely aligned to the direction of travel we see in the market and more specifically with our clients. Let's bring those new capabilities to market, commercialize those successfully. Alongside of that, focus on new business. We want to become very efficient at upsell, cross-sell with these new capabilities to remove that exposure to the renewals volatility. So it's both improving our renewals rate. And to be clear, we do continue to believe there's room for improvement there. That's important. But we need a much greater contribution over time from new business revenue. And the best way for us to engineer that outcome is making sure that we've got relevant products that are coming off a production line that's operating at an improved cadence and with it driving our ability to grow revenue on a sustainable basis.

Can you give us an idea you may not be able to, how much you're investing in new products? What percentage of revenue is being invested in new products?

John, Christian here again. So we do disclose our level of expenditure within our disclosures to the market, including today's presentation, around product and technology. What we've also said more recently to the market is that we're looking to invest incrementally in product, in R&D, and that incremental investment we've said is up to 10% of TCV -- annual TCV value. So by way of example, if we look at FY '24, the year just passed, where our TCV was circa $80 million, we've said that we will -- we're prepared to increase our expenditure in product by up to $8 million. And that is -- that's across both our existing platform and product set, Prognosis, Collaborate, Transact and Infrastructure, as well as across IR Labs, our technology incubator in the United States. So that will give you some very real and tangible guide as to what level of expenditure we're looking to make.

Great. Sorry. Yes, I haven't had a chance to read through all the detail yet. The -- sort of the call comes quite soon after the -- all the announcements put out. Now this one is how do the -- you've got these various measures of revenue. How do they relate to cash flow? The cash flow presumably isn't as lumpy as the revenues, even the pro forma revenue. Is that correct?

So you've hit on to something that is super important around our company and obviously to shareholders, which is how do we look through this upfront revenue recognition profile that we have as a company to better understand cash flow. And that is absolutely why we preference pro forma revenue. And again, pro forma revenue evenly spreads out the dominant component of our revenue stream, which is license revenue over the length of the contract. And that pro forma revenue gives a better guide as to cash flow as does pro forma EBITDA when you deduct expenses. So yes, that's why we guide the market around underlying results to try and provide a guidepost against cash generation.

Excellent. That gives me a good idea. And then just finally, you've used the term medium term quite a few times. Could you define medium term from your perspective, please?

We generally refer to -- it's Ian here. We generally refer to medium term as up to a 3-year window.

Yes, that's fine. That's fine. Different companies and different shareholders have different views as to what medium -- short, medium and long term is. I just needed to know what your view is. Yes, that's great.

Your next question comes from [ Matthew Cook from Cashbook and Journal ].

Again, back on the capital management, you alluded to your exact words, but there's going to be something coming up soon in relation to that. You said you're in the advanced stages of something regarding your product-led growth strategy. Can you give any indication, is this likely to be organic expenditure? Is this likely to be acquisition? And also when you're -- you've talked about up to $8 million. What's your requirement for sort of payback periods and risk profile and that sort of stuff?

Thank you for the question. Understandably, capital management is a hot topic. If I reverse those sort of questions, investments that we make organically, we're looking for a 3- to 5-year payback. Those are our parameters for investment at this point in time. And I think historically, we have indicated to the market that we will canvass both organic and inorganic opportunities for new revenue streams. We haven't provided details or updated with regards to that. But I can say that the focus of the company today is on organic product-led growth.

And so within the IR Labs, how does that -- does that just mean you start from scratch on a product or how do I understand that?

Well, essentially, yes. I mean, IR Labs has been created very specifically to be able to operate in a way that is very closely aligned strategically, but operationally somewhat more autonomous. And what we mean by that is we wanted to generate a 2-speed innovation outcome whereby we could run fast through a dedicated group like IR Labs with very specific skill sets around more modern data technology such as machine learning and AI, where that team was able to operate without the constraints of a legacy code base and a legacy tool set. And so that's exactly what we've done. And that 2-speed innovation approach, we believe, is very important.

Sorry to keep harping on about this. I've seen a lot of companies blow up balance sheets and profitability and cash flow by sort of dreaming of the next big sort of product release. How do you ensure that the products you're working on are actually going to be wanted demanded by your clients rather than just sort of -- like 3 to 5 years sounds like a very long time away to get a payback on a product.

Well, there's a couple of elements to that. Look, we get very involved in every step of the process. So the first is management of costs. So I think you can see from these results, there is really strong cost management discipline in the business, and that will be ongoing where cost reduction has made sense. We've made sure that we act on that. We'll continue to look for those opportunities and that cost management discipline is alive and well every working day. The second element to that is that very closely defining the process that we go through to give birth to new products through IR Labs. And so there is a production line methodology that's well established. There are gates through which we must pass before the next stage of investment is released. There is independent client validation that must be established. There is technical proof points and prototyping. So it's not a case of handing over a blank check and hoping for the best. It's a very considered closely managed process with checkpoints along the way to justify ongoing investment.

I'm sure others on this call sort of -- you've probably got this message, harbor my concerns that you're talking about spending up to $8 million a year. And it sounds like that's going into IR labs. Just sounds like it doesn't have the product case straight away. I hear the gateways and things, but I guess you can add my name to the list of people to add that to the Board that is this expenditure being evaluated against buying back your shares at the current price? Just another way to put it.

Well, I think it's also important to point out that the innovation agenda that IR Labs are pursuing is not just about creating new capabilities that might sit to the side of the rest of the product set today. We're also focused on capabilities that can fast-track the development of new products within the current product set. So it's about understanding are there innovation opportunities that make sense given the DNA of the business, and it must align to the DNA of the business around data, mobile application, enterprise clients, other applications for new capabilities and in particular, applications that align with the current product set. So it's -- this is not about saying let's speculate on some new capabilities. We're doing this very carefully. We're doing it and have recruited people who have done exactly this type of thing before with a track record of success. So whilst that guarantees nothing, we're doing it judiciously. Operator, I think we might bring the call to a close, just conscious of time.

Sure. There are no further questions at this time. So I hand back to Mr. Lowe for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. I just want to thank…

Sorry to interrupt. We have a last-minute registration coming. Can we take the question?

Okay.

Perfect. So the next question comes from [ Byron Velic ], a private investor.

My question is in relation to pro forma revenue and particularly in regards to the Collaborate product. Revenue there seems to be in terminal decline. It's still the largest part of the business. I presume that decline is because of the hyperscalers and Microsoft eating your lunch there. Correct me if I'm wrong, do you see a bottom to this decline? Is there a way to help the decline?

Look, what I think the answer to that question is, and we've disclosed this in recent years, is that our churn rate -- and Ian touched on this earlier -- our churn rate, particularly in our Collaborate product, is where the strongest headwind for the company exists today. And the company is doing a lot of deliberate work around how to mitigate that. And as we've reported in this half, the early signs are positive, but they're modestly positive. So it's definitely too early to pop the champagne cork around that particular topic. But what I would say is that our churn rate has definitely come down recently, but it is still a headwind.

And can you give me some examples of what you're doing to hold that churn rate or to turn it around, please?

Yes, certainly. So this is Ian here. Look, one of the things that we've identified is that the churn rate is disproportionately high at the smaller end of our client base. And so what we're doing across the business more generally is doubling down in both our sales and our client service efforts with our larger clients. And we've previously talked about the ideal client profile, the ICP, which is really refocusing the substance of our efforts very much on these larger clients where we have a better conversion rate, a higher retention rate. These are larger organizations with more complex requirements that are well suited to our solutions. So that's certainly one of the things that we've brought to life. And that is now a standard operating procedure, if you like, in the way that we plan for and execute all aspects of sales and client success.

There are no further questions at this time. I now hand the conference back to Mr. Lowe for closing remarks.

Yes. Thank you, operator. Look, I just really want to thank our clients, our employees, the Board and of course, our shareholders for their continued support. And we're very much looking forward to demonstrating progress over the coming few cycles. Thank you.

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