Kelly Partners Group Holdings Limited (KPG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Well, good morning. Beautiful day here in Sydney. Great to have everyone together for our Annual General Meeting on this Friday morning. So I'd like to introduce our Board: Steve Rouvray, Ryan MacNamee, Paul Kuchta and Ada Poon and Lawrence Cunningham. Without further ado, I think we'll just share a little bit of information and take some questions. So at Kelly Partners, we're operating accounting firms focused on private businesses with tremendous team members. And since 2006, we clearly knew that the most important thing was to get the right team members into our business, working with the right clients in an inspired way. And what drives the business is that we have carefully recruited people that share our values of acting in the best interests of others, doing what you say and playing as part of a team. And we encapsulated this in saying that we found in a wonderful book, that,At the heart of a great business is having valued members working together in a winning team, knowing and feeling that they're part of an inspiring mission." And I'm pleased that today that team numbers 500-plus people, and that's certainly, at least on an 80/20 basis, the case. And so when I'm asked what is it that drives the long-term growth of the business, it's really this ethos, which is difficult to define in a spreadsheet. But the spreadsheets hold the results of this human energy. It's a wonderful book that is worth reading, calledAccelerating Excellence," I think is the title, by James King. And he talks about the psychological firepower that's unleashed in people when they feel that they are on an inspiring mission, working with people in a team that share their values, and they feel valued. And so when I'm asked what is it that you think drives the business, it's really encapsulated in this saying. And so while you may want me to get to the spreadsheets, the numbers really just reveal the energy that comes from our team. We have developed since 2006 and undertaken every single deal that we've done using our trademarked and unique model that we build ourselves, called a Partner-Owner-Driver model. And the reason that that's significant is that this is a model developed by accountants for accountants. When I'm asked,What makes your business different to what other people are trying to do in the accounting space," the other people that have tried to do things in the accounting space, and around the world today we've got some other participants in the space, they're led by nonaccountants who haven't spent 3-plus years with a team with 1,000 years of experience thinking through and understanding accounting firms. And so it's really this model that we are trying to leverage through our businesses. And so you'll find in everything we share today that the fact that we're specialists in partnerships with people that become owners, that that gives that psychological firepower, that drive that's within a business. And we've provided that slide so that it's easy to understand, and we've published it many times. So there are my preliminary remarks, and I'll come back to share more with you later this morning. But good morning, and welcome to the Kelly Partners Group Holdings Limited Annual General Meeting for the financial year ended 30th of June, 2023. My name is Brett Kelly, the Executive Chairman and CEO. It's now 10:07 a.m., and there being a quorum present, I declare the meeting open for business on Friday, the 10th of November. I confirm that the meeting has been properly constituted. In opening the 2023 AGM, I'd like to introduce the Board of Kelly Partners Group Holdings: Steve Rouvray, our Deputy Chairman and Non-Executive Director; Ryan MacNamee, Non-Executive Director; Lawrence Cunningham, Non-Executive Director; Paul Kuchta, Executive Director; and Ada Poon, Executive Director. Also in attendance is Kenneth Ko, our Chief Financial Officer; Joyce Au, our Company Secretary; Leo Tutt and Lloyd Crawford, Partners of William Buck, our external auditors. I'll now make a presentation about the company and its activities over the prior 12 months. This presentation has been released to the ASX prior to the commencement of this meeting. Significantly since 2006, we've had this ethos of trying to think about how to double the business on a consistent basis for 100 years, influenced by Jim Collins' work inBuilt to Last" and inGood to Great." It was always our intention to build an institution that would last beyond ourselves and that would make a significant impact for good within our industry, where we identified that people's full potential wasn't harnessed and recognized within teams and chartered firms, that clients could be serviced better and that there could be a very significant positive impact on the community by helping private business owners, who employ 70% of all Australians. And that's also true in the U.S. and U.K. markets. And so we're pleased that we have built a business system that has an ability to continually double and that that has already to date occurred 5 times in a row. You'll notice a very similar cadence for our now long-term quality shareholders, that the business tends to grow and then we consolidate those efforts and we grow again, and we consolidate those efforts and we grow again, and we try to continually improve the business, always looking to grow the opportunities for our people, grow our capacity to service our clients and grow our willingness and ability to impact positively our communities, but never being in a rush, always being in a position that by keeping the business very strong in every sense we always have the ability to not do anything that doesn't make sense to the mission, values and vision of the business. And so I think approaching nearly 20 years as quality shareholders, you should be confident that we're clear about the mission, values and vision of the business, we have a clear strategy and a structure for execution and that there is some flywheel effect and some disciplined pursuit of this long-term mission. Turning to our Q1 update. It was important that we put this update out. Because at the end of the financial year, our partner shareholders -- we think of our quality shareholders as partners in our business. And a number of them contacted me and said,Brett, the business has undertaken a lot of acquisitions in the last 2 years. We noticed that when businesses grow at very strong rates, things can become loose and disorganized, but you don't strike me as those types of people. We're worried about margins, et cetera." And I said,Look, let us get through the first quarter. You'll see that consistent with a [ 17-year ] operating track record, the business will just return to its normal performance. So we're pleased that you can see the revenues coming through that have joined the business. You can see the underlying group EBITDA at the sort of margins that you'd expect over time. And you can see the attributable NPATA and EPS growing very strongly. We expect that that will be reflected throughout the year, and we want you to have the confidence that the business continues to relentlessly pursue the manner in which we've undertaken the business since inception. Turning to Slide 6, you'll see the Q1 growth over 5 years. It's just a very consistent story of consistent revenue growth, consistent NPATA growth, consistent EBITDA growth, consistent EPS growth. Now for any quality shareholder that gets a little concerned from one result to the next, we judge ourselves on 5-year periods and always have. We're in the second 5-year period, early stage of being a listed company, but we are continuing to in a disciplined fashion execute the business plan that is long settled, with operating principles that are long settled, with a set of values and behaviors that are long embedded in the businesses. So turning to growth. What I've introduced in this slide is a new term. Everything old is new again. We try to keep things interesting. But there's a lot of talk about programmatic acquirers, and there's some wonderful research by McKinsey that makes clear that programmatic acquisition is an excellent way to run a business, if you're excellent at it. And we want people to be confident that that's the business that we're in. However, we've chosen to use the termprogrammatic partnerships." Our business is working with people in partnership. We build very effective partnerships. We've done that many, many times now. There's 32 operating partnerships. And we'd love you to think of the business in that way. We've got 28,000 partnership contacts in our database, over 138 leads. We won't disclose, obviously, who we're meeting with or where we're up to in those discussions. But the pipeline has never been stronger. And I think it is worth observing that in the first 5-year period as a company, we did 6 deals. In the next 5-year period, we did 8. In the following 5-year period, we did 31. There was a question when we listed on the stock exchange here in Australia on the Australian Stock Exchange, why be a listed company? And we said we wanted to run the next-generation accounting firm, where we were transparent and obvious about what we're doing, and that we were prepared to do in public the things that we do in private and that we were happy to share the progress that we were making. But we knew that that would attract like-minded people. And it has, and it's doing that on an increasing basis. And so after the first 5 years, we've done 3.5x the number of deals we did in the prior 5 years. I think it's fair to say that that strategy has resonated and makes some sense. But don't be concerned. We consider the target set here in Australia as some 10,000 firms, and we think 10% of them on the end of the bell curve are the ones you want to speak to; that's about 1,000 firms. I think we've done about 50 deals, 85 partners. So we might have penetrated less than 10% of what we see as a target deal set. And we think that there's a huge amount of runway to go in this market. In FY '23, the partnerships that we formed are here on Page 9, and they are, about to appear, in the Hunter region, in Leeton, Maitland, Melbourne, Palm Beach, South West Brisbane, East Sydney and Brisbane. And I'm pleased with the efforts that we're making in each of those cases. In FY '24, we expect that -- we've got Griffith opened. This week, on Wednesday night, we had over 300 people attend. It was really fantastic. I'll talk more about that in a minute. Bundall, in Queensland. Los Angeles coming soon, in December. I'll share on Page 11 the Griffith office launch. More than 300 clients attended. It was a really very, very special, wonderful note and shows the dominant position that that incredible group of people and firm have in that market that's a very prosperous and growing region. Now turning to operational updates. In the U.S., we are making small considered capital-light steps to build something that is highly differentiated, will build our employment proposition and will allow us to build a vertical owned by no one else, and that's looking after Australians in the U.S. market. And there is a large population there. We've opened our group office in Malibu. We have a representative office in Newport that we expect to staff up in the next 6 months. And there is a confidential binding term sheet signed in Los Angeles that we expect to start trading from December. It's particularly exciting. In India, we've moved from a start-up to 32 people, and we're making nascent steps training the team. The partners are learning how to do business across border. And that is showing very good signs of being a long-term highly effective complement to the business that we're building. We have a facility there that can hold 60 team members, and we expect the economics of that to be tremendous once we fill that over the next 12 months. Our focus, our operational day-to-day focus has been integrating these 9 deals in this 6-month period, and we are returning all of those businesses to the margins that we would expect from our operating businesses. And finally, we're making real strides in the digital space to build a single point of truth that sits across all of our electronic systems. It gives our partners much better visibility on what they're doing with their clients and a Kelly Partners passport that, for our top 20% of clients, will give them access to a unique universe of opportunity within the group. And all of that's come from listening to our directors and listening to our partners. Turning to the financials. We continually share this screen, inspired by a wonderful book, The Outsiders, on how we're allocating capital. We started the business with a AUD 160,000 bank loan. We've raised now a total of AUD 13 million over the lifetime, roughly AUD 13 million, it could be AUD 14 million, actually, AUD 13.2 million plus AUD 800,000, say AUD 14 million over the life of the business. We've continued to reduce the number of shares on issue. Today, they are at 45 million. We've grown revenue from AUD 30-plus million at IPO to it should be over AUD 100 million, AUD 105 million this year. Our focus is improving the earning power of our existing operating businesses. I think that you can see some evidence that that's going quite well and continues to look quite satisfactory. We are further increasing the earnings through acquisitions of those underlying businesses. We're growing our existing accounting subsidiaries, and we're growing existing complementary businesses. We're making programmatic acquisitions, but we'll make an occasional large acquisition that we've defined as a business with more than AUD 5 million in revenue. We are repurchasing KPG shares, not when we think the intrinsic value justifies that action, but when we have free cash to do that. And we're making sure that all of our board and senior management and anyone interested in investing in the business understands that there's 45 million shares on issue and we don't intend to randomly issue new shares to enrich ourselves (i.e., insiders) or dilute and unfairly disadvantage our external quality shareholder partners. In terms of profit trajectory, I think for our quality shareholders that really seek to understand the business, it's important to understand its pattern. And the pattern I think now is quite nicely expressed here, that our NPATA will go up a little bit and down a little bit and then up a bit more. But over time, we expect that we'll make strong gains in our profitability over time and provide excellent returns to our shareholders. But most importantly, we do nothing to attempt to deliver smoothness in our earnings. The business was not tuned in a private equity fashion pre-IPO to maximize its earnings position. We don't tune it at any particular time to try and achieve a pretend financial result. We just keep building the business and clearly communicate the financial position at a given point in time, as we intend to be long-term holders. Our 5-year plan that we published was really an attempt to make more clear in 2020 when people were a little confused what we're up to. There was no internal confusion, mind you. A nice clear revenue, EBITDA, NPATA plan. I think you can see that we're on a clear path to achieve that on a 4-year rather than a 5-year basis. Now we're not intending to publish a new 5-year plan. Because following our [ heroes ], we don't think it's helpful for management to bind themselves to a 5-year plan that might cause them to do things that otherwise they may not do. And so what we would urge is that for our quality shareholders who are financially literate, we have provided this template, which I think most of you are more than capable of replacing those numbers with the next 5-year numbers and making an estimate for yourself. We think this is a particularly predictable business, operating in what we hope we'll demonstrate over time to continue to be a particularly predictable manner. And the reason we're so confident in that predictability, I think it's fair to say that governments in the Western world, on both sides, have shown no willingness to reduce their eagerness to tax people. They're less eager to tax multinationals. Individuals don't have any money to take. But our clients who built private businesses and provide all of the employment in the economy, or 70% of it, they seem to be favorites of governments to tax because they have less ability to move things around the world. And so we think that it's fair to say that the business of taxation is probably not going to go away, and we think we have a predictable model to capture value in that space. Over the next 5 years, what we have shared is our strategy, our objective. So in Australia, to grow to become a top 10 accounting firm in Australia. The scope across the services that we provide: accounting, tax, compliance, audit, finance, insurance and wealth, to a much smaller degree. And we give you sort of some clear insight here as to what that market looks like. We understand the Big 4 firms are their own types of businesses: largely consulting, to a great degree; less than 25% audit. The second-tier firms, we've always described as Big 4 Wannabes. We don't want to be like them. We're trying to create our own blue ocean for our own way of doing business, serving our own type of client in this market. In terms of scaling complementary services, we continue to grow out those businesses, and we believe that we have a real chance to become Australia's global accounting firm. It's an ambition, but no one was ever moved by a small ambition. This is a human-centered business. And inspiration is free, seldomly used in our industry, and the energy that can be provided to our business by pursuing a worthy mission is very much underrated. So we believe that we have a good chance of building a very unique presence in Los Angeles and then London. We have our longest-serving partner in London this week, securing a very small office to plant a flag there. And we believe that we have the team and the drive and the psychological firepower to pursue that over the next 25 years. Don't look for a quick return. There was never a quick return within the business that we've built here, but there definitely will be a return in my view. In terms of our advantages, if you can think of the business as a business system with at least these advantages, we've got many others that we try not to publish, we have a clear mission, clear values, clear vision captured in a business system, a business model for operating firms, a Partner-Owner-Driver structure and a central progress team that is unique. If you think that that's true and that we have the driving commitment to execute on a consistent basis in the same way for a long time, I think the opportunity is real. But sometimes people accuse me of promoting Kelly Partners. And it's true. I think it's a wonderful group of people, helping wonderful clients, making a real difference in their communities, and I'm not ashamed to share that message. Now we recently undertook a strategic review with the help of Jefferies here in Sydney, who did some really wonderful work. And why did we do a strategic review? Well, we think that, from time to time, reflection is probably due, and we see the business as having a huge amount of potential. And the opportunity to work with very bright people that share that view seemed to me to make sense. And so Jefferies were keen to work with us. We were keen to work with them. And so we undertook a process to say that if you own this business together with our internal and external shareholders, we think that we have a duty to consider the best way to operate the business today and for the long term and to seek input from people that we have a high regard for that can point out options to us that we might otherwise not consider. So moving to Page 25, we made these update announcements recently that it's important as a shareholder that you understand. If you haven't read The Founder's Mentality, that's a Bain publication, you should. It clearly demonstrates that founder-led companies over the last 30 years have delivered 3x the return of nonfounder-led companies. You can read the research as to why they suggest that that's the case. That programmatic acquirers generate superior returns. That KPG outperforms a select sector of sector participants and compares favorably with some of the best-in-class compounders in the world. That there are many global accounting firms. And so KPG's aspiration to be one of them and to be Australia's first global accounting firm is not too crazy if pursued in an intelligent, diligent way over a long period of time. And that there is potential to generate meaningful incremental earnings from pausing, ceasing, reducing the dividends that we pay and finding intelligent ways to reinvest that capital. So we haven't made a decision at this point. We are well through the process of considering options and costs and really where we will get the best long-term return for all shareholders and strengthen our ability to deliver that strategic intent. And we will keep you fully informed as we go along. I'd just move us to Slide 30, if we can. I'd draw your attention to this slide that I like a lot. I like this slide because it shows the sorts of companies that exist as sort of global compounders, and it shows how we're performing against some of these fine companies and others that are less fine. I think you can see that we're trying to, as one of my heroes says, put ourselves in good company, because they will drive us to be better at who we are and what we do. On Page 31, I'd draw your attention to the comparison between the Kelly Partners business and the CBIZ business. There is only one listed accounting group in the U.S., and that's this company called CBIZ. We think that they're a very good company. And we think that if our business was being compared on a regular basis, on a side-by-side basis in that market, that that wouldn't be a bad thing for our organization to make ourselves known to firms that might want to join us and to have credibility that our performance has earned us and in that market, which Los Angeles, or California is the fourth biggest economy in the world. So we do see it as, frankly, a bit of a mission field. On Slide 32, you'll see that there are global accounting firms. We don't endorse any of them. We make no particular comment about whether they are awesome or not, but we do know they exist. And we sort of have the view that if they can build what they've built, we think we might be able to build something significant as well that can actually, frankly, have a more positive social impact. On Page 33, there's some work that hopefully you've seen on what the economic opportunity is around dividends. So moving to Section 2 or Section 3, observations on our U.S. strategy. On Page 35, you'll see that the U.S. presents an opportunity. There are many demand drivers in Australia that are identical to the U.S. California is a perfect beachhead. We're getting a huge amount of interest. It's really quite exciting. And that we think that there might be a little bit to do there. On Page 39, I'll draw your attention to the huge investments that have been made in the space across private equity transactions. We want to provide a nonprivate equity, permanent capital Berkshire-style alternative to people that have in that market spent their lives building businesses that they value and cherish, that want to do a partnership with us, that we'll look after their people, their clients and their communities. We believe fundamentally that private equity firms buy businesses in order to then sell them. And so if you've spent your life building a wonderful firm, and it's really your baby, you'd be much better off in trusting your baby for the next 50 years to Kelly Partners than you would be to give your baby to somebody who wants to dress them in a weird outfit and, in short order, sell them off. So we do think that there's a really very exciting opportunity in that space. On Page 42, this year, in Omaha, we had a wonderful catch-up. There's some photos on 43 with many quality shareholders that had traveled to Omaha for the Berkshire Hathaway meeting. And well, I think I've got my Hollywood candy shop mug over there, Kenny, that I brought home with me. We're going to do that again. We've booked the same venue. There was coke and hot dogs, not recommended as consistent dietary intakes for our shareholders. It allowed us to meet people from all over the world who teach us so much about the world and how to do business better. And so I'd encourage you if you get the chance to be in that area at the time to drop in. Now I thought we would take some questions. We've got some time for that. And I think Joyce will do some question-hosting. Thank you. If you type in your questions, then we can see them and then we can answer them. Great. If there are no questions, it must have been a very clear presentation or I must have put everyone to sleep, probably the second, we'll move to Item 3, [ prior ] shareholder minutes. The minutes of the previous Annual General Meeting of the members of the company, which was the Annual General Meeting held on the 16th of November, 2022, are available for inspection by contacting the Company Secretary. Item 4, Notice of Annual General Meeting and proxies. We now move to the formal business as set out in the Notice of Meeting. The Notice of Annual General Meeting was mailed to all registered members on or about 10th of October, 2023, and is to be taken as read. Voting at today's meeting will be conducted via an online platform. For those entitled to vote at today's meeting, please log in to the online voting portal. If you are having any difficulty navigating the platform, please refer to the Computershare online voting guide. Details can be found in our Notice of Meeting and in the chat below. As previously notified, voting on all resolutions today will be conducted by way of a poll. Undirected proxies or open votes that have nominated the Chairman as their proxy will be cast in favor of each resolution in the Notice of Annual General Meeting. For the purposes of the poll, I appoint [ Chris Stojanovski ], of Computershare Investor Services, the company's share registry, who have examined and prepared summaries of the proxy forms received, to act as Returning Officer and to conduct the poll. If you are eligible to vote at this meeting, a new polling icon will appear on screen. Selecting this icon will bring up a list of resolutions and present you with voting options. To cast your vote, simply select one of the voting options. You are not required to hit Submit or Enter, as your vote is automatically recorded. Item 5, financial statements and reports. Do you want to move to those -- come back to those resolutions electronically, Joyce? Or do you want to go to Resolution 1? Great. Financial statements and reports. The first item of business is to receive the company's annual financial report for the year ended 30th of June, 2023. Financial report and the reports of the directors and the auditors are now made available before the meeting. There will be no vote on this item, and it's a discussion item only. The company's auditor for the 2023 financial year, Leo Tutt and Lloyd Crawford, of William Buck, are present to take questions relevant to the conduct of the audit and the preparation and content of the independent auditor's report. Are there any questions or comments on the financial report or the reports of the directors and auditors? If you wish to ask a question, please post your question in the Q&A section. Are there any questions or comments on the management of the company? Are there any questions relevant to the conduct of the audit and the preparation and content of the auditor's report to be put to the auditor? We will now proceed to the resolutions set out in the Notice of Annual General Meeting. Resolution 1. Resolution 1 is as follows: To consider and, if thought fit, to pass, with or without amendment, Resolution 1, Adoption of Remuneration Report, as an ordinary resolution. If you wish to discuss this resolution, please post your question in the Q&A. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are presented on the screen. I now put the motion. Moving to Resolution 2. Resolution 2 is as follows: To consider and, if thought fit, to pass, with or without amendment, Resolution 2, Reelection of Director, Mr. Stephen Rouvray, as an ordinary resolution. If you wish to discuss the resolution, please post your question in the Q&A. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are presented on the screen. I now put the motion. Resolution 3, Reelection of Director, Mr. Paul Kuchta. Resolution 3 is as follows: To consider and, if thought fit, to pass, with or without amendment, Resolution 3, Reelection of Director, Mr. Paul Kuchta, as an ordinary resolution. If you wish to discuss this resolution, please post your question in the Q&A. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are presented on the screen. I now put the motion. Resolution 4, Remuneration of Non-Executive Directors. To consider and, if thought -- Resolution 4 is as follows: To consider and, if thought fit, to pass, with or without amendment, Resolution 4, Remuneration of Non-Executive Directors, as an ordinary resolution. If you wish to discuss this resolution, please post your question in the Q&A. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are presented on the screen. I now put the motion. This concludes the resolutions to be voted on today. I now declare the poll closed. Following confirmation by Computershare, the final results will be announced to the ASX later today. I would like to take a brief moment to thank Mr. Stephen Rouvray and Mr. Paul Kuchta for their service to date; Steve as Deputy Chairman and Independent Director and Paul as an Executive Director. It has been a huge amount of work to undertake the work required pre-IPO to become a listed company and then to operate the business over the last 5 years. And I hope all shareholders will appreciate the enormous amount of remuneration both of our directors have received and the massively underpaid fashion in which we treat our Board. That was satire. Moving to #10, other business. Is there any other business that can be lawfully brought forward? If any shareholders wish to bring forward any matters, please post your question in the Q&A.

I notice that there are 2 questions now in the Q&A. And so I'll start. I'll give people some time to pose some questions. And while people are thinking of that, I will answer these 2 questions that I can see currently. What is the purpose of the India office? Is it for shared services? What we're doing in India is we noticed that we could probably employ another 5% of people if we could find the people, people aren't really available in Australia, as professional team members. And so the officers have got together to build a wonderful group of people in India with a front door. It's fully branded Kelly Partners, really first-class work environment, where those team members are working from home as fully qualified accountant team members in our businesses. When I say working from home, their home is Mumbai and they're working from an office in Mumbai. And we believe in flexible work. And so if a team member in Australia can work in an office or work from home, we believe that the same is true for people located outside Australia. And frankly, that's going to dramatically increase the talent that's available to our business as we seek to grow globally. That was from [ Rissol ]. Thank you, [ Rissol ], for your question. From Brendan, Thank you, Brett and KPG, for another great year. Can you please talk more as to why you believe relisting in the U.S. is a net benefit for loyal long-term Australian shareholders and why KPG cannot achieve its objective by remaining listed in Australia? Thank you. It's a great question, Brendan. We haven't reached a conclusion, but the [indiscernible] will become, I think, more obvious when we do. We think that the possible benefits -- ultimately, we think that the biggest market for the intellectual property systems processes that we've developed are going to be the U.S. market. And so how to best deploy the resources of the business to get you as a shareholder and a long-term quality shareholder the best return, we expect that, like here, whereby being listed we've increased the number of deals by nearly 4x over a 5-year period, a way to be very differentiated and really a light tower for people that have built great businesses in the U.S. market will be by being known and being obviously high quality in that market. And we think being listed is likely to give us that. We also think it will make the business more accessible to investors around the world. The predominant shareholders in the top 20 that are not insiders are global investors. They're not Australian investors. And we don't believe that there'll be any disadvantage to an Australian investor by being in our register if we do list in the U.S. And interestingly, ultimately, it will give the company the most flexible way to structure itself and the most access to the capital that will be required over the next 80 years. If you think of a 100-year horizon, we think that that's probably something that will make sense. But we're doing a lot of work on it. I, like you, are a significant shareholder, and we'll be very considered as to what next steps we might take in that direction. So I appreciate the question. I'm not sure if there are any other questions. I appreciate everyone's time today and the excellent attendance that we've had. Here it is. Can you please talk more as to why the normal cadence of acquisitions has seemingly halted in the last several months? It's a good question, Brendan. I wouldn't characterize it in that way. We're very focused on the integrations that we're doing of the businesses that we have, and we continue to engage with many, many businesses in joining the group. We can never control the speed at which people move. And frankly, I'd love them -- it'd be lovely over time. I should break that acquisitions over 17 years sort of slide out and do it on a monthly basis. It would be lovely if one just turned up once every 4 weeks and they acted in a sort of rational, and rational from our perspective, manner, where they just did exactly what we wanted, exactly when we wanted. But we're dealing with people, and they have their own constraints with their lives and businesses. And sometimes -- I think the longest deal that what we did, I first spoke to that firm and they joined us 14 years after our first conversation. And I was sharing with a firm actually I met with yesterday that the shortest one was on the same day, within an hour. And they said to me, Brett, what was the difference? I said, Well, the difference was, on the second one, I was dealing with the wife of a guy that died the day before. So she was able to think really clearly, that time is limited and death is certain and that you should probably get on with it. But most people don't have that clarity of thinking. So sometimes it may take a little longer. But I don't think on a 5-year basis, and we think in 5-year periods, that you will be anything but ecstatic about our ability to bring people into the group and integrate them properly so that they feel welcome and excited about what they're doing and that they are likely to be part of our group for 100 years. And that's definitely our focus. So we're not in the business of just buying things for the sake of it. We're not in the business of buying anything. We're in the business of building partnerships that will last a long time, and that takes a lot of effort. But I'm very confident that you'll be pleased over time. Now I can see that there are no more open questions. Going once, going twice, going 3 times. If there is anyone that's got a question, I'd encourage you to pop it in there. We are here and willing to answer any question that you might have. Closing comments. I'll ask myself a question. The biggest learning in the last 12 months is that at the point we are with the business, it's incredibly important that we bring people into the business that share our mission and that distinction between sort of missionaries and mercenaries. The business is obviously successful at what it does and can attract people that don't have the long-term mindset that we have and that don't fully share the mission that we're trying to execute. We're being very diligent about growing the business. We're growing the business with people that share that mission and have that long-term view. And that will continue to be a very strong focus for us. I want to thank everybody for their attendance today, the incredible support that we have within our quality shareholder group. I expect to bring continual opportunities to you to participate further in the growth of our group. And I, frankly, have never been more energized or excited about the opportunities that that lay in front of us. I think, together, we're building something that is meaningful and is really making a difference, and I thank you for your continued support. On that basis, I have to declare the meeting closed. As that concludes the business of the meeting, I declare the meeting closed, and I thank all members for their attendance. There was another question, just before we close. What are we specifically doing to build a team to progress our ability to continually make acquisitions? For the first time, 6 months ago, at the beginning of the year, we appointed a person who's full time, running a digitized automated version of the outreach process that we have run for 17 years. We've moved the number of firms that we are contacting digitally up by nearly 3x. We have much more depth in our understanding of what we're doing and who we're trying to attract. We have a professional search group working with us in the U.S. and one in the U.K., and it is having a huge impact to the top of the funnel in terms of the number of firms we're meeting with. In terms of getting your eye in on these deals, meeting many, many, many firms is critically important. I met one yesterday, I met another one this morning. It is something that we do on almost a daily basis, and I would say a daily basis. But certainly, virtually every day we are meeting either a second time or a third time or a first time another firm. And we have never had a full-time person in the business focused entirely on acquisition of talent firms. And now we're digitizing the digital outreach for new clients that are targeted at a specific level. So we've done a lot. I did meet with a very talented individual at 7:00 a.m. this morning, encouraging him to join the team that we're building. But I think it's also very well understood that if you build a large acquisition team, that that team will build up an institutional imperative to do things. Otherwise, they'll feel underemployed and they will encourage you to do deals that you might otherwise not do. It is very clear in the book, The Outsiders, that those outsider CEOs have outperformed. They're very clear not to build up a team of hyperactive deal doers who drag them into deals that may not align ultimately with what the business is trying to do. So striking that balance is really important. We're trying to do that. And I think you'll see the results over this 5-year period that we're probably getting that more right than different. We've also developed a number of partners within the group into what we've called scouts, who are as part of their role and regional managing directors reaching out to firms, doing first meetings, making introductions and bringing those people to me and our internal team. So there's a lot going on. I don't want to share everything that we're doing. A lot of it's quite exciting, but it does seem to be having a real impact. Right. Now on a second attempt -- there's a question. And guys, I'd encourage you, we are here. We have time, which is unusual for us. So if you've got questions, please load them up. Can you please speak to the attitude of the people on the ground to the overall KPG corporate trajectory? It's a great question. What I observed -- when I started at Pricewaterhouse, I was recruited there because it was a global firm. But when I wanted to work in a global office, it was virtually that you had to resign and move to that office and apply from that city. It didn't act like a global firm, and it still doesn't. And so for us, if we had the opportunity to say to people at the end of their CA program, Hey, take your work, take your laptop, go and work from L.A. for 3 months, 6 months, 2 years, go to London, we think that we can build a more interesting long-term career for our people. And it has energized our people and continues to. We're building a summer intern program with a top 50 college in the U.S. to bring some of their accounting students to Australia during the U.S. summer holidays, and we will, in turn, send some of our people into the U.S. office. And we'll ultimately do that with the U.K. We'll build tax capability across those regions. And we'll make sure that people in these offices know people in those offices. We've already sent quite a number of clients to the U.S. firm that we've -- that has agreed to join us. Frankly, the interest of our people and our clients is overwhelmingly positive. Like, I haven't had a single negative, because I really think there's nothing negative for our people in energizing them in that direction, which is very, very exciting. It's a little like when I started. The third office we built was in Penrith, and people thought we were completely crazy, that we were putting an office in Penrith. And then in Campbelltown, which they thought was even worse. But most people, let's face it, have never been to Penrith or Campbelltown. And so they really didn't know what they were talking about. And that has helped our people in those offices and the group tremendously. So we don't want to overbake things, oversell things or overpromise. We just have an insight to our talent and the talent more generally, that we think we can do something differentiated. I make the comment within our business often that everyone accepts that you have to have differentiation in order to build a business that's long-term competitive. But the big word in the middle of differentiation is different. And most people, particularly accountants, struggle with the idea of being different. Everyone wants to be part of the pack and loved and liked. But being different, in the short term, doesn't always deliver that. So we've got to follow our inner scorecard, do what we know is, we think, long term the right thing for the business. And we'll appreciate your patience as a shareholder as we quietly progress that. Can we discuss the prospects in the U.K. and even New Zealand as opposed to the U.S.? Is there any other countries maybe of interest? We think that English-speaking Commonwealth countries like New Zealand, like the U.K., like Canada are obvious places to play, and we are and continue to experience interest from people in those markets. We don't see things as this versus that. The 2 biggest Australian expat communities are London and L.A., I think followed by New York. Hence, our interest in those places. We think our model is applicable in these other places. And you should expect over time that we will seek to build out management teams that want to partner with us with our model and build in those markets. We don't -- we believe the 2 most powerful words in life and business, the first one is no, the second one is and. We don't believe that we're pursuing one thing at the expense of another. We believe that we can do this and that and the other. But we can't do it all at once, and we'll just gently do it a single point of time. If we can prove our model in the biggest, best market, frankly, for our model in the world, we think it will be more obvious to people the potential of the model in other places. Hence, the reason to prosecute the opportunity in the U.S. before somewhere like New Zealand. At the end of the day, return on talent is a better calculation than proximity by number of kilometers at this point. Can each Board member please speak to what you see as the biggest bottleneck to KPG's growth potential and how we're going about liberating these? Well, I'll hand that over. Maybe I'll start with you, Paul. Paul is a Managing Partner of our Sydney CBD business, who can share your thoughts.

Thanks for the question. And Brett touched on it earlier when someone asked a question around acquisitions. So those that are organized win. And so when we're talking to acquisition targets, people are busy in their lives, like Brett said. So it comes down to whether or not they're organized in their life that they're able to make that decision and move as quickly as we are against those decisions as well. So in terms of not a bottleneck, but I see it more as a planning from the other side. It's really assisting them to get their life in order so they can move on with Kelly Partners.

Ada? Ada is one of our Founding Partners and a Managing Partner of our North Sydney business, which is one of our largest businesses, and has been here, I think, from Day 2 or 3. Ada, how are you -- what are your thoughts on the big bottlenecks?

I see it as our people, probably even our existing people, how they can grow and learn at the same time, training the next generation, being part of a fast-growing company. We all need to grow and learn very fast as well.

Ryan has had an illustrious career as a Chief Technology Officer and now is enjoying semi-retirement, although being on our Board is no retirement gig. Ryan, what are your thoughts?

I think it's a balance, because you can run as fast as you can, seeing as many people to interview and to ask to potentially join, but that funnel gets narrower and narrower down the track. And I think Brett's approach of getting our partners, existing partners, that have lived and breathed the business for a long time and understand the values to have those initial discussions. And when it gets to the nitty-gritties, then to get Brett and Ken involved to look through the financials and all of the other things. So I think that's a really good approach because it scales what we do, but it still retains that final say to Brett and Ken that really know the numbers and know what they're looking for. But we can't run that fast and then leave the rest of the business behind. The rest of the business still needs to operate on a day-to-day basis. And we need to integrate these new businesses. I think one of the biggest failures of other companies is merging or pulling other companies in and they're not taking the time and effort to make them part of the culture. We want to make sure we spend that time with these new businesses that they are part of Kelly Partners and they have the same values that we have. And that takes effort. So you can only run as fast as you have the back end sorted out.

And Steve is our Deputy Chairman and is very experienced through a long career previously with Austbrokers. Steve, what are your thoughts?

Well, I think it's a lot, as Paul referred to, the target market there are generally accountants and a lot of them are pushing the upper years and are really bogged down in their business a lot. And the bottleneck really is to get them to focus on where they should be moving in the future and to -- I mean, most of them have the desire and the knowledge that they've got to do something about where they are, but to get them out of their day to day to focus on it and to progress it, I think is where we have the struggles. I think we've got the team -- I know we've got the team to convert things when people will make the decision on the other side. And I think we've had discussions that have gone on for quite a while to get people across the line or deep-focused enough to get them across the line in a reasonable time frame. And I think that is the biggest thing we face.

That makes some sense. Another question in there. I've noticed recently KPG is running ads on Facebook, Instagram to build, I'm assuming, top-of-funnel acquisition targets. Can you speak to the results of those activities? Well, not really. But Zack's a long-term quality shareholder. Zack, we'll continue to experiment and try things that we think have prospects of turning up firms and talent and clients that want to join us in our mission. And you do have a keen eye for what we're doing, which I do love about you, and I think you're spot-on in that we are doing an enormous range and amount of things that are different. That's one of the things that's least different, frankly, and we'll continue to do that. We think experimenting just makes sense. And that experiment is going well. I would say that we get -- 90% of the deals that come to us, we've only ever done 2 deals through practice brokers. So say, 98% of deals have basically been proprietary, they've been exclusive to us, where because of our long-term outreach, now nearly 17 years, people know we're in the market and if they have an excellent firm they should join us. So we are blessed that very good people continue to contact us. And I think we've got an unusual amount of advantage. Everything we do seems to create more flywheel and more awareness, and we'll continue to do some of these interesting things. We're doing all sorts of good things, and I think we've got a few more tricks up our sleeves to out-innovate anyone that seeks to compete with us. Now I see I think we might have exhausted the questions. Happy to take any further questions. Thank you, everyone. Have a brilliant day, and thank you. [indiscernible], appreciate your questions. I'd love to finish by just saying thank you. We're humbled by people's continual support. We have a long-term focus. The team are united and passionate about what they do, energized by the opportunity. And while we are happy to take an hour out to do an AGM, we have plenty of great stuff on that we're enjoying, and we love spending time with everyone who's made the time to be with us today. I want to thank our Board, all of our partners, all of our team members, our valued clients and all of the community organizations that we are participating in. It is and we appreciate the privilege that it is to do what we do. And as I love to say, have a great day. Thank you.