Objective Corporation Limited (OCL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] for Objective Corporation. So this morning, obviously, I'm Tony Walls, the Chairman and CEO of Objective Corporation. And I'm reliably informed that we have a quorum, and I declare the 2023 Annual General Meeting of Objective Corporation open. The AGM this year is being conducted as a virtual meeting. I know there's been some discussion about virtual meetings, but on balance, we believe that the virtual meeting gives equal opportunity to everyone around the world that's an Objective shareholder. And in the past, we've had very, very limited representation in person. So we think this is a modern way to conduct our AGM, and I'm sure you all agree. So shareholders who have registered to join the meeting will be able to ask questions to vote on the resolutions during the meeting. All resolutions are determined by poll vote. And votes received prior to the meeting will be displayed on a screen during the meeting; and the final results, including the votes cast electronically during the meeting will be released to the ASX later today. Instructions for how to vote -- sorry, instructions for how shareholders can ask questions and vote on resolutions were included in the virtual meeting guide distributed to shareholders. And as shown on the screen, so the first one here, as you can see, there's a written form that comes up. I mean, if you hit the -- sorry, if I just go forward one slide, you will see that there's an ability to vote online during the AGM. Equally, there will be an ability to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] So I'd like to firstly introduce you to our Board members who are attending the AGM: Darc Rasmussen; Stephen Bool; and Nick Kingsbury as well as Ben Tregoning, our Company Secretary; and Mark Godlewski representing our auditor, Pitcher Partners. Immediately after the close of the formal part of the meeting, we intend to have a short update, which will deal with the past year and talk about future prospects for the company. There will be an opportunity, as I said, for shareholders to ask questions at the end of that presentation. If I move on to the Notice of Meeting, the Notice of Meeting that appears before me has been circulated to all registered shareholders in accordance with the ASX Listing Rules and the Corporations Act. The Notice of Meeting is taken as read. Note that voting exclusions relating to each resolution are detailed in the Notice of Meeting. So now we'll move on to the formal meeting agenda. Item #1, the financial statements and reports. The first item on the agenda is to receive and consider the financial statements and the reports of the directors and the auditor of the company for the year ended 30 June 2023. The financial statements and reports have been in the hands of members for the statutory period. And shareholders are not required to vote on the reports or financial statements. However, you have the opportunity to ask questions to the directors and of the auditor. Are there any questions concerning the 2023 annual report or financial statements?

We do have a question. So I'll ask the question. It's from Stephen Mayne. Given that we have a market cap of around $1 billion, isn't it time we moved on from a small audit firm, Picture Partners, and went with 1 of the big 4 global accounting firms such as PwC? Could the Picture Partners' signing partner speak to any other $1 billion listed companies that it audits?

I guess if we're going to entertain this style of questions, I'll hand over to Mark Godlewski if he's available. Ben?

Sure. We will just invite him to the stage.

Yes, we can. Thanks, Mark.

Okay. I think that's an interesting question. It's not really about the conduct we audit, but anyway, I'll talk about myself, my clients in a number of industries because we're a mid-tier firm. My largest client would have turnover greater than $1 billion, and our smallest client would be a not for profit. So I think our background is we come with a diverse range of experiences. And when you look at the business, Objective, yes, it's grown over the last couple of years, but -- and we do audits of entities with overseas subsidiaries and various other companies. So I don't think the scale of Objective's business takes it outside the realms of a mid-tier firm like ourselves. And I certainly don't believe the big 4 provide the same service as us in my personal opinion and experience. I'm not sure if that answers the question, but with Picture Partners, we have 8 or 9 other audit partners all with different skill sets. Both Shanley and I have done the audits for the last number of years, and we both have relevant experience with IT companies. But [ whichever ] partnering Picture Partners provide the service would have the requisite experience and knowledge of the company and that industry.

Thanks very much, Mark. Are there any other questions? Okay. Thank you. I declare the financial statements and the reports of directors and the auditor of the company for the year ended 30 June 2023 received. We now move on to agenda item #2 and the first resolution. Please note that pursuant to Section 250R(2) of the Corporations Act, requires that a resolution to adopt the remuneration report to be put to a vote of shareholders and shareholders who have the opportunity to discuss the remuneration report at the Annual General Meeting. However, under Section 250R(3) of the Corporations Act, the vote on this resolution is advisory only and does not bind the directors of the company. I now move that the remuneration report of the company as set out in the directors' report of the financial year ended 30 June 2023 be adopted. Before voting on this motion, is there any discussion? A summary of the proxies that have been received are displayed on the screen. The Chairman will vote all undirected proxies in favor of this resolution. If you have not lodged a proxy and you are voting during the meeting, please indicate your vote on the poll on the screen now. [Voting]

Okay. All right. We will now move on to agenda item #3, retirement and reelection of directors and the second resolution, the reelection of Mr. Darc Rasmussen as a Director. Mr. Darc Rasmussen retires by rotation. The explanatory notes provided with the Notice of Meeting give a brief description of Darc's experience. I move that Mr. Darc Rasmussen, who retires as a Director in accordance with the company's constitution and being eligible for reelection, is reelected as a Director of the company. Before voting on this motion, is there any discussion? Okay. A summary of the proxies received are displayed on the screen. The Chairman will vote all undirected proxies in favor of this resolution. If you have not lodged a proxy and you are voting during the meeting, please indicate your vote on the poll screen now. [Voting]

Okay. Thank you. We now move on to agenda item #4, resolution 3. I move that in accordance with Section 136-2 (sic) [ 136(2) ] of the Corporations Act and for all other purposes, the company's constitution be amended as set out in the explanatory memorandum with immediate effect. This is special resolution requires 75% support from shareholders who have voted or provided their instruction to vote by way of proxy. Before voting on this motion, is there any discussion? Okay. A summary of the proxies are displayed on the screen. The Chairman will vote all undirected proxies in favor of this resolution. If you have not lodged a proxy and you are voting during the meeting, please indicate your vote on the poll screen now. [Voting]

Okay. That brings us to the end of today's -- the formal part of today's meeting and I declare the meeting closed. I'd now like to move on and give an update on the company and its future direction. At the conclusion of this part of the AGM, there will be the opportunity to answer questions. Unfortunately, I can stop reading the script now and talk about the business more fluidly. So first of all, I'd like to recap. I think for many of you that have already seen the results over the past 3 months, these numbers will be familiar to you. Revenue was up to $110 million, $94 million in annualized recurring revenue, EBITDA of $26 million. We paid an unfranked dividend of $0.135 per share. Our net profit was constant, $21 million. R&D, which we'll talk about a little bit later, was up to 25% of total revenue at $27 million. And cash finished the year at $73 million and no debt, so in all, our usual relatively strong operating environment. I think the thing that really underpins what we've been doing now and we've seen these periods in the past where, I guess, top line revenue has been a little flattish, I think I've given quite a lot of airtime to the reasons of moving all of our business lines to SaaS over the last 12 months and the retirement of our perpetual right to use, and I've given other color to what has been driving sort of top line and bottom line results over the past 12 months at the end of the full year results. So I won't bore you by going over those things again. But what I do want to draw to your attention was really what was underlying the results was this drive in terms of the SaaS revenue and certainly highlighting the fact that we've had compound annual growth rate over the past 7 years of over 30% in terms of that SaaS driving. So you can see there our traditional business down the bottom, the USP, it's been a far more modest CAGR, as you can see. And we certainly have been shrinking the nonrecurring elements of the business. So I think as a forward indicator of not only FY '24 and beyond, this gives you a very strong flavor of what's driving the underlying performance of the business. If we move on and talk a little bit about the company's strategy because it's really about the outlook, nothing that we can talk about today is going to change what's happened historically. And as you will find, that a lot of the things that we've done over the past years have really set us up for the great position that we're in now. So firstly, I think it's always important that we restate the mission. This mission for us has been -- has really been at the very heart of everything that we do. And that is outstanding digital government software driving stronger communities and nations, and as we step through some of the things that we'll talk about today, I hope that that's really born out in terms of the passion that we all have for the marketplace that we address. Equally, one of the things that I've spoken about over the last 12 months has really been this Objective value proposition. And everything that we do today, everything that we look at in terms of M&A is really driven by these core themes. Firstly, regulation and governance, the systems that we put in place for customers are not discretionary items. There are things that customers need in order to fulfill their mission, whether it be a regulatory requirement of a government act or whether it be a regulation or a specific regulation that's been passed through parliament. These are the things that drive everything that we do. I think the second thing is that really what's been happening also is this huge digital transformation. I often shy away from sort of cliche terms and things that are, I guess, popular or popular in the press. But we've really seen the amount of digital transformation that's going on. Yes, in many respects, what happened during the COVID years helped accelerate that, but this was a movement that was well underway anyway, and it continues today. There is very much how do we serve citizens, how do we serve the community through these digital platforms. And the combination of the regulation, the governance and this digital transformation gives us the national outcomes that we'll talk about during the presentation today. As you know, we do that through 3 particular business lines, I think if you look at the heart and heritage of the company, has always been in the content and process space. That is documents, records, workflows. They're the things that really the company has grown up with over the past quarter of a century. But equally, as we've become more proficient in these areas, we've really taken those themes and said what are the areas of specialization where we think we've got competitive advantage can we build upon. And that's resulted in the development of our planning and building specialization and our RegTech specialization. But underneath all those are the same key drivers: regulation; governance; digital transformation; and most importantly, documents, records and workflows. They still underpin these other business lines. And this is really evidenced by all the things that you see here. Whenever we go and measure what we do, we do a lot of work with customers to look at value realization. All of the things that we do result in very clear metrics to make sure that customers understand the benefits of implementing one of our solutions. And this is very evident through these customer stories. Now we've given you a QR code here. If you use that QR code, it will take you to the customer stories section on our website, and I would really strongly encourage you to go and watch these videos. They're all relatively short, but they give you a good sense of the community impact that the solutions that we have are all driving in the communities that we enjoy. I particularly love some of the first ones there, CareSouth, which is relatively close to us here on the South Coast of New South Wales. There's a great story there. Equally, if I can call out what we've been doing at the Welsh government with the relocation of refugees from the Ukraine. And I think just some of those stories through there, they really give you a great insight into the benefits that we provide customers. Equally, this year, in our annual report, so we've launched our sustainability report that addresses our commitment to ESG. That's also available on our website. So if you go to our website, you'll be able to find our sustainability report as well. So that's something that I know is very important to many of our shareholders. And I guess we've also spoken about, during the COVID years and the post COVID years, just how much emphasis we're putting on building great teams and having great people as part of those great teams. So I don't think anything -- even though attracting people to Objective has always been relatively straightforward, there is always a war for the best talent. Whether it's a very bullish time or whether it's a little less bullish time, attracting great people to our organization has been key to our success and remains there. So the 3 elements of this is really how do we attract people to the organization, how do we develop them and how do we retain them. And this year, again, if you have a look on our website and through our annual report, you'll see these 3 core themes: diversity, equity, inclusion. You'll see a lot of the things that we're doing there not only about women in the workplace but certainly both religious diversity, which is very topical at the moment, along with sexual diversity and other elements of diversity that we have within the workplace. Equally, you can see there developing careers, the things that we're doing around our Objective Boomerang project and emerging leaders. We've had a strong long-term commitment to LinkedIn Learning. Equally, mental health has become a big thing for employers and employees right throughout the world, and we've had many, many activities in this space over a long period of time. But what's really been important to us is to be acknowledged externally. And this year, we were certified as a great place to work. We're endorsed as an employer for all women as well. So these things all talk to the investment that we're making in our employees. I'd like to move on and talk somewhat about innovation because it's very much alive and well. You can see how much that we invest in innovation from some of the metrics that we put up at the beginning of the meeting. And I think it's important that we start off with talking about our flywheel of innovation. I wouldn't have done a presentation at an AGM or a results presentation or even internal presentation at a keynote address here. In the past 5 years, it didn't include an acknowledgment of this flywheel. I think it's very important that we understand that investing in R&D is absolutely core to our mission and core to our heartland. And so all things start with that investment in R&D. That leads to outstanding software. And if we've got outstanding software, that allows us to deliver an outstanding customer experience. And if we've done that well and we've charged the right price, that'll give us the financial performance to allow us to start that all over again. We've been doing this very, very consistently since we became a public company in the year 2000. And by way of evidence, if I look at this chart here, this gives you the compound effect of our investment in R&D over the past 25 years. I think what's really significant, though, for us and for all of us that have been on this journey for such a long time is that 42% of our total R&D spend, over that period of time, has happened in the last 5 years. And I think this is why you're seeing an acceleration of the innovation here at Objective. That's a very large number, 25% of total revenue and in excess of 30% of our total software revenue. And as you can see here in the last couple of months, we broke through the $0.25 billion investment in R&D since becoming a public company. So I think those things all really, really talk strongly to our commitment. If we think about innovation, the things that we're thinking about all the time, first and foremost, customer needs. I hear lots of things. We'll talk briefly about AI in a moment, but I hear lots of things about competitors, what someone else is doing, AI, a whole range of things. But I think what's at the heart of what has really driven us for all of our 35-odd years in this market is making sure that we're really focused on customer needs. That really needs to come first, last and always. In addition to that, we've had a SaaS mindset. We've been delivering SaaS-only solutions now for more than a decade, things that you'll know like Objective Connect, Keystone, Keyplan. These are all born in the cloud. I would argue that probably even Keystone predates a lot of the discussion around SaaS when it was still a lighter weight concept. So all of our products now are really built and delivered with this SaaS mindset. Thirdly, security. I know a lot of you know that so many of our customers are in the sensitive space. We invest more in security today than we've ever done before. We have daily security checks and security measures that are imposed on all of our products, and we have a team of people here that are absolutely dedicated to -- solely dedicated to the focus of security. And then finally, AI, it tends to be something that's very openly discussed since the emergence of OpenAI and ChatGPT in particular. But we've been using many of these products for a long period of time. I'd like to just evidence that in the couple of quarters through 3 initiatives that you would have already heard about from us. Firstly, Objective 3Sixty, which really provides this enterprise data fabric that we've spoken about. There's a lot of information about 3Sixty available on our website, but it is really all born out of the use of artificial intelligence. Secondly, our Keyplan product that we've recently launched off the back of, really, the split out from the Keystone product, we've had a sentiment analysis in that solution. So when we get inputs from constituents across councils, we are able to go and analyze -- in a similar way to the large language models work, we're able to go and analyze the information that comes back from the community around what is the sentiment around particular elements of strategic plans within government. And then finally, we've been using AI techniques and computer vision, in particular, in our Trapeze product for quite a lot of years now. And a great example of that is Smart Stamping, where we're reading plans that are submitted and need to go back to build as an architect to make sure that we are reading the plans and reading the information off the plans to do the calculations and do the tests that local government planners need to do during the planning process. Now there's a myriad of other opportunities and things that we're delivering with AI, and I'm certain that at the next Investor Day, we'll go through these in a lot more detail. But I'd like to move on and talk a little bit about the line of business or each of the lines of business and give you some insights into the things that are happening there. So first of all, many of you will remember this slide from the full year results. So this just gives you a snapshot of the portfolio that's in the Content & Process business line. We can see the numbers there, and you can see the split out of the Keystone and Keyplan solution. But I think what's really important here is, and we've seen this with a lot of customers in the last 12 months, in particular, a lot of the new opportunities that we're progressing, we have probably the most complete portfolio of solutions in this space of any company globally. So the ability to automate, the ability to collaborate, the ability to federate the information and the ability to manage, this is a complete experience for customers to manage information. Whether they want to have a single repository, whether they have multiple repositories, whether they want to share externally, these are all features and capabilities that we deliver today, as I say, the most holistic experience of any competitor that we have today. Again, the drivers for these things are twofold: firstly, regulation and governance, as we mentioned before, in this digital transformation. Now I'm not suggesting that I'm going to go through every last one of these for you today. Again, these are available on our website, and you can go and have a look at those in some detail. But to give you some comfort level around what this means for us in terms of the addressable market, it's twofold. Firstly, it's our transition to the cloud. We are now seeing a very solid pickup in the movement from Objective ECM to our brand-new product in Objective Nexus. This allows us to take customers that have historically grown up with the ECM solution over the past 2 decades to move to the modern SaaS Objective Nexus solution and primarily the addressable markets of the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, although we do have other installations in other countries around the world. But when I talk about the more holistic information, governments landscape, you can see there we have now included North America. We acquired the technology that underpins 3Sixty out of North America earlier last year. And for those of you that have read through our annual report in detail, we'll see the new customers that we've had come onboard, particularly in North America, using 3Sixty over the past 12 months. But more than just 3Sixty, the combination of 3Sixty, Nexus, GOV365 and Connect gives us, again, this holistic ability to go and govern information right across an enterprise. These things enable us to not only go and look at new opportunities in the marketplaces or the geographies where we currently are but also tap into that North American marketplace. So we're very confident about what we're doing in the content and process space, and we're seeing new opportunities come through the organization or come to the organization all the time. I'll move on and talk for a minute about what's happening in Planning & Building. I think you know we've had a big investment in this space over the past 5 years with both the acquisitions that we've made and also the development effort that's been going in particularly within our Palme North R&D campus. And whilst you can see here that the revenue has been relatively modest, the ARR growth has been very, very solid. Again, if I look at the 2 drivers for that business, regulation and governance, and digital transformation have been the drivers. But the big thing for us really in this planning and building space has been this big ecosystem. So not only do we address the needs of local government. More so, we address the needs of a bigger ecosystem, the building ecosystem. It is one of the biggest ecosystems in the world, regardless of which country you go to. One of the biggest things that drives GDP is the construction industry. If I look out the window here in Sydney, I'll see cranes everywhere. I've traveled extensively in the last month. I've been to the U.K. I've been to other parts of Australia. I've been to the U.S. Everywhere where I go, you just see the strength of the building industry, and the ecosystem that underpins all this construction is very much a document management, recordkeeping and workflow set of capabilities. You can see here just some of the stakeholders and actors that are in this ecosystem. And so if you look at the customer footprint that we have today, it's very significant. Those of you -- I've been asked questions before about why has Build taken a little bit longer to roll out than perhaps people originally thought. And that is because we're building 1/4 of a century capability in our minds. If you think about the Objective ECM solution and what we've now got with Nexus, that's born out of about 30 years of work. And equally, I think the work that we're doing in Objective Build today and everything that we're doing in Planning & Building really has that longevity, really has that opportunity ahead of it. And so we've taken the time to make sure that we're building on very, very solid foundations and not rushing the foundational part. Having said that, though, you can see here from the infographic, we've got 79% of councils in New Zealand are now using 1 of the Objective Build solutions. We have 28 councils that have now committed to Build, and we have 26 remaining that are still on 1 of the [ donor ] solutions in AlphaOne or GoGet. I think you know that we've taken the capabilities of those existing products and really rebuilt a new modern platform with Objective Build. There's still lots to come with Build, both in New Zealand and Australia, but we are absolutely in a very good place as far as the adoption of that system is concerned. We have slowed down, as I mentioned at the full year results, to make sure that we got the Objective inspections piece completed. This allows builders and councils to do inspections on site and record information back and build as a long-term record of the building process. That particular part of the solution is going to be released fairly immediately. And I think you'll see the demand pull for Objective Build, particularly in the New Zealand marketplace, continue on very strongly throughout 2024. Equally, if we look at Objective Trapeze, it has enormous market share across ANZ. We've got about 67% of the addressable councils here in Australia. We define addressable councils as those with greater than 5,000 rate payers and more than 3,000 professionals log onto the Trapeze platform every day. Equally, in New Zealand, we have 90% of councils that are using the platform. We do expect to get that to 100% and certainly greater than 1,300 professionals every day across New Zealand using the Trapeze platform. It is the go-to solution for planners in this part of the world and sets us up equally for opportunities in other parts of the world as well. So again, we're very excited about the year ahead in terms of what's happening in Planning & Building. And then if I can also talk to RegWorks. It had a great year in terms of ARR growth. We've addressed the low sales revenue with the reduction in services. As people will know, both internally and externally, we've got a huge push on to reduce the amount of services required to deploy the RegWorks solution. I'll talk to that in just a moment. RegWorks is made up of really these 3 components. And I think this really talks to the modern government so -- and talks to also to the digital transformation. So there's always been this back-office component to most solutions in government as we see in everyday life, but equally, we're serving citizens more and more through these front-end portals. Most of the solutions that we have today, whether it be planning and building and certainly here within RegWorks, are really driven through the front end and having citizens and organizations to be able to interact with our solutions through this online portal. And again, so many of the aspects of what we do are driven by mobile. And so we have dedicated apps in many cases as well as solutions that run on various numbers of tablets and laptop devices that are -- that can be used regardless of the type of field worker that you are. So I think there's those 3 elements that really talk to the things that make up the modern government solution. The same drivers: regulation and governance, and digital transformation. As well as that, if you look at RegWorks, it's particularly strong in terms of being the no-code deployment. So customers can deploy RegWorks. Customers can configure, and customers can modify their RegWorks solution without necessarily coming back to Objective. This is quite different to what we see with generic platforms and bespoke platforms, people using CRMs. This is a very, very distinctly different way of going about the RegWorks solution. If we look for a moment at the number of regulators in the markets that we serve, you can see here in Australia, there's 98 federal regulators and 580 state and territory regulators. That's a fairly large number. Equally, there's about 70 in New Zealand and 90 large regulators across the United Kingdom. Again, these organizations rely upon digital self-service today. The heritage in this part of the market is typically homegrown, bespoke solutions and people that are now moving on, organizations that are now moving on from these homegrown solutions and into something that is far closer to a [ cults ] application. I think this is where Objective RegWorks' future is really strong. If we think about some of the community outcomes, we've spoken about New Zealand Police during the year. Wage Inspectorate in Victoria is a great example of a new regulator that's looking to be a modern regulator, and we stood up very quickly. As we see, there's new acts of Parliament all the time that are creating new, what I call, micro regulators or smaller regulators or regulators that have been spun out from other government departments. This is part of the sweet spot that we address with Objective RegWorks. And so finally, I just want to talk to the strategic priorities for us in terms of 2024. These are the same strategic pillars that you've seen from us before. Firstly, we must engineer outstanding solutions. Nothing good happens until we develop an outstanding product. But equally, this includes the domain expertise. All of the things that we've touched on, planning and building, regulators, the things that are in the record-keeping workflow space, these all require very specific domain expertise, and I think it's well understood that Objective is the leader in this part of the world. Secondly, how do we deliver more opportunities for customers with more product solutions? Thirdly, how do we grow our family through M&A? We have a long and successful track record with that. And finally, how do we attract new fans by going into new markets and certainly using digital engagement techniques to bring new organizations to the Objective brand? So if I talk about those in short, just a couple of short slides before I open up to Q&A. First of all, outstanding innovation. We've touched on some of the innovation that we've been doing in the AI space. We did run an Investor Tech Day earlier in the year, several months ago now that was very well attended. That went through a lot of the innovation in a great level of detail. We'll be running the same thing again in the next 12 months. We've seen the benefit of deep customer engagement. There's one thing to talk about customers. There's another thing to go and make sure that our engagement with them is very deep. And finally, operational excellence, it's been interesting to see the pullback of when money is free, operational excellence tends to go out the window. But we've seen the huge pullback, particularly from the U.S. multinationals over the last 12 months or over the last 6 months and how the operational excellence and efficiency has been really at the heartland of so many other organizations. It's never not been part of what Objective has been about, but I think equally, we carry that discipline in through FY '24 as well. So if we talk about innovation, I'm often asked when are we going to pull back on our spend on innovation. I think for the last 20 years, my answer has been never. I probably don't see it necessarily growing as a percentage of total revenue above the current level. We think the current level is very, very healthy at 25% of our revenue and certainly in excess of 30% of our total software revenue. So they are very healthy numbers by any international measure. We're also applying a lot of deep rigor to making sure that we're sharing across the very -- each of the business lines. We're able to leverage many of the things that we do across multiple products today. With our SaaS solutions, we're delivering evergreen capabilities. So if you're on a product like Nexus or Connect or Keystone, those products are being updated every week and bringing new capabilities to customers. And I think that's something that's new that's been very welcomed from our customers as well as us making sure that we have a very much keep the lights on, nurturing, monitoring capability as far as the SaaS offer is concerned. Our customer engagement, I think, has been a strong part of Objective's heritage, but equally, we're getting greater customer engagement through an ever increasing customer success team. When I say ever increasing, every business line that we have now has its own dedicated customer success team, and those teams are getting larger and stronger. At the same time, we're probably getting the balance right between account management and customer success, whereby customer success and making sure that customers are getting great value out of our solutions is an absolutely core part of our brand promise. And then finally, as I mentioned, operational excellence. I think we've always been known for trying to maintain a disciplined management of costs. I think for a lot of organizations, things like hosting costs have certainly got out of control. And for us here at, Objective, we're monitoring costs. But at the same time, we still do need to invest, and I've been through this with a number of our institutional investors in recent times. We can't ever increase EBITDA margins and at the same time, invest in our future. There is a trade-off in those 2 things. And going forward, we're going to be calling those out so that shareholders can see that trade-off between those 2 things. We've certainly got a good playbook for M&A. I've spoken about M&A a number of times this year. I don't want to labor on the game here at the AGM this morning. But most certainly, M&A is a huge part of what we see alongside the muscle that we've built through our organic growth. So you can expect to see those 2 things being used in equal measure as we go into calendar year FY '24. But at the end of the day, it's about making sure we also achieve our sales results at the same time as getting customer delights. And I think the mix of those 2 things together, coupled with that cost discipline, is what's going to deliver outstanding results in FY '24. So with that, I'll pause, and I'll certainly invite additional questions.

Ben?

Thanks, Tony. We have a number of questions. So these questions are mostly from one shareholder. And so I'll lay them out to you. The shareholder's Stephen Mayne. I'm a local government counselor at the city of Manningham in Melbourne. Do you know if we are our clients? Which I can confirm they are indeed a client for Connect and for Trapeze Pro. How are clients that aren't using Build coping? And are there any monopoly concerns given that we are the dominant provider?

Look, I don't have any issues around monopoly concerns. At the end of the day, we provide a set of products and customers that choose -- are free to choose them or not. That's the nature of software. It's a game of meritocracy. I think we've seen a lot of meritocracy in software. Google, Microsoft, there's plenty of meritocracy that happens. So no, I don't have any concerns in that respect.

Next question is there doesn't appear to be any record of last year's AGM debate on the company website. Could the Chairman undertake to publish a full archive of the AGM webcast online for the 3,000 retail shareholders who weren't able to make it to the needlessly early 8:30 a.m. start?

Well, I'm not sure that I'd regard it as needlessly early, not much. We've got international shareholders. I'm sure that it's highly convenient for many shareholders and perhaps inconvenient for some. And yes, we can have a look at what we can provide online in terms of future webcast recordings.

Next question from the same shareholder, Stephen Mayne, seeing as Tony has never sold a share and has also bought back 30% of the shares on issue over the last years, why doesn't he just take -- just complete the process and take the whole company private? What is the point of being listed if the biggest shareholder is never going to publicly trade a share?

Quite a number of questions there, Stephen. So firstly -- the first thing, I wouldn't say I'd never sell a share. I just happen to have not sold one so far. I think, look, being a public company has been very good for Objective and Objective shareholders over a long period of time. And it brings a lot of discipline to our organization. It brings a lot of transparency, and I think that's something that customers really like about us. Have I addressed the 3 questions there, Ben? Must also say, Stephen, it's -- I've taken as a badge of honor after 23 years of being a public company that you've joined our register and welcome you to your first AGM with us. Hopefully, many more to come. So -- but Ben did I answer all the questions?

I think there'll probably be a follow-up question if you haven't. So I'll just take on the next question because there are a few to get through. Again, from the same shareholder. After a 10% vote against last year's constitutional amendment to allow for virtual meetings, it is disappointing you went ahead and held one. Will you return to having a hybrid meeting in 2024?

Look, we haven't decided what we do in 2024. But I'd say that we'll stick with this format. I think it's -- this format gives equal opportunity to all shareholders. I think we know that a lot of people like working from home. We -- I'd probably happily say that of the last 23 Annual General Meetings that I've run, we've had no more than about 5 retail investors turn up. I think the only benefit is that the staff get to eat all the pastries that don't get eaten by shareholders when they come to the office for the AGM. So I don't think it's been cost effective for the company to run an in-person AGM. And I think that this particular format is convenient for most and certainly gives equal opportunity to everyone regardless of where they are, regardless of what city they're in, in Australia, regardless of where they are around the world. So I think this is a great way to do it and a very fair way to do it.

Next question, same shareholder. When is the Objective going to appoint its first female director? Why draw attention to yourselves as the only listed $1 billion company with -- remaining with no female director? And Tony, just before you answer that one, I might just incorporate it with another question that is on a similar topic, which is it was great to hear you talk about diversity and Objective being a great place for women to work. So why don't we agree to appoint a female director to the Board? Have any government clients raised an issue when we tender or a new client?

No, I've not had it raised with me. This is -- look, it has been discussed internally, and we are looking for the best directors to join the Board and as we are looking for the best people to join the company in every capacity. And we don't differentiate between race, sex, gender. We live these preferences. We just don't differentiate. Having said that, I am certainly aware of the norm of having more female representation on the Board, and it is something that doesn't escape us, but it's certainly not something that we feel compelled to do in the very near term. But I'm sure at the point that we appoint a new director, that will be close to our hearts.

Okay. There's another question from Stephen Mayne. Objective Corporation is one of the most illiquid and least traded $1 billion companies because the Founder and CEO, Tony Walls controls about 65%. Could Tony comment as to why he doesn't sell down to diversify his personal investments and provide some liquidity for public investors?

I think, look, I think the liquidity here has been addressed over time through one of the former directors, Gary Fisher's sell down. I mean Gary and I were equal shareholders at one point, and he's sold down quite a lot of shares and provided a lot of liquidity into the market. I have plenty of investments outside of Objective, and I don't feel the need to further diversify. I think I'm on public record of saying that. I know Objective very well. I think it's been a great investment for me and a great investment for so many of our shareholders, and we know it intimately well. I don't feel the need to go and invest in something I know a lot less about. And so as I said to the first question earlier, I wouldn't say I'd never sell a share. I just haven't sold one yet. So I think there's other -- plenty of other public companies that have got large single shareholders on their registers certainly north of 50%. We're certainly not the only one. I'm sure you're familiar with, up until recent times, Reece Plumbing was another one. There's others in the tech space as well, which I know that you're aware of, Stephen. So look, hopefully, over time, the liquidity issue will be addressed through M&A activities, and you won't have to worry about that.

The next question, also from the same -- from Stephen. This might be one that you prefer to provide a written answer to, but I'll just read it out as it's submitted here. I've done 300 AGMs online and have never come across the Livestorm app before. What is it? Any chance you'd go for one of the regular share registry platforms next year, which includes a drop-down box to select questions for -- select resolutions for questions and less restricted word limits.

Yes, Ben, I'll take your steer on that. We'll provide a written answer to that. And if there's a better platform, Stephen, that you've seen, we'd be delighted to have a look at it. So please advise us, and yes, we'll have a look at that.

Stephen's also submitted a question in relation to lodging the presentation with ASX and disclosing the proxies, which will be done as it has been done prior years. So I'll take that as a comment. As the last question, does Tony have a relationship with the TechnologyOne Founder, Adrian Di Marco, given the similarities of building fabulous listed tech companies with Australian governments as a local client? Have we ever had merger talks? It's a great presentation today and well done.

Thanks, Stephen. Yes, I do know Adrian. And no, we've never had merger talks.

This is a question from [ Andrew Swaffer ]. Could we please head back to the slide on why customize when you can configure? I can see the opportunity for scale and other offerings, but please help us better understand how you get meaningful scale in RegTech?

Yes. Look, I think at the moment, the meaningful scale, I think a lot of the RegTech solutions at this point in time, we don't have an enormous number of customers on the RegWorks platform. We've been building the platform and a [ cults ] application for regulators is a relatively new idea. The team, the Itree team that originally built this platform and the work that's gone into it since our ownership, which is just over 3 years, has been very significant. If we look at the way we go to market, the go to market tends to be quite strong. It's quite long in that most market activities are an RFI stage or request for information stage, then followed by an RFT. And that's typically what happens in an emerging market. And so that's where we are with the RegWorks platform today. We've had some good successes here in Australia, here in New Zealand, as I've outlined before. We expect to have our first new customers in the U.K. in very near term. But I can't really address the scale out over the long term just yet because I think we tend to be ones that come back and talk about what -- exactly what's happened as opposed to what we're planning on doing. At the moment, with RegWorks, the plan is to make sure that -- or the intention is to make sure that we've got a platform that is scalable from a go to market. We will, outside of Australia and New Zealand, be appointing partners and making sure that the low code, no code methodology is available to partners so that they can actually go and deliver this solution using the platform to their customers. And that's really how we're going to get the scale to work. I can't give you the scale metrics really outside ANZ, in the U.K. at this point in time. Needless to say, there are a mind-boggling number of regulators in the U.S. as you would well imagine as well as other countries, other Westminster countries in particular, where they have regulatory environments that are very similar to the Australian and New Zealand ones. So I think that's something that we'll address perhaps at the next AGM because I think, for us, it's about delivering it and talking about how we're delivering it rather than blow a whole bunch of smoke about a dream that we've got in terms of the way this is going to roll out for us. But it is very much a case of making sure that the solution, coupled with the methodology, can be taken into market by third parties. I hope that addresses the question. If I haven't, feel free to ask a supplementary question.

That was all the questions that we've received, Tony.

All right. Thanks, Ben. Again, look, thank you to our Board, who've been present on the call. They've been amazingly supportive during the year of all the initiatives that we've had underway, and thank you to our shareholders. I know I'll get to meet many of you again in the coming weeks, and I look forward to a great FY 2024. Thank you.