Oxford Metrics plc (OMG.L) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Oxford Metrics plc Preliminary Results Investor Presentation. review. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand you over to CEO, Imogen O’Connor. Good afternoon to you.

Hello, and thank you for joining us today. I'm Imogen O’Connor, CEO, and I'm joined today by our CFO, Zoe Fox. Here's what we'll cover with you today. First, I'll give you an overview of the business and our fiscal year '25 performance highlights. Then I'll hand over to Zoe to take you through the financials. Then will be back to me to talk through our market opportunity, strategy and outlook. Oxford Metrics is an innovation-led technology business, transforming how the world captures, analyzes and applies motion and image data. We do this through our 2 divisions. Our Motion Capture division operates through our leading Vicon brand. The business has a rich heritage and is the gold standard in motion measurement and analysis across the life sciences, entertainment and engineering sectors. Some of our customers include the likes of Nike, Electronic Arts and Sega. In fiscal year '25, Motion Capture contributed just over 71% of our group revenues. The major opportunities ahead lie in new applications for our markerless technology, emerging geographies, entering new verticals and strategic partnerships. Our other division, Smart Manufacturing, consists of IVS and the Sempre Group. These companies focus on machine vision and measurement technologies used in quality control and automation. Its key end markets include medical devices, electronics, aerospace and automotive. Smart Manufacturing contributed 29% of group revenues in fiscal year '25. The opportunities here are significant, driven by the transformation to the digital factory, AI and automation adoption, regulatory requirements and the need for greater production efficiency. Across both divisions, our value proposition is increasingly unified. We capture and measure whether through motion, imaging or precision metrology and then we analyze that data using advanced models, many of which are powered by AI. These insights help customers make better decisions, whether automating defect detection, improving first-time production accuracy, building AAA visual content, advancing diagnostics and rehab strategies, enabling world-class research and accelerating creative iteration. In essence, we transform complex imaging and measurement data into intelligence that enables customers to create, innovate, heal and assure quality across many industries. We're now going to play a short video that gives you an insight into the tangible benefits we're providing across many industries through our motion capture and smart manufacturing technologies. [Presentation]

Despite challenging market conditions, which you can read across many industries, we're pleased with our performance this year. We have focused on what we can control, and we've delivered on this. We've achieved both organic and inorganic revenue growth. Our order intake has increased in motion capture by 21% year-on-year with continued strong margins. Adjusted EBIT has improved and our working capital and cash generation strengthened significantly versus last year. We have aligned our innovation with our growth opportunities and launched our next-generation AI-powered mocap solution. We've also expanded our addressable markets with new products and our acquisitions in smart manufacturing added new IP, markets and technology. We are also in a stronger position to scale as we've strengthened our leadership team with 2 Managing Director hires. Sempre and IVS are being merged to drive synergy and EBIT improvement. And overall, we remain firmly focused on long-term growth markets for the group. So now I will hand you over to Zoe for the financial review.

Thank you, Imogen, and good afternoon. And as Imogen has said, we're pleased with our performance in the period. We saw an improvement in order intake, 45% increase for the group, which includes inorganic as well as organic growth. But importantly, we saw Motion Capture up 21%. And as we saw -- we also saw an 8% rise in revenue year-on-year, taking it from GBP 41.5 million to GBP 44.8 million. We've got continued higher margins just below 65% and adjusted EBIT increased by around 29% to GBP 2.2 million from GBP 1.7 million. And importantly, both revenue and adjusted EBIT were in line with our market consensus. Cash remains robust at GBP 37.3 million after funding buybacks, dividends, R&D and acquisitions. And cash generated from operating activities before tax was GBP 6.7 million compared with GBP 300,000 last year, reflecting our tight control of working capital, particularly on our inventories. Overall, from a finance point of view, we have seen good progress with growth in revenue, adjusted EBIT and good operational cash generation. To provide some context on our comparative performance, it's useful to look at order intake, our opening orders as well as over the last few years. FY '22 and FY '23 benefited from unusually high order volumes driven primarily by COVID supply chain issues, which were delivered over the FY '23 and H1 '24 periods. Order intake is now normalized, and we are seeing a continued improvement and growth in intake as seen on the left-hand graph. Moving on to the revenue and EBIT graphs. You can see the growth in the revenue and that the graphs show that compared to FY '23, revenues were similar, but delivered at higher margins. The margin differences reflect inflation, salary increases and importantly, our investment in R&D, particularly in our markerless technology. Markerless represents a significant strategic step, expanding our long-term proposition and enabling broader market reach. As we move forward, FY '25 provides a more normalized comparative base going forward, we see order intake increase and profitability increase. Taking a look at our adjusted EBIT bridge from FY '24 versus FY '25. And adjusted EBIT is used to measure the performance of the business, excluding certain items, which we consider do not reflect the trading performance of the period or by excluding provides greater clarity over financial trends and assist with the year-on-year analysis. The adjustments in the year totaled GBP 2.6 million versus financial year '24 of GBP 3.6 million. They include our usual adjustments, the share-based payment charges, amortization of intangibles arising on acquisitions costs relating to the closure of IMU New Zealand in FY '24. And then also in this year, we have an impairment of GBP 750,000 due to technical obsolescence and motion capture markerless project, reflecting the nature of machine learning technology development, which was superseded when the product was released during FY '25. Our adjusted EBIT increased 29% year-on-year following from the GBP 1.7 million on the left-hand side of the graph to the GBP 2.2 million on the right side. The key drivers for this increase were contributions from our newly acquired smart manufacturing businesses, Sempre and Amber Optix, at an approximate GBP 1 million -- 38% of organic growth in our IVS business, along with cost-saving initiatives across the group and continued high gross margins. Our R&D investment shifted with lower expensed R&D and a higher capitalized development, reflecting investment in new products and the launch of markerless. This had a net benefit to the P&L of GBP 900,000. We did see a reduction in Motion Capture sale volume, consistent with the headwinds from the reduction in U.S. academic funding. However, this was offset by that organic growth in IVS and new acquisitions, profit contribution and cost savings across the group to provide a growth of 29% in adjusted EBIT in the year. Looking at our cash bridge. Cash of GBP 50.7 million in FY '24 and moving along to the cash of GBP 37.3 million FY '25. We have an EBITDA of GBP 5.5 million. We've got capitalized R&D of GBP 3.3 million, along with GBP 400,000 of other CapEx. Working capital improvements added GBP 1.2 million cash, benefiting from that inventory improvement, which moved from GBP 7.7 million to GBP 5.9 million for the year-end despite having acquiring additional stock from our new acquisition, Sempre. We've got net acquisition spend was GBP 4.2 million. So that's the spend in Sempre and Amber Optix. We've got interest income contributed of GBP 1.7 million. We paid GBP 4.2 million on dividends and executed GBP 8.3 million through the buyback, which reflects the initial GBP 6 million plus a further GBP 4 million during the year. Overall, operational cash generated before tax was GBP 6.7 million, up from the GBP 400,000 in FY '24. When looking at the performance of the 2 divisions, Smart Manufacturing now represents a larger proportion of the sales at 29% up from 7% of last year. Both divisions had clear drivers behind their performance this year. In Motion Capture, we continue to innovate, manage costs tightly and position ourselves for new markets with the launch of markerless as well as seeing improvements in the EMEA and APAC regions. In Smart Manufacturing, we focused heavily on operational efficiency, strengthening systems, improving margins and preparing the Sempre and IVS merger, which will create a stronger and more scalable platform. Looking at geographies, North America was down as expected, around 30% year-on-year, affected by the academic funding headwinds, while all other regions delivered growth. Capital allocation. We have a fair amount of feedback from our shareholders on our capital allocation and our intent. So we thought it would be helpful to set out how we've deployed capital over the past few years, both in returning value to shareholders and investing for growth and then some additional information on the strategy going forward. In FY '25, capital return to shareholders is GBP 12.5 million, including buyback of GBP 8.3 million and dividends of GBP 4.2 million. Other allocation includes R&D investment, where we've capitalized GBP 3.3 million and acquisitions at a net cash of GBP 4.2 million. Our capital allocation priorities for the future, however, remain clear. We have organic growth and innovation. We will continue to invest in our R&D and our product development and innovation. Enhance our capabilities commercially and our customer experience, continue to drive efficiencies in the operations as we scale. We continue also with our M&A, targeting small bolt-on acquisitions that will accelerate our growth, which will add rich IP, add technology and market and geography reach, maintaining our disciplined valuation policy. When looking at our shareholder returns, there is continuation of the in-flight buyback program. There is still a further GBP 1.5 million to utilize out of the GBP 10 million, and we are continuing with the dividend payment for this year. We are paying at 3.25p, which will be an outlay of approximately GBP 3.8 million, which, although is currently uncovered, reflects the confidence in the future and the strong cash generation of the business. But we are reviewing the policy, and we recognize we need to return to cover on the payment. The full capital allocation plan will be shared following shareholder consultation. And finally, to summarize our financial performance, we've delivered revenue growth of 8% and an adjusted EBIT growth of 29%. We've had robust order intake, up 45% when taking into consideration our new acquisitions and up 21% year-on-year in Motion Capture. We've delivered strong operational cash generation, continued with the working capital improvements and reported around a 30% reduction in inventory year-on-year. And we have implemented continued tight cost control and efficiencies not just through the integration of Smart Manufacturing businesses, but also across Motion Capture business, building the platform for improving profit margins and growth of the businesses. We've entered the new year in a strong position, supported by the robust balance sheet and cash resources. The GBP 37.3 million cash allows us to continue investing in our growth through small bolt-on M&A and organic growth. And I'll hand back to Imogen.

Thank you, Zoe. I'm now going to speak to you about the great opportunity we see in our 2 divisions and the market drivers. In the motion capture market, where we cover a human and object measurement, our current total addressable market is around $236 million projected to reach $524 million by 2030. This growth is driven by expanding use cases, adoption of the markerless technology into existing and new markets and wider adoption of motion capture across geographies. Our hybrid technology, consisting of marker-based and markerless used simultaneously will strengthen our offering to our existing customer base and open up new applications. In the smart manufacturing market, the vision and inspection metrology markets within are growing, expected to reach $15.6 billion and $1.2 billion by 2030, respectively. This growth is driven by increasing regulations in sectors such as medical and aerospace and by the broader digital transformation across manufacturing and industry. Across both markets, we compete from a position of strength. In motion capture, we are the recognized gold standard. And in smart manufacturing, our technology addresses industries where reliability and accuracy are paramount. Our strategic focus in motion capture will be to accelerate the adoption of our markerless and hybrid solutions by enhancing their commercial and technical capabilities. In smart manufacturing, we will combine our vision IP with a more repeatable product portfolio by merging IVS and Sempre and shifting away from bespoke projects to drive scalable, higher-margin growth. M&A, Smart Manufacturing, we will continue to seek earnings accretive small bolt-on acquisitions that expand our technology, market and geographic reach. Further, with focused and stronger teams in place, we can explore cross-divisional AI strategies and technology sales. At the half year, we signaled that we were working on the flying the group strategy to reflect the evolution of the business, the launch of markerless, the build-out of Smart Manufacturing and the appointment of dedicated divisional managing directors. That work is now well advanced and has a clear direction of travel, focused on scaling our core technologies, increasing the proportion of recurring revenue and maintaining disciplined capital allocation, including selective bolt-on M&A. Following the appointment of our new Chair in November, the Board believes he is right that he is fully involved in finalizing this plan. We, therefore, intend to set out the strategy in H1 fiscal year '26, including priorities and the 3-year framework we will use to measure progress and expect to present it at an investor event, the details of which will be announced in due course. Machine learning already enhances our marker-based technologies as we have been using AI in our solutions since 2018. Our markerless research project began in 2019 with the full investment secured in 2021 to build machine learning AI team. Our recently launched markerless technology has been developed using our proprietary Vicon Vision archive, a large and growing motion data set. This data set is being used to continually train and evolve our proprietary Vicon vision model, which provides the data for our customers to work with. In vision inspection, AI has been used since 2019 for image and object classification. We train our models on an image data bank to provide the required metrics for the factory information systems to process and report. Its value is clear. It enables our vision inspection systems to cope with unpredictable defects, changing lighting and other real-world variations without stopping production whilst maintaining throughput and accuracy. AI isn't new to Oxford Metrics, but its impact is accelerating our technology. I'll now take you through our areas of focus for fiscal year '26, followed by our outlook. So looking ahead to fiscal year '26, in our Motion Capture division, we will execute strongly on our expanded outbound sales function, focused on emerging territories who are adopting motion capture on a broader scale form tactical partnerships that can extend our reach and expand our markerless and hybrid capabilities in the entertainment market and launch into life sciences, a major global market. In our Smart Manufacturing division, we will merge IVS and Sempre to build a scalable growth engine and deliver synergies across both companies and the wider division, make a shift towards repeatable products that drive better margins and EBIT expansion and continue to pursue disciplined earnings accretive, small bolt-on M&A. So to conclude, we're pleased with the progress made this year and excited about the opportunities ahead. We entered the new year in line with management expectations with a clear focus on execution, supported by a strong balance sheet, which gives us the flexibility to invest in our organic and inorganic growth strategies. An energized leadership team with new divisional managing directors and Board Chair, we have the platform and scalability to drive EBIT improvements.

[Operator Instructions] I would like to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via investor dashboard. Imogen , if I may now hand back to you to take us through the Q&A, and I'll pick up from at the end. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much, everybody. So thank you, everyone, for coming to our presentation today. And thank you for the questions that we've received pre the meeting and those who have submitted questions throughout the presentation. So I'll -- the first question is how could the recent M&A activity in the entertainment industry, for example, the proposed Netflix, Warner Bros. on Paramount+ obviously, deal affect Oxford Metrics' competitive position and strategic opportunities. Well, it will only really directly affect Oxford Metrics if it delays projects that involve motion capture. So that's really the way that we see the M&A activity affecting us. I think Zoe you take this question 2?

Yes. How will the U.K. budget affect Oxford Metrics increasing costs? Well, it won't significantly or materially impact Oxford Metrics for a couple of reasons. I mean the salary sacrifice on pensions will in 2029. But currently, the national minimum wage increase, Oxford Metrics, we are real living wage foundation accredited. What that means is Real Living Wage is works out on actual costs to live in the U.K. rather than the minimum set by the government. So it does tend to be a higher level than the minimum wage. So we haven't got any impact from the increase of the minimum wage in our businesses at this point in time. Obviously, the EV changes will have an impact on our employees as they're not quite as attractive. We have relatively small fleet, so the tax on them will again be immaterial for the business.

Could you give us an update on the M&A activity? So we have covered this a few times during the presentation, but we are still concentrating on those small bolt-on acquisitions that can accelerate our smart manufacturing strategy, technology-rich, extend market reach and geography reach is selective, and we follow our strict published financial criteria. Earnings accretive able management teams in a good route to profit or profitable. And we continue our program of having lots of conversations and qualifying in and out quickly there. So the next question is how much will markerless contribute to the group? So markerless is a transformational technology for motion capture. So we're increasing its technical and capabilities to more customers and markets and reviewing our commercial models. We expect to present in more detail about this at the forthcoming investor event. But over the medium term, it's fair to say that we see markerless acting as a catalyst for a higher proportion of software and recurring revenues across the group. Greg [indiscernible] a little bit further on. What is our biggest challenge? Yes, this is a good question. I think really our biggest challenge is the macro events and conditions of the United States as the recovery of this market and funding is unclear, but we are taking positive actions to optimize our offering for perhaps more limited budgets such as the launch of the Valkyrie 6 camera that we announced in the summer to help out with that. Zoe, I think you're taking the next question.

Yes, which is given that the shares are currently trading below book value. Can you comment on whether the Board intends to extend the increase of the share buyback program? And how are you thinking about buybacks versus the use of capital at the valuation? I think possibly in the presentation, that's hopefully been answered a little bit for you. But just to sort of recap, we are reviewing our capital allocation alongside the final stages of the 5-year strategy, and we'll look to feedback at the investor event that we are planning after full consultation with our shareholders. We are looking at the dividend policy, the buyback investments as well within our business and organic and inorganic growth.

Okay. Long next question.

Next question. So I'm not going to read out the whole question, but it's basically asking about the adjusted share-based what's the actual quantum in the cost of all the adjustments that we've made to get to our adjusted EBIT. Now this year, the adjustments totaled GBP 2.6 million. Last year was GBP 3.6 million. Now we have similar adjustments in there that the business has done on previous years. So you've got the share-based payment, the amortization of acquired intangibles as well as some more one-off costs that we wouldn't expect to see reoccurring in the future. So part of that is the cost associated with the running down and closing down of the IMU New Zealand. Going forward, they will be very minimal. We have just some legacy contracts still with that business. And then the other one is GBP 750,000 for the impairment of development. So yes, we wouldn't expect these costs to be ongoing in the business.

Okay. I just -- there's a few other questions that have asked a little bit more detail around that development impairment of GBP 750,000 around the markerless technology. So the markerless technology is in machine learning, obviously, technology and the impairment is down to technical obsolescence of development that didn't actually make it into the final product that we launched in the fiscal year, and it was superseded during that period and therefore, has been amortized accordingly -- impaired accordingly, sorry. Okay. So question 9, [ Greg H. ] Thank you for your question. Can Motion Capture as a platform to boost smart manufacturing. So in terms of where we're looking there is on the video, there was just a little shot from our Capital Markets Day of 18 months ago where we showed our markerless technology actually tracking a technician around smart manufacturing work bench. So we do see potential for markerless perhaps to leapfrog over into technician tracking or factory floor tracking. In motion capture, of course, we're using AI and machine learning as are certain areas in our smart manufacturing companies. Obviously, there's a clear strategy there to make sure that we're using best practice in our AI strategy and the tools that we use as well. Moving on to question 10 from Mark. Quite a long question, but in essence, the organic revenue growth that we're targeting for Smart Manufacturing in the short medium term, Zoe?

Yes. So obviously, we've had great organic growth in FY '25 of 38% in Smart Manufacturing. Our market numbers consensus out there, we're looking at around 10% from an organic point. That is a conservative estimate, we believe. And there's lots of work going on with that smart manufacturing of integrating the 2 business, et cetera, will all help improve that those growth rates hopefully.

Question from Sam around 38% organic growth.

Calculated. It is purely looking at the organic growth. So it's excluding the new acquisition of Sempre and including that bolt-on, smaller bolt-on Amber Optix. So it's purely looking at IVS sales on a year-on-year basis.

Gross margins?

And gross margin for Smart Manufacturing, I mean, the division is slightly different. You've got the Sempre is a lot more distributed model and then IVS is higher. So the business together, we are estimating to be mid-50s.

Yes. And of course, with the strategy that we're going to be pushing out with the projects products, that's all about improving margin in that division and pulling that margin up higher over the period of time as products are higher margin than the project work that we do. Question on the opening order book...

Yes. question is opening order books, order in hand looks worrying low for FY '25. Is this headwind for FY '26? No, absolutely, it isn't. We -- what we've seen in the last year or so is our order book normalizing. If you go back to pre-COVID levels for this business or the Motion Capture business particularly did not have high order books, circa GBP 1 million, GBP 2 million were very, very normal. So it's not worrying. What is our key driver is looking at order intake and that's -- obviously, we can see that's a 21% increase.

Question on finance expense not explained.

Finance expense not explained. I think perhaps a bit dig down into the notes, it probably is, but there is some financing costs and FX within that, that relates to IMU New Zealand. So again, not a recurring cost.

Okay. [indiscernible] coming in now. Okay. So the outlook for bolt-on acquisitions. Well, there's a lot of good companies out there, as I talked about before, but you do need to have a lot of conversations to really find the ones that are going to fit in with your overarching strategy and that also importantly meet our valuation criteria as well. We've talked about the impairment.

Yes. There's a question here, number 15, about EPS. And given significant numbers of adjustments to EPS, would it also make sense to adjust out the tax charge? I don't think it would. I mean the other impact on this number, I think it's not only tax, it's also the interest. We've obviously got a reduction in interest as we utilized cash. We've returned GBP 12.5 million of cash to investors this year. So of course, that will reduce down our interest going forward. So it absolutely should bear in mind when we're looking at that EPS. But I think -- yes, I think our adjustments is more looking at that EBIT adjustment, I think number is more appropriate for the business at this point in time.

Okay. And I think probably for the final sort of question and answer is I'll group together quite a few themes that we've had in some of the questions around the numbers that are out in the market, what we intend to do with our cash, buybacks, tender offers, et cetera, et cetera, is that this is the priority for the forthcoming investor event is to lay out that framework for the 3-year period in more detail. It's to review, which is in review our capital allocation policy, including return to shareholders via buyback or dividends, et cetera, M&A, all under review and will be a big part of that investor event to come. So I think on that basis, I think we'll close up. Thank you, everybody, for your questions and for spending time today learning a bit more about Oxford Metrics. Thank you.

Fantastic, Imogen, Zoe, thank you for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the Board can better understand your views and expectations. This only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Oxford Metrics plc, I would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon.