PayPoint plc (PAY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to PayPoint's Half Year Results Call. [Operator Instructions] Please also be advised that this call is currently being recorded for PayPoint's own internal purposes. With that, I would now like to hand the call over to Nick Wiles, Chief Executive Officer of PayPoint plc to begin with opening remarks. Nick, please go ahead.

Thank you, Saska, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to our interim results presentation for the 6 months to September 2022. I'm joined this morning by Alan Dale, our Finance Director. We have Steve O'Neill here as well, our Head of Corporate Affairs. Our presentation is going to take our usual format. We've got quite a lot to cover this morning with an overview of our results, an update on strategy, followed by Alan taking you through our financial highlights, before I give some additional background on the performance of the business and our divisional review and then opening up for questions. So really turning to the first half. Our strategic focus remains on adding to our capabilities, enhancing client and retailer partner proposition and strengthening our business platform and to achieve this through investments in our existing business and through acquisition where we've identified additional capabilities that we can open up new sector verticals with all complementary growth markets. In the first half, in addition to our BAU [indiscernible], I'm going to highlight a few investments we've made, firstly, in our Direct Debit platform to enhance our MultiPay proposition and in our Merchant Rentals business to strengthen our card merchant proposition. We've taken a minority of investments in OBConnect, our open banking partner, in order to accelerate our progress in Open Banking and Confirmation of Payee and, on the 7th of November, we announced the recommended acquisition of Appreciate Group for GBP 83 million, which I'll talk a little more about in a few moments. We've also completed the sale of our investment in Snappy Shopper of GBP 5.5 million. When we made our investment, it was part of a broader commercial partnership in which we envisaged a really scalable home delivery proposition to support our retailer network. Sadly, this hasn't materialized. I think as appetite for home delivery has cooled a little, we see a viable Snappy network across our own PayPoint network probably in the region of 300 to 500 stores rather than 3,000-plus we'd hoped for. Hence, on this basis, whilst we continue to work with Snappy as a commercial partner, I don't think we think this scale warrants an investment, and hence, the sale that we've made in the first half. Operationally, there are some important highlights in really each of our 3 business divisions. In Shopping, our core PayPoint network continues to grow, and we further expanded our Counter Cash network with over 4,500 sites now live with over GBP 22.8 million withdrawn through the network over the past year. And we recently hit our first GBP 1 million withdrawal week. We've taken important steps to enhance our SME card proposition with a new Saturn terminal, improved pricing, 1-month contracts and next day settlement. We're also seeing a strong performance in business finance via our YouLend proposition, almost GBP 6 million lent across both PayPoint and Handepay in the first half. In E-commerce, we've had an excellent first half with parcel transaction volumes now up over 60%, enabled by our investment in in-store technology, stronger carrier partnerships and I think a growing recognition of the value of the Collect+ out-of-home network. And in Payments & Banking, we delivered a strong performance in the energy sector, driven by an increase in the frequency of consumer transactions and a higher energy price post the energy cap at the beginning of the year. Our Cash Out and DWP Payment Services continue to grow with over 4.5 billion vouchers issued in the first half. And we continue to be active in supporting government and local authority exception to both disbursements, including in the second half, the EBSS household payments, we were paying through on that work through to the spring of 2023. We are seeing some early success in the take-up from clients for our confirmation of Payee service in partnership with OBConnect and it's encouraging in terms of building a good pipeline for the future. And financially, we've had a positive first half with net revenues growth in each of the 3 businesses, an overall net organic revenue up 6%. On an underlying pre-exceptional basis, pre-tax profit of GBP 22.5 billion was up 2.1%, having taken a GBP 700,000 provision for the funds that are outstanding currently with McColl's. The business continues to generate strong cash flow. Our net debt is down over the first half, and we've increased our dividend by 2.2% as we reaffirm our dividend policy. And in terms of outlook, we're confident in the progress that we're making and transforming the business and in delivering our expectations for the current year. I think this slide is a really important reminder of really the critical role that we and our retailer partners play in delivering vital services into the community across the U.K. And certainly, as a business, it reminds us of our purpose, which is to make people's lives easier every day. This brings to life our business values and something everyone within PayPoint is very proud of. In the first half, in support of the communities we serve, we provided a range of government services through our network, including the disbursement of nearly GBP 60 million of financial support on behalf of the DWP and over GBP 55 million of Energy Bill support in the form of vouchers, which have already been redeemed through our network, and it's a service we will continue into the second half of this year. This next slide shows how the transformation of the business comes through in the numbers for the first half and the key underlying drivers to each of the 3 businesses. Net revenue for the business increased by headline 6% to GBP 59.5 million with our total SME retailer locations remaining in excess of 63,000. In Shopping, net revenue increased by 3.2%, reflecting a 2.6% growth in the PayPoint estate to just under 19,000 sites, an increase in our service fee, a resilient performance in cards and progress in the take off our enhanced proposition, including, in particular, Counter Cash and MyStore+. In E-commerce, net revenues have increased by over 45% to GBP 3 billion, reflecting a 60% growth in parcel transaction volumes to 23 million parcels. This growth has been driven by our continued investment in in-store technology, an enhancement to our consumer experience and the strengthening of our carrier partnerships. In Payments & Banking, net revenue has increased by 6.1% to GBP 25.7 million, reflecting a resilient performance in cash flow payments, a continued settling back of our e-money transactions of post-COVID, the strong performance in digital payments and in particular, for DWP. At the heart of our transformation has been a clear strategy of buy, grow and invest, with M&A being a key element of this strategy as we've sought to add capability, secure entry points into new growth markets, enhance our technology offering with a focus on the U.K. This slide summarizes the M&A steps we've taken over the past 3 years. Each of these acquisitions has been consistent with these key things, which we believe we rapidly and successfully integrated into the wider PayPoint business, and each are now contributing both financially to the wider business proposition. I have already referred to our investment in Snappy, which we sold during the first half and, as I described earlier, the scalable proposition across our retailer network that we had envisaged at the time of our investment has not materialized, with the more likely estate size today of between 300 and 500 as really being much more likely, and as such, doesn't warrant the time focus on capital investment that we have had in mind. Our commercial partnership continues, and we hope that the growth of the Snappy Estate within our network which is the scale I referred to earlier. This slide is just a reminder of the PayPoint universe and the additions we've made to partners and proposition across 3 businesses during the first half. Our particular callouts are in E-commerce, the addition of the Royal Mail, Amazon returns and Wish.com as carrier partners and new additional services, each with bespoke networks within the overall Collect+ network. In Payments & Banking, we've added the services that come with our partnership with OBConnect and Open Banking and confirmation in Payee. We also continue to work with a number of newspaper groups to develop a digital subscription service. And finally, through i-movo, we've expanded further the support we have given local authorities and governments to enhance and enable their various disbursement schemes. And in Shopping, we've gathered pace in the rollout of a number of FMCG campaigns across the network in support of a strong slate of major brands. We strengthened our card proposition and added Funding Circle to our successful business finance proposition. Turning now to the acquisition of Appreciate Group. I think one of the key things to emerge since we announced the proposed acquisition this month has been very much what have we seen in the Appreciate business that the market has not so far seen. Firstly, we see a business undergoing significant change in transformation in many ways, similar to the journey that we at PayPoint have been on in terms of seeking to identify growth, bringing technology and investment to unlock new opportunities in the business. The business today is no longer hampers business and hasn't been for some time. As you will have seen from their interim results announced on Tuesday, the business is led by a strong management team, we've identified clear opportunities to grow the business, are already in the early stages of implementing these plans, making the necessary technology investments to establish a strong digital capability at the heart of the Love2Shop brand and engaging with corporate and consumer customers in a way they haven't done before. A reminder of the overall mix of the business today. There's a strong customer base of over 400,000 customers, split across the corporate and consumer business and more than 200 redemption partners. In the Corporate business, which makes up about 62% of group revenue, the business has a strong corporate employee rewards and incentives proposition centered on its Love2Shop brand with a growing corporate client base, meaningful scale and growing annual billings. The Consumer business, which makes up about 38% of group revenues is centered on Park Christmas savings, delivering support through prepayment savings to consumers seeking to plan and save Christmas and other occasions via direct consumer relationship and also through an established agent network. We see enormous potential for this business given its complementary customer demographic with PayPoint and to build on the work the Appreciate management team have already undertaken to revive growth in this business, particularly given the relevance of this proposition in the current times we're living in. In terms of the opportunity we see going forward for the combined business, we described a couple of weeks ago the 4 key pillars to the opportunity which we believe creates both a compelling financial and strategic case for the acquisition of the business. Firstly, a strengthening of the PayPoint universe and its proposition; secondly, opening up new growth opportunities in new and existing markets; thirdly, bringing together complementary capabilities and operating efficiencies; and fourthly, a strong financial case to deliver earnings enhancement and value creation for PayPoint shareholders. And based on these pillars, we describe over the next couple of slides how we intend to unlock this value. Here, we've sort of show a buildup of the value we can generate from the acquisition through a number of building blocks. Firstly, the acquisition based on market estimates and the combination of the two businesses is earnings enhancing in the first full year to March 2024, having taken account of the additional P&L charges and D&A at interest on the acquisition debt. Secondly, there are a number of immediate and tangible cost benefits from a single plc structure for the combined business, which we expect to quickly deliver and will add to the base financial case. Thirdly, we've identified a number of operational revenue opportunities from bringing the existing Appreciate digital payments in-house and across the MultiPay platform, which we believe will deliver a better customer service and reduce processing costs. And then finally, we see a number of key opportunities to drive enhanced revenue growth as a combined business. In part, prepayment savings, we see a great opportunity to accelerate growth and unlock further value in this business. As I said already, as a starting point, we see a huge overlap with the customer bases of Park Savings and our core bill payment customer demographic, with the opportunity to take a number of steps over the next 12 to 18 months to strengthen service we can provide this community. As you may have seen from their interim end results on Tuesday, the Appreciate management team already have what they call a returning to growth strategy underway in the business to deliver growth for the next saving system through a combination of a retention and growth strategy with their direct savings customers, greater engagement with our existing agent network and plans to develop the proposition. In support of this strategy, this is also launching digital tools to support agents, reduce churn and improve recruitment. In addition to these 2 existing marketing channels of direct and agent, we see a significant opportunity to develop a third complementary sales channel based on a subset of our retailer network. Initially, we have in mind the starting point of between 2,000 to 3,000 retailers that would become super agents at the heart of their communities supporting savers and growing the overall number of Park Payment savers. Finally, we see a great opportunity to expand the range of budgeting and occasions beyond just Christmas, supported by the right proposition, a value and a range of redemption partners. In Corporate Rewards & Gifting, we see a clear path to accelerate the growth plans already underway in this business through firstly, building on the current success the management team in broadening out the corporate client base. In the first half of the current year, this client base has grown by 14% and, within this growth, has been a strong performance in the corporate rewards and incentives market where the business has delivered first half growth of about 21%. In addition, there is a growing opportunity to develop white label solutions for corporates in both the public and private sectors. We have already started to work with a number of local authorities to offer this rather than simply offering cash, and there is certainly scope to further develop this with a view to offering products with cost of billing in mind. And finally, we see the opportunity of cross-selling at the MultiPay platform across the Appreciate client base. And in Consumer & Gifting, firstly, supporting the existing Appreciate plans to focus on this aspect of the business as it is a key driver to lead into the corporate business and, in addition, expand the Love2Shop offering available today in about 9,000 of our PayPoint independent stores from pin on receipt proposition to a physical card, which we believe is more likely to drive growth in gifting rather than in self use. Overall, we're in no doubt this is an important acquisition for the business and an opportunity to do a great job in combining the two businesses, accelerate top line growth and deliver significant value for our PayPoint shareholders. And with that, I'd like to hand over to Alan to cover the financial review.

Yes. Thanks, Nick, and good morning, everyone. As you've just heard from Nick, the group has had a good first half as it continued its transformation, and we have announced our offer for Appreciate Group. My part of the presentation is focused on the positive performance being reported, reflecting the enhanced platform as well as the contribution from our recent acquisitions, which were included for the whole of the prior period. With the highlights slide, the key starting point is our reported profit before tax of GBP 21 million highlighted in the middle, down from the prior period GBP 55 million, which reflected the GBP 30 million exceptional profit on sale of Romania. We have other exceptional items. In the current period, as Nick has just discussed, we had the GBP 1.2 million loss from our disposal in the Snappy Group and some initial acquisition costs for the Appreciate transaction. Last year, there was the GBP 2.9 million gain from the accounting for the contingent consideration relating to our i-movo acquisition. My key focus in the following slides, therefore, will be on the profit from continuing operations, which, excluding those exceptional items, has increased 2.1% to GBP 22.5 million for the period. Other focuses will include the increased net revenue and the improved cash generation. Focusing on our continuing operations, you can see in the middle section, we have analyzed an GBP 0.4 million or 2.1% profit before tax improvement compared to the same prior period with all 3 divisions showing organic net revenue growth. We have specifically called out the GBP 0.7 million provision we have set up for the outstanding funds from the McColl's administration. This is because as a one-off item, it distorts the operating margin and but for its effect, the continuing operations profit before tax would have been an increase of GBP 1.1 million or 5.5%. We also show the impact of the restatement on prior year results relating to the IFRIC accounting clarification on intangible assets that we explained and adopted at the year-end. Our Shopping division saw GBP 1 million net revenue growth primarily from growth in the service fee revenue from our PayPoint One product. The E-commerce division has seen a considerable increase of GBP 0.9 million in net revenue, an excellent 45.7%. The net revenue for Payments & Banking division also increased, which is a good change from the declines we have seen in previous periods from the continuing decline in the use of cash. This is as a result of the solid performance in energy, our continuing transformation and, in particular, the contribution from the i-movo acquisition. There is a separate slide later which we'll discuss the GBP 2.3 million increase in costs. As I've just highlighted, all 3 divisions saw a net increase in net revenue. Our Shopping division increased 3.2% in net revenue and GBP 29.8 million to GBP 30.8 million. Service fee revenue increased by GBP 0.7 million or 9.2%, driven by an increase of 339 revenue-generating PayPoint One sites since this time last year, considerable site increases in the higher revenue point of core compared to base and the annual RPI increase. It should be noted that we did not put through the whole RPI increase in a move to help our retailer partners. Nick is going to go into detail later on the performance of our card business. The excellent 45.7% increase in net revenue in our E-commerce division is particularly pleasing, with recent volumes of over 1 million transactions a week and which puts us into a great place as we come into the peak period. The Payments & Banking division saw increased net revenue of GBP 1.5 million or 6.1% with a number of business lines moving in different directions. Cash flow payments just decreased by GBP 0.1 million due to the strong energy sector, performance increasing 8.1%. The increase in the price cap has seen customers topping up more frequently and with increased average transaction values. In particular, digital net revenue increased by GBP 2.9 million or 87.1% with a positive performance in all business lines, including the DWP payment exception service delivered by the i-movo acquisition. We have continued to work at keeping the time control on costs in the year. And this slide focuses on explaining the increased reported costs for continuing operations by looking at the GBP 3 million net increase in costs. This total increase includes the GBP 0.7 million one-off McColl's provision. We start by showing the benefit from the restatement of prior results relating to the IFRIC accounting clarification. The largest increase results from our investments in people, in particular, our sales teams. Like most other businesses, we faced into wage inflation, but our overall net increases were limited to 4%. As discussed in previous result calls, we have faced recruitment issues in our field teams and so had put through increases late in the first half of the prior year to partly counter lists. The increase in asset leasing costs reflects the change in accounting treatment for our merchant rentals and client lease products. These are now operating leases, and so we have a depreciating asset expense rather than with the accounting for net investments in finance leases. A number of our products have related transaction processing costs, and with the increase in revenue, we can see an additional GBP 0.6 million of such costs coming through. As explained at the end of last year, we again see lower depreciation due to a number of assets having reached their end of life in the prior year and the clarification of the useful life for our PayPoint One assets. Financing costs did not have a variance, as has stayed steady with the benefit of the decrease in net debt being offset by the increase in interest rates. With our cash generation, the key point is that we have strong cash generation from our continuing operations. The profit before tax from continuing operations of GBP 21 million has been adjusted for exceptional items, depreciation, amortization and working capital to provide a strong continuing operations cash generation of GBP 28.3 million. This is GBP 6.5 million better than the same period last year as we haven't had the same level of working capital changes compared to the prior period. Together, these funds we used to pay for increased dividends of GBP 12.4 million, the investments in our open banking partner, OBConnect and GBP 1.6 million increase in CapEx required from the change in our card lease product. Previously, the purchase of card terminals went through the net investment in finance leases and was reflected in working capital changes. Another key point is that we reduced our net debt by GBP 4.5 million in the half year. As covered earlier, we have sold our investments in the Snappy Group for GBP 5.5 million, but that transaction completes in October. This next slide shows how our balance sheet has changed since the prior year-end. The balance sheet has strengthened, with net adds increasing by GBP 5.1 million to GBP 88.4 million, facilitated by our strong cash generation. The key thing is our GBP 4.5 million reduction in net debt as we continue to deleverage. The main change in constituents is the investment in Snappy Group is no longer treated as an associate, and at the period end, it was an asset held for sale. The dividend and financing slide come with a number of topics. We have set out in the table our new financing structure we've put in place before our offer for Appreciate Group. This includes a new GBP 36 million 3-year amortizing loan, and our RCF facilities were extended to 2026. This covers the GBP 63 million cash element expected to be paid in the first half of next year. Other material cash flows for the next 6 months include dividends and CapEx, where based on current expectations, we expect to be spending a further GBP 6 million on terminals and systems. As we have seen, our business is very cash generative. Although nothing is guaranteed, we would expect in normal circumstances for the combined businesses to return to a ratio of net debt-to-EBITDA below 1 by the end of the financial year '24, '25. Turning to dividends. We have provided a reminder of our previously stated capital allocation policy that is unchanged after the Appreciate Group announcement. Consideration is given to future investments, where our acquisition opportunities such as Appreciate or OBConnect or CapEx to drive future revenue or provide resilience and efficiency. Our dividend policy targets a cover ratio of 1.2x to 1.5x earnings, earnings being from continuing operations and excluding exceptional items. As highlighted in my first page, diluted earnings per share from continuing operations, excluding exceptional items, grew 5.1% to 26.6p. Consistent with our policy, we are declaring an increased interim dividend of 18.4p payable in two equal installments. This is an increase of 2.2% compared to last year's 18p final dividend and an increase of 8.2% compared to last year's 17p interim dividend. This increased dividend reflects the confidence we have in the business for the future. I trust that was a helpful insight and will now pass back to Nick.

Thanks, Alan. Turning now to our divisional review and first starting with our Shopping division. Our headline performance shows a 3.2% growth in net revenue to GBP 30.8 million, with our retail service activities delivering underlying growth of 7.8% and cards down a modest 0.6%. During the first half, we remain focused on growing the PayPoint One estate, which grew by 2.6%, enhancing our retailer proposition through better retailer engagement for the rollout of additional services, such as Counter Cash, business finance through YouLend, a strong slate of FMCG campaigns for a number of major brands, our MyStore+ resell app reward and the merchandising rollout of our e-money proposition. In cards, as I will describe in more detail in a moment, we've enhanced our SME and retailer proposition with the launch of a new Android terminal supported by a 1-month contract, next day settlement and strong pricing. In addition, we've taken steps to deliver a change in our sales and retention performance supported by better data and analytics and AI tools. Turning now in more detail to the progress we're making in our card business and to firstly remind you of the opportunities we outlined in November 2020 when we acquired Handepay Merchant Rentals. At the time, we grouped these under 4 headings to drive synergies from bringing the 2 businesses together under a single acquirer, improving the sales rate for adoption of best practice, reducing merchant churn and levering our data and analytics to better manage our merchant state. On the next slide, we have summarized our progress in each of these focus areas and our priorities for the second half. Firstly, in terms of our acquirer strategy, it's fair to say here we've made the least progress of our 4 priorities. It's clear as to our thinking and that we need our future acquire a partner -- in our future, acquire a partner, we need one that can offer a broader range of capabilities beyond those we need as a pure ISO to support our future growth plans in MultiPay and in particular, our growth into new sector verticals where capabilities such as PayFac are essential. As we look to the second half, I'm more hopeful that we will bring this work to a conclusion, and as such, we can move our business to a single acquirer platform and unlock the synergies this will bring, hopefully, during the first half of next year. In terms of delivering an improvement in our sales rate, the progress in both the Handepay and PayPoint sales teams is really exciting. Despite a tough recruitment market during the first half, which has limited our ability to have a full headcount, the impact of our new sales direct has been really significant, with improved productivity across both teams supported by our most competitive proposition ever with a creative and agile approach to sales and promotions, as such that into the second half we're building further sales momentum as we continue to leverage our strong selling proposition in the market and we believe with more to come from future enhancements to our proposition and actions to address our recruitment challenge. With respect to leveraging our analytics, our teams now have the tools to drive better conversations with our merchants, with the supporting analytics to drive a better and more optimized efforts across both PayPoint and Handepay with a further rollout of these tools and supporting CRM capability into the second half. In addition to strengthening our sales capability, we have now established a clear focus on accountability in the business for reduction of merchant churn. Without a doubt, this is a challenge across all players in the card industry, and we understand the need to be smart around how we use our data analytics to better anticipate churn in our merchants from their trading and you analyze the data better in our business, so we can deploy the right retention tactics at the right time to manage this. Building on some early success, we are now expanding our retention activity across both PayPoint and Handepay and developing further analytics and AI tools to support this initiative. Overall, I think over the last 2 years, we've built confidence in the progress we're making and our ability to reduce churn, resume growth and really drive a strong and healthy card estate. This slide very much brings to life the quality of our existing merchant estate across our 3 acquirers. And to remind you, we currently write new business on to both EVO and Lloyds card net but not the legacy Worldpay book. In total, we have over 31,500 card merchant sites. And over the period, we saw an increase in the EVO book and a small decrease in the large Lloyd's card net book and a larger increase in the Worldpay book. And in summary, we believe we've now got the most competitive, attractive proposition ever, a strong and improving sales team performance, a highly attractive and resilient merchant estate. We've made significant steps forward in our analytics and retention plans. And I think for the first time are really leveraging the cards DNA of talent that we very much brought into the business. So I think really we have a platform now to accelerate growth in our card payments business, and evidence of that, I think you will see coming through in the second half and into next year. In E-commerce, we've seen a 45% growth in net revenue and 60% growth in parcel transactions in the first half, enabled through our investment in in-store technology to enhance consumer experience, a strengthening of our carrier partner relationships and establishing Collect+ as very much the #1 out-of-home network. In the first half, we benefited from the strengthening clothing and fashion categories and the continued expansion of new services with carrier partners and our investment in the Zebra print label printers. In addition, we have launched a number of new partnerships, which have yet to start contributing fully, including a network for Wish.com, expanding further our relationship with Amazon into Amazon Returns and some early work for the Royal Mail, particularly in support of their efforts during their industrial action. In our Payments & Banking division, we have delivered a 6.1% increase in net revenue to GBP 25.7 million. Underpinning this performance has been an 87% increase in our digital payments net revenue, reflecting the strong performance from i-movo in particular, a reduction of 21% in net revenue in our cash through to digital business where both gifting and neobanking transactions have been resilient. The gaming transactions have continued to return back to pre-COVID levels. And into the second half, this decline now looks to have leveled off at around 10% below some of the periods last year. And in cash, we've had a resilient first half performance with cash bill payments in particular showing a solid performance. In terms of progress over the half, as we said already, we've seen a strong performance in the energy sector with net revenues up 8.1% and transaction volumes up 6%, driven by increased frequency and value of customer transactions. Cash Out from the DWP services have been strong with over 4.5 million vouchers issued in the first half, and we now have 9 energy providers signed up for disbursement of energy vouchers through the EBSS scheme, which started during the first half and will be equally active into the second. And we have 6 clients now live for our confirmation of Payee service by OBConnect, our Open Banking partner. And we have seen a significant contribution from our i-movo acquisition with over GBP 2.6 million of net revenue generated in the first half through a combination of our services to the DWP and our Cash Out services being used by an increasing number of local authorities with the prospect of further contributions into the second half from the Energy Bills Support Scheme and our newspaper partnerships. And we have also made during the half solid progress within the business in terms of delivering our ESG program, our commitment to the real living wage and a culture of diversity and inclusion throughout the business. We've also continued our program of IT investment to support our service delivery and resilience. Turning now to the outlook. I hope as you've seen throughout the presentation, we remain confident in the progress we're making in the transformation of our business and the rebalancing towards growth and improving shareholder returns. We're pleased with the progress we've made in the first half and the continued role we and our retailers provide in supporting communities in which we serve. As we look to the year as a whole, we see the seasonal balance of our business resetting such that we have a more usual second half weighting to the year as a whole, more traditionally, the weight of the business pre-COVID. Our increased interim dividend is a clear message of our confidence in the business, its resilience, our continued strong cash flow and the progress we're making, and we are very clear in our delivery of expectations and confidence in delivering those expectations for the remainder of this year. And with that, I'm very happy to open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question today comes from Orson Rout of Barclays.

Three for me perhaps. First, on the Handepay. I saw that revenue this year was only flat year-on-year, perhaps somewhat lighter than we would have anticipated. So may be 2 on that first. I mean, you've changed the contracting from multiyear to 1-month and 12-month contracts. Can you try and quantify for us what the headwind is you're seeing from this? Do you expect this to be a further headwind in H2 and the out years, or is this starting to become less of a headwind now? Then the second would also be on Handepay and I just want to report that, that churn has started increasing slightly. Now you seem to be quite bullish into turning into H2. So I was just wondering if you sort of could explore, give some color on why churn in H1 increased and what you've seen changing over the last couple of months. Then the third question is just more broadly on the outlook and the typical seasonality returning that you've spoken to. So just wanted to get some color here. Are you expecting quite a significant acceleration into H2 in this case? And it would be helpful if you could give some additional details regarding the puts and takes here because, of course, macro is slowing and looking at the spending data, we are seeing spend decreasing in the recent weeks, but perhaps this is being counterbalanced, for example, through the rising energy prices, which are helping the bill payments business. So I was just wondering if you could sort of speak to the puts and takes that give you confidence in H2 despite the tougher macro.

Alan, do you want to start with the answer around Handepay?

Yes, sure. Orson, as you say, yes, the Handepay Merchant Rentals net revenue was flat, which is disappointing for us because we do feel this is a very good acquisition and a good business for us. You mentioned the 1 month, 12 months, is that going to be headwind. And we actually feel that was something we did back in last October, which is a real benefit for us. Because if you look at the changes that are coming out of the PSR review, there's lots of changes to contracts. Contracts are going to have to shorten. So we actually made that change back in last October, which puts us at an advantage. And the other things that are coming along, which Nick mentioned is, we just now adopted the new Saturn Android terminal as our standard terminal, which moves away from our own kind of more traditional [indiscernible] you see around everywhere. And that's already giving us traction in growing our sales. And then the other thing Nick was saying is about the actual productivity that our sales force has improved, where we've been held back. We're being quite open about it, is, I'd say, the recruitment is a very competitive business. But what we've seen is we've got our new sales director in place. She's really looked at our sales force, driven up their productivity. And if we can recruit them more people with that extra productivity, that is really going to help the current business grow, I say, into the next year.

I mean also, there are quite a lot of numbers that we share in the first half around sort of the performance of the cards business. And I think if you look at them, I think it's important for us to distinguish between the new business we're writing on the EVO and the number -- the actual growth in the EVO estate in the first half. We actually grew the number of merchants on the EVO book in the first half. Slightly what's happening to Worldpay is a little bit out of our control. We have just re-signed the Worldpay contract, which I think the terms of which will give us more opportunity to be proactive around managing that estate going forward. But I think if you look at actually the key drivers here, as Alan has said, firstly, we're seeing a much higher level of productivity from our sales teams. Secondly, I think we now have a proposition of quality and value that we haven't had historically. And I think the early evidence is actually that's driving much better retention, much better actually sort of growth actually in the books on which we're now writing, which is EVO. I mean if you actually look at the actual revenue points, the net revenue in total was down slightly by 0.6% to GBP 15.9 million. But actually, the Handepay business increased actually the amount of value processed quite materially in the first half. So I think there are a lot of numbers that move around in this business. But I think the core reality is the platform now is probably stronger than it's ever been in order to grow this business from here. In terms of the outlook, I mean, firstly, as we've said, we expect to return to the more seasonal balance of H2 weighting over H1. I don't think there's anything new in and of itself in that, and obviously, energy transactions are higher during the winter than they are during the summer. There's some seasonality to our Parcels business. More broadly, there's a whole seasonal weighting towards second half of this year across many of our businesses. In addition to that, FMCG campaigns have been very much second half weighted. There's been a buildup of FMCG in the business during the first half and a number of those campaigns are now going live, and there's a real sort of growing momentum in that, which will come through into the performance of the second half. And in terms of the headwinds, I think the reality is that there was a huge amount of sort of government support going into the most needy in the community in terms of supporting and helping very difficult situations around cost of living. We participate in that through the DWP, through disbursements, through local authorities. That has an impact positively for us. It also has a potential negative impact in terms of reducing the number of top-ups we see, particularly in electricity. So balancing that out is actually one of the question marks for the second half. Clearly, the other question mark for the second half is really what happens to consumer activity and consumer behaviors post Christmas and whether you actually see less activity in our Parcels business and this activity in terms of transaction flows in our card business. But I'd like to think that we've anticipated some of that taking that into account when we have expressed the confidence we have in the year as a whole.

We're now moving on to our next question, which is Joe Brent of Liberum.

Three questions, if I may. On Love2Shop, I think you're currently in 9,000 stores. How much do you think that could realistically grow to? Secondly, you talk about moving to a single acquirer platform. Would that be one of the existing acquirers? And can you explain a little bit more what those benefits might be? And then on Park and the revenue synergies there, could you give an indication of -- am I right in thinking of sort of 10% margin in that business, and could you give an indication of what the pay away might be to the super agents?

We'll do our best on the last one. And I think if there were advisers in the room, they would probably be looking at us now and saying we have to take good care given we're in the middle of an offer, but I'll do the best I can. On the first one, I think it's really important to distinguish between a presence in store with pin-on-receipt and a presence in store with the card. And I think what our experience tells us that however hard we try, pin-on-receipt is very much for self-use. And if we want to make meaningful progress in gifting, then we need to have a physical card in store. And certainly, one of the early conversations that we would like to better have with gifting is around how we merchandise in those same stores, which are having success with pin-on-receipt to make those card stores. And I think we're going to make progress in gifting through on that card. So to be clear, if you look at our e-money business today in aggregate, gifting is a very small percentage of that. And hence, I think there's real opportunity to grow that, both for Appreciate, but importantly, also for our retailers in terms of further reasons for footfall and commission. On a single acquirer platform, I think you will understand that we're in a very delicate stage in terms of identifying our single acquirer partner going forward. And given that today we work with two live acquirers and one passive, I'd rather not comment on who the outcome is likely to be. But I think in terms of synergy, I mean, first and foremost, we would like to think that if you actually have the size of book and the growth prospects we have in that book, you're going to get very keen in terms of the acquirer relationship, that's number one. And number two, and probably as importantly, you have a genuine partner there in which you can develop the right capabilities, the right platform, and the right ability to actually expand the book at a different pace, if you're working closely with a partner. And that's actually what I think we're lacking today. What's terribly important is actually we go forward and look to really grow and expand our card business. And Mark Latham, who runs that business, has been working really closely with the team actually to really identify the best acquirer partner for actually the next stage in the growth of this business. And I think good commercial returns makes us actually super competitive in that market. Finally, on Park, I don't think we can comment further on really what the margin profile of that business is beyond what you would have seen from actually the announcements that Appreciate have already made. We do think that the creation of that third selling channel will make a really big difference. We really think from the conversations we've already had there's a real appetite from our retailer network to provide that service. They're very naturally at the heart of their communities, and they're very naturally people who would make great agents to really grow that sort of third leg. And I think it's probably fair to say that we can talk more about that actually in May when we've actually sort of acquired the business and are in full control of it and talk without the constraints of being able to take over the period.

[Operator Instructions] As there appears to be no further questions at this time, I'd like to hand the call back over to you, Nick, for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you very much. And look, thank you, everybody, for joining us this morning. And I think as you can see, there's an awful lot going on in our business. We're confident as to our outlook in the second half, and look forward to updating you further in May. So thank you, everybody. Have a good day.

Thank you. That concludes today's call. Thank you for joining, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.