QuickFee Limited (QFE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you, everyone, and good evening to those joining us from the U.S. Welcome to the QuickFee FY '24 Full Year Results Webinar. On our call today, we have Simon Yeandle, CFO; and Jennifer Warawa, President, North America to run through the presentation. And we also have Dale Smorgon, Chairman of QuickFee on the call to answer any questions after the presentation. And my name is Katie Mackenzie, Investor Relations for QuickFee. After Jennifer and Simon conclude the presentation, we'll open it up for Q&A. We won't be using the hand-raising function. So if you have any questions, please type them into the Q&A tab at the top of the screen. If we don't have time to get through all the questions today, then we'll reach out to you directly following the webinar. Now I'd like to hand over to Jennifer.

Thank you, Katie, and good morning, everyone, and good evening to those of you joining from the U.S. We're very glad that you could join us today as we share an overview of the progress we've made in the QuickFee business in both the U.S. and Australian markets in our 2024 fiscal year. Everything we're going to share with you today is based on a relatively simple business focus for QuickFee. We held professional service firms automate and accelerate accounts receivable, while at the same time supporting them as they grow their firms. Over the next 40 minutes, we're going to share with you an update on the market dynamics in the U.S., an overview of QuickFee's operational and financial progress over the course of the last year. In FY '25, we're focused on delivering the outcomes that the business, the Board and you, our investors know are possible and will also recap our FY '25 strategy today. Let's dive in. While we're confident we have the right strategy to support our business ambitions, the proof the strategy is working is all in the results. And in FY '24, we continue to deliver strong results, underpinned by great people and a laser focus on relentless execution. As you can see on the slide, in FY '24, group revenue was up 37%, and our profitability improved, which was highlighted in Q4 as we were EBITDA positive. Additionally, our transaction volume set a new record in FY '24 with U.S. PayNow TTV being $1.4 billion and group lending volume hitting AUD 100 million for the first time. We're issuing earnings guidance for the FY '25 year, expecting FY '25 to be EBITDA positive in the range of $1.5 million to $2.5 million weighted to the second half, and we'll get into how we plan to deliver that later in our presentation. Overall, I'm very pleased with the progress we've made and the results that we delivered in FY '24, but I'm still acutely aware that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and there's much more to be done and significant opportunity ahead of us. To click down another layer on the highlights I just shared, group revenue was up 37% on PCP to AUD 20.3 million, driven by increased total transaction volumes and continued margin expansion; Australian revenue up 49% on PCP to AUD 9.1 million, U.S. revenue up 29% on PCP to AUD 11.2 million. As previously called out, we have improved our profitability, delivering group EBITDA of negative AUD 3.2 million in FY '24, and we were EBITDA positive in Q4 FY '24. We have a stable cost base with operating expenses down 1% on PCP to AUD 15.8 million and NPAT improved $3.4 million from negative $8.1 million to negative $4.7 million. Along with being EBITDA positive in Q4, our overall EBITDA improved significantly in H2 FY '24 to negative $0.5 million, continuing the trajectory of improved profitability. Additionally, our operating expenses were $7.4 million in H2 FY '24, down $1 million or 12% on H1 FY '24, primarily due to a decrease in general and administrative and product development expenses. We were being diligent with our spend and that is making a noticeable impact. We reported a very encouraging track record of revenue growth half-on-half for the last 3 years, as you can see here, with EBITDA showing corresponding improvements, which gives us great confidence in our ability to deliver positive FY '25 EBITDA as mentioned. Now there are many market dynamics that are shifting and evolving in the U.S. So before I get into a snapshot of the U.S. business, I wanted to take a little bit of a step back and level set on where we're at in the U.S. market and particularly the accounting segment. On the accounting profession side, increasing inflation is putting pressure on improving cost management, also driving firms to seek more efficient automated ways of working. The merger and acquisition landscape in the U.S. is extremely active, and firms are prioritizing accounts receivable reduction to improve valuation. Additionally, accounts receivable management remains a top priority as firms look to better manage their own cash flow. Through the pandemic years, many firms had more business than they can manage. Now these same firms are now experiencing slower growth and are putting sales and marketing strategies in place to attract new customers and are looking for ways to gain competitive advantages. Finally, there's a talent shortage in the accounting profession, and this continues to drive increased demand for automation capabilities across all firm functions. Now let's take a look at the small and medium business side, uncertainty in the economy has increased, which is causing individuals and businesses to hold on to cash as long as possible. Access to capital through traditional lending has been a challenge for SMBs with only 25% getting their needs met. And finally, there's more competition for dollars in business than ever before and couple that with inflationary pressure and increasing operational costs and businesses are looking for creative ways to make their dollars go further and also hold on to their cash as long as possible. Why is all of this market information so important to QuickFee? Well, let's take a look on the next slide. When we look across our customer base as to why they work with QuickFee or when we win a new customer, it typically boils down to one of 4 reasons. And sometimes it's a combination of these reasons. First, they want to reduce accounts receivable. AR is typically one of the highest line items on a firm's balance sheet, and we help turn AR into cash. Second, they want to grow their business. There are many priorities competing for cash, and we can help find more of it for firms and their clients. Third, they want to automate their processes. We increase efficiency while helping improve the client and employee experience. And finally, they want to save on fees. Firms can save thousands and sometimes even hundreds of thousands of dollars on credit card merchant fees simply by passing on credit card surcharges to their customers. Now let's take a look at our solutions. QuickFee's payment platform allows the firm's clients to pay their invoice by ACH or card, which we refer to as PayNow, and you can think of this essentially as traditional digital payments. We also offer a lending option that's proprietary to QuickFee, QuickFee Finance. This pay-over-time option allows clients to pay monthly payments over 3, 6, 9 or 12 months, while the firm gets paid in full at no cost to the firm. Finally, our Connect product is a significant growth enabler in the U.S. market. Our existing customers have a combined annual revenue of around $10 billion. Right now, only $1.4 billion of that annual revenue is processed through QuickFee. The remaining $8.6 billion is primarily being received by check. This is where Connect comes in. Connect provides the integration into leading practice management solutions, helping turn a manual primarily paper-based invoicing process into an automated digital process by sending out the invoices generated within the practice management solution via e-mail. Those invoices have a payment link on them, which sends the customers directly to the QuickFee payment page. We now have 4 Connect integrations being CCH ProSystem effects, CCH access, IRIS Practice Engine and Thomson Reuters Practice CS. Now of course, we have competitors that we run up against, but there are some very specific ways that we differ from our competition. QuickFee designes specifically for professional service firms. We have no invoice maximum for QuickFee Finance. We have no hard credit tax for clients or firms, and this is important because someone doesn't want a black mark on their credit score simply because they paid their invoice over time. We integrate with the leading practice management solutions, and we have pricing that works for all sizes of firms. We are the best loco that meets the needs of the largest segment of the accounting market, and we have a very competitive subscription pricing model. Now I shared with you why firms work with QuickFee, and now I'd like to drill into how working with QuickFee meets our customers' needs. Well, it's great for us to tell you what we do. It's even more valuable for you to get a sense of the impact that QuickFee has on our customers. So I wanted to share with you some customer testimonials. First, as we look at reducing accounts receivable, based on our data, firms that are not focused on improving their engagement to cash workflow on average, have 16% of their annual revenue sitting in accounts receivable and take an average of 60 days to get paid, QuickFee PayNow and pay-over-time solutions help reduce accounts receivable and help firms get paid faster. Not only does our data show this, but here's a quote from one of our customers, Steve Grissom on how his firm's AR has been dramatically reduced by using QuickFee. Second, as I shared earlier, through the pandemic years, many firms had more business than they could manage. These same firms are now experiencing slower growth and they're putting sales and marketing strategies in place, and they're looking to win new customers. And of course, they want a competitive advantage as they're doing so. Now well firms are looking for new clients, 67% of SMBs in the U.S. cited finances as their major concern. So on one hand, firms want new clients and their prospective new clients are concerned about how they're going to pay for those services. Jamie Franco from Select GCR shared that 25% of their prospective customers inquire about a payment plan, and this is the consistent feedback that we receive for our firms. Not only can quickly finance help firms land new customers, but it really can be a true competitive differentiator. As it relates to automating workflow, productivity is one of the highest priorities for tax and accounting firms. Meanwhile, 84% of turnover is voluntary due to dissatisfaction with working conditions. Our firm's ability to automate as much of their workflow as possible is a key priority for firms of all sizes, and QuickFee Connect does exactly that, automating the entire engagement to cash workflow. Jeannine Hosta from Pease Bell said that not only has their accounts receivable reduced by 90%, but then are now getting their AR-related work done in half the time. Finally, QuickFee's ability to pass credit card surcharges on to a firm's client is a huge win for the firm. In fact, Rene Dvorak from Whitley Penn shared that their firm saved about $140,000 last year to QuickFee's credit card solution. QuickFee is well positioned to benefit from the industry trends towards automation and improved cash flow. Our product suite is very competitive in the market, and we're increasingly getting very positive feedback from our customers. So we know we're on the right track. Now I want to pivot and recap on our current strategy and share FY '24 progress. Now we've shared this slide previously, but given it's the foundation of our strategy and key focus areas for FY '25, I wanted to revisit it for just a few moments. We think of this flywheel is showcasing the 5 areas that we believe will unlock transformational growth in the U.S. market. And in fact, we're already starting to see these growth areas deliver. Our #1 lever on the flywheel is not surprisingly QuickFee Finance. QuickFee Finance has revenue yields that are approximately 25x those of our PayNow offerings, all while delivering solutions to the market that's unmatched by any other company in the U.S. It's the reason we came to the U.S., and it's instrumental in delivering transformational growth. Second, QuickFee Connect is part of our growth strategy. Many firms that have adopted Connect have seen the transaction volume grow by over 40% in the same period over last year. In addition to that, by integrating QuickFee Connect with the most widely used practice management solutions in the U.S. firms are able to unlock automation capabilities that do not exist in the practice management solution itself to maximize the transaction volume we capture from our customers, Connect is the key. In addition to QuickFee Finance and Connect, we also need to deliver differentiated technology, build strong partnerships with other leaders in the industry so we can rapidly grow our reach, drive increased awareness and acquire new customers at scale on a one-to-many basis and, of course, leverage automation across all areas of our business. Now in FY '24, we achieved a number of operational milestones that continue to build on our platform for transformational growth which included signing 103 new customers, launching 3 new strategic partnerships with Knuula, IRIS software and Elenio Global and developing and launching our own direct-to-bank ACH platform. I also want to call out the incredible job our product and development teams have done with building out our product functionality. QuickFee Connect has recently launched a new integration with Thomson Reuters Practice CS while at the same time being very proactive with taking customer feedback and building that into our product road map. Our product suite is the best it has ever been. And with our 4 strong Connect integrations, a pack product road map that we're delivering on at pace and our improved functionality in direct response to customer feedback, we're increasingly winning firms from our competitors. And these are just a few of the many achievements in FY '24. As you know by now, and I've said multiple times already on this webcast today, Connect is a key focus area for us. And there are a few call-outs worth noting here. First, you'll see that we've introduced a new subscription model to the market and have started with an implementation fee of USD 1,995 and a monthly subscription of $499 a month. We'll soon be introducing additional functionality, which will be available at higher level tiers, which, of course, are at a higher level price point. With that, Connect is incredibly important for 3 reasons. First, it has a subscription model with monthly recurring revenue streams. Second, it increases transaction volume for all of our solutions. And third, it introduces a very competitive offering that's ideal for firms that want to build their own tech stack, which is becoming increasingly important to firms of all sizes. In FY '25, we have a number of new integrations on our road map, and we're already working on our next one. QuickFee has a laser focus on implementing initiatives that will deliver the greatest ROI. We have a full dashboard of metrics, including lots of early indicators that show we're on the right track or where we need to adjust. This slide highlights just a handful of these metrics that we track closely and give us confidence that our initiatives are working. You can see here that we've had positive improvements in average annual revenue per new firm sign up, the attach rate of QuickFee Finance for new firms and the total transaction volume from new firms. That said, we did see a decrease in overall new firm sign-ups, but that's directly linked to our focus on larger, higher quality firms with more opportunity for growth, for example, a potential Connect customer versus smaller firms with limited opportunity for supporting our revenue and TTV ambitions. These positive metrics can be directly attributed to execution plans that support our strategy, including new commission plans and a redesigned customer onboarding process as well as improved offerings to attract higher-quality firms and new strategic partnerships. And in the U.S., we delivered strong revenue growth with U.S. revenue up 29%, driven by 54% growth in U.S. finance revenue to AUD 4 million and 22% growth in PayNow revenue to AUD 7.2 million. Our gross margin was impacted by higher interest expense due to rate rises and higher borrowings to fund the loan book growth. However, gross profit was up 21%. The U.S. realized improved EBITDA, now positive at $0.2 million. And finally, new customer acquisition saw strong growth in the number of active firms, which was up 5% to 794, and the active customer numbers, which was up 12% to 357,000. The U.S. also saw increasing transaction volume across all products with the U.S. loan book growing at 22% in FY '24 to USD 9.9 million and financed transaction volume up 28% to $26.7 million. Our PayNow transaction volume continues to increase and Connect certainly playing a role in driving volume with Connect invoices up 120% in Q4 over Q3. Now let's take a look at how Australia did in FY '24. Australia had a very strong FY '24 with revenue up 49% on FY '23. We saw record lending volumes and also yields both from the fee funding and legal disbursements funding products. For a mature market, this is a fantastic result and a testament to all the hard work the team has put in over the last year. The disbursement funding product delivers higher revenue per dollar originated than the traditional fee funding product as the interest compounds, and this has contributed to increased revenue yields as the disbursement funding book grows. The book now comprises approximately 1/3 of the Australian loan book at the 30th of June 2024. In December of 2023, QuickFee finalized the agreement with Wingate Corporate Investments for a AUD 10 million funding facility to support this growth. The Australian Buy Now Pay Later product, Q Pay Plan, which provides finance to the homeowner services market and includes the Jim's group franchise agreement had strong growth with FY '24 TTV up 100% to $3.4 million on PCP, and FY '23 was AUD 1.7 million. This product is making small but growing positive contributions to revenue and EBITDA. With operating expenses down 6% as nonessential costs were removed from the Australian business. The Australian region delivered EBITDA of $2.4 million, up $2.2 million on FY '23. Our business in Australia, led by our founder, Bruce Coombes, has shown consistent growth over the last 12 quarters since COVID with Q4 delivering record lending, a combination of all the hard work the team have put in. Economic conditions continue to work in our favor as interest rates remain high and inflation has not let up. The success of the QuickFee brand in the Australian market is built upon reputation for excellent customer service and ongoing vigorous relationship management activities, which positions the business extremely well to continue its growth. I'm now going to hand it over to QuickFee's CFO, Simon Yeandle, to walk through the financials in more detail. [Audio Gap]

Thank you, Jennifer. Hello, everyone. We'll run through these financials. Record finance and PayNow volumes, as Jennifer mentioned, in both the U.S. and Australia drove revenue growth of 37% to $20.3 million, $14.8 million in FY '23. Interest revenue was up 53% to $11.2 million from $7.3 million in FY '23. And revenue from PayNow, products and other fees was up 21% to $9.1 million from 7.5% in FY '23. QuickFee's lending activities are funded 88% by borrowings and 12% from our own funds. And the combination of the growth in the loan books and the high interest rate environments, Jennifer mentioned, in both Australia and the U.S. resulted in interest expense increasing to $4.7 million this year from $2.6 million last year. Our borrowing costs are linked to bank borrowing rates in both countries. So the 3 factors that ultimately drive this cost going forward are the loan book growth and the level of funds drawn and interest rates. The remaining cost of sales increased to $3.0 million from $2.8 million in FY '23. This line item is made up of variable U.S. ACH and Australian card processing costs and credit and loan approval expenses. The modest increase of $0.3 million in cost of sales reflects the lower ACH processing costs from the move to our direct to bank processing model. We're now all ACH PayNow transactions are processed in-house through 2 separate banks, and this delivers more internal controls over our processes as well as providing full redundancy but it also removes a lot of third-party processing costs. So that modest increase is really -- it's pleasing to see and reflects the fact that we have managed to remove some of those processing costs from the business. Operating expenses declined by $0.3 million, as Jennifer mentioned again. I'll talk about the cost base shortly. Bad debts remained at the very low levels we've seen historically at 0.14% of lending, which remains a highlight of our business model with that dual credit protection both clients and the firms, guaranteeing of client loans and that opens the credit quality of the firms we deal with. And as Jennifer mentioned, EBITDA improved $3.3 million from $6.5 billion to negative $3.2 million, an impact from negative 8.1% to minus 4.7%. And importantly, EBITDA of H2 was close to breakeven at negative $0.5 million. That's up from negative $2.8 million in FY '23. And our permanent head count reduced by 1. We now have 46 staff. It's 26 in the U.S., 16 in Australia and 2 non-executive directors. So looking at our cost base in some detail. We've continued to manage costs carefully without impacting the growth potential of our products. We're running a sustainable cost base of $15.8 million, and that's down $0.2 million on FY '23. So the chart top right is our total OpEx and the 4 main functional categories along the bottom here. And the reduction in OpEx primarily driven by general and admin costs reducing. We've driven some nonessential costs from the business and redeployed our dollars into revenue-generating activities wherever possible. And those activities also include investing in our products to take advantage of the revenue opportunities presented by further Connect integrations. Product investment comprises not only rolling out new connect integrations. We're also making our platforms more secure, compliant, user-friendly and scalable, which is all really designed to meet the demand to our firms and their clients. So product development costs in H2 decreased from H1. But while we saw that decrease from H1 to H2, sorry, we do expect product development costs to remain at the FY '24 level throughout FY '25 as we will continue to invest in those opportunities. Over on the balance sheet, our balance sheet has improved over the past 12 months. reported cash on that top line on the right of $13.5 million that's up $10.1 million. It's made up of 2 components available cash of $6.9 million and a new component this year, which is $6.6 million of cash in transit, and that cash in transit is from our direct to bank ACH processing. So there's cash that is held in our bank accounts on behalf of firms, while they process ACH transactions. The clients will pay the firms, but it goes through our bank accounts. And at any one point in time, we'll be holding cash there at 30 June and $6.6 million of cash on behalf of those plans. So the available cash balance of $6.9 million was up $3.5 million over June '23. In May and June this year, we successfully finalized a $4.4 million capital raise for our well-supported share placement of $3.75 million and an oversubscribed share purchase plan of almost $700,000 and the capital raised will be used to fund further loan book growth in the U.S. and Australia to support the positive momentum in the business. And importantly, our loan book has grown $12 million or 28% to $55.2 million, and this growth has obviously been funded by the increase in the borrowings that we've drawn. Over on the cash flow slide has 2 parts. On the left is a more traditional cash flow statement. And on the right is some reconciliation from loss for the period to operating cash flow. Our operating cash flow on the left is comprised of 2 main elements. First line, net cash outflow from operating activities of negative $4 million represents our operating loss from running the business, and that will become positive once we are profitable. And the second line outflow from loan book firm funding of negative $5 million represents the cash outflow from funding our loan book growth. That's funded, as I mentioned, by a mixture of debt facilities at about 88% advance rate and our own funds at 12%. As our loan book continues to grow, the second line will continue to be negative as we lend more money, and that line also contains the working capital movement of the shift to in-house ACH Processing. So a bit of a funding update here. We've summarized our credit facilities and growth capacity. As Jennifer mentioned, in December '23, we finalized a $10 million facility with Wingate to support the growth in the legal disbursement funding product, and that provided a $4 million additional equity injection when it closed in December. We're also in the process of investigating supplementary facilities, which we initially augment and then likely replace in full of the Northleaf facility well in advance of that facility maturing in November 2025. Increasing the utilization of that facility unavailable from October this year. So we will likely run the Wingate, Northleaf and the supplementary facility until sometime in 2025, but we do not expect any material financial or operational impact from any potential changes in lenders. We expect interest costs to remain broadly in line with where they are currently. So to summarize, as a result of these facilities, the recent capital raise, we're comfortable we have sufficient cash reserves to fund the 10% to 15% equity contribution required that we need to inject for loans to be written as the book grows. And importantly, the business is expected to be operationally cash positive in FY '25. So there's a rough calculation, cash available at 30 June to fund lending at, say, 88% advance rate could fund a further AUD 40 million of loan book growth. So we're well placed mentally in addition to being well placed to grow the business. I'll hand back to Jennifer for now.

Great. Thank you, Simon. So as we look ahead to FY '25, we'll continue to have a focus on sustained profitability, supported by acceleration of TTV and revenue from QuickFee Finance and QuickFee Connect. Our Connect integrations will continue to drive increasing demand and opportunity, allowing us to win more new customers and drive PayNow and Pay Over Time transaction volume as well as revenue through our new subscription model. Most importantly, we expect FY '25 EBITDA in the range of AUD 1.5 million to AUD 2.5 million weighted to the second half. Our outlook for FY '25 is positive, and it's strongly supported by the momentum we've built over the last few years. I have no doubt that we're in the right place at the right time and that we're well positioned to take advantage of the market opportunity while delivering unparalleled solutions to the accounting market segment. Our top tier management team are leading their areas of the business with a true owner mentality, high accountability and a sharp focus on outcomes. The same outcomes that you, as an investor, are seeking. We have a proven track record of delivering strong year-over-year revenue growth. Just one of our verticals, accounting has a serviceable addressable market of $84 billion in the U.S. alone. The market opportunity is tremendous. Given that we have just 14% of our existing firms revenue flowing through QuickFee, we have the opportunity to 8x our transaction volume without even getting one new customer. Our proposition is different. The combination of our unique finance product, Connect's ability to modernize our firm's tech stack and our unique pricing set sets us apart from anyone else in the market. And finally, we have a customer base of over 1,500 professional service firms, and that continues to grow. We're very appreciative for your time today and hopefully, you can feel the energy around the results, our strategy, our momentum and our plans to execute. It's an incredibly exciting time to be at QuickFee, and I believe our best days lie ahead. I'm now going to hand it back over to Katie Mackenzie to moderate the Q&A portion of our meeting. Please put any questions that you may have in the Q&A box.

Thank you very much Jennifer and Simon for the presentation. Just a reminder, as Jennifer said, to put any questions in the Q&A tab. And just while we are waiting for some questions to come through. Simon there's a question for you. There's been a lot of talk in the past week or so about U.S. interest rates potentially going lower by the end of the year. Are you able to talk about what impact that would have on QuickFee in FY '25 and what impact, if any, that would have on your earnings guidance that you've released today?

Okay, that's a good question. As we've mentioned in the past, the rates we charge our clients are relatively inelastic in terms of demand. So we can increase interest rates, it doesn't impact demand. Should interest rates cash rates decrease? We wouldn't necessarily decrease our rates to customers. Obviously, our cost or borrowings are tied to those cash rates. Currently, we've got about $30 million of borrowings denominated in Australian dollars and about USD 9 million. So overall, if interest rates would rise globally by 1% or drop 1%, that will have an impact of about AUD 500,000 on our interest cost, and that will be split roughly on today's borrowings about AUD 70,000, Australian rent change and 130,000 the U.S. rate change fine as 1 percentage point. So with that regard, that shouldn't impact material any earnings guidance. But again, I'd stress that we wouldn't expect to reduce the rates we charge clients should interest rates in the economy decrease.

Simon, very detailed and helpful. A question for Jennifer. You've talked a lot in the presentation about Connect and the importance of Connect to the business moving forward. Could you just talk a little bit about in FY '25, what your success look like this time in 12 months? What would we like to see Connect doing? What would that look like?

Sure. Thanks, Katie. So I would say, first of all, I mean, without providing direct guidance around what we think we're going to be doing with Connect, I'll give you some ideas of what success looks like. I think, first of all, a firm foundation of happy customers is incredibly important for Connect. With any product that's growing as fast as it is and our ability to attract new customers is incredibly important and those references are important. So having customers kind of underpin everything that we're doing. A solid base of subscription revenue is important that monthly reoccurring revenue is incredibly important as the business moves forward. Increased finance or a QuickFee finance volume as a result of more people getting to our payment pages is important. And then finally, increasing transaction volume across our PayNow solution. So I think that QuickFee Connect underpins a lot of our other business goals and seeing it deliver in that way will be important.

All right. Thank you, Jennifer. I'm just having a little trouble clicking on that question. Simon, would you just be able to click on the question that's come to are you able to access that one.

Sure. The question is, I think it's probably for me anyway, talks about Can you shed some light on Q1 FY '25 so far. We're seeing similar growth rates to FY '24 really plus the Board in terms of Australia and the U.S. So no surprises there in terms of the Q1 rate so far. It's not guidance for Q1. But what we've seen so far is broadly in line with the past 12 months. We'll continue to invest in the Connect product and to take advantage of the opportunities there. So we don't expect to see any decline in sort of the OpEx base in the first half as we try and accelerate some of that deployment of the market and the product. And another question, what's the revenue target. I think if we continue to grow revenue at the rates we grow in FY '24, that will deliver the kind of EBITDA range that we've presented. So I think that is certainly within our capability of doing. There's a question here for Jennifer, what has the customer feedback after the launch of the integration with Knuula been like?

Yes. So the feedback coming out of our Knuula integration has been extremely positive. We did a lot of due diligence on Knuula prior to getting into a partnership with them and had customers take a look at the product. It's incredibly robust as far as functionality and it's very easily customizable. We have customers that are using Knuula and QuickFee together today. So integration is in practice. Some of my favorite things are when we have a client that is looking at a competitive solution. And when we talk to them about why they're looking elsewhere other than QuickFee, they said, "Well, I just want to be able to have something that does engagement letters as well." And so when they find out that we have an engagement letter solution integrated, it's incredibly valuable because we're able to save that customer, and we see that almost every day, we see something like that. So it's been a very good partnership, and we have some really happy customers as a result.

Right. Jennifer, we've got another question here on any customer feedback. It is only early days with Thomson Reuters, but if you have had any customer feedback following the launch of the integration with Thomson Reuters.

Yes. And I would invite all of you to comment, if you come and sit in the office here, the feedback is electrifying. I would say everyone in the office is buzzing with it. The week that we launched or just the week after we launched, we had our entire sales team and our relationship managers, all in the office together. Some of those folks are field-based, but they were all in the office, and it was all hands-on deck. We have -- one of our sales reps mentioned that tomorrow he does not have any break in between meetings all day. It's just TR, practice CS, Connect demos all day long. So the response has been incredibly good. The Thomson Reuters customers have been waiting for this. And I would say -- I mean, when you look at the overall revenue impact, I mean, I think that it's -- we're starting to build a subscription base. So it takes some time. But we're already seeing that implementation revenue and that subscription base grow. So we've been very pleased. We had a webcast last week and had 100 people on it just to look at TR integration, and I was pretty impressed with that. So we're excited.

Sounds great. We've got a specific question here on the next Connect integration. Now we didn't talk to that specifically in the presentation we sort of talked about in terms of an overall road map, Jennifer I'm not sure if you're able to add any more color to that?

Sure. I wasn't going to, but what the heck, why not, right? So yes, the next Connect integration that we're working on is with a practice management solution called Practice ERP. Practice ERP is built on the NetSuite platform. And actually, I just met with one of our customers earlier today, and she said, "Oh, sorry to tell you that I'm changing practice management solutions." And I was like, "Okay, what solution are you going to? " And she said, "Practice ERP." I'm like, "Well, that is just great news because we have that integration that will be done within the next couple of months." So they have a really nice space. We offer some competitive differentiators against -- that put us in higher regard than some of NetSuite's existing payment integrations, and we're well suited for the accounting space. Additionally, one of our largest customers is moving over to practice ERP. So we have some good momentum and referrals already coming in for that integration, and we're not even done yet.

That's great. And we have a question on could be one for Simon or perhaps Dale, if you wanted to join in as well. Just to share your thoughts on the economic environment in Australia, you're sort of seeing the outlook for FY '25.

Yes. I think we've -- I mean, there's been a huge spike in the past 6 to 9 months in terms of insolvencies. There's a lot of the businesses that are survived during the pandemic that may not have been capable of surviving and the ordinary conditions failed. That hasn't really impacted us too much because accounting firms and law firms tend to survive in both good and bad times. The cost delivery pressures are still there, but the still spend, still small businesses are still growing, still spending on legal and accounting advice. But I think it is still pretty tight out there. There are a lot of small businesses who are struggling as we've seen, we've managed to grow all parts of our Australian business. Those conditions continue to work in our favor.

Thank you. Jennifer, in the presentation, you talked about M&A activity being in U.S., particularly in near can profession. What are you seeing on the ground? And how do you expect that will impact QuickFee over the next 12 months?

Sure. There's definitely impact our business. And sometimes it works in our favor and sometimes it does not work in our favor as much. I think we visited with a firm today that was you -- they're not a huge significant firm. They don't have a lot of noise in the market. They're not making lot of noise in the market as it relates to acquisitions, but they've recently acquired one firm and they're going to be acquiring more. So it's just that is happening across the board. And it is a huge area of the accounting space right now. Accounting today just launched their first private equity conference just focused on the accounting profession. That's how big it is. It's a conference just focused on PE. So I think that some of the impacts that we see on QuickFee when we're on the right side. So we're working with a large firm that is in acquisition mode that's acquiring probably on a customer or a firm a month or sometimes 2 in one month. That works very well in our favor because when they make an acquisition, they move them over the QuickFee platform. So that makes it very nice for us. On the reverse, we could be working with a firm that is -- we have great relationships. They love our solution. If they're acquired by a firm that doesn't use QuickFee, sometimes we lose that business, even though we've had a great relationship, even though we're really tight with the firm because that they didn't know they were being acquired, that came as a little bit of a surprise. So I think our strategy is making sure that we're in with the firms that are in acquisition mode to make sure that we get as much of that business as possible is a smart one and we'll continue to do that.

Thanks Jennifer. And then a follow-up question on the M&A. This could be one for Dale. Have you seen any offers -- is the specific question. Have you seen any offers to be acquired by a larger organization? And then I guess a broader question about your M&A strategy.

I'll give a very Chairman like to answer to the question. Clearly, as a Board, we are looking to maximize value for all shareholders. So we're -- as Jennifer's presentation and Simon's excellent financial report, we are laser-focused on reaching and achieving sustained profitability. In our view, that is the best way to add value for all shareholders. At that point in time, I don't doubt there will be a raft of M&A style opportunities, partnership opportunities that will open up for the business. And of course, we'll look at each one of those as they come towards us. Right now, as I said, we're focused on running the business, doing more of what we've been doing, achieving our budget for this year, and then we can address those other intangible opportunities as they come along.

Thank you, Dale. We've got a question here, this could be one for Jennifer on the white label payment interface and secondary business verticals other than accounting. Are you able to touch on those Jennifer?

You bet. So on the white label payment side, we're actually working with a company right now that has a large professional services customer base, and they have their own payment division. So they have their own PayNow or ACH and card division. They don't need those services. But what they don't have is our Finance product. Our original discussion started around white labeling and evolve because they said, you know what, there really isn't value in us and white labeling because we're not a commercial lender, we don't have the track record that QuickFee has with lending. You guys understand the market, you have credibility in the accounting space. We're actually better off to keep it labeled this QuickFee, and we're just offering it in partnership with QuickFee. So we are looking to go out to their customer base shortly after there's a September 15 tax deadline, and we have a go-to-market plan that we'll be starting with them immediately following that. As it relates to secondary business verticals, we just had a meeting on that earlier today. Our Chief Growth Officer, Chris Smith, has 3 different verticals that he is building out go-to-market plans over the next few months. So we are fully ready that come January as we head into tax season, we are going full court press after other verticals. So we maximize the opportunities while the accountants are heads down in tax season.

Great. Thank you, Jennifer. We have a question here on the Investor Relations side. So a comment that the number of investors in QuickFee has decreased over the past year? And what are we doing to -- or what's QuickFee is doing to improve the visibility of QuickFee in the investor community. So I'll have a first cover answering that, and then I'll hand over to Simon and Dale, if they would like to add anything further. So we have been very committed to doing lots of webinars after the quarterly and after the half year and full year results in the Investor Day, so we are constantly presenting the results back to the market and always open for questions. We are about to launch an investor hub, which we think will improve transparency to investors, there'll be opportunities there for investors to ask questions and for us to make those questions available to all shareholders and we'll be posting more information, not only ASX releases, but some more PR and soft news flow as well on to the investor portal. So we are absolutely committed to transparency and engaging with our investors. And we do have certain strategies in place to improve that. But I'll hand that over to Simon and Dale if they could have any other comments.

I was going to say, I mean, we're all cognizant. We'd like to be further advanced in our path to profitability than we are. I'm sure all our shareholders would like us to be as well. We have welcomed new institutions on to the register as part of the share placement this year. But we are very, very cognizant that smaller retail shareholders are the ones who can influence the share price in the sort of short to medium term as much and they're the ones who are currently buying and selling. And we, as Katie mentioned, are very, very focused on how we can engage, support and communicate the message to the noninstitutional shareholders as much as we can, and we will be ramping up that kind of presence in the marketplace to try and give as much information as we can to the investor community.

Thanks, Simon. I was going to say. I was just going to say the same thing in relation to welcoming some substantial new institutional shareholders to the register, which I think is a testament to the progress that the business is having -- so yes, I was just thinking what you said there, Simon.

Okay. Thanks, Dale. We have a comment here, I guess, more looking at posting monthly updates. I think -- I mean I haven't spoken to Simon and Dale and Jennifer about that. My view is it's not our intention to move to monthly reporting. I think quarterly reporting is in provide ample opportunity to communicate the results. Simon, did you want to jump in on that?

Yes, we have had that question a number of times. I'm aware that it is of interest to some people that we would post sort of monthly folic numbers. The challenge we have is that our business is very seasonal. And even within one quarter, you will have a soft month that's still compensated by a strong amount. Good example is in March and April, depending when Easter and the school holidays fall. You can actually have a stronger March and a weak April or vice versa. So if you're publishing numbers and actually decrease on one on the next and can happen from, say, December to January. Unless you're very, very clear, you run that the risk that people will take that as growth slowing. These are any sort of fluctuations tend to even themselves out over the course of a quarter, we traditionally reported quarters and we'll probably continue to do so for those very reasons. It can probably go too granular. And it actually, you lose the message and you can't see the trend as much as you think you might.

I think one thing that I would just add on to that is that we just -- the shared a moment ago, just around the investor hub, I think that when someone is asking about, can we look at more regular updates I think that you'll get that with investor hub. It might not be the exact one pager that contains all of the exact information. But I think that regular flow of information will be easier for us to get to our investor base. It will be easier for you to ask questions, and I think there'll just be a constant flow of information. So I think it will feel much more like a continuous conversation versus quarterly updates once we get that investor hub live.

Yes. I agree with that Jennifer. Yes. That's right. And we have got a final question here. So just a reminder to everybody on the call. If you've got any questions, just type them into the Q&A tab. But the final question here that we've got at the moment around the Australian BNPL given it's relatively small. Is the question, has there been any thought to shut this down and improve the focus on core product lines in Australia. So I think, Simon, that's probably one for you on Australian BNPL?

Yes. It pretty sounds we're on track, we continue to monitor all aspects of our business and all products to make sure they are performing and generating the returns, and we expect from them. The BNPL business literally takes one staff member. He's not a distraction for Bruce myself or any other management team and is generating a small amount of cash from quite a healthy and growing base of merchants. At this stage, we have no intention to, but we'll continue to monitor.

Okay. Thank you, Simon. I can't see any other questions there, but I'll just remind you that if you do have other questions, feel free to e-mail Simon or myself later. And as I said, we'll have the investor hub up and running in the next month or 2 just to -- you can ask the easy to ask questions there. Jennifer, I'll hand it back to you just to wrap up the presentation.

Great. Thanks, Katie. As I shared earlier, I just want to thank you all for joining us today for this update. We are honored to have you as part of our investor base. We are extremely energized about what's happening in the business. It's -- some days, it's just a crazy ride hanging on to keep up and it feels really good. It's hard to sometimes articulate that through a presentation and slides and a lot of number updates, but I can assure you that there is a lot of excitement in the business and a lot of momentum, and every single functional area feels it. And I hope some of that came through today, but we look forward to engaging with you and increasing our engagement with you through the investor hub. And we just want to thank you so much for your support of our business and our team, and we look forward to many more successful updates ahead. Thank you for joining us today.