Shine Justice Ltd (SHJ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Shine Justice Limited FY '26 Half Year Results Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Carolyn Barker, Group Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Well, good morning, everybody. I'm glad that you can join us on this call. I'll be taking us through the PowerPoint deck or the preso today, and I'm ably joined by my colleagues, Marc Devine, CFO; and Simon Morrison, Managing Director and Head of our IMT business, international mass torts business. In the room with us today, we also have John George, who is the Head of Investor Relations. So we have determine who will speak to what pages of the presentation. And I mentioned that because I'm assuming that you have hard copies or have had access to that preso as well as the results and the ASX announcement that was uploaded this morning prior to the market opening. So just by way of introduction, having been on these calls before, I wanted to just let people who are new to these investor calls know that in my role as Group CEO, I previously held the role as Chief of Staff to the Managing Director, Simon. And so I have held those combined roles for the past 3 years. I'll be taking us through guiding the discussion. We do have questions that can be e-mailed to us, and we will then respond to those at the end of the presentation. So let's start on Slide #5, and that is getting right to the core of how we've done in FY '26 half year. And here are the highlights. Well, the first thing is that we have returned to profitability as compared to same period last year, have an NPAT of $6.7 million compared to a loss at the same time last year of $1.7 million in FY '25. And that's been as a result of focused hard work and underlying business performance. So that is the first highlight. The next one is PI and our momentum in our traditional homeland activities. Our core business, as you know, is Personal Injury. We have 2 segments, cash-generating units segments, that is Personal Injury and Class Actions. Over the years, they have been called various different things, and we'll sort of refer to that as we go through and do comparisons in the slide show in greater detail for PI and Class Actions. But on the PI front, we delivered real revenue growth and improved productivity half year-on-half year, and we'll go into that later. Class Actions is our other segment, and we have 4 in-principle settlement agreements reached for the half, and we are looking for that cash to flow in the second half. We felt it may have in this half as a timing issue, but we are pleased with where the Class Actions is sitting at the moment. We will declare a $0.015 fully franked interim dividend, fully franked I repeat, and that will be declared and payable on the 24th of April this year. I want to make mention as many companies are doing of their role and rollout of technology and technology execution. We have established -- informed the market last year that we've established an emerging technology center in that there is an AI core, and we are continuing to work through that, and we will have more to say about that at the end of this financial year as we move from very active work in proof of concept to outcomes that will look at our year ahead. And as we always do in these presentations and our releases, we like to point out that our core role for us is to be there for our clients and to shine a light on injustice. That is why we exist in the sense of operating a profitable business with returns to shareholders, absolutely essential, but we exist and we do that by our specific focus on our clients. So more than $600 million in the first half was in damages was achieved for over 2,000 clients, and that includes our Personal Injury clients and Class Actions. The action is included in that, not the number of class members. And as we said, we're waiting for in-principle settlement agreements for those 4 class actions. Okay. Moving on to the next slide that's going to give us more depth. I'm going to hand over to Marc Devine, our CFO.

Good morning, everybody, and thanks for joining us. Yes, I was going to touch on the more the financial sort of highlights for the half. This is on Slide 6. So just reading across the top of the page first. Revenue of $108.8 million, up 8% on the prior corresponding period, number of $100.7 million, which is a good outcome for the half. EBITDA was up quite substantially. So it was up from $9.2 million in the previous half. So it was a 77% increase to $21.1 million in the half year. NPAT, as Carolyn alluded to earlier, $6.7 million in profit as opposed to the small loss the previous year. And GOCF, the cash which we'll talk about as we go through the slides, that was actually minus $6.3 million the half year. There's some underlying sort of timing movements that we'll come to further on the cash flow. And EPS has improved from a negative $0.0101 to $ 0.0455 per share in the half year, which is a good outcome. And as Carolyn said, the dividend has been declared and will be payable in April. So just on revenue growth, it's sort of like the last 2 reporting periods have seen growth in revenue, but it climbed 8% in the half, mainly driven by sort of momentum in the productivity of the legal team. So even though there were more -- sorry, there were less headcount, there was actually a higher sort of legal work per fee earner, which is a good outcome for the half. Class Action revenue is pretty stable. Again, we'll talk a lot more about Class Actions as we go through the slide deck, and how the activities there will impact on revenue in a positive way in the future. On the revenue side, the recoverability has improved in the half year. So I think last year was a poorer year for recoverability, but in this half, we've managed to increase recoverability across most of our regions, which is again, a good outcome, and assists greatly in the EBITDA growth. And as I mentioned, the enhanced fee earner productivity, which we're hoping to continue in the second half. On the cash flow side, the biggest drag on the cash flow was the number of Class Action settlements, which were earmarked to come in the first half, very late in the piece, were actually pushed into the second half. That's $17.6 million worth, which is quite a substantial amount. And the main reason for those, well, there's a couple of reasons, but there was a court action, which was, the judge had the orders late in December, deferred those to the new year. And we're still waiting on those receipts to come in. The risk around not getting that cash is very minimal. It's more just the timing of it, and we think it will happen in sort of by mid-March. Also, in Personal Injury segment, there was some delays in processing settlement clearances through a government agency. So that sort of impacted towards the end of the calendar year as well. And that timing of those releases is actually reduced as we sit here today. So that blockage has eased up. I guess, yes, just a general statement is that our focus obviously is on cash collection, making sure we try and get these class action receipts in as soon as possible, and we're working with the courts and our barristers, et cetera, to try and make that happen. The last box on the right-hand side, around capital returns. The group's still focused on shareholder value, hence the interim dividends being declared. Obviously, we still do have an on-market buyback in place. We haven't actually done a lot in that space in the last 6 to 9 months. When capital management allows, we'll definitely be enacting that buyback program. Just to move over to Slide 8. So just for more detail, some of this I'll skim over because I've already touched on them. As I said, revenue growth of 8%, EBITDA improved substantially from last year. I think it's a 19% margin this year, as opposed to 11% last year. Pleasingly, employee expenses were pretty stable, like 1.5% increase. They were obviously increased in wages and other cost pressures related to employee expenses. As I said, I think the fact that we didn't have as many headcounts as the last comparative period pretty much offset any of those increases in salaries. Other costs, overheads, again, it's a pretty stable overhead business, so not much movement in overheads, good to see that that's flat with the revenue increasing. Move to Slide 9, just on the cash flows. Probably the only main item here to call out is, obviously, the receipts from customers is impacted by the class action delay in the receipts. Otherwise, most of the other lines there, on a comparative basis, are flat when you look at H1 '26 versus H1 '25. There are some other disbursement made to be recovered as well and come in the second half that we expect in the first. But other things, payments to suppliers, pretty standard. Income tax would flatten out a bit. I think last year we had a lump sum tax payment due because we got into a tax payable position where at least currently we're paying installments. That's sort of a more even trend throughout the year. And obviously, just the statement at the bottom there, you know, liquidity remains a focus and getting those receipts in, you know, is a priority of the business. Move to Slide 10. We just thought it worthwhile just to show the impact of the timing of those class actions. If they were to have been received by 31 December, then what that would look like from a GOCF perspective. So we just put in this bridge here, which has the 4 different actions that we're talking about. Obviously, there's one material one there at the end, the $9.1 million. If all those receipts were received, you know, it would have been a healthy GOCF of $11.3 million. So again, it's not about if those receipts come in, it's just around the top. And we've already received, I think, $8.5 million of those in January and February, and the balance we expect in March. So we just wanted to provide that sort of normalized view of the GOCF for the half. So Slide 10 (sic) [ Slide 11 ], the balance sheet. Again, it's a fairly stable balance sheet. Probably the only thing to call out, obviously, the with the delay in the receipts, we have had to use the overdraft facility during the period, so the cash and bank balance there has moved from that $18.1 million in June to $1.1 million in December. There's still headroom, plenty of headroom in our facilities, as I've said, about December, so there's no sort of issue there. Receivables have increased. I guess that's reflective of that class action delayed receipts, majority of the reason for that receivables increase. WIPs increased by a little bit. The constraint also went up by 9.8% in the year, as the WIP has increased also. And otherwise, I think from a balance sheet perspective, it's fairly stable with no sort of material movements outside of next to cash.

Thanks, Marc. So that was just to clarify on the Slide 11, for those who are reading along. So I'll now speak about the Personal Injury as a segment and the overview within those figures that we just heard from Marc. So just wanted to remind people, people who have been with us a long time will know this, but for new people on the call and new interested parties, to investors, et cetera. As a professional services firm and the type of law that we do, it is -- there's a very much defined by what we call velocity, and that is how long a case extends over as we receive it, we open a file, we work it through, and we either settle it or get a judgment in court to but we believe the benefit, of course, of the client in the vast majority of situations. Velocity measures how long that process takes. In PI, which we're talking to now on Slide 13, it means that our sort of cash and receipts can extend over more than 1 and/or 2 reporting periods. And so as the matters have progressed and the revenue is proportionally recognized as it falls within the period, that's a no-no, but the cash can be lumpy. And that's just something that's a bit different to the type of law that we operate in, and I thought I'd just say it again. It can create period to period cash, ups and downs, volatility, whatever word we like to use, despite what we're doing on the ground. So I don't think that can be emphasized too much because it is a difference in how we run our show. Okay. Personal Injury. The sort of overview here is that we remain a leader in the Australian Personal Injury business, have for years, 2 other major competitors. Between the 3 of us, there's roughly 30% of the Personal Injury market. The other 70% is made up of small boutique secondary firms, small boutique firms, regional firms, and suburban firms. We have 43 at the moment law offices. This is varying as we look at our property strategy and decide that the lengths of some geographic areas and into others, and the way in which we do that is varying in terms of our prior collaborations, et cetera, et cetera. So at this stage, 43 PI offices. We have 540 -- circa 540 PI staff, and as I said, just under that 10% of the market share. Scale and reach. Well, that is about our national footprint. It is about our office structure. It is about our collaborations, and it is about our reach into suburban, high-growth suburban areas and also regional areas. And that is then wraps up to an overall performance that you can see this year or this half on half is better than last. Our client success, we talk about that, but again, over 2,000 cases resolved. This is for PI in the first half, securing $376 million in damages. Productivity gains, one of those words thrown around a lot, but basically we talked to the market at the full and last half, full before that, about our CRM integration, salesforce and the extension, its salesforce's agents, to help take us into a more AI-enabled work world at the front end. That work is very near completion, but the full integration has occurred, and this is assisting wait times, conversion rates, us being able to triage the clients and the work types, the Shine work types. And so it has become a far more productive and efficient operation, so it's good. This just absolutely has got us working toward responding in shorter time and in many cases, real-time after that, straight to the lawyer, straight to the branch, et cetera. The technology investment has been made some years ago in salesforce. It is now enhanced. The technology investment we're making now is in cloud-based activities, agent creation, connectors, getting agents to talk to agents, and what our AI interface is going to be with how we look at how we use AI in chronologies and, I guess, reporting and reviewing and looking at the documents. We're still working through that as many, many, many firms are. We believe that we're on top of it, and so we'll be able to report more to you at the forum. Moving on to the next slide, 14. This is showing the underlying, if I can use that word, performance of Personal Injury as a segment. Now it shows both net revenue and EBITDA. And what we've done, you can see the box, the broken line box that's on the top of some of those bar charts -- we've tried to -- we've taken this data, obviously, from the historical published financial reports. However, what we wanted to show is because we've changed our cash-generating units to be named and the segments are Class Actions only and PI only. We did have a number of other businesses in what was called NPA, National Practice Areas. That included some law types that we've exited now 18 months ago. That included class actions within that new practice areas nomenclature. It included the brand that we applied in, say, West Australia and also which we've now had for a long time in Queensland, and some other associated areas of business. So that's now all been sort of cleaned out. We've got these 2 segments. This is the -- I don't think it's the word underlying, but this is the pure comparison to comparison. So you can see here how Personal Injury has increased in terms of net revenue from H1 '22 to H1 '26. In terms of EBITDA, you can see what the graphs are showing you there. We continue to be aware that we have a fragmented market, in that there's those 70% of firms out there which present great opportunity to work with acquire file acquisitions to know that there is growth within that 70%. We -- to that end, we told the market last, in presentation last, full last year, that we would be looking at file acquisition as a strategy, and we continue to do that. I just wanted to report that so far, 168 quality files has been acquired in this first half, and we are pursuing a number of opportunities as a sort of strategic thrust. On to Class Action overview. Again, we've tried to color the bar charts to explain the additional information that is not in...

Slide 17.

Slide 17. I've just been reminded by our CFO that I should have said we are up to now Slide 17. Thank you, Marc. And so going straight to the historical context there. That's what I think he's trying to tell me, so thank you. And that is, the bar charts there show the information as shown in the financial reports, but with the movement of the segments, et cetera, et cetera. What impact, again, use the word underlying, but what the movement is. We can see the revenue is -- it's sort of holding steady over the years, and we look at that EBITDA of the Class Actions, and Marc has talked to that, and we will continue to give you more information about them. We mentioned last year that we have a robust pipeline. We do, in investigations and in actual active matters, have filed actions. That continues. 27 under investigation, 27 filed actions. We also introduced last year the notion of the IMT business, international mass torts business, that is run from our U.S. hub, which Simon Morrison, our Managing Director, runs and heads. And that's why Simon is going to talk to that in his presentation alone because this is the area that's new to Shine and very exciting. We are getting referrals. Shine Justice from the hub, through the Class Actions pipeline as the strategy has determined. So that's exciting. And the H1 impact, timing impact, as Marc just talked about in terms of cash is something that we are watching carefully, but we will -- we know we're managing as we can. And 4 actions that we have agreed achieved in principle settlement agreements with in H1, total $232 million in gross client quantum. Okay. Let's move to -- just a reminder on Page 18 of our Class Actions portfolio composition. It has not changed in terms of strategic positioning. In other words, reportage. We have a number of actions in a number of matter type areas within Class Actions: financial services, first nations, shareholders, shareholder consumers and employment & medical. And that also allows us to balance risk. So that is there for your consideration. Okay. Now for the exciting part, international mass torts and unlocking global growth opportunities through our strategic AP expansion. Over to you, Simon, onto Page or Slide 20.

Thanks, Carolyn. Good morning, everyone. We've a pretty busy 6 months in this new part of our business. As Carolyn said, it is new and developing, but we're gaining some significant momentum. The underlying strategic objective of our international mass torts practice is simply this: to source and fund very large-scale class actions out of the United States that we can litigate into countries where we hold a Class Action presence, Australia obviously being the largest of those countries. So if we move to Slide 20, I'll just talk you through the operating structure of this part of our business. We run it through what we call a hub-and-spoke strategy. So we've developed a hub in the United States. There's a small team of us in the U.S. and our job is to find the right cases that can be litigated and funded down into other countries. We then have 3 operating spokes currently. Australia, obviously, is the largest. We have filed 3 very large class actions on a protected basis, the Johnson & Johnson talc litigation, which you may have seen in the media recently, the Proton Pump Inhibitors class action, and the 3M Combat Earplugs class action. In New Zealand, we are investigating our first very large mass tort class action, which we expect to file in the next 90 days or so. And then the newest part of the IMT business is our Thailand practice. We've set up an operation in Bangkok, Thailand. And the Johnson & Johnson talc class action is the first of those cases that will be filed. The structure we operate in Thailand is in concert with a partner litigation firm headquartered out of Bangkok. Behind that, we have a large pipeline of cases that the team is working up, which will flow into the spokes. And they cut across a variety of areas: chemical cases, environmental contamination, consumer, gaming, social media. Addiction cases are becoming prevalent and are the subject of the pipeline; e-commerce cases, and emissions cases. Moving to Slide 21. I'll just walk you through the funding model for the international mass torts practice. So firstly, we are pleased to announce we have secured a funding facility from an international litigation funder of up to AUD 40 million for a single large mass tort case that we will be litigating in Australia. This is a first for Shine and we think the largest funding secured for a single case in Australian class action history. Secondly, we have been negotiating for some time with a number of international funders to develop a portfolio fund, which will enable us to litigate multiple class actions in one funding facility. We are at a very mature stage in those negotiations and hope to have something to talk to the market about in the not-too-distant future in that respect. Move to Slide 22. I'll just walk you through the regulatory model. The United States is slightly different to Australia. As shareholders of Shine would know, you can be a non-lawyer and own a law firm in Australia. The United States is far more restricted. And there are only 2 states that permit that structure. One is Arizona, and you need to apply to the Supreme Court for your operating license. We applied some 12 months ago and received our operating license from the Supreme Court. So we are up and running in the United States. We are the first international law firm to secure an ABS license in the United States, which we thought was significant. We have acquired a small personal injury practice in Tempe, Arizona, so we're running a PI practice out of Arizona. The strategic intent of the license is it opens up significant opportunities to dovetail into our international mass torts practice. And finally, Slide 23, I'll just walk you through the operating model of the IMT business. We have a U.S. market that we source our cases from. We partner with multiple United States law firms, and we select law firms that have already litigated the cases we are contemplating filing in Australia or are currently litigating, so we can share expertise with our U.S. counterparts. We then source the cases, investigate the cases, and then bring them down into the spokes. The target practice areas across our portfolio include product liability cases, consumer protection, chemical cases, environmental cases, disaster and pharmaceutical and medical devices. That concludes IMT, Carolyn.

Thank you very much, Simon. I'm just going to talk now -- we're looking at Slide 25 -- about our technology and innovation. This is on the minds of every business, every entity throughout the world and in Australia, it's no different, especially in all of these listed presentations. We have an emerging technology center. That center is absolutely focused on how we manage our data, clean our data, put our data in the cloud and then access our data in a more efficient, commercial business-oriented way. Given the tools that exist today, that didn't exist 3 short years ago, let alone 10 years ago. We're really focused about how that can help us drive our business. We are -- the word pilot is in the slideshows here, but we are working with various proofs of concepts in order to drive efficiencies through our various business lines, using AI and other technologies, not just AI. And to understand what AI really means, we know how to do it, how to enact it, how to incorporate it, but what is the actual real outcome in terms of cybersecurity, in terms of the ability of staff to understand and access it, in terms of reporting and what that means and how it's recreated in different ways. So we're working through that now, so that the proof of concepts, the types of activities that we're piloting, actually can be understood and taken on immediately by the whole business. And so we're excited about that and we'll have more to talk about in our full year results. So the data is, as I mentioned before, is at the center of all of this. It is every business, including ours, and we are well progressed in managing that with our data platform, with our data lake in the cloud, and our commitment to -- we've almost been a data-driven business. We're very good at data, but -- and reporting, but to use the technology that's around at the moment to its fullest extent and to train people up along the way. And this will, of course, work out in the end to gains in margin expansion in revenue growth to access other markets in different ways and help us with how we budget in future years. I just wanted to let you know that we are on to this quietly and efficiently, and we'll let you know where it is that when it lands. I think that will be way just as exciting as the work we're doing, Simon, in international mass torts. Of course, this applies to the group worldwide. So we are looking at how we accommodate and the U.S., Thailand, New Zealand, et cetera, in that format. I'd like to now -- I'm going to skip Slide 26 in terms of the timing that we've got, because it really just is more about the technology, ROI pathway. It's there for you to read. But over to you, Marc, for some info on capital management.

Thanks, Carolyn. So let's talk to Slide 28 for those with the deck. Yes, just touching on capital management, obviously a very focused area within Shine. The order rundown of the page is not reflective of priorities, but at the topic of shareholder returns, obviously. We're in that lucky position now. We've got fully franked dividends with the $0.015 declared for the half. That's again a continuation of what sort of has been the recent history of interim dividends to shareholders. The share buyback, there were 380,000 shares bought back in the half year. And again, as I said, the program was renewed in September. We've got 10% in capacity and when capital management allows, I'm sure that will be utilized. Obviously, from a value perspective, as Carolyn has touched on, in growth, investment using capital, so the technology center, AI, CRM, the international expansion which Simon alluded to, we did acquire those files in the first half as well, and we are still looking to try and add more quality files through purchase through the second half and the future as well. So I guess there's a balancing of the capital, but a grade on that, all those items as well. Working capital optimization. So we are looking at those various funding mechanisms for Class Actions, including some that are well progressed as per Simon's earlier comments. We've also got disbursement funding still in place. We're looking internally at how we can make that a bit more efficient and provide some more value through to the group. Obviously, balance sheet, net debt is $79.9 million, less than 31% on a debt to equity ratio. The average cost is around 8%, which is too bad for all the current interest rate movements. But again, I guess all those together, there is a large focus on capital management where best to deploy capital as we can. Let's go to Slide 29. Just very briefly, that just shows the history of the dividends. Obviously, in this graph, we've put the unfranked and the franked dividends, so shareholders can see what the historical sort of trend has been. Fairly consistent dividends from 2021 to 2026 from an interim perspective. Just touching on some of the operating costs sort of things. As I mentioned earlier, the employee expense point of view, the focus on efficiency is definitely something that the business has been targeted on in the last 6 months. Increasing legal work per fee earner and just managing the headcount in the right headcount in the right regions as well. Overheads, it's a fairly stable overhead business. Always looking for efficiency and gains where possible. But it is, again, something that we do keep a very close eye on, and it's good to see that it hasn't increased over the last half year. And I guess just a last statement on the right-hand side there on Slide 30, the discipline for overheads will continue into the second half of 2026. Obviously, with investment in IT and other growth initiatives, hopefully we can actually over time further protect that cost base.

Thank you. All right. So we're towards the end. We're on Slide 32, it's to wrap up. But before I certainly do that, I'd like to just say that this year, calendar year '26, 2026, is in fact, Shine's 50th year as a business. Continuous operations from a small, humble, but obviously clearly creative beginnings in Toowoomba to now a dominant Australian firm in the 2 industries, in 2 segments, I should say, that we operate: PI and Class Actions. And as you've heard from Simon, international -- using international mass torts as the lever to grow our business beyond our shores. And it's all in our 50th year in the business that this is sort of culminating. A lot of thinking, of course, happily with that. And so we're really so proud to be an Australian firm in our 50th year and celebrating that in this calendar year. So just wanted to say it without being silent about that activity that underpins our culture. And so look, we are a leading firm in a fragmented PI sector, meaning there's lots of room for movement in the 70% that ourselves and the 2 other majors don't already have. We are -- our national footprint is extensive, and it is suburban and regionally oriented as well. But we've sort of alluded to this, Marc and I, differently. Our province strategy is being examined. It will have to change. It will change strategically so that we keep pace with the trends, demographic, psychographic, and also people at work trends. We -- client impact is $11-plus billion recovered for 130,000-plus clients in that time. Our brand strength and reputation, and act as something that is -- that drives us. It says here, competitive motion. We put that in to see if you're all chuckling on your side of the fence. So our investment in technology, in licenses, in AI investigation, in emerging tech as a concept is baked into the budgets. And we're very aligned to how that will also drive our evolving business in terms of our operations and client satisfaction and the dual engine of PI and Class Actions is where we continue to fit in. So there's a last slide there at 33. We've sort of said it all. That's for you to read later. Now we're at the time of 11:10. And Marc, you are looking at any questions that may have come through?

Travis, are there any questions on the line?

No questions standing by at this time. [Operator Instructions] We do have a question from Peter Drew from Carter Bar Securities.

Just wondering, firstly, could you just talk through the provisioning levels in the PI book in the first half of '26 versus the first half of '25? And just whether that's had any impact on the revenue uplift?

Thanks, Peter. The provisioning levels in PI actually -- have actually increased slightly in the first half of 2026 as opposed to 2025. So when you say, is there an impact on revenue, obviously increased provisioning, there is a small impact on revenue. But I think the level we're at now with the provisioning, so that they've only went up a small amount, in memory. That it's just again a bit of conservatism in some of the matters that may be aged or we may be paying a bit of a closer attention to. So there was a small uplift, but nothing I'd classify as material.

So sort of on a like-for-like basis, the provisioning is more conservative. So if it was the same, the revenue number would be higher.

You could jump that way. Yes.

And then just in terms of, I guess, file acquisitions. How should we sort of -- like will those file acquisitions that you made in the first half, will they benefit the second half? And is that sort of run rate that you achieved in the first half, is that a -- are you comfortable you could repeat that sort of growth in the second half?

It's a good question. What I will probably say on the file acquisitions is that we identified one early in the first half that we were actually been able to convert and do a deal with. We have through the half probably spoken to or dealt with another 5 or 6 different people that were looking to either sell their files or their business, or a combination of both. We haven't converted any of those at this stage. So I don't want to commit and say second half we'll do more. I think what you'll probably see with file acquisitions is that it'll probably be a bit lumpy. As we come to, we might do 160 that we've done in the second half, we might do one that's slightly smaller and then the next half, we might do one that might be 200 and a bit over that. So I think they're going to be different sizes depending on the people that we're in discussions with. And they do range from a sole trader who's got his own or her own legal firm to someone who might have 5 or 6 lawyers working for them. I wouldn't want to commit to an answer right now, but they will be very varied over time.

Okay. And then just in terms of Class Actions, I mean, can you just talk to the sort of revenue outlook, I guess, in the -- for the second half and maybe into FY '27, just with the sort of existing domestic portfolio and then the international business and how that major class action that's being funded with the new fund is going to sort of impact revenues in second half and then into '27.

Yes. So on Slide 17, Peter, in that middle column, we can call it that. I think we've noted there's around $7.8 million locked up in Class Action investigations. There's probably, I'd say, probably just over half of that is nearing the point where we need that matter funded, and then we can convert that into an active matter, thereby recognizing that revenue. So immediately, you can see just there alone, there's probably $4 million or $5 million that hopefully in the second half, we convert across. And that will sort of -- as we convert investigations to active matters, we try and then bank them with investigations as well, active matters. So we're still ramping that business up and still increasing in headcount and matter numbers. That's really the more immediate looking view. From the international mass tort side of things, probably we have secured that $40 million funding facility, but it's probably too early in the piece to actually start to give any longer term view on what that might look like because there's still a lot of moving parts and a lot of detail to work through, even in relation to the 3 matters that Simon had in his slide deck there. So I dare say by the end of this financial year, and when we come out in August, we'll be able to provide a lot more color around what that does actually look like from a financial perspective.

Okay. And then just to clarify, Marc, so you're saying that of that $7.8 million, half of that might drop in potentially as revenue against that sort of high $17 million base in the first half.

Yes.

Just the last one, maybe for Simon. Just could you give us a little bit more detail on just the partner involvement in these class actions? Just trying to understand what the roles are.

Yes, sure, Peter. So we select firms, as I said earlier, that have either already litigated cases that we're contemplating litigating or are currently involved in them. So the role they play with us is they assist us in how we develop evidence to run the litigation in Australia. They assist us in respect to the strategies that have been utilized in the U.S. litigation. They have some operating restrictions on them. For example, if they've settled a case in the United States, there are certain things they can't tell us, and we understand that. But they work with us side by side throughout the course of the bespoke litigation, if I can call it that, to help us build the best evidence, select the best experts, know how to get the best discovery in the litigation, and then I call it intellectual IP about how to deal with the respondents, who are all largely U.S. multinational operations.

At this time, we're not showing any further questions. So I'll hand the conference back to Carolyn Barker.

Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for your attendance today. As usual, John George, our Investor Relations Manager, will be in contact with many of you as a follow-up to this call as we usually do. And it's been great talking to you again and I'll wrap it up with.