Smart Parking Limited (SPZ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Is it afternoon or morning?

It's morning, Chris.

Morning. Thank you, Richard. And I'm in Queensland, so I apologize for being a few minutes late. But Queensland is still -- it's not [ too ] daylight savings, so things are complicated. Anyway, welcome to the Virtual Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of Smart Parking. My name is Chris Morris, and I'm the Chairman of Smart Parking and will be chairing this meeting today. I'd like to introduce you to my fellow directors and company secretary who are present in the virtual meeting. Paul, put your hand up. That's him. Jeremy, Fiona and the wonderful Richard Ludbrook who does all the hard work in the company. I would also like to welcome the company's auditors, Grant Thornton. I advise the meeting there is a quorum present. Therefore, the meeting is properly constituted, and I declare the meeting open at 11:05. If shareholders wish to ask questions during the meeting, I confirm there will be an opportunity before putting any resolution to the meeting to ask questions of the Board as they relate to the formal items of business of this meeting. [Operator Instructions] All questions in the first instance are directed to me as Chair. Please note that while you can submit questions from now on, I will address all questions at the same time at the relevant stage of the meeting, which will be after all the items of business and proxy positions have been presented. Slide 2. The Notice of Meeting contains details of how to vote and is also shown on the screen. Voting today will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of business. In order to provide you with enough time to vote, I will shortly open voting for all resolutions. At that time, if you are eligible to vote at this meeting, a voting icon will appear on your screen. Selecting this icon will bring up a list of the resolutions and voting options. To cast your vote, click one of the options. There is no need to hit a submit button as the vote is automatically recorded. You do however have the ability to change your vote up until voting closes. I now declare voting open on all items of business. Please submit your votes at any time. Please refer to your screen for summary of the proxy votes received for each resolution. Where a valid proxy has been given to the Chairman without voting instructions, please note that in all cases, I intend to vote in favor of the resolution. Notice of Meeting -- information on how to access the Notice of Meeting and explanatory statement dated the 11th of October 2024 was distributed to all shareholders, and we'll take that notice as read. All resolutions contained in the Notice of Meeting and to be put to members today will be displayed on your screen, so I will not read out each proposed resolution. We'll now move to resolution 1. Resolution 1, adoption of the remuneration report. Resolution terms and proxy votes for resolution 1 are shown on the screen. Are there any questions on this resolution? It looks pretty overwhelming, positive to me. Okay. No questions. I now put the resolution to a vote. Resolution 2, allocation of equity to Managing Director under the employee share scheme. The resolution terms and the proxy votes for resolution 2 are shown on the screen. Are there any questions on this resolution? You're going well there, Paul. I think you'll be all right. All right. I now put the resolution to a vote. Resolution 3, approval of a 10% placement capacity. The resolution terms and the proxy votes for resolution 3 are shown on the screen. Are there any questions on this resolution? No questions. I now put the resolution to a vote. Resolution 4, reelection of the director Fiona Pearse. The resolution terms and proxy votes for resolution 4 are shown on the screen. Do you want to say anything, Fiona? No, you don't have to.

Sorry, I'm just trying unmute myself, Chris. I'm happy to say something if you want me to.

Just wondered if you want to put in a good word for yourself.

Yes. Okay.

Fiona keeps us all on our toes.

Well, that's the job of the Chair of the Audit Committee, isn't it? Keep everyone on their toes, help manage risk, help make sure the finances are in order, and I'll do my best. So...

Excellent. Thank you very much. Are there any questions on this resolution? I now put the resolution to a vote. That concludes the resolutions to be voted on today. Would but all shareholders voting online please ensure you have submitted your votes? I will now pause to allow you time to finalize those votes. [Voting]

Thank you, everyone, for voting. It's now closed. Results from this meeting will be released to the ASX later today. We have now completed the matters contained in the Notice of Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, and I declare the meeting close. Our Managing Director, Mr. Gillespie can't help himself, but he always starts to give presentations. He does it very well. Personally, I'd like to thank Paul, and I think, the other Board members as well. He's done a brilliant job this year. And we'll let him tell you what's happening. Go for it, Paul.

Thank you, Chris. Thank you very much, and good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us today for FY -- well, the 2024 AGM. Today, I'm here in Melbourne. I'm joined by our U.K. Managing Director as well, Jo Hiney, who's over here for a few days working with me on some projects. Unfortunately, Rich is not with us today. He's in Auckland, [ no need to ] be here as well, but another day. So I'll take you through the slide deck that we shared with the ASX today. We did this morning. It includes a review of FY '24 and also a trading update for Q1 of FY '25. Before we get started, though, I'll say upfront, we made a strong start to the new financial year. There's an important new target in year 2, which I'll talk more to later in the deck. But as usual, after the presentation, we'll be very happy to answer some questions that you may have on this pack. So if we can go to -- first to Slide 2. Thank you, [ Stacey ]. FY '24 was another successful year, Smart Parking. We delivered strong growth in our existing markets. We made significant progress expanding into new territories and delivered record results. We delivered robust growth in the U.K., New Zealand and our German operations. We completed 2 acquisitions to build scale, and we expanded into the new territory -- attractive territory of Denmark. FY '24 was a continuation of the growth momentum we've been consistently delivering for many years. Since FY '20, as this slide shows, we've grown revenues by 133% and we've added over 1,000 ANPR sites to the portfolio that we manage. With this scale, we've moved out from an operating loss in FY '20 to deliver an impressive EBITDA margin of 27% in FY '24. Scale is clearly driving operating leverage and margin expansion. We've demonstrated we can scale profitably in multiple international markets through a combination of organic growth and carefully selected accretive acquisitions. We've also proven our ability to leverage our proprietary market leading technology, deep domain expertise and operating model into new markets to build successful and profitable businesses. This has been the basis of our success and remains a foundation for our future. If we can turn now to Slide 3, please. I want to take a moment to reflect on why Smart Parking exists, what's the problem that we actually solve and what value do we add. We can then assess the scale of the problem and from there, the size of our market opportunities. Put simply, we solve a critical problem for the car park managers and site owners. We ensure their car parking facilities are used by the people they want in them or as the headline says, we ensure there's always a place to park for genuine customers. This service is incredibly valuable to a landowner as it increases footfall and internal retail sales. These are real and measurable economic benefits in the service we provide. So how do we do this? We do it by maintaining compliance standards. We leverage the advanced activity system, deep domain expertise and proprietary technologies we've been investing in and evolving for many years now to make sure car parks are used by only genuine customers and illegal parkers are disincentivized in a professional way. This slide maps out the workflow system. We've created a highly efficient industrial strength and scalable activity system. We can process, analyze, match and enforce enormous volumes of data and images with great speed and accuracy. We created deep moats that sustains our competitive advantage and drives our superior performance. So we go step through this, at each major part, which is important and it's key to understanding SPZ. We've extended our sales capability to accelerate the addition of new sites to the estate. We've developed an effective account management team that engage with customers to demonstrate the value we add and support clients through their partnership. We manage sector risk by ensuring our portfolio includes a diversified mix of sites across numerous sectors including retail, hospitality and entertainment to mention a few. We have worked with site owners to survey the new site to install our Smart Parking camera solution. This is the hardware to complement our software and data analytic skills. In order to understand the scale, I'm going to quote some numbers at you. These stats demonstrate the strength of our systems. So first, we recorded and matched images to 189 million vehicles last year in multiple countries across the estate. We managed around 55 million exemptions for customers, i.e., legitimate parking for permit holders and staff, and we processed 4.6 million payments for compliant parking transactions. SmartCloud and Smart Hub is a proprietary technology that are the keys to our growth. Each product is essentially the front office and the back office of our business. We take each in turn. SmartCloud enables the collection of huge amounts of data from the whole estate, processes plate images and payments, generates all contraventions, communicates with government agencies, issues the breach notice, manages the appeals process, the customer interaction and will finally deal with the debt recovery process. This is the back-office solution that drives our business across all territories. The front office or Smart Hub, which we launched last year, is the customer-facing portal that drive -- that provides our customers with data analytics, flexibility and deep insights into their parking location. This is a unique level of control that we give back to our customer that allows us to see exactly how the site is performing. It also provides instant access to data, something the vast majority of landowners have never had before. This separates us from the competition and gives us a significant competitive advantage across all markets that we operate. The problem we solve is large and complex across all jurisdictions. Our technology, systems and processes are well developed and advanced. This allows us to deliver great service and positive outcomes for our clients. We look now to Page 4, please. In FY '23, we truly became a multi-territory business. In FY '24, we proved we can successfully scale in multiple markets and expand our addressable market opportunities. We delivered strong growth in the U.K., New Zealand -- in the U.K. -- in our U.K., New Zealand and German operations. To complement organic growth, during the year, we integrated the Local Parking Security acquisition in the U.K. and the ParkInnovation deal, which was completed in Germany in July of 2023. We're pleased with these acquisitions, and they're performing well. We commenced operations in Denmark in February. We quickly started winning customers and generating revenue through management contracts and issuing PBNs. PBN payment period in Denmark is short, so cash flow has been good. Denmark is a great example of how we can quickly and successfully enter new territories. It sets us up well for entering potential new markets in the near future. And since we last reported results, we made good progress with some new opportunities -- in exploring new opportunities in Scandinavia, Mainland Europe and the U.S.A. We spent a good amount of time in the States in particular. We've invested in understanding the regulatory frameworks with site owners and their needs and the competitive landscape. Florida and Texas, in particular, have constructive regulatory frameworks and attractive market dynamics. There is more work still on this, but I would say we have significant interest, and we're firming up the business case with carefully controlled market entry. On Page 5, we can review our record results from FY '24. To compare to the PCP, revenues up 21% to $54.3 million. Adjusted EBITDA was up 28% to $14.7 million, and margins have expanded 150 basis points to 27%. Adding to this, we closed the year with 1,424 sites under management, ANPR sites under management, which is an increase of 28%. We are managing profitability, driving margin expansion and self-funding our growth investments. We generated $12.2 million of free cash flow, including acquisitions, CapEx and technology investments. We spent $13.5 million to close the year with cash on hand of $7.2 million. We prioritized maintaining a strong balance sheet as we grow. The growth investments included $600,000 of setup costs in Denmark where we started to generate revenues soon after setup due to some early contract wins through our great new hires. We spent $5.2 million on growth CapEx to support organic expansion and a further $7.7 million on the 2 acquisitions in the U.K. and Germany. Both of these added scale and earnings. FY '24 was a record year. With our earnings growth and strong balance sheet, we've been able to support a heavy investment year, which will set us up well for FY '25 and beyond. On Page 6, this page highlights our progress in building scale in all territories outside of Australia during FY '24. We delivered revenue growth across the group with U.K. up 21%, New Zealand up 56% and Germany up 519%. PBNs increased by 22% on the PCP. We averaged 214,000 PBNs per quarter this year, which is an average increase of 22% on last year. The U.K. accounts for 78% of our PBNs, with 15% in New Zealand and 7% in Germany. We expect this mix will continue to balance as the new territories expand. Revenue in the U.K. increased to $44 million. We issued 14% more PBNs and closed the year with 1,124 sites under management, an increase of 21% on the PCP. The U.K. is clearly our largest market. It accounts for 80% of our sites under management and 81% of the group's total revenue. The New Zealand business is performing strongly. Revenue was $4.6 million for the year, a lift of 53%. Our compelling offer is resonating in the market; and as I've said before, we're providing superior solutions, displacing legacy providers. At balance date, we have 162 sites under management, which is up 93% on the PCP, and we delivered a 70% growth in PBNs. We captured less than 1% of our addressable market. There's enormous upside for the future in New Zealand. As some of you will remember, we suspended our Australian operations last year. There are positive ongoing discussions with the new government in Queensland, and we're confident of a good outcome for SPZ in this territory. In Germany, we continue to make progress. It's the largest market in which we operate today. Revenues for the year increased fivefold to $2.8 million. PBNs increased by 477% and the number of ANPR sites under management was up 67 -- up to 67. Our priority now is to grow from these foundations and drive scale and operating leverage. And finally, as I mentioned a moment ago, in February, we started operations in Denmark. This is another constructive market for our ANPR technology and operational processes. We have the sales team and structure in place. They're growing sites under management, and revenue generation has commenced. With a market potential of 10,000 sites, it's over 3x the addressable market of New Zealand, so we expect growth for many years. So in conclusion, we made good progress delivering growth and building scale across multiple markets. Plus, we've expanded our addressable market to over 150,000 sites where we can deliver our technology and our services. And of course, as we grow the number of sites under management, our revenue and earnings will also grow significantly from where we are today. If we look now to Slide 7. Smart Parking is well placed to grow or continue to grow in existing and new markets for many years to come. We have purposely put these foundations in place to support long-term growth. We've developed over a decade of domain expertise in understanding customers' needs and the compliance and regulatory frameworks in the markets in which we operate. Our proprietary technologies are highly scalable, and we have proven our ability to buy and integrate well to augment our organic growth. We've tripled our addressable market opportunity from 45,000 sites in the U.K. to 150,000 sites including Germany and Denmark. We've demonstrated our ability to scale and drive operating leverage. Our model is capital light, cash flow positive with high returns. Added to this, we have the team and the bench strength to continue to execute well. We are all about execution at SPZ, and I believe that the results can show you that. On Slide 8, as highlighted in many of our market presentations, this slide shows the 3 drivers that underpin our success and help us grow our business well into the future. It's important to recap on how we'll grow. First point is obviously organic growth and organic growth in our existing operating territories. This will be driven by a disciplined sales approach of winning new locations and delivering great customer service to our client base. The second point is obviously new territories in new markets. With our success in New Zealand and Germany and now Denmark, we're now busy looking for new markets where we can leverage our IP and market leading scalable technology. Whilst expansion to new markets does cost money, it's a cost we can manage and fund from existing cash flow, and the returns on capital are attractive. And the third point is M&A. We've demonstrated a series -- with a series of acquisitions that we can successfully find, evaluate, execute and integrate M&A opportunities. We will continue to build the pipeline and maintain a disciplined approach, ensure we look at deals that will be the right strategic fit and deliver return to shareholders. If we move now to Slide 10, please, and then we can talk about a Q1 trading update. As I said at the top of the deck, SPZ started the new financial year well and is trading in line with our expectations. We've maintained our strong exit run rate from FY '24 and growth is continuing across all major markets. I'll remind you that Q1 is seasonally a stronger quarter with the peak of the Northern Hemisphere holiday season increasing foot traffic across the estates, however, in Q1, we did a good growth versus the prior corresponding period. Revenues for the quarter are up 24% compared to the PCP. Adjusted EBITDA was 30% higher at $5.4 million. PBNs were up 18%, in line with our expectations. We had 28% more sites in the estate on average this quarter compared to Q1 of last year, and we closed the quarter with 1,485 sites under management. On this slide, the slide -- the site count slide, I'm delighted to report growth continued since the end of the quarter as it closed the business last night with 1,529 sites under management. So what's the significance of this extra and recent growth? Well, we've achieved ahead of time our long-term target of having 1,500 ANPR sites under management by December 2024. I'm incredibly proud of the team's efforts in surpassing this major milestone. Shareholders may remember that at this meeting last year, we brought forward the target, and now we've delivered that ahead of time again. We've beaten expectations by enhancing our sales capability, entering new markets and improving our operational strength to support this growth. These foundations stand in good stead for ongoing growth and profitability into the future. Slide 12 shows the strong growth in PBNs across the quarters and also breaks out the PBNs by territory. It's clear that with the growth in locations under management, we will see that PBNs grow and in turn, revenue and profitability. If we look to the final slide on Slide 13, I'll finish with some closing remarks and provide a new significant growth target. FY '25 promises to be another successful year of growth and record results for SPZ. We have an expanded pipeline of opportunities across all major markets and enhanced sales capability to convert interest into new partnerships. We will continue to drive growth in existing markets with long-term growth runways. We have years ahead of us in the U.K., Germany, New Zealand and Denmark. We will continue to deploy capital -- our capital carefully as we invest in growth and make further disciplined acquisitions to build on our scale and strengths. We're evaluating new territories to enter to continue to expand our addressable market opportunities. Scale clearly drives the performance. A number of markets in Scandinavia, Europe, the states in the U.S. are attractive to us. We'll continue to evaluate the best way to enter these territories in a low-cost and low-risk way. I look forward to talking more of the progress of this in next year's meetings. And looking further out, where will this growth take us? Where will it -- where will we be in 4 years' time? Well, today, we're setting the new long-term organic growth target. By December 2028, we now expect to have 3,000 ANPR sites under management. It took us 10 years to reach 1,500 sites under management, and we expect that to take only 4 years to double the number of sites, and in short, SPZ is accelerating its growth. So in growing to this new target, we'll continue to build our track record, continue to focus on the disciplined execution of our growth strategy, which has served Smart Parking, our shareholders, our employees and our customers so well in the past. That now concludes my presentation. Thank you very much for listening. I'd be very happy to answer some questions. [Operator Instructions]

Okay. First question, Paul, is from [ Stella Wang ]. Could you give an update on the investigation into the U.S. expansion or acquisition and any impact from the recent election result?

In terms of update on an acquisition, I mean, look, it's obviously very difficult to give any kind of update on that sort of information because we -- in this sort of forum. However, what I would say is we are actively looking at a number of opportunities that are of interest to us. There's nothing on the table today, so I can't really take -- go much further than that. What I would say, I think there's no impact from the election over there, I think the locations we're looking at, the states that we're looking at right now that are of interest to us, in particular, Florida and Texas, so I don't think any election result is going to have a negative impact in that environment. In actual fact, there's 48 states that have got a regulatory environment that will allow us to access the local Driver Vehicle License Agency details, which is interesting. In reality, the key states we're looking at are the likes of Texas and Florida, which are much more interesting in how they go about enforcement environment. It's more positive for us. Was that -- sorry, was there another part to the question, Richard?

No, no, you've nailed it. Yes. So a question from [ Shao ]. Can you provide an update on engagement with the Queensland government?

Yes. Obviously, we have a new group of people to talk to now, which is really positive. We have engaged a new consultant or new lobbyist to work with us, who is, I guess, more focused on the liberal party, which has been positive. I mean there's a -- we did have meetings with the Shadow Transport Minister before the election. Unfortunately, that [ chap ] is now -- he doesn't have the transport portfolio. He's in charge of data, which is actually very, on one hand, negative because we've got to build a relationship with the new minister, which is fine. But also he's in charge of data and that includes the CITEC database, which we want to access. So we've made good progress in contact so far. We've had a good conversation with the minister's office. So I think there's going to be a period of time, [ Shao ], between obviously now and anything happening in the short term. I suspect the first 100 days, they'll be tied up with what the commitments they've made to the [ electorate ]. So I suspect -- we expect to hear something in early part of the new year, [ Shao ], so before anything would change.

Okay. Next question, Paul, from [ Simon Louie ]. What assumptions around new geographies being onboarded are made regarding the new 3,000-site target? Or is this with existing geographies?

Well, at this stage it's existing geographies because we've got enough -- there's enough greenfield. There's enough opportunity in the existing territories we're at to meet that number. So even if we don't go to another territory, we believe we can grow at 400 sites a year, right? So from that perspective, I mean, any new territory is going to be a positive for us. I mean Germany has been a really interesting exercise. We've learned a huge amount from opening in Germany and getting going there. It's an enormous market. The scale is very important to us there. We believe that we can have a bigger impact. It's taken some time, but we believe we've got the right team in place now. We're making more progress. So I suspect that I anticipate seeing that area accelerate. But also Denmark is a fantastic location. There's a lot of opportunity there, great commercial environment, great regulatory environment. So just those 2 areas alone could be very positive to us. But also Johanna and her team in the U.K., we've got a fantastic sales team there. They keep delivering. We had a great first quarter. And I expect to see the pipelines will be strong, expect to see continue to grow. So at the moment, [ Simon ], it's looking at existing territories and anything new is obviously upside for us.

Okay. And the second part of the question, Paul, is, is there any plans to increase the install rate per month.

Always trying to do that, [ Simon ], if we can go quickly, we will. It's -- we're never going to turn away deals for the new locations that will work for us and our technology can make a difference. So yes, we always want to expand that.

Okay. Question from [ Stella ]. Paul, do we expect EBITDA breakeven in Germany soon?

I think we've highlighted in the deck, we said on calendar year '25. We've had some -- we've made some changes in Germany over the last few months, which I shared with people at the full year, the full year results. I do expect to be past that breakeven point in the next 12 months, yes.

Okay. Question from [ Nick ]. Could you comment on the speed of the German rollout? And are there cultural barriers to implementing ANPR in this market?

I'll take the first -- I'll take the second bit first. I mean there's no cultural barriers. It's an interesting place, Germany. And as I said a moment ago, we've learned a huge amount of how we operate and how flexible we need to be and those sorts of things. I think it really comes down to personality, [ Nick ]. And we've changed 1, 2 personalities in recent months, and we believe we've got the right personalities in place now. So the speed could be absolutely quicker, and that's something we're very focused on -- we're incredibly focused on. So I anticipate seeing that rollout accelerate in the next 6 to 12 months in Germany.

Okay. So from [ Annabelle ], congratulations on the result. Can you break out what the Q1 organic growth profile looks like?

Organic growth profile, [ Annabelle ]? I think -- well, in terms of the type of sites we're winning or type of customers, is that what you mean?

I'm happy to talk to that one, Paul. So I guess in the Northern Hemisphere, obviously, a lot of people take holidays in July. So July is usually slightly slower month in terms of installs, still '25. And then August, September, we see higher numbers as people come back to work and growth started to ramp up. Okay. [ Max ], from [ Max Moore ], has your opinion on the technology -- sorry, the question seems to have been truncated, so I might pass on that one. [ John Southgate ], why only Queensland and not other Australian states?

So at this stage, in Victoria and New South Wales, we can't access Driver Vehicle License Agency database. We can't get the owner's details of the car in order to send the breach notice in the post. In Queensland, we could, and that's obviously on hold at the moment. You can actually access the key details in WA and South Australia. However, you have to do that via a court order, which takes quite a long time. So for us and our model, where we really add value and make a difference is the speed in which we can do things, how quickly we can capture and match plates together, create contravention, so yes, this car hasn't paid or they've overstayed the time and the speed at which we go to the Driver Vehicle License Agency, get the name, address and then send the breach in the post. That time line is very important to payment ratio to actually somebody even paying for a [ slot ], right? So to us, if we have to go through a court order, which might take 2 months, your payment rates are going to be incredibly low and therefore, commercially not viable for us. So that's why Queensland is really important. I believe as a business, we are totally committed to getting switched back on in Queensland and working with the government to find the right code of practice. And that's what we're working with them on, is to have a document that says these are rules of engagement for private parking operators. This is how you go about doing your job, just like we have in the U.K., just like New Zealand, just like Germany and just like Denmark. So everywhere else we operate, there are -- there's a code of practice or rules of engagement. That doesn't exist in Queensland at the moment. So we believe that if we get the right code of practice place in Queensland, there's a good pace to go to other states, New South Wales, Victoria and so on, with the code of practice saying this is the way you should do it, and we are prepared to make that investment.

Okay. Next question from [ Justin Helfwood ]. Can you please provide an update on the U.K. regulatory environment?

Absolutely. So right now, we -- there's no real change from what I've discussed at the full year, which has obviously been a change of government. With that, there's been a significant change in the civil servants that we're dealing with and the personnel we deal with on a monthly basis and the industry is dealing with. The really positive news is -- and people will know this, on the 1st of July, that the 2 trade associations in the U.K., the IPC and the BPA got together and put in place a single code of practice. So that means for any motorist, whether you're going to a Smart Parking car park, and we're BPA members, or whether you go to another provider who is an IPC member, the rules are the same, right, whether it be -- the grace period has to be the same period. The appeals process is the same. The pricing is the same and so on. So that has a big impact with the government in that they're watching now how we're operating. So the industry has regulated it correctly. We have one single code of practice in place, and the rules are the same for everybody, which is raising standards across the industry, which is really what we wanted to do from day 1 and what we agreed with the government from day 1. So there's been absolutely no talk of any change at this stage. They're positive about the single code of practice. But we still maintain good contact with the department at the moment, and we're still in contact with them. But there's no change or anything on the horizon right now.

Okay. A question from [ Max Moore ]. Has your opinion on the technology segment and its place for growth prospects and the business changed since your last presentation?

Well, I guess, [ Max ], we -- as you know, [ Max ], we've been winding down the kind of technology side of the business in terms of the sensing technology that we sold or we to sell to people like Wellington and Westminster and Adelaide and so on. We still have some customers on maintenance contracts, and we're clearly looking after them and delivering the service to them as contracted. But the real focus of our tech team and our R&D resource is on SmartCloud and Smart Hub and building the best possible products to make us better at what we do, right? And we look at things on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, like how do we process quicker, what can we do with our AI engine that's going to make the plate matching better so we get a higher read rate of each plate that we see. Those have really positive impacts to our business financially. I mean how do we -- our appeals process, how do we make that more streamlined, so we can have a keen team dealing with all the appeals and they're done very fast and look after the motorists? These are things we really put the effort on. And then, of course, the customer-facing portal, Smart Hubs did a fantastic job in retaining customers and winning new customers because this is something quite unique in the industry. Not many of our competitors will have a client-facing portal that allows them to access the data of their car park or their site, manage their exemption list, manage their cancellations, all those sorts of things. In the past, they had to sort of ring up to do. Now they can just do it via the portal and get all that data back. So that's the real focus of our development at the moment and building the best possible product that is going to make us as competitive as possible and retain our customers and really make that moat around our business be as deep as possible. That's what we're after. So we're not really into selling centers at the moment, [ Max ]. We absolutely wanted that business back, but we are still delivering maintenance services to those customers.

Okay. Question from [ Isaac Jacobs ] and there's 2 questions, Paul. Could you talk a bit about the churn of sites and the customer life cycle?

Yes, do you want to cover that one, Richard, in terms of the churn, and then I'll cover the life cycle if you want.

Yes. So typically, we lose about 35 to 40 sites a year. And in many of the instances, that will be the customers redeveloping their land. Obviously, they no longer require a car park. Sometimes as part of our site optimization, we might remove cameras where we can earn a better return on another site. And in some cases, we will lose sites to customer -- assets to competitors. The second part of the question is it appears that PBNs issued are growing at a slower rate than sites added. Is this correct? And if so, why should that be? okay. So there's a couple of reasons for that. One, obviously, we completed the acquisition of LPS in March. So that's obviously 72 sites. So you'll see a full year impact of those sites in this financial year, and we still have 71 sites in Queensland that are on a shrink. But obviously, in the future, we would expect Queensland to come back online. Okay. Question from [ Shao ]. Is the Denmark team going after single-site customers or are there large multisite customers as well, like Germany and the U.K.?

Both really, [ Shao ]. Yes, so in what we've won so far, interestingly, we've accelerated our kind of win rate there, and we've got 25 signed contracts now in Denmark, which is incredibly positive given that we only started recently. And that's going to take time to install all those sites. But no, we do have 1 or 2 multi-site customers. I mean the potential for one of those is quite large. In particular, Scandic Hotel Group, we've got a number of those sites right now, and they've obviously got hotels across Scandinavia, which is of interest to us. But also, yes, single sites, with the team we've got there now, we've managed to hire some fantastic people from the industry, who've got great experience in this marketplace. And then we'll see some good relationships, which is why we managed to win sites quite quickly. So it's a mixture, [ Shao ]. But like anything, we've got -- like in the U.K., we got some fantastic single-site customers who generate great revenues for us, just like we have 1 or 2 customers that have multiple sites that will generate great revenues for us. So yes, we're not fussy, [ Shao ]. We'll take either a multisite customer or a single site, provided the site works for us.

Okay. Another question from [ Shao ]. In the 2 U.S. states you have studied, are there many ANPR operators? Or is it a manual market? And what is the size of the addressable market?

If you take it state by state, obviously, Florida is quite interesting. So there are 1 or 2 operators that provide ANPR services. It's slightly different how they go about it, but Florida is good because there are rules of engagement and a state law that came into place on the 1st of July. And that really sets out kind of rules of engagement, almost like a code of practice. So Florida is interesting. So there's 1 or 2 operators that will provide that product. The same people are doing the same thing in Texas. Okay? It's a growing part of a growing solution. More operators are looking interested. Richard and I have spent some time over there this year and meeting with a number of competitors and landowners and just truly understanding things. So it's a growing part of what's -- a growing product, I would say, in that part of the world, but it is mainly manual today. And it's interesting, there's a huge number of sites that we observed, as we drove around in a particular time, that just has no management whatsoever, so lots and lots of greenfield. So in terms of -- we're still working on the actual market size, [ Shao ], and we believe to have that work completed in the next couple of months.

There is 50 million people in Texas and Florida, so the markets are obviously substantial. Okay. [ James Tracy ], could you please comment on the margin differential between the U.K. and other markets and how long you think it will take for newer markets to catch up? So [ James ], I mean, obviously, all the markets are different. The ticket values are different in all of the markets. And obviously, the cost of sales are different. So we think about our newest market being Denmark. We haven't been operating there very long. There's a very high ticket value in Denmark. The cost to obtain the owners' details are 0, whereas the U.K., it's GBP 2.50. And there's no print and postage costs, so the tickets in Denmark will go out electronically. Okay. That looks like all the questions. Anybody have any final questions for Paul?

No, we might close the meeting. I'm happy to mention something which, Paul, you'll be able to correct me or, Richard, when I say that [indiscernible] when we just took over the U.K. business and went to the U.K. And I said at the AGM, this company is going to be $0.01 or it's going to be $1. Well, I'm very confident that at the moment we're going to get to $1. Taking a bit of time but not an upward curve.

Thank you, Chris. I mean I think to echo those sentiments and just the work that we and the team have done, it's great to have Richard, the work he does, and Jo, the efforts she puts in her team. It's good to see the results coming through, but clearly, we got a long way to go. We've got lots more to do and lots more to offer our customers and hopefully, a lot more territories to open in the future, which we are very keen to do. I think what I would leave people with, just really remind them of our growth priorities, which is that 3,000 organic site target. We are totally focused now on adjusting our business and growing to that. So that's a real focus for us. And any new territory we can get along the way will be an absolute bonus, so -- but we're totally focused. The team are doing a great job, and we've got a lot more to do over the coming weeks and months.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

All right. Thank you all. Bye-bye.

Thanks very much. Cheerios.

Bye-bye.