The Pebble Group plc ($PEBB)

Good afternoon, everyone and welcome to the Pebble Group Full Year Results Webinar. Presenting today will be Chris Lee, CEO; and Claire Thomson, CFO. [Operator Instructions] Thank you all for joining today's call, and I'll pass you over to Chris Lee, CEO. Chris, please go ahead.

Thanks, Gareth. Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. It's the Pebble Group 2025 full year results that we're going to walk you through today. We're going to go through the same sort of rhythm of what we do. We'll do a little bit on the market, some highlights. Claire will take you through the numbers, and then I'll kind of do Facilis, Claire will do Brand Addition and happy to take any questions at the end. So Claire and I have been part of the business a long time and definitely emotionally invested kind of through that period, but also financially well invested as well. And so definitely believe aligned with shareholders. In terms of the business that we're actually part of or the industry part of, go back to there. It's the promotional product sector that our businesses operate in. And that is all businesses, all sizes and all sectors are using merchandise to support their brand. They're engaging with their employees, their customers or potential customers and suppliers are really proud of who they are and want to express that in either what they're wearing and kind of what they're using in terms of writing instruments and pads or kind of what the drinkware they're using. But all around us promotional products exist and that creates a really large market. So globally, we estimate at around about $50 billion, and that's $25 billion of that is in North America, where a lot of the business that we see is as well. And so the Pebble Group lens into the promotional product sector is about through $1.7 billion, which of that U.S. market is around about 6%. So really an important size of spend that we're seeing and controlling through our technology in the U.S. and Canadian markets. And that $1.7 billion comes from our 2 businesses. So Pebble Group is a holding business, our holding company and the ownership business that's listed. The real action and all the fun happens at our 2 operational businesses, Facilisgroup, and Brand Addition. And Facilis sees $1.6 billion of the U.S. industry of that $25 billion of annual revenues through the technology that we provide to some of the really quality and growing distributors in the North American market. And then Brand Addition is selling products to some of the biggest and best-known companies in the world on a global basis and quality product to them on a consistent global basis to some of the best-known brands and is a growing and cash-generative organization as well. In terms of sort of what we think are some really good cornerstones of investment, growth to us starts with looking after our existing relationships, whether it be our clients at Brand Addition, our partners and our suppliers at Facilisgroup. We're really interested in long-term relationships rather than one-off. So we put a huge amount of focus on existing client relationships to make sure they're long term for the good of the partner and the client and the good of our business as well. Both of our businesses, Facilisgroup and Brand Addition, we're very biased, obviously, but we think they're market-leading in what they do. Important to us that, that long-term relationship is about having a good reputation and with people that businesses trust to work within the long term and far from perfect. But absolutely, it's important to us what our business reputation is and making sure those long-term relationships are nurtured. It's a $50 billion business on an annual basis in promotional products. And so the size of our businesses means there is opportunity to scale and very much understood this industry is a fragmented one. And what we do, do is trying to grow and move forward. We have profitable and cash-generative organizations, and that allows us to return value to shareholders, and we'll go through what we've actually done over the last couple of years, and we're looking to do in the future in terms of delivering value to shareholders as well. And so in terms of the highlights of the business, I'll start on the right and work from right to left. So Brand Addition, selling products under contracts and the largest organization in the world, great NPS scores, which reflect the long-term relationship. We've grown the number of new businesses that we've contracted with in the last 12 months, and that retention rate is very, very strong. And whether it's been through Brexit, through COVID, through inflation rates, interest rates, through tariffs, Brand Addition stood really tall in all of those headwinds and produce very solid results, great retention and cash generation over a long period of time. At Facilisgroup, we've really kind of focused on our stakeholder relationships over the last 2 years. And with our partners, we've moved our NPS score from 35 up to 50, a really good sign of where we believe those relationships are, again, leading to long-term commitment from both the partner and ourselves. We have taken a lot of time in trying to grow the number of partners that we're actually doing as well as retaining -- actually growing the numbers that we're doing and have almost doubled that number in 2025 versus 2024. And again, partner retention is very strong. So we've been on a 2-year project to improve our technology, our team, our relationships. And now we do believe that, that is done. We believe we're now ready to return to growth and really excited about what that might deliver. And so those businesses being successful, generating cash. What does it mean for our group that we are very cash generative, we're debt-free and we're able to return value to shareholders in what is an actually very difficult market, we've still been able to give significant and valuable returns to our shareholders. So that's one of the highlights. Claire will go through the numbers now, and then we'll dive into each of the businesses.

Thank you. So sharing on this slide the KPIs of our business and really the key points of focus for the year that's just passed and this will come out as we move through the slides, but our themes are it's a really difficult macro. Our revenue has been stable in that environment, and that's something that we're very proud of. And whilst -- and with that backdrop, we've really focused on the things that we can control, so can we -- improving our gross margins. We signaled this time last year that we were looking to return to growth in Facilisgroup and investing behind that, and we'll give you some more feedback and update on how that's gone through the year. And then we also said that we would improve our free cash flow conversion during the year, which we've done, and I'm very pleased to have moved that from 68% in '24 to 91% in '25. And that's allowed us to make a significant return to our shareholders in the form of a buyback and a tender offer and a dividend. The 2 businesses in our group have got very different business models. So over on the left-hand side of the screen, we've got -- showing the split of revenues. We've got Brand Addition, the products business is the lion's share of revenue in our group. And then Facilis is a much smaller proportion of group activity at the revenue level, but they are kind of -- it's a SaaS business and the SaaS revenues that generate really healthy margins. And so as you move across to the right of the screen, you can see the split of EBITDA between Brand Addition and Facilis is much more equal. So P&L, revenue, I've referenced right at the beginning as we've got stable revenues in a difficult environment, and that revenue number is principally driven by Brand Addition. And so what we did experience in the year was a bit of softening in our existing clients, but the success that the teams had there in converting new opportunities meant that we were able to hold our revenue at a consistent level with the previous year, controlling what we can. So Brand Addition, we saw an improvement in our gross profit margin, and that was the kind of fourth year in a row that we've done that. The team has done a brilliant job there, generating profit margins of 37 points versus the 30 back in 2022. We invested for growth at Facilisgroup, specifically in our sales and marketing efforts to drive that new partner acquisition, and we've had great success with that in the year and announced on Tuesday that we were going to continue that investment. And so that's led to our closing EBITDA being slightly behind last year, but on the back of some really exciting metrics as we move forward into 2026. Balance sheet, there's a really strong balance sheet, and it's that's supporting our organic growth and enabling us to make the capital returns that we have done over the year. When you look at the Pebble balance sheet, I think really it's all about Brand Addition. So the working capital is backed by large corporates who we contracted with and the blue chips. And so our working capital numbers will move with sales volumes, but they're really high-quality assets that turn to cash, which leads me nicely on. So really kind of nice straightforward cash flow. I've already referenced the fact that we've increased our cash flow conversion, and that's come through from the normalization of CapEx in Facilis as we focused on bringing our CapEx investment down and really returning the business to growth through some OpEx investment, and Chris will take you through that in a couple of slides. And then you can see the significant increase in the returns to shareholders that we made over 2025. So what does all that mean in terms of capital allocation? So highly cash-generative businesses that gives us choices around capital allocation. And our #1 choice is investing in accelerating organic growth at Facilisgroup. So our experience over the year is that we've been increasingly confident in the LTV-to-CAC number that's coming out of that investment and the returns that we're getting from that investment. And so we're going to invest behind that and really push the organic growth in Facilisgroup. We announced on Tuesday that we're going to maintain our dividend at a quantum similar to that -- well, exactly the same as that we paid in '25. And we also announced a share buyback of GBP 5 million share buyback that we're -- that started on Tuesday, and we're in the process of completing.

Thanks, Claire. And so we're going to dive into Facilisgroup now. So Facilisgroup's business is based on technology, but we start this with people. And here's an Empower, we call it initiative, is run by women across the promotional product sector and we sponsored and started at Facilisgroup. And what this shows, and this was one of our events in New Orleans. And what this shows is that the depth and quality of Facilisgroup's relationships and the community that it creates is a bond far beyond technology. So the technology provides a growing and ambitious distributor with technology in which to sort of run its organization, the scale of that technology allows us to create a buying group and market network on top and the relationships that all provides some of the closest and best relationships in the industry. And I'm really proud that Facilisgroup sponsors such a thing as Empower. And so again, talking about that, we provide technology. We provide 360-degree best practice processes for that technology to be used to its best advantage. The scale creates the market network and around that, the amazing relationships where we help our -- train our partners' salespeople. We help celebrate their successes, and we help educate their salespeople and educate their principals and their owners in kind of networking with each other as well. So technology, supply chain, buying group and community makes it a really powerful business, but it's the heart of our partners' businesses, not just a piece of technology. And so this is some of the statistics that come out of there. And again, concentrated on the bottom, if we can get partner numbers moving in the right direction, and we return to growth on that in 2025, in turn, that sort of those partner numbers create a growing level of GMV, and that means sort of our scale is moving forward. And then from that, our preferred supplier spend can grow with some of those great supplier relationships, and we all benefit from that as well. So our partner suppliers and Facilisgroup will benefit from those metrics moving on the bottom of that. The challenge that we've had over the last couple of years and been doing a bit of refocusing is taking those top left-hand charts and saying we make nice returns, and that's been very good, but we haven't grown over the last couple of years. And so in 2025, we felt in a position to change that, which is really now going to be -- we're going to benefit from that in '26 and 2027. So definitely, the challenge is nice business, kind of some lovely metrics, but not growing. And over the last couple of years, we've really worked hard at the relationships with our different stakeholders. So making sure our partners are listened to, are on site, and we're providing them with great technology. Again, exactly the same with our suppliers and building a great team. And those 3 things are in place. So now we move towards delivering returns now to our shareholders and moving back to growth. And I feel as though we've done all the steps in order to get to that place right now. So in 2025, you can see there the performance. We took a chunk out of profitability in order to grow the revenue and that chunk out of profitability, we think, has been really well invested by looking at a lifetime value of the new customers that we've won versus what we've actually spent on the new business, and we'll go into that right now. So lifetime value to cost of customer or cost of partner acquisition is a relationship that's really important when you're thinking about how are you getting the most out of your investment and what it's returning to you. And Facilisgroup has an extremely strong lifetime value, and that's because of these 5 attributes on the left-hand side. We have this wonderful 2-income model in terms of we receive fees from our partners for the technology, and then we receive a fee for the activity between our partners and our preferred suppliers in terms of creating that buying group and supporting wins for our suppliers, wins for our partners and wins for Facilisgroup itself. It's a very powerful 2-sided income model. Our partners grow with us. We help support their businesses in training their salespeople and giving them the good technology and linking them with each other to support their growth and really nice statistics are there that we grow -- our partners grow ahead of the industry average. High retention rates is obviously very important in terms of lifetime value. And as we're growing, we're finding we're actually building the technology to future-proof the businesses of our existing partners and those that are growing. And in doing that, actually, it's allowing us to attract larger partners into the organization as well. So what we're finding is the average partner joining us through the second half of 2025 and the first weeks in 2026 is actually bigger than the average partners we're attracting in the past. And of course, we've got strong profit margins. And so the mix of those 5 things really pull out a really strong LTV. And in terms of customer acquisition cost, very clearly, we know the incremental costs that we've been spending. It's been on people. Good leadership has made a big difference to us in our business generally, in our technology over the last 2 years, in our new business acquisition over the last 12 months. And we're finding we are hiring and getting leaders of a better quality, hiring people of a better quality on top of better communicated messaging, we're really making some really headways into that and getting a repeatability that we haven't had before in terms of bringing new customers in on a regular basis. And so that's a little bit of this evidence. So the first half of the chart on the left is saying this is how our partner numbers changed in 2024 and comparing that with 2025. So you can see the gray bar is attrition and either businesses getting acquired and therefore, leaving our community or some choosing to actually take an alternative. So you can see that has been fairly stable, whereas the actual growth in the number of partners in the green has moved up by 88% in number. And actually, the annual recurring revenue of those 30 has grown slightly in 2025, and we're finding that is growing again in the first few weeks of 2026. So what does that mean? We can kind of do the math and the cost of partner or customer acquisition at that $1 million is quite easily identifiable. There's some great formulas and debate about how you actually kind of do the lifetime value. But the inputs going into that are what we showed a couple of pages ago. But that 7:1 ratio says to us what we've spent is really going to come back to us as good investment and let's spend some more in there. And that's what we're doing because we believe sacrificing a little bit of that high margin for some revenue growth makes our business much more interesting to be part of whether you're a supplier, you're a partner or one of the team. So in terms of what we're doing going forward, our growth starts and when we walk across the threshold every day, we think about our existing partner community, our existing suppliers and our team. That's where our growth starts. Our technology has moved forward enormously over the last couple of years, and congratulations to the team that have done that and the leadership that has done that. And then our revenue base is moving in the same way. So the team has worked incredibly hard over the last couple of years in moving our organization forward generally with our partners and our suppliers. And now it's time to give a little back into the investor, and I'm looking forward to being here in 6 months and 12 months and showing those kind of income graphs going forward.

So when you think about Brand Addition, I think working -- selling promotional products to large corporates, international organizations and every single one of Brand Additions customers you would be familiar with and doing that on a global basis. And again, we're setting out here some of the services that wrap around that, but Brand Addition stands tall on its client retention levels and something that we're really proud of. And our customers look to us to provide not only a really cool product that engages with their audience, but to do that in a way that helps them engage and address their own ESG commitments and they look to us to help them understand not only what the product is made of, but whose hands it's made in and where it's made from. And so when you think of Brand Addition, like I say, I think huge organizations who want a really cool product that engages their customers but also reflects their own brand and their commitment to ESG. So the metrics of Brand Addition, again, something we're really proud of. So our revenue has been stable over the last few years, and you can look at them in 2 ways, but it's been a really difficult macro environment, but we managed to hold on to those customers, continue with those great retention rates, and that's meant that in that difficult environment that we've been able to stand tall. I've touched -- I think I've said it 3 times. But -- so by moving that gross profit margin has been a great achievement that the team have delivered. And because we've controlled our costs below gross margin, then that improvement has delivered -- has dropped through to EBITDA in '25. And then below that, the pie charts are showing you the nice diversification of revenue by destination and client sector that helps give us a nice spread of business in Brand Addition. So this chart is kind of putting a little bit of meat on the bones of what I've been saying. So if there was a bit of pressure on our existing customers, what the team has done really well is to supplement that or to offset that pressure with new business wins. So we've kind of -- we've had a little bit of a down on existing customers, so not by number, but in the volume that they're spending with us, but the impact of an increasing number of new client wins means that we've been able to withstand the pressure. And then we've moved our gross margins on. That's really helped our EBITDA. And then -- and like I just said, controlling our costs has meant that we've been able to move our EBITDA returns forward in what's in a really difficult environment and something that we're really proud of. so this is a little bit more detail on the momentum that we've been experiencing in new client acquisition. So the number of new client wins in '25 was well ahead of those in '24 and what our initial view of that is that the quantum of revenue that we expect those new client wins to deliver is pretty consistent with what we've had in the prior years. And Brand Addition, it takes 12 to 18 months for us to get a full view of that. But the winning of an increasing number is only good news for us. And then behind that, there's a really nice buoyant pipeline. So our focus on continuing that momentum remains. So our 3 points of focus for '26 is, as Chris said about Facilis, and it's absolutely the same with Brand Addition, our growth begins with retention. So holding on to those long-term relationships and making sure that we're working with our customers to give them what they need is exactly what we'll focus on. And then we'll supplement that with continuing the momentum that we've got in new client wins, and we'll do that in a really disciplined financial way. So we'll aim internally for a 5% organic revenue growth, holding on to those margin improvements that we've made over the last few years and letting that feed through to our EBITDA margins.

Thank you, Claire. All right. So we're kind of on the way home now. And so this is the ESG section. But actually, kind of these are things that we're doing because we believe in running a business a certain way for the right for our environment, for our suppliers, for our partners and for our team. And so things that we think are the right things to be done can happen to become under the banner of ESG rather than we think ESG and what shall we do. So we're doing things not because they're fashionable or we kind of -- somebody is telling them we should be doing it. We're doing it because we think it's the right thing to do for our own stakeholders. And I think next week, alongside our annual report, we'll be issuing, I think, our fourth or fifth ESG report, which is a great document, which kind of goes into some detail about a lot of the great initiatives that are going on around the group. And we're very proud. We do them for the right reasons, and they come under the banner of ESG rather than the other way around. And this is saying kind of the cornerstones that we have there is around our people, our environment, communities that we work in and our own people, of course. And so really important stuff, and it's just about running the business the right way and happens to kind of go under a title of ESG. And so as we finish, giving you the sort of messages around -- the key message around our organization for 2026. We've had a sensible start both in Brand Addition and Facilis. And what we wish to do is to prove out all the work that's gone on over the last couple of years, a wonderful team and leadership team kind of sort of taking that from the front and these LTV to CAC ratios are really encouraging us to invest for growth and sacrificing a little bit of that really good margin to return to a level of exciting growth, I think, is exactly the right thing to do, and we're getting a lot of support for doing that. In terms of Brand Addition, making sure -- again, Claire said, I think I should exactly say the same, in terms of the gross margin that business has done and kind of whatever has been thrown at it, it's been absolutely super in terms of performance and cash generation. And again, we put a nice little bit of growth into that. We have a wonderful cash-generative business. So we continue to give capital back, GBP 3 million dividend, GBP 5 million buybacks going on top of the GBP 12 million that was returned last year. So those things are happening. debt-free, cash generative allow us to do that. So in a sensible spot, getting Facilis back to growth and continuing to demonstrate the strength of Brand Addition is what's ahead of us. And we're looking forward to a successful 2026 on the continued hard work of the team in 2025. And I think that takes us to everything. So with an appendix with a little bit of kind of further information, some financial guidance, the segmentals of the business and the balance sheet breakdown. So everybody can look at that at their leisure, but we'd be pleased to take any questions that people have.

[Operator Instructions] We have had a couple of questions pre-submitted and a number have already come through. First question is which e-commerce platforms are fully integrated into Syncore.

Yes. And integration is a big part of what is going on right now at Facilisgroup in terms of in order to support our businesses that are growing and getting more complex, having integrations from whether it's e-commerce, accounting or CRM, they're the kind of big things that need to happen. And we do have -- and again, I think I probably won't talk about the brands, but one of our -- has been a preferred supplier into the e-commerce over a lot of time. That is part of -- in our integration right now. But those will continue to do. And I think we have a decision to make, do we go with one in particular and really go deep into one particular e-commerce platform? But I think I'd rather be a bit more agnostic than that because each of our partners have quite a very different needs. There is so many different platforms that are available out there. What I'd like to do is allow our partners the opportunity to choose what e-commerce platform they want and then integrate from there rather than just choose one to go very, very deep with.

Okay. Thank you. Next question is a bit broader. How do you feel that AI might impact on your markets either in the near or the longer term?

And so it's -- we were sat here with investors 12 months ago and tariffs was really kind of the new point. I think over that period, people have got used to what tariffs has done and worked around that. And AI has kind of taken its place as the big thing and the big question to answer. In terms of our end markets, I think people still want promotional products to be part of their marketing mix. I think even more so in the world of AI and digital marketing, a physical product in the hand is great. So I think our end markets remain very strong. So it's about using AI to help our customers sell to their customers. It's about using AI in that amazing data that we've got and using AI to say, can we either do our coding more swiftly? Are there any processes that we can do more efficiently? And so we've got some very bright people beginning to use AI to a greater and greater degree every day, but we're also taking some external support to help us guide us along the way. But we'll use it in a responsible manner, in an excited manner. And I'd say a really good thing it's not affecting our end markets. So we come back into there and how can we use it to support our customers' customers and our own efficiencies as well.

Okay. Thank you. A question about the total addressable market. The question is, since there's a similar-sized total addressable market in Europe, why has Facilisgroup not expanded outside North America?

Yes. And I think -- so we've definitely spent the last 2 years in getting right what we are doing at the moment. And I think we've kind of -- the team have done an amazing job in doing that. The size of the market -- it's one market in North America, well, one plus -- there is the U.S. and then Canada. But really one market that we're working in overall. And so that's one set of suppliers, that's one language, one currency, but I do plus, important, I don't forget Canada on top of the U.S. And that creates a scale and a volume that we have a very small market share of and where is the best return, where is the LTV to our CAC in there, and it's much better spent in North America right now. If I think about Europe, then the market itself is the same size, but each of the individual countries will have a slightly different supplier base, which fragments that part of our business model. So the position we're in is looking after our existing customers right now and in North America, and there is market share to be gained there at a much better LTV to CAC than we could do in Europe right now.

Great. A couple of questions on Facilisgroup, which are a bit more financial. First of all, what are the trends in consolidation within the target market that might limit the addressable market over time? Then are there any signs of stress in that market, for example, increasing bad debts or lengthening like-for-like debtor days? And then finally, for clarity, are new contracts on comparable gross margins to those shown in the presentation? Or are you having to fund new business with short-term subsidies?

Yes. Okay. Good questions, long ones. And so acquisition-wise, acquisition does happen. So in fact, I'll go to that slide, if I can. So we do say that in those gray bars there, there's a little kind of analysis of how they split between businesses that have been acquired, businesses that we've actually asked to leave and businesses that have chosen something else. And what you can see in there is that, that numbers, 19 to 16, I expect that kind of average to probably continue. But if that average continues on a growing green bar and businesses that are actually attracting into Facilisgroup, then obviously the numbers grow. We celebrate when a partner is acquired because they probably put a lifetime of effort into growing their organization at their own risk and have built something that has value then to sell on. And I think that -- so it's -- we lose a customer or we lose a partner, but actually, they've kind of -- congratulations to them for actually building something of value that has -- they can pass on. And so we say well done to that. So I do think we'll never be 100% in -- those gray ones will never disappear. And so that will naturally happen on an ongoing basis. And I don't think -- if I looked at that over the last 4 years, I think that's the number that continues. I don't think there's going to be a dramatic increase or decrease in that in the next few years. In terms of debtor days, part of the 2 or 3, maybe 4 of the churn is businesses that have struggled and then haven't been paying Facilisgroup and then obviously, you use a payment plan, you're in touch with them. But eventually, we have to say, if it's not right for you, you can't pay, we exit. And outside of that, we get paid monthly upfront and advance. So that is absolutely fine. And the final point was on the gross margins. We have a single price list that is given into our new business team, which is exactly the same that it is with our existing partners, and that is what they use. There might be very occasionally things done around there, but there is one price list that everybody comes on. Everybody gets the software to sort of run their business and the services around that, and it's on a price list, which all of our customers understand.

Okay. That's great. One slightly more technical question. With the sunsetting of Comercio orders, how do you intend to compete down market against commonsku without, it says, GL. I think I mean [ grow ] ledger capabilities. How do you intend to compete upmarket against NetSuite and other ERPs?

Yes. And I think the market obviously has other offerings in there. And I think we're aware of the capabilities and the fragility of other competitors in there, but we're concentrating on doing what's right for us and our partners. And so our pricing list goes from starts at GBP 2 million, and our biggest customer is around about GBP 70 million. And that's sort of our -- GBP 2 million to GBP 20 million is a sweet spot, but certainly, we're kind of growing with the businesses that are outside of there. So we are concentrating ourselves doing -- I think we've got a unique and wonderful business model that is about technology, the supply chain buying group and the community, and that's unique in our industry. And I think if we get those things right, I think we will be at a great place in the industry. And I think there's room for lots of businesses, but I think we'll be one of the leading ones in there. And that's kind of the way that I'm pushing forward is getting what's right for our partners, our suppliers and our business.

Okay. One perhaps on -- again, on the financial side. If revenues grow as hoped, what are the implications for working capital intensity and cash conversion?

Yes. So when we talked about revenue growth and investing for revenue growth today, we've been talking at that accelerated level about Facilis. Facilis is a very working capital-light model. So there is very little working capital in there, and I wouldn't expect that to change our dynamic. We've moved our cash flow conversion forward to kind of just over 90%, and that's where we expect it to stay. And that's a contribution of the really good -- really strong cash-generative characteristics of Brand Addition and they've been consistent throughout. And then Facilis, our ability to move that forward last year was because we normalized our level of investment in CapEx. And again, that normalized level we expect to continue.

Okay. Thank you. There actually is a question on tariffs. I know you just mentioned it, Chris, but last year, tariffs was a huge topic. I'm interested to know how you navigated through those? And is there any ongoing impact?

Yes. So tariffs is kind of most simplified macro level, really affecting businesses in the U.S. buying out of Asia. And so from a Brand Addition, the products business, probably around about 25% of our Brand Addition business is in the U.S. and very little of what we buy there is do we do direct. So that's really on that level, not -- it didn't affect us hugely. And where it did affect us or where it affects the industry is the suppliers in the U.S. who are buying out of Asia and then servicing our -- servicing the local buying that U.S. distributors are doing. And so I think obviously, they had huge amounts of disruption into their businesses. And I think we're amazing in how they responded to that, how they supported us and making decisions around stock investment and kind of where to spend their money when they didn't really know how tariffs would play out. So I think there was some disruption this time last year, and you can see a little bit of that in the preferred supplier spend in Facilisgroup. But I think the -- its overall impact has not been significant. Now that's not to say that the teams and the guys in terms of navigating that haven't worked really hard because they have, but our -- the impact on our business was kind of not significant. And kind of -- let's see how that plays out this year, but I think the same principles apply.

Great. Just we're down to our last question. [Operator Instructions] Otherwise, I'll just ask this last one. It's going back to the LTV and CAC slide and the conversation around that. Question is, since you spent $1 million of incremental CAC during 2025 and the LTV is $7 million, why wouldn't you allocate a lot more to this activity? And where do you believe the point of diminishing returns is given the competitive landscape?

Yes. And I think absolutely, that's what it does say and we are. And so -- but I want to do this in a way that we continue to build evidence and confidence. So I don't want to just throw tens of -- millions of pounds at it, I want to kind of go, we've done GBP 1 million, let's do GBP 2 million, let's do GBP 3 million, let's GBP 4 million and make sure we kind of continually can prove a repeatability of that. And so I do think 7:1 says absolutely spend more, and we are, but we're doing that in a controlled and disciplined manner. We won't hesitate to continue to invest if those metrics continue to come through. And I think the kind of the well sort of publicized number of 3:1 and people say anything above that is strong. And so let's see where that takes us over the next 6 months, next 12 months and 18. But my expectation is we continue to invest behind that over that period and do more and more each time as we continue to gain in confidence. And I think anything above GBP 3 million would say keep going.

That's great. That's a great note on which to end. There are no further questions at this time. So I'll hand back to you, Chris, for any final closing remarks.

Thank you. Yes, I think we've made some great progress in 2025 and really excited about what can happen in '26 and '27. But that's not down to the kind of 2 of us sitting here, that's down to some amazing people all around the organization. So this always gives me a public forum to say thanks to everybody at Pebble Group and the team there at Brand Addition and the team at Facilisgroup. I do -- very proud to be part of that organization in total and the individual businesses as well. So thank you for those guys. And I say we're looking forward to continuing to run the businesses thoughtfully for the long term and looking forward to kind of bring some revenue growth in 2026 and '27. So thank you very much, and we're easy to find if there's any further questions.

That's great. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Claire. This is the end of the webinar.