The Property Franchise Group PLC (TPFG.L) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Property Franchise Group Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself, however, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. And I'd now like to hand you over to Gareth Samples, CEO. Good afternoon, sir.

Good afternoon, and thank you for taking the time and trouble to attend our half year results presentation today. We're delighted to be able to talk about record first half performance, and we're going to cover today highlights of the year, financial review that Ben, my CFO, is going to take you through, our strategy for the years ahead, a summary and outlook and then give you the opportunity to ask any questions you'd like to ask. So today, Ben and I, I'm the Chief Executive Officer for those of you who haven't met me and Ben is our CFO. So a little bit about the group, we've been on a pretty rapid sort of growth strategy over the last 5 years. We are now the U.K.'s largest multi-brand property franchise group. We entered the AIM top 100 in June of last year, we now moved our market cap on to about GBP 360 million, which puts us about 25th in the most valuable AIM company, so really moving forward. We've got a proven multi-brand franchise model. We look after 18 unique brands. Five of those are national. Ten of those are regional, and we've got one international franchise brand. We're the largest network in the U.K. in terms of property businesses. We look after 1,900 businesses across the group. We have a financial services business with 300 financial advisers. We're Mortgage Advice Bureau's biggest introducer. We'll do 25,000 mortgages this year and about GBP 4 billion worth of lending. We have diversified revenue streams but with high recurring revenue. So 47% of all of our revenue is recurring, which is really high. We've got really strong cash generation in the first 6 months of this year, GBP 13.2 million cash from operations. We've had a successful acquisition strategy across both TPFG and Belvoir, actually over the last 10 to 12 years with 9 completed acquisitions across the group. We've got a progressive dividend policy, and we increased our dividend last year. I'm delighted to say, we're going to do that again at the half year, so 17% increase in our divi from 6% to 7%. And probably 1 of the greatest achievements over the last 12 months has been putting in place a highly experienced leadership team that really do run the business day-to-day and give Ben and I the bandwidth to look at strategy, the investor relations. And that's been a huge plus for both of us. And those group MDs are considered real experts in the field, and we're really lucky to have that sort of senior leadership team supporting the business on a day-to-day basis. So I think, overview, we've got a track record of delivering growth underpinned by a resilient business model with considerable opportunity arising from the group's increased scale and reach, and we'll touch on a bit more of that later in the presentation. We said back in April that we're going to report in 3 distinct divisions. So we've got Franchising. That will always be our biggest revenue stream. You can see some of the brands there on that slide. The Franchising revenue accounts for 54% of total group revenue. Second biggest revenue stream is Financial Services. We're part of Mortgage Advice Bureau. We also have a small business that's attached to Primis, and that accounts for 30% of our total revenue. And then we've got Licensing, our new business that we acquired in May of last year, Fine & Country, the upmarket top-quartile estate agent looking after properties over GBP 1 million; the Guild of Property Professionals, a network of 800 estate agents that buy a range of services from us to be members of the Guild. And that income stream represents about 16% of the group's total revenue. So that gives you an idea of the scale of the group and where that money comes from. In terms of the key highlights for the first 6 months of this year, so we've had a record set of results, and we say that every 6 months, partly because of the acquisitions, partly because we've been really successful over the last few years. So a record half with significant financial and operational progress. Our revenue grew to GBP 40 million, which was up 50% on a year ago. Our EBITDA jumped 65% to GBP 15.7 million. And as I touched on earlier, we're delighted to be able to report a 17% increase in dividends to 7p. 47% of recurring income and GBP 13.2 million worth of cash generated from operations. In terms of synergies, we said at the start of March last year that we believe there was GBP 2.5 million worth of synergies in the 2 acquisitions we did last year. And we've made really good progress in the first 6 months of this year, bang on target to complete that GBP 2.5 million worth of synergies by the end of the year. We've launched our biggest initiative across the franchise business this year, and we'll talk about the Privilege campaign. But that really has demonstrated the new scale that the group has. I think when you put 2 or 3 business together, you hope that 2 and 2 equals 5. I think the opportunity that we now have almost feels like 2 and 2 equals 8 and 9. So lots of work to execute on that opportunity but opportunity all the same. And we touched on last time the exciting opportunity that AI brings to the business. We've got 14 million data records across the group, and utilizing technology to deal with those leads better, more efficiently, more effectively to deliver better quality leads back to our franchise partners is a huge opportunity that we're working on. And again, a little bit later in the presentation, we'll touch on some of the detail around that. So they are the key highlights for the first half of the year. I'd now like to hand over to Ben Dodds, our new CFO, who will take you through the financial highlights. So Ben, over to you.

Okay. Thanks, Gareth. So as Gareth referred to earlier on, from a revenue perspective, really kind of positive first half of the year. We've delivered GBP 40.3 million worth of revenue, which is a 50% increase year-over-year. There's obviously the acquisition effects within that, driving that really high number. But if you take those out, actually the underlying business on a pro forma basis has grown and the revenue has grown by 8%, so again, strong underlying growth. Of that revenue, 47% is from recurring sources. So again, kind of hovering around that circa 50% mark that we generally kind of have as an internal target. And adjusted profit before tax reporting GBP 14.5 million, which is up 59% year-over-year, again, there being some acquisition effects within that kind of variance year-over-year. And if you strip those out, the underlying profitability has improved by 18%. Clearly, the difference between that revenue growth and the adjusted profitability, adjusted profit before tax growth being where the synergies that Gareth has already kind of referred to are helping to improve that overall margin. Dividend, we're going with a 7p interim dividend, which is a 17% increase over the 6p that we announced this time last year. And closer to the balance sheet and cash flow, net debt at the end of June was GBP 10.9 million, an improvement obviously over 12 months ago of GBP 3.4 million. Included within the first 6 months, we've obviously had to pay the deferred consideration on the Guild and Fine & Country acquisition that we did last year and all of that is encapsulated within that net debt figure, holding our leverage again really low at 0.5x, which, again, we're really happy with. Cash from operations, GBP 13.2 million, which has increased significantly over last year and just demonstrates the cash generation that we're making in that kind of conversion of profitability and our adjusted basic EPS improving 18% to 18.3p. So that's the key financial highlights. One of the things I think is just worth kind of sharing with you is how that kind of revenue and profitability is made up on a divisional basis. So certainly, you can see on the left-hand side, Franchising making up 54% of our revenue, Financial Services making up 30% and then Licensing with the remaining 16%. And again, when you then look at the adjusted operating profit on the right-hand side, you can see that Franchising with that, I suppose, greater margin that we get out of franchising really kind of driving the total share of profitability at 77% with Financial Services then at 12% and Licensing at 11%. So just deep diving very quickly into each of the individual divisions for a moment. And I think it's worth just very quickly, for those that are new to the business, touching on what is the kind of incredibly high-level business model of each of these kind of divisions. Franchising, probably one that's most well understood and is fundamentally where we have franchisees who are lettings or estate agents who are offering letting sales, financial services to their clients, principally with a focus on lettings certainly historically, and we as a business are earning management service fees, so in effect, a percentage of revenue model on those revenues earned by franchisees. You can see in the chart on the right-hand side broadly how the revenue kind of breaks down within the Franchising division. So we split those management service fees between lettings and sales. And again, you can see based on that kind of historic lean towards lettings, lettings remains a big proportion really of that overall Franchising revenue. Second then to that is the management service fees that we make on sales activity within the network, and then we have our owned offices and other income. And you can see generally across the board, actually, we've grown all of those elements from H1 '24 to H1 2025. When you look a little bit deeper, lettings MSF on a pro forma basis, again, taking into account the acquisitions, has grown by 4% probably not quite as strong as we would like in an ordinary year, but when taking into account some of the environment at the moment around the Renters Rights Bill, which we'll touch on a little bit later on, actually still a really kind of positive result. Sales growth within the year has been fantastic at 18%, partly driven by some of the stamp duty changes that we saw in the first quarter. And you can see that level of recurring income, particularly in Franchising is very high, very much driven by that kind of lettings MSF proportion that comes through. Adjusted operating margin for this division is at 58%. So it's a very kind of healthy division financially. Just very briefly touching on the priorities. So talking about the Privilege program, which Gareth will refer to, I think, a little bit later on and what we're doing around the rollout there, really continuing to drive the sales opportunity, particularly within the Belvoir business where it was a little bit poor historically, and we needed to improve it, launching some AI offerings around call handling and property management, which will again help both drive the profitability of the franchisees and ultimately provide us a commercial opportunity as well and ultimately maximizing the sales opportunity from the pipeline that we've managed to build and is at GBP 43.5 million at the end of June, which is the largest that we've ever had on our sales pipeline, so really strong for that division. Financial Services, so again, simplistically from a model perspective, we have 293 financial advisers who are in effect working with retail customers to arrange mortgages and protection products, and we are earning a commission based on that arrangement, and that commission is fundamentally the revenue that flows into the business. You can see it's grown by 54% year-over-year from H1 to -- H1 '24 to H1 '25. And again, there will be an element of acquisition effects within there. So the underlying improvement was 14%, so again, really, really strong, supported by that sales activity that we had seen in H1. So it's very much kind of tied to that, but again remains an important part of our business. Priorities, again, very much kind of focused around what we're doing on productivity per adviser. So how are we driving the amount of revenue that each adviser is achieving within a period higher and higher and doing that through process improvement but also some of the AI projects again that we'll refer to. And it's again just looking at how we continue to recruit business partners and other employed advisers as we go forward in order to be able to deal with the lead generations coming through. Just finally on Licensing, so probably the newest division to the business and was really the fruition of one of the acquisitions that we did in May of last year. It's very similar in respect to that of Franchising, but the principal kind of difference is that instead of it being a percentage of revenue model, this is about a recurring fixed fee in order to be able to operate under that particular brand. Fine & Country is that upper quartile and estate agency brand that's operating both U.K. but importantly as well internationally, and the Guild is similar to that, almost a members organization that gives access to a range of different products and services to independent, so operating under their own brand, estate and lettings agents. Again it's continued to build. So if we compare H1 '24 to H1 '25, we've obviously seen some pretty significant growth year-over-year, again, taking into account the acquisition, so pretty significant growth at 514%, bearing in mind there's only 1 month of that within 2024. Again, if you strip that out and have a look at what the pro forma growth is, that's 5% year-over-year. And that's the story really, I suppose, of 2 halves. So Fine & Country is a business growing really strongly, both domestically within the U.K. and internationally, and that's driving that growth. Guild requires, I think, a bit more work. We're just seeing a little bit of attrition on members at the moment, but there's a fantastic kind of value proposition piece to be done there, which we think will provide a significant amount of opportunity going forward. That's clearly a priority for us in H2 to deliver along with our revamped international strategy that we've been working on Fine & Country. In terms of cash, so just touching on it. Again, we're an incredibly cash-generative business. We generated cash from operations of GBP 13.2 million in H1 '25 compared to GBP 3.7 million in H1 '24 and free cash flow per share of 12.8p compared to 3.7p in H1 of 2024, so really cash generative. You can see there in terms of the, what we call the, reconciliation of movements from the start -- sorry, from the end of last year through to the end of June this year, major kind of movements that sit within there. We have the deferred consideration on the acquisition, as I say, of the Guild and Fine & Country. We had some additional kind of tax impacts as a result of going from being a large company to a very large company in the eyes of HMRC, which just increased the amount of pure cash tax paid within the year, which had an additional effect. We obviously paid the dividends that we -- the full year dividends earlier on in the year, and we also sold some shares within the employee benefit trust that ultimately meant that we ended up with GBP 7.3 million worth of cash by the end of the year. Capital allocation. So I think it's always worth touching on this, but really kind of hasn't principally changed versus what we've talked about previously. First priority is always financial resilience. It's about keeping a strong balance sheet, paying down debt and keeping our leverage low as we can, particularly outside of any kind of acquisitions that we're doing. Then it's about looking at how are we investing in our own organic growth. The reality is actually the capital investment required for this business to kind of deliver some of these growth opportunities is pretty small. So actually, the cash outlay for this is fairly minimal, but it obviously is a kind of key priority for us. And then it's about the progressive dividend. We've continuously paid a dividend really since the listing point. We paid out at 56% in 2024. And obviously, we've kind of continued on with that progressive strategy for what we have announced in terms of interim dividend. M&A activity, particularly as we're, I suppose, now moving out of this period of the integration that we've done with Belvoir last year and the Guild and Fine & Country just means that we're now, I suppose, open and looking at what further options might be there available to us. And ultimately, any surplus capital, we'd look to try to return to shareholders through whether it's buybacks or special dividends. So again, very consistent with what we've talked about previously. And probably just the final slide to close from my perspective. If you look at the last 10 years, the general, I suppose, assessment is that because we're operating within the property sector that we must be quite a cyclical business. Now when you look at the 3 key measures of dividend, adjusted earnings per share and adjusted profit before tax, every year since 2014, you can see in that graph that with the exception of the dividend around COVID, this business has delivered growth in each one of those metrics continuously over that period and particularly over the last 5 years, started to build up and try and build up some increased momentum, particularly around the adjusted profit before tax. And that's in a landscape of COVID, Brexit and closer to home within the industry, the tenant feedback. So that kind of cyclicality actually really doesn't exist within our business, and that's principally because of that franchise model where we're taking that smaller proportion of the overall income, and therefore, we're a lot more sheltered from any major kind of downside risks, which enable us to be able to kind of fill those small gaps with other income as it comes through. And just finally, when we talk about the -- obviously, the impressive level of growth that you can see there but also thinking about the cash generation that are going to come from this business going forward, we've talked, I think, historically about the fact that when you add the original kind of businesses that have come together through last year and you look at the amount of cash that they generated over a 3-year period, that was GBP 64 million between 2021 and 2023. That will have only increased in 2024 and is similarly only increasing in 2025 and gives us as a management team, fantastic opportunities to be able to look at how we utilize that cash for the benefit ultimately of shareholder value in line with that capital allocation strategy that we've just talked about. So I think that's probably all from me there, and I'll pass back over to Gareth to talk through strategy.

Brilliant. Thanks, Ben. And before we go into strategy, more of the market updates. 2025 has been really busy. In sales, we always guide on normal being 1.1 million transactions, and if you go back to 2023, it fell below that to about 1.050 million. 2024 was bang on 1.1 million transactions. We believe that we'll be just short of 1.2 million transactions in 2025. So overall, it's been a really good year. You've seen that from the MSF uplift, 18% up so far year-on-year. We've still got a strong pipeline. The summer has been good, so there's still people buying houses. Interest rates are still pretty low. So we're seeing good signs of activity in the sales market, and we hope that continues. Financial Services has benefited from that transactional volumes from the sales market, but also there's a big backlog of remortgages and product transfers going back to COVID times. So we expect in 2025 lending to increase to GBP 260 billion, and that's an 11% uplift on 2024. But more importantly, in 2026, that number jumps to GBP 320 billion. So lots of remortgage and product transfer business to be done next year, and obviously, the base rate reduced in August. So the mortgage market is very strong. And then lettings, we guided last year that we believed rent inflation would slow down in 2025 and it has. We believe that would be between 3% and 4% in the year, and it's running slightly above 4%, so a little bit better than we thought but still pretty strong. And demand continues to outstrip supply. So for every property that comes to market, we've got 10 suitable tenants that would rent it. So across all of the markets we operate in, we've got pretty buoyant marketplaces at the moment. So we're really encouraged by that for the remainder of 2025. Obviously, there are some headwinds with the Renters Rights Bill that we thought that would be in by now, to be fair. Labor committed when they came to power it would be within weeks. We're still waiting. It was in the House of Commons yesterday. They rejected every recommendation from the House of Lords and have now gone back to the House of Lords. But we think it will be implemented -- will get more [ sent ] relatively quickly, and it will be implemented in April or June of next year. So what are we doing about it? Well, we're trying to retain as many landlords as possible. There are people leaving the space. And our job is to try and sell them to landlords that want to increase their portfolio size. And we're having reasonable success of that. In addition to that, we're running educational evenings for self-managing landlords, so inviting landlords to come into our office, presenting to them about the Renters Rights Bill. And what's really clear really quickly is they have no idea about the sort of penal fines, if they don't make themselves compliant, that they could face. So they've worked really, really well. We want to put ourselves very much as the thought leader in the space, the educator within the space, and we're running podcasts and as I say, landlord evenings to make sure that we get our message across, we're utilizing LinkedIn, social media. And as we get closer to the bill coming in, we will ramp up those landlord evenings and those podcasts. So that's the Renters Rights Bill and the impact that's having on us at the moment. And then you've got the growth strategy. And again, those people that have followed the story will be familiar with these 6 growth drivers. And we touched on earlier the leadership team that we've put in place. And this is very much what they do day-to-day. They're driving these initiatives with our franchisees to make them better. Okay? And if I look at where we can see growth, organic growth in the lettings arena, first part of organic growth is the rent inflation. So we believe we'll see 4% a year over the medium term. That will deliver on our lettings book about GBP 750,000 worth of additional bottom line improvement. So that's nice to have. We also encourage all of our franchisees to acquire their local competition. And Ben's done a deal with Barclays where we've got really preferential rates for our franchisees to be able to go and acquire their local competition. So we're pushing them to really look at that and drive those acquisitions. And then again, we touched on earlier, Privilege, which is our three-pronged support package for our franchisees. The biggest part of that is to -- is a rent indemnity policy that we've encouraged all of our franchisees to talk to all of their landlords and get them covered. And that cover will give them cover against rent arrears, eviction costs should they have a tenant that doesn't pay their rent and any damage that tenant does. So for a relatively small cost, we can guarantee the landlord's income, the franchisee's income and the franchisor's income. So we've mandated that policy across the group. Our franchisees are selling that and making good margins on those policies. But most importantly, most of our network will be covered by a rent indemnity policy, which gives everybody full protection. So we're excited about that and the income that can drive into the group. We've got recruitment. So we've got an aging population of franchisee, and we need to refresh that. And we will have 50 new -- sorry, 50 businesses come to the market each year for the next 5, 10 years because of that aging population. So we've set up a department that specializes in finding the next generation of franchisees. And when a franchisee wants to sell their business, they have 3 options. First option, and this is one we don't like, is to bring family in so sons and daughters, but they don't tend to work quite as hard as mom and dad. So we don't like that, and we refuse that in most situations. They can incentivize management. So if they've got a strong management team that's done well, they can incentivize them through shares, and take a back step in the business and go and play more golf or go on holiday a little bit more. And we don't mind that option, but it's not our preferred. And our preferred option is they go and sell completely, and they bring in a new franchisee. And we help them do that, and we charge them a fee when they sell their business and the incoming franchisee also pays us a fee. So recruitment will become one of the biggest important drivers moving forward. What we find with a new franchisee taking over a business is in year 1, total income increases by 21%. Okay? And that's because partly they've got debt. They have to borrow money to buy the business. But partly, they're motivated and they are working a bit harder and they embrace all of the growth initiatives that we recommend. So that will become a big department and a big part of our business over the next 5 years. Sales, we've talked again historically about underperforming in the sales arena and Belvoir are exactly the same. They underperform. So there's a big opportunity to drive our sales result and take additional market share and our group head managing directors and our operations directors work with our franchisees to upskill them in the sales arena to take additional market share and drive additional turnover. Acquisitions, we've touched on the letting book acquisitions. This is more about the acquisitions we, as a franchisor, would make. We've talked about the 2 targets in the franchise space, those being Winkworth and LSL. So they've got franchise businesses. And of course, if they were looking to sell, we'd be interested in those businesses. But other than those 2, there's not much left. We bought most of the others. So we're then looking at acquisition targets that complement the business that we've got. So services that are offered to estate agents, things like tenant referencing or board directors, where we can buy a profitable business and spread that business across our 2,000 outlets to improve profitability and take more of the estate agent spend. So again, looking at profitable businesses around the edges that would complete our service offering. So there are things we're looking at, at the moment. And then Financial Services, we've talked about improving the individual productivity of each financial consultant through the use of technology, and I'll touch on that in the next section. But we're also going to support that and continue the Buy & Build strategy that Michelle and Dorian started in 2017. So we will continue to buy financial services businesses with at least 20 financial consultants operating in that business, and they must be profitable. They are the criteria that we're looking for. We'll definitely do one acquisition this year, and we'll look to do a couple a year, I think, going forward. So that Buy & Build strategy in Financial Services is very much still alive. And then digital marketing and AI, and this is the bit, I guess, we're really excited about. We've got 14 million data records currently. We've got 4,000 leads a day that go unanswered. And we've got technology that's changing quite quickly through the introduction of automation, AI. So we've worked really hard over the last 9 to 12 months with businesses that offer these services, truly understanding where the opportunity exists for us and coming up with some real use cases where we can either make our franchisees more efficient through cost savings, utilizing technology or where we can deliver additional lead generation through a digital marketing strategy that gives better quality leads back to our franchisees. And we're really, really close. We spent the last 9 months perfecting those sort of case studies. We're working with 3 technology companies on some specific projects. And we believe, by the end of this year, we'll have at least 2 of those 3 projects in trial. And to give you one example of what that looks like, I'll talk about property management. Property management, we do because we're predominantly a lettings business. And property management is pretty predictable because tenants ring in and they say, I've lost my keys or my boiler stopped working or I've got no hot water or windows being smashed or my garden is a mess. And we have humans that deal with those inquiries and those queries. If we can utilize technology to triage those initial inquiries, we believe because it's quite predictable, we can solve some of those issues without any of those problems touching a human. And we've got a franchisee in letting that's got 2,000 properties under management. They've got 18 property managers, and that's a big cost to that franchisee. If we can utilize technology to save even 20% of that, then we can save the franchisee GBP 200,000, GBP 250,000 a year straight to the bottom line. Would they then pay for that white label technology? Of course, they would. So they are the things we're working on to try and make the franchisee more profitable, more efficient, more effective moving forward. You've then got lead generation, so 14 million data records, sending the right message at the right time with the right call to action, generating leads for valuation, financial services, lettings and then utilizing tech to better qualify those. At the moment, if I generate a financial services lead, I hand that to a financial consultant. And it's probably too early, so they get a lot of leads that go nowhere. If I can utilize technology to better qualify those prospects, I'm giving the financial consultant a much better lead that's going to deliver a better outcome, and that's where we will see the individual productivity and profitability of each financial consultant start to increase. So really excited about where technology can really assist our business in terms of cost reduction or business generation. And I think because of our scale, we're dealing with businesses that nobody else would be able to deal with, and they want to deal with us because we've got 2,000 offices. So we get the very best technology with companies the single offices couldn't afford to contract with that will give us a better outcome in terms of the technology that we ultimately use. And then that will be another income stream for us because we will then be able to commercialize that technology and sell that to our franchisees. So that's a little bit about our growth strategy. In terms of summary and outlook, the year has been really good. We've acquired 2 really big businesses. We've successfully integrated them into the group, and we're beginning to see the sort of real benefits that scale delivers for us. I think we've got a proven track record of growth, and we've got a really strong balance sheet, which is really positive. We've launched our biggest ever initiative, the Privilege program, to our 700 franchisees, and that's already delivering that sort of growth opportunities for our franchisees and delivering better bottom line performances for our franchisees. We are, of course, aware that there's a budget and that budget, there's not a lot of positive stuff in the newspaper. So we are absolutely aware that there may be some budget bits that are anti the housing market. However, we've had that before. I think if you look at -- go back to the slide that Ben presented where you see that constant growth, we've had negative situations before that we've navigated incredibly successfully. And I think that's a real strength of the franchise community. They're running their business on a day-to-day basis. They're very nimble. They have to navigate the issues that they face, and they're very good at doing it. AI, we've talked about. They have initiatives to drive improved profitability. The strong senior leadership team, I hope gives you confidence. The bandwidth we've now got is better than it's ever been, the quality of people we've got running the business day-to-day better than we've ever had. And that gives us the bandwidth to move forward and continue the drive that we've been on over the last 5 years. And finally, full year trading remains in line with expectations. It was a big ask at the start of the year, a big jump. You saw that graph going from 22 to 30. We're on target to deliver that 30, which I'm delighted about. So without any further ado, that's the end of the presentation. Thank you for listening. We're now going to go to questions.

[Operator Instructions] Just while the company take a few moment to read those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you the recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via investor dashboard. As you can see, we received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. And if I may just start off with the first question here, which reads as follows. Will you be moving from AIM soon?

That's a really good question. We get asked that by a lot of shareholders and the answer is no. I think we've been a real net beneficiary of the uncertainty with companies saying they might go to main or they're going to go to main and clearly, a lot of private equity taking businesses off AIM. We believe we're a really strong business. We are, by market cap, I think the 24th -- 25th biggest business on AIM. We are attracting shareholders we would only dreamt about seeing 18 months ago and AIM has been really good for us in the last 12 to 18 months. So no ambition to move to main, yes.

The next question we have here reads, what are the biggest risks or threats to continued growth?

You want to take that?

So I suppose, principally, one of the key focuses, obviously, for us as a business is our lettings -- part of the lettings business and our lettings book. And obviously, the Renters Rights Bill definitely, I suppose, provides a challenge to landlords in terms of them assessing the returns that they're making and perhaps some of the risks. And obviously, if we can't manage that expectation or that kind of sentiment from a landlord perspective, there is a potential that obviously, we might see some further attrition. I think turning that into an opportunity, actually, we've already seen, I suppose, an element of that. The Privilege program that we've talked a lot about today was -- I suppose, had 2 real objectives. It was about trying to mitigate some of that risk about demonstrating to landlords that we could reduce some of the potential challenges that Renters Rights Bill might bring whilst also providing an additional income stream for our franchisees and us as the franchisor. So it's definitely something that we need to continue to monitor going forward given how big a chunk the lettings element makes of our business. But I actually think it's something that we can take more of an opportunity out of rather than anything else.

Just moving on here. Will the licensing to independent estate agents gobble up some of the MSF?

I don't think so. I mean [ all ] has been talked about for probably 5 or 6 years, and it was back on the agenda about 3, 4 months ago. So we're pro licensing and qualifications. And we've invested heavily in a technology platform, a training platform that enables staff to take their industry exams that will sort of take some of the pressure off when licensing comes in. So no, we're pro licensing. We've got everything set out to be able to deal with it. We've got a good training department. So yes, bring it on.

How much revenue is recurring versus transactional?

So we briefly touched on this earlier on. It's 47% in the first half of the year. That has dropped a little bit, and I've seen a similar question, which I'll deal with at the same time, which is why has it dropped. In the Financial Services division, that has a lower proportion of recurring revenue because of its very nature and so therefore, getting, in effect, a full period impact of the much greater financial services business that we acquired as a result of the Belvoir acquisition has meant that it's just diluted down some of that recurring revenue. Now it's had a particularly strong first half as well. So I think it's probably diluted it slightly more than actually what a normalized position would be, which is probably going to be much closer to that, say, high 40s -- high 40% and circa kind of 50%.

The next question we have here reads, do you have any concerns about possible property taxes being announced in the forthcoming budget?

I think everybody has, to be fair. So yes, there's talk about taxing rental income the other week. But I think what's not helpful is this constant speculation about which taxes. I think I'd much prefer they went back on the manifesto commitment and just put 2p on income tax or something. But we don't know what's going to be there. It is all speculation, wealth tax, property tax, rental income tax. We've got to wait until November. But yes, it's a concern.

Just moving on here. Are there adjacent markets or services you're considering entering?

I think it's probably touched on the acquisition piece I talked about earlier where we're looking at where our partners, our franchisees spend their money. Can we buy a profitable company offering services into estate agents in general, push that across our franchise network, give them a better deal than they can get themselves and increase profits of the business we bought? So we'll look at that. We'll consider that. As I said, if there was loads of franchise businesses to buy, we'd carry on buying those. But I think we can enhance the service and enhance the proposition to our franchise network and deliver acquisition growth. So yes, we'll keep you posted on that.

How worried and prepared are you about the possibility of a cyber attack?

So I think we constantly review our cyber procedures. We have an annual audit in respect of, I suppose, our setup, our cybersecurity. That's conducted by an independent third party. And obviously, we look to make any changes that they recommend as part of that assessment. I think it's very much a moving feast. Technology moves on. The potential cyber attackers are coming up with more initiatives, new initiatives as to how they do these types of attacks. So I think the onus on us is ready to have it as a, I suppose, a constant and monitored priority for us as a business to just make sure we're mitigating and minimizing any potential risks of something coming through.

Perfect. We've got 2 questions here from an investor, but I'll just read the first one here, which reads as follows. Can you elaborate on the drivers of the 18% PF growth in sales MSF, which considerably faster than overall housing market volume growth?

Yes, I can. So we mentioned earlier on, and I think we have done historically that the Belvoir business didn't have a particularly good sales offering. So in addition, I suppose, to the general kind of benefit we would have seen as a result of the improved market, we have, on top of that, been working to relaunch Belvoir's sales offering, which we've done successfully, and we did at the -- within the first half of the year. And obviously, that's also provided some benefit over and above, let's say, what the market has seen on just that kind of stamp duty impact.

I think there's also one other point, which is landlord selling. So obviously, we're the landlord agent. So if the landlord has sold, we've probably done more landlord sales this year, and that will have also driven it. Final point is we're not very good at it. So the disproportionate growth is more likely for us than maybe someone like Connells.

And the second part reads, within franchising, you had a very strong growth in own offices and other. Can you elaborate on the drivers of this and whether you expect these growth rates to continue for the rest of the year?

So I think on a year-over-year basis, we did have improved or we did see growth within owned offices. However, quite a chunk of that is to do with the acquisitions. When you strip that out, actually, the growth was not necessarily particularly exciting. It's something that we want to look at further in terms of the performance of our owned offices kind of going forward.

And I think the last question we have here reads, congrats on the great delivery. Why not go more aggressively for LSL and Wink from an M&A perspective? What multiple do you think would be fair?

Good question. So we're still integrating the 2 we did last year, I suppose, so there's a bit of that. They're both really good businesses. In terms of multiples, I mean, they're both listed. So you've got LSL, I don't know, GBP 300 million. You've got Winkworth at GBP 25 million. So yes, that gives you some idea about the value or how they're valued currently and then you can maybe look at whatever premium. So definitely would do them. Definitely think they are good businesses. And yes, I think we've got a lot of opportunity within the businesses that we've got. We want to get that right, not bite off more than we can chew, get that right this year and then maybe look next year to another acquisition.

Gareth, Ben, thank you for answering all those questions you can from investors. And of course, the company can review all questions submitted today and will publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company, Gareth, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?

Absolutely. Firstly, thank you for your interest in our business. We've had an unbelievable sort of 18 months, 2 years. We're delighted with the way the business is performing and really just want to thank you for your interest and look forward to speaking to you again in 6 months' time.

Perfect. Thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of the Property Franchise Group PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.