Tracsis plc (TRCS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

The past 12 months has been a challenging period for the Tracsis business, and this has culminated in a disappointing set of results for the first half of this financial year. Those results have been impacted by 3 key headwinds. The first of those is well-publicized, funding shortfalls as a result of the first year of Control Period 7. For Tracsis, that has hit only 1 part of our business, and that's our remote condition monitoring hardware business. However, that has resulted in hardware volumes being almost 60% down on a like-for-like period from 12 months ago. The second headwind relates to a cyberattack that happened in September of 2024 for one of our major traffic data customers, and we have a multiyear framework contract with that customer. However, they were unable to place any work with us for a period of 4 months. So both of those headwinds had a significant impact on different parts of our business in the first half of this year. The third headwind relates to profit margins in our Traffic Data and Events business. And that largely relates to input inflationary cost pressure, which given the phasing of those contracts and the seasonality of those contracts resulted in a shortfall in our expectations in H1. We have taken actions to address that, and we expect the improvements in performance to come through in the second half of the financial year. As a result of the uncertainty that is ongoing, we are, therefore, going to take a much more prudent approach to both how we forecast the remainder of FY '25, but also how we will forecast future years of growth for Tracsis. We remain absolutely confident in our long-term strategy. We continue to make long-term investments that are about growing recurring revenue and about growing transactional revenue. And in both of those areas, we have seen really strong growth in the first half of this year. Recurring revenue is up 7% on a like-for-like period and transaction revenues, which include our smart ticketing and delay repay activities are up 18% in the period. So we remain very much strongly of the view that we are in a strong position to continue to grow. We have invested in our technology. We have invested in our team, and we have great confidence in the growth drivers ahead of us.

Our financial performance in the first half was impacted by those 3 key headwinds that Chris explained earlier. Despite this, we delivered a solid revenue performance. Total revenue for the group on a like-for-like basis, excluding the prior period revenue from the Transport Consultancy activities we're no longer pursuing grew by 2%, and we had underlying growth in both divisions. Our EBITDA performance was more impacted by those headwinds, and we estimate that the total cumulative impact of those was approximately GBP 2.5 million against the first half of last year, and that was partly offset by underlying growth across the rest of our Rail Technology portfolio. In total, our EBITDA was GBP 1.9 million lower than the prior period at GBP 3.8 million with EBITDA margin of just over 10%. Whilst overall, our financial performance was softer than last year, the group's fundamentals remain very strong. We have a large installed base of products and solutions with customers, and that gives us a solid base of recurring revenue. Our total revenue from recurring software licenses as well as the transactional revenue from our smart ticketing and delay repay products was GBP 12 million for the first half of the year. And as Chris explained earlier, we saw very encouraging growth in both of those metrics. That base of recurring revenue, in turn, underpins very healthy cash generation for the business. And we closed the period with GBP 22.1 million of cash on the balance sheet and no debt. That was GBP 2.3 million higher than the end of the previous financial year and GBP 5.3 million higher than at the end of H1 2024. And that leaves us well positioned to invest in the longer-term growth of the business. And alongside that, those end market drivers of long-term growth remain strong for Tracsis, driven by the rail and the wider transportation industries increasingly adopting digital solutions. We will continue to invest in the long-term growth of the business and allocate capital with a focus on growing recurring revenue, which in turn will help to deliver improved margins and strong cash flows. Our first priority is organic growth, and that includes R&D investment opportunities, both to enhance and deliver the next-generation functionality of our products and also to further consolidate our product portfolio around a smaller number of scalable product platforms. Alongside this, we will continue to look for M&A opportunities with a focus on recurring revenue, earnings accretion and accelerating the progression of the business towards becoming a more product-focused application software business. Throughout this, we remain committed to our progressive dividend policy, and we've declared a half year dividend of 1.2p, which is 9% up on the prior period. And today, we're also announcing a GBP 3 million share buyback, which reflects the confidence we have in the long-term prospects for the group and our future growth opportunities. We've done a lot of work over the last couple of years to transform the operating model of the business, and that is now coming to a completion. That has made the business much more robust and resilient and gives us a really strong foundation for future growth.

So we have made good progress in the first half of this financial year. We have won a number of important multiyear software license contracts, and we've also made really strong progress in deploying a number of our long-term contracts with customers in both the U.K. and North America. So let's pick a few highlights. So in the U.K., we've continued to roll out our Operations and Planning platform, and the key part of that platform is a product called TRACS Enterprise. That product has now gone live with a further 2 train operators in the U.K. and continues our growth in this space. In Train Dispatch, in North America, we have delivered a really important variant of that product, which is to do with positive train control, and sees us open up a really important new market opportunity for us in North America. To keep that momentum going, it's also important that we are winning large multiyear contract that we can continue to fill our order book. We are seeing a material change in the last 12 months where we are seeing the time period from notification of contract award to us actually starting with deployment of these projects typically extend by up to 4 to 6 months in duration. However, we are now planning on that basis. And against that backdrop, we have won a really important smart ticketing contract, which is called Tap Converter, and this is in partnership with the Rail Delivery Group and Great British Railways. And we'll see us take responsibility for all back-office transaction calculations for the future deployment of Pay-As-You-Go smart ticketing across the U.K. outside of London. That will drive significant transaction revenue growth for Tracsis over the coming years. We have also delivered an important remote condition monitoring project in North America, which continues our slow progress in terms of taking what is a really key product in the U.K. and now trying to open up the North American market for Tracsis. And then on the transaction revenue side, we've made really good progress from both a smart ticketing perspective and a delay repay perspective. And alongside that, we continue to build our relationship with Network Rail. We secured a multiyear contract for the continuing development of our RailHub platform, which is a really important part of Network Rail's drive to have 0 lives lost across the U.K. rail industry. So we are making good progress against our strategic growth objectives, and this gives us real confidence in our future. So all of those contract deployments will drive ongoing recurring revenue and transaction revenue growth for Tracsis.

Whilst we expect the external market headwinds to continue through the second half of this year and into FY '26, we expect to deliver an improved financial performance in the second half. That's underpinned by an order book of work for delivery during that period, seasonally higher activity levels across parts of our group, in particular, in Traffic Data and Events, and the actions we've taken during the first half to improve margin performance and profitability. While those headwinds remain, our focus is on protecting the recurring revenue in the business and growing it where we can, in particular, continuing to grow those parts of our portfolio that aren't directly affected. So in Rail Technology, for example, that includes our customer experience and Safety & Risk Management product portfolio and on continuing to diversify the business, including in North America. In that context, we've undertaken a detailed review of our expectations for FY '25, applying a more prudent set of assumptions. That includes no material change in Control Period 7 activity, and therefore, no change in our remote condition monitoring hardware volumes. We've assumed that there are no material new contract wins with train operators either in the U.K. or in North America. And for those parts of our group that have lower levels of order book visibility going into the final quarter of the year, we've assumed run rate activity consistent with historical trends. On that more prudent basis, we anticipate that the group will deliver a full year '25 adjusted EBITDA performance of between GBP 12.5 million and GBP 13.5 million.

We look to the future with confidence. We've got long-term tailwinds in both the U.K. and North American rail markets where there is a real push towards the adoption of digitalization, which will drive efficiency savings, better performance and bring more modern technology into the hands of both consumers and also operators across those markets. We have a strong reputation. We're seeing improvements in delivery. We're seeing improvements in the quality of the outputs business delivers and that only further strengthens the value proposition that Tracsis can deliver. We've got a great team of people. We are investing in the right pieces of technology. We are investing in our business model to make sure we bring all of that together for the greatest benefit from our customer. And most importantly, we have a very clear growth strategy for the Tracsis business. That remains unchanged against the backdrop of current uncertainty. So supported by strong long-term demand for our products and services, the benefits of the work we've undertaken to enhance the organization over the last few years and a clear growth strategy, we have real confidence in the group's future.