Xref Limited (XF1) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
January 27, 2022
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Operator
operatorWelcome, everyone, and thank you for joining Xref's Investor Update Call. [Operator Instructions] I must advise that this conference is being recorded today, Thursday, the 27th of January 2022. I would now like to hand the call over to your speaker today, Lee-Martin Seymour, CEO and Founder. Please go ahead, sir.
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveThank you for that. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for joining us. Happy New Year to everybody. I hope you have all had a good break. This morning, I'll be running through a summary of the release that we put out this morning, together with 4C. I'll try and keep it as short and tight as I can and then open up the floor to some questions, as usual. So on the 5th of January, hopefully, we helped you guys out by popping out our flash figures during the break. In those flash figures, we announced sales of $4.6 million, revenue of $4.3 million and cash receipts of $4.7 million. So some incredible numbers there and growth rates. For the half, we also released that we were 96% up for the half, and that we have actually sold $10 million as part of that half. And we have remained cash flow breakeven for the last 3 quarters and, in fact, for the whole of the calendar year '21 have been profitable. So really good responses from some of our key investors from that January 5 release. In this morning's release, we have added much more color to those flash figures and included our 4C. A key driver for the results is the performance of our digital marketing efforts. And the pandemic has allowed us to make a very nice shift away from traditional sales outreach. It's very, very much different to how we have worked pre-pandemic. Today, it's not about opening an office overseas and filling it with salespeople that make outbound calls. This is now about digital marketing with the amount of people working from home and searching for solutions. We've leveraged the situation, and this has been helped along by the demand that we're seeing in the employment sector around the world. It manifests itself into search. People out there are looking for it. And over the 11 years, we've managed to make sure that we are the most rated -- the most highly rated platform globally on platforms like Google, G2, Capterra, GetApp. I advise you all to have a look at us on those platforms, not just our Google ratings in Australia but in the U.K. or in North America. Alongside the credibility that Xref has, we have an enormous amount of content available online, such as thought leadership, white papers, free tools and apps, and the ability for people that are searching for is to find us to gain that credibility and self-serve their way to the platform. It's about, right now, being bound, and we're doing that really, really well. We've managed to halve our marketing spend since the pre-pandemic figures but in tandem have increased our lead flow by 362%. And you'll see by the figures today that in Q2, we actually attracted 1,600 qualified leads. This has echoed into our sales records that we've been promoting to the market and, therefore, has pushed recognized revenue up as well. As a result, our sales cycles are tighter, our adoption of the platform is faster, our initial invoice values have all increased and improved, and the client list, I'm sure you'll agree, is pretty fantastic for Q2. Globally, with clients at home in Australia, University of the Sunshine Coast; the Chartered Accountants Australia; Rabobank; Downer; the St. Vincent's Health for Australia, a very good varied amount of education, not-for-profit, finance, commercial and health; and then overseas, the Prison Advice Service in the U.K.; as well as DHL; and another football club, which we're always very happy to get, the Wolves Football Club, the Wolverhampton Wanderers; and in North America, the University of British Colombia; Trulioo; Vaco; Cornwall Hospital; are all fantastic clients that have joined us. So to further showcase our strength in not only new business but how we retain a client, I always like to include our cohort analysis. And those 2 figures that I really do enjoy our most -- our oldest clients, our legacy clients from back in 2014 to '17, contributed 13% of our sales figure for the last quarter. And our brand-new clients for FY '22 contributed 16%. We have a really good spread of revenue contributors every quarter. And this just showcases our ability to gain new business and also to attract and acquire new clients. Sales becomes revenue, and not an awful lot of businesses can sometimes say that. The product and the platforms and the credit and the checks that we sell to clients, we recognize that revenue when they use our service. So it's a really nice stat to see our sales pouring into revenue. In Q2, we recorded record revenues for both Xref and RapidID: Xref grew 52% in revenue; and RapidID, 363%. You'll notice, and I sort of aim your eyes to 2 figures in this release, one is RapidID's gross revenue grew 173%, whilst the net revenue, i.e., the margin that we gained from the checks that we provide, grew 363%. This is simply a result of larger discounts being given to us by the third-party vendors as we grow. So one of our largest vendors is the Document Verification Service, the government department that provides our -- what we need to identify an individual. Over the term, we've managed to reduce cost of those checks and -- from $0.80 to $0.50, and that has been echoed into our margins. So we have, therefore, experienced economies of scale and will continue to do so. Every year, I enjoy showing our Christmas recovery. In fact, the whole team gets behind how fast our business can recover from the Christmas period. This remains a clear indicator on just how fast the recruitment sector is returning to work following the festive season. And the majority of our revenue comes from Australia and New Zealand. So we tend to monitor it here because the season is obviously a longer period of holiday here as opposed to the Northern Hemisphere. This year is the fastest we've ever returned from pre-Christmas levels, and it suggests to us that quarter 3 and 4 are going to be very busy, indeed. This year was also the first year that we witnessed a number of checks, nearly 100, being done across different platforms on Christmas Day. So it gives you a sense of the urgency there is in the employment sector right now, and it is not going to wane. Over the next 6 months, we'll be launching Pulse Checks, we'll be driving adoption of our recently launched Exit Survey platform in -- that we launched in November as well as launching our new look referencing platform with added features and benefits. Alongside this, we have a large internal billing engine product -- project, sorry, that will allow us to drive our SaaS subscription revenues on the new platform. As well as this, we will be developing our marketplace of checks, including RapidID, and we'll see growth in not only our additional checks on the marketplace but also the use of our wholesale and API integrations. So it will be a great time to show -- it's a great time to show the mix in revenue and compare these in July 2022. So if you see on Page 3, we've showcased the revenue streams, growth rate of RapidID and additional checks, 364%. Our wholesale year-on-year has grown 100%, a very new part of our business, and we currently hold sale out to people like CVCheck, great partners, as well as Equifax. And most recently, we announced the integration to FirstAdvantage. And so we hope to see big things from the wholesale agreements. A lot of our clients use our service via their business-as-usual platform, i.e., their Applicant Tracking Systems. This initiative started 5 years ago, 71% growth over the last year to $1.2 million worth in Q2 of checks being taken, not on our platform but on other people's platforms. And then with the Xref platform grew again by 45% to $2.6 million in the quarter, we launched our Exit Surveys, and we continued to develop Pulse Checks to be launched in Q3 or 4. In terms of cash collections, these continue to grow, and it was a good opportunity to show you the difference between our OpEx and our COGS. So our OpEx remains relatively flat, and any growth in OpEx tends to be wages and salaries in both sort of additional headcount and salary increases over the year. OpEx will remain flat for the remainder of the year, but it's nice to pull out those COGS because they tend to grow alongside sales, and these represent our commission paid to internal sales staff, so with higher sales comes higher commission, as well as the costs attributed to third-party checks via RapidID. The Xref COGS tend to be about 11% to 13% of our sales figure, whilst, as mentioned before, RapidID is a lower-margin business that attracts discounts with volume. So we have the opportunity to further reduce COGS with further growth in volume and scale from that business. We showed -- in terms of cash surplus, we showed a surplus of $1.4 million over the half, which will look very nice in our half yearly release that will go out late February. And we have $10.5 million in the bank as of the 31st of December. Just to titrate, we have had 3 quarters of cash flow positivity, and the whole of calendar year '21 was profitable. So to summarize, a very strong foundation to the year. In a Q1 and 2 that traditionally and seasonally are the lowest part of our year, exceptional demand is being seen, and it's coming through digital marketing very well. Our product development, growth in subscriptions and the development of the Xref Marketplace position us well for retention, new business and a much, much larger global addressable market. As we enter the busiest quarters of the year, our team, after the festive season, I can assure you are well rested, and they are certainly ready to close out what is soon to be an exceptional year for Xref. I'd like to open the floor to questions, if anybody has anything to ask this morning.
Operator
operator[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from [ Stella Wang ].
Unknown Analyst
analystI've got a question on the annual run rate of revenue you disclosed in the last announcement. Last time, it was $18 million, wasn't it? So I'm just wondering if you can let us know how you calculate this run rate and what figure we're looking now. Can you give any trend going forward? Because $18 million was $3 million more than the 15 number -- the $15 million number you disclosed at the end of last financial year. So any trends would be nice to know.
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveYes. So we really boil all this down to a weakening number. And there is a clue on Page 3 where you can see the green line on the Christmas recovery, you'll see that sort of $350,000, $360,000 a week of revenue before we -- or usage before we dive into the Christmas period and then our recovery rate out of that. And that includes the usage of Xref and RapidID. So if you times that out by 52, you'll see our current run rate. And perhaps, next time we do this, I'll probably give a longer view of usage and how it's grown. A couple of quarters ago, we had a weekly usage shown through the pandemic through FY 2021 and into '22, and you can see that growth. Growth is accelerating because of things like RapidID, the marketplace, and it will accelerate more once we get into that subscription area. And I say that because at the moment, we wait in Xref to recognize revenue once a client starts to hire. As we move into more subscription base and a percentage of our revenue is in subscription, irrelevant of recruitment numbers in a month, we will be recognizing that monthly subscription. So what I can say at the moment is it is somewhere between sort of $360,000 and $370,000, depending on the week that RapidID has. Sometimes it can even be $400,000 a week. And so roll that out 52 months -- 52 weeks, sorry, and therefore, you have your run rate, and that's how we calculate it. I would suggest at the moment, it's probably around the $20 million as a rev run rate. But considering we're going into a growth phase, we're shifting a model and RapidID continues to grow aggressively, I think we've got only good things to come.
Unknown Analyst
analystGreat. Just maybe one suggestion because the weekly number would fluctuate through the seasons. So maybe in the disclosure of this line, you can normalize it [indiscernible] the season you have like, it could be through the roof in June, isn't it, if we're still concentrated on Australian market.
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveYou'll find as we grow out North America, seasonality will not be as drastic because, obviously, school holidays, summer holidays come at a very difficult time, and the peaks and costs are very, very different North and South Hemisphere. So we're starting to see those seasonalities, especially what we've seen in this Q1 or Q2, we're starting to see those seasonalities that we've seen over the last 11 years start to dilute.
Operator
operatorOur next question comes from [ Luke Tai ]. Sorry, Luke appears to have disconnected from the Q&A. The next question is from [ Nick Rode ].
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveWe lost another one? [ Nick ]? Maybe come back to [ Nick ] if we...
Operator
operatorWill do. We have [ Luke ] back online as well. So I will hand that back over to [ Luke ].
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveOkay.
Unknown Analyst
analystCan you hear me, Lee?
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveYes, I can hear you, [ Luke ].
Unknown Analyst
analystGreat. Just interested to know what plans, if any, you have for your growing cash at bank.
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveI think right now, like any business that has just found itself moving into profitability I think is a balancing act. Should we build out free cash? Absolutely. Should we invest into growth? Absolutely. It is a balancing act. And I think we certainly would like to have our cake and eat it. We've shown over the last 8 quarters that our strategy to move into profitability has been well executed. And alongside that, we've brought the growth, and I think we'll continue to have our cake and eat it. It is something that we monitor on a daily basis. And I think that as we grow out during the next sort of 6 to 12 months we'll remain profitable, we'll certainly attract free cash, and both will prosper not just one, if that makes sense.
Operator
operatorOur next question is from [ Chris Seto ].
Unknown Analyst
analystJust a bit about FirstAdvantage. Have you integrated with them yet?
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveYes. So that is continuing right now. We signed the integration agreement and the partner agreement before Christmas and announced that to the market. We've known FirstAdvantage for many years and the key management over there, a great bunch of people, certainly wanting to provide Xref services within their own platform. And not dissimilar to the partnership we have with CVCheck or Equifax, I think it goes along with that strategy that we agreed on years ago, which was that we're not going to become a checking company, but we are going to allow Xref to be consumed wherever a client wants to use it, and we are going to allow checking companies to showcase their checks on our marketplace. And it's a really harmonious relationship that we have with checking companies. We don't compete with them. And I think what FirstAdvantage offers us is not only the ability to offer Xref to their clients in this region but also as we progress the partnership, other regions around the world, but certainly, a very close relationship that we have with the -- that team over there.
Unknown Analyst
analystAnd has there been any reference checks through that partnership?
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveNo. It's very new, so it's being built out at the moment. We only have a build-out with clients in mind. We have a shared amount of clients, so clients that use both FirstAdvantage and Xref. And we've already had discussions with a varied amount of clients that, once we're ready, we'll switch them on.
Unknown Analyst
analystOkay. And do you have any sort of -- I mean, perhaps with the relationship with CVCheck -- do you get a sense of, based on the CVCheck relationship, how the FirstAdvantage might work out from a sort of revenue perspective?
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveNo, not really. We have a cracking relationship with CVCheck. I think we remain 100% agnostic on the checking companies that like to integrate Xref. It's our belief that wherever you are on the planet and whatever size of business you run, however you want to consume your Xrefs, you can do so if that means that you consume them as part of your CVCheck or FirstAdvantage or Equifax agreement. If you want to consume them by your ATS channel partner agreement or natively with Xref, there are no boundaries to a green grocer on a shop corner, referencing his 1 employee a year or a major like Ramsay Health referencing global hires in our native platform or another checking partner. So we're really quite agnostic in terms of our partners, and certainly, our strategy is that you can collect an Xref wherever you are or whatever platform.
Unknown Analyst
analystYes. And since the FirstAdvantage, is it exclusive with Xref? So from a FirstAdvantage perspective, do they offer other reference checking tool?
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveNo, they do not. They do not. In fact, they have a really strong appetite to make sure that they're offering the best checks on the market out to their clients. And I'm sure that like others, making sure that they can offer Xref out to the new and existing customers is -- adds value to their kitbag, and it's not dissimilar to applications or platforms out there offering DocuSign. When we choose platforms as a client when Xref go out and choose Salesforce.com or other platforms, we absolutely require DocuSign, an e-signature platform, to be in there and integratable. Similar to when we're choosing financial platforms, we absolutely need them to integrate to Xero. So this is sort of rite of passage. If you're offering a platform, you must be able to talk to the key vendors of those best-in-breed checks across the planet, and Xref is one of them, and platforms like to make sure we're included in their marketplace, whether they're an ATS or a checking partner.
Operator
operatorWe'll go back to [ Nick Rode ].
Unknown Analyst
analystCan you hear me now?
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveYes, I can, [ Nick ].
Unknown Analyst
analystSorry about that. Lee, congratulations once again on a great quarter. My question is really around competition. And I guess, in the past 12, 18 months, we've seen more copycats really coming to the market. And I guess, I wanted to get your thoughts around what -- how you're seeing that reflected. Is that impacting price? What's the feedback you're gaining from customers and sales teams? And also, I guess, whether it presents -- I guess, there's some inherent threat there. But does it present opportunities as well perhaps in terms of potential acquisition?
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveGreat question. And I've answered it a lot of times before. But I think as we pull out the pandemic, the answer has changed slightly, especially with the level of development we're doing. So we don't suffer too much competition. In fact, when we began, there was no one on the planet doing what we were doing 11 years ago, and people thought we were [indiscernible]. We have to convince clients that what we were doing made sense. We were very early to the market. In fact, we never had anyone to clash against or compete against. It's really good to have competitors come into the market because they help justify that this is a thing, automated referencing and the verification of candidates across the planet is a thing. So their marketing tends to help us. However, the competitors that we have in the market tend to compete with us on price. Because we've been here so long, our product tends to outstrip. And the reason I say that is because Xref is fully multi-language. It's multi-region. We have an ISO 27001 global data security certificate. And alongside that, we have 24-hour support across the platform. And so it's really hard to compete with us today in automated referencing. But whilst people are probably designing, as you say, maybe copycat platforms, that's all well and good. They remain to compete with us only on price. However, we are just about to accelerate out of that space with not only the marketplace additional checks, wholesale agreements and channel partnerships that we do very well, but we're just about to accelerate out of that with the platform with the offer of both Pulse Checks and our new Exit Survey platform. So whilst our competitors stay in preemployment, we then move across into -- from preemployment into the whole life cycle of a candidate from when they are employed to when they inevitably leave and beyond. So our strategy opens us up -- opens our addressable market up to not only talking to preemployment teams, i.e., recruitment teams and talent teams, but also to start talking to the HR teams and payroll teams within those businesses that we already have. So with our 11,000 users and 1,300 key accounts across the planet going out to those companies that love us, trust us and enjoy using our platform every day, going out with further development of new products in the marketplace and providing a broader level of product, even providing the ability for them to move from credit to subscription, means that any competitors that are new to the market and only offering one element of that, then they aid the message, but they're the right competitors to have. Hopefully, all of that made sense.
Unknown Analyst
analystIt did.
Operator
operator[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from [ Matthew Stecker ].
Unknown Analyst
analystLabor markets, obviously, globally speaking, are running extremely high at the moment. Lots of powering happening, lots of job advertisements. And I'm just wondering if your team had any thoughts on the December numbers in the job advertisements in Australia, where buyers don't -- were -- came in 5.5% lower than the preceding month. And how you see that picture developing over the next calendar year? Obviously, still a lot of certainty, but also, how that might affect the business?
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveYes. Pleasure. Good question. I have always avoided looking at job adverts as a key metric. And the reason I say that is because during a downturn, the recruitment sector tend to post a number of the same job ads to try and conjure up candidates. And so you see an explosion of adverts to buy and generate candidates, so that you can provide jobs open in a down period. Plus, in fact, for us, it's very much at the early stage of recruitment when you're putting an advert out there. Whereas referencing -- if you have a look at our Christmas recovery, referencing is at the most sticky end of that recruitment process. So you only reference when you know you're going to make a hire. You put a job ad on when you think you're going to hire and you might not end up doing so. You'll probably put multiple job ads on in different ways to try and conjure up somebody or a candidate. So job ad stats are always -- were not very reliable. But if you have a look at our Christmas recovery, you'll see that the industry has just got straight back to work, and the revenue growth over usage shows that not only are we selling these checks but companies are using these checks a [ right or not ]. The market is very hot. People are moving for different reasons, probably more reasons than ever. So they're moving so that they can get away from a pandemic-subject sector like hospitality, retail, nonessential services into more of a pandemic-proof sector like health, not-for-profit, government, education. People are moving because they have been out of work, and some are moving because they've been in their roles for the last 18 months through the pandemic, and they just need a change of scene. Some are also moving country. So I actually had a lovely interview with somebody on Monday that had just moved over from South Africa, with 2 children wanting to be somewhere a little bit safer and a little bit more away from those issues. So you're seeing people move country. However, at the moment, Europe, the U.S. have limited people coming into Australia. Because of the cases we have, we're certainly still in the grips of the pandemic. Borders are sharp. Travel is difficult. But we are crying out for labor in Australia. So this isn't going to go away anytime soon. We have got years of a huge migration of talent. And I think that it's certainly not going to be short-lived. We are certainly going to see the roaring 20s again.
Operator
operatorThe next question comes from [ Kevin ].
Unknown Analyst
analystLee, congratulations on the amazing quarter. My question is around the sales. So since the pandemic began, a lot of the sales have been internalized, moving from outbound to inbound leads. Do you think it's a sustainable way to attract sales and leads even in a post-pandemic world?
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveWe still do outbound, but we do outbound on large enterprise deals. So my sales team are the cream of the cream, and they only concentrate on large enterprise clients. Our account management team concentrate the growth -- concentrate on the growth of current clients, and our customer success team make sure that the users on our platform every day have the best experience possible. So we're still very human in our approach to clients. However, in North America, people do not want a sales call. They want to hunt their own solution. They want to self-serve their way into that platform. They want to test it for themselves. And only when they're happy are they going to speak to a salesperson. You'll notice in North America that people don't use terms like account executive or sales development or business development consulting because those titles don't get them in the door with the client. So what they've done in North America to try and solve that is that they've re-termed all of their salespeople to vice president of this and vice president of that and a lot of the planet and -- just to try and get their title in the door. And really, what they're combating is North Americans do not want a sales call, and they do not want a hit on LinkedIn. It's very difficult. But if they go out and they hunt for solution and they find credibility, they find us on an ATS marketplace. They find us on G2. They look at a testimonial video. They use Template Builder, then they come through Xref Lite and take a free reference to prove to themselves that it works. At that point, they're probably going to suggest, "I actually need a conversation because my requirements are bigger than what Xref Lite can provide me," and at that point, we speak to them. What it does is it not only gives the client the best way and the best journey into our platform, but it also removes all of the noise from the tire kickers and the small businesses that take up a lot of our sales team's time. And it centers our sales team's efforts just on the highly convertible larger clients on the planet that need that bespoke help. And you can see that echoing in the client list that we shared this morning.
Unknown Analyst
analystRight. That's great. Lee, that was really interesting, and congratulations again on a great quarter.
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveMy pleasure. Thank you so much, Kevin.
Operator
operatorOur next question comes from [ Shaun ].
Unknown Analyst
analystLee, really good quarter there.
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveThanks, [ Shaun ].
Unknown Analyst
analystJust a multipart question from me just on sort of the international aspects of the business. I might have missed this, but what was sort of the percentage of revenue or sales that came from sort of outside Australia? And given you want to reduce the seasonality at a time, I guess, you obviously want to see overseas grow faster than Australia, are you seeing sort of that trend start to play out?
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveYes. Sure. So we don't make our lives very easy because we continue to have a strong growth rate in Australia and New Zealand. And so with the Northern Hemisphere coming in at 16% to 18% of our revenue, we really need -- although they're growing and they're keeping up with their share of revenue, Australia and New Zealand continue to grow as well. So it's, I suppose, our mission. We've got 2 key missions to execute over the next 24 months. And that is to eclipse Australia and New Zealand revenue with that of the Northern Hemisphere, including Europe and North America. But number two is to eclipse our prepaid credit recognized revenue model with that of subscriptions. There are 2 key goals. So you will see it happen. But cast your minds back to 2015 and '16 where we were centered like the rest of the world was in putting an office in Norway, putting an office in London, in [indiscernible] hiring leadership teams in those regions. We've actually come all the way out of that. So we've been there. We know what doesn't work. And I think when you're trying to grow a business, as long as you know what you're prepared not to do, you're going to have a great run. And so we have done that. We've tried it. And what we have now in those regions are incredible account managers, incredible business development leaders, great customer success and then some finance to make sure that everybody gets paid and we receive the invoices. But most of those teams are remote. Our head office in Sydney is just down in The Rocks, and our head office -- and that's at the Southern Hemisphere. And our head office for the Northern Hemisphere is in Toronto. These are nice places that people can go to if they need to be social. But apart from that, we are fully remote. And as a result of the pandemic, it meant that we can remain efficient. We can remain profitable, but most of what we do today is via Zoom and online.
Unknown Analyst
analystYes. That's really helpful. And I also noticed, yes, with the new client names this quarter, there's a big tilt to sort of really noncyclical sectors and defensive sort of sectors, which you've been, I guess, consciously trying to do. I think, just, I guess, going forward, do you see that sort of trend continuing? Or do you see sort of more cyclical price come back because they're recovering and sort of hiring again?
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveYes. I would argue that instead of us focusing on health, government, not-for-profit, it's actually our lead flow is coming from those areas because they're the industries that are growing and recruiting right now, but they're also the ones that are -- that do not want to end up in the news for bad hires. So the trust economy right now is very hot because not only are they recruiting, but they are seeing a number of candidates. And the only way to tell whether a candidate has ever done what they say they've done is to check with the person that was there at the time. So referencing is the only way of doing that. So I would say that we are seeing far more trust economy style clients coming through our lead flow, and they are converting with a strength of conviction because of where the market is right now, rather than us saying this is where we need to be to defend ourselves against a possible repeat pandemic. It's actually coming through the lead flow because people out there are searching for solutions, and they tend to be the trust economy doing that.
Unknown Analyst
analystYes. Yes. Got it. And just on your leads, I know you ramped up marketing a little bit, and you mentioned I think before that you're looking to sort of extend a little bit with your marketing budget. I guess do you see scores like the marketing payback is good to just really ramp up that sort of lead-generation spend, especially if you can get sort of really quick payback on it?
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveYes. In fact, we have. So if -- I showed our marketing spend 2 years ago pre-pandemic. But right in the middle of the pandemic, it was about $100,000, which was half again of what it is today. So in fact, it has moved up, but it's still half of what it was. What we're doing is learning what works. And Karina, our Group Marketing Director, is far more analytic. So our marketing team today is much more of a data analytics center than worrying about ordering doughnut holes and events higher for large events provide nothing. So we're looking at our SEM and our SEO, our thought leadership, the content amplification that we have online right now. We're seeing how those leads come in. We're seeing how we can convert leads from our free tools like Template Builder or Xref Lite and how our own platform can generate leads for us. So we have a far more utility-focused marketing team. We are working out ways to better invest in areas. And I'll give you an example. We're very interested in what's going on in Japan. The high users of LinkedIn. There's an awful lot of recruitment going on. And there's a couple of other regions around the world, including Germany. So we tend to -- what we have done recently is actually ring-fenced a bubble of spend and spend it on lead generation in those new markets to see what comes through. And so we can then put a unit cost on how much we're spending on price per click because we know how much we can impact the pipeline for our sales teams globally with a certain amount of dollars in marketing in a region. So we're getting to know what those sort of, I call them, cooking knobs what we need to dial up and dial back during a quarter to make sure that the pipeline is fed for conversion. And we've never been in a better place than we are today with digital marketing.
Operator
operatorLee, we appear to have no further questions at this time. I'll hand the call back to you.
Lee-Martin Seymour
executiveAll right. Well, I appreciate all those questions. As normal, I'm very accessible. So if you have a look on that quarterly, you can see my e-mail or my mobile number in getting in touch with our IR team. So if you need a one-on-one to understand the story a bit more, feel free. But thanks for your time this morning. Thanks for some great questions, and enjoy getting back to work, hire lots of people. Thank you very much.
Operator
operatorLadies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference. Thank you all for attending, and you may disconnect your lines.
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