Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our results presentation. You've got myself here today along with Richard English, our CFO, and also Peter Beamsley, our head of IR.

We'll just work through. Just some housekeeping matters, everyone.

If we do experience any technical difficulty, we'll just take a short break and recommence. We'll be running questions at the end of the session.

Let's just get straight into it, which is probably the financial highlights of the year. Geez, it's always great to present to everyone what has been a fantastic first half of financial year for Uplift there of 7.3% resets both verticals contributing positively across the organization.

A bit of a breakdown. Certainly EMEA is our stronger performing region, certainly delivering broad-based growth across the business and a healthy pipeline as we go forward.

I know our communication and media vertical did deliver double-digit growth of about 13.5% in the first half. Certainly supported by some really good wins, etc., and reinforce our position as a Tier 1 provider.

Utilities and energy vertical positive as well. Certainly EMEA also contributed positively with 9.4% growth.

That's probably a bit of a focus on the EMEA region for us and probably a bit of destabilization in the Americas, which we all understand at the moment now. $5.7 million, that's a 46.1% increase over the previous corresponding period.

Stimulate the EBITDA margin of 29.2%. The thing which probably most people look, and Hansen has always been that cash-based organization of increasing to 68.8 over 49.3.

Then, consequently, our NPAT also increased by 142% compared to the previous corresponding period. It does reflect the high quality, the benefits which I think Hansen now in its 26th year being a listed entity, that strong discipline around cost management.

Along with operational improvements and productivity gains, we certainly see further opportunities for margin gain, which I'll probably cover off a little bit in the next Hansen and AI. Guys, we all understand we've been talking for the last couple of years about what we're doing in AI, and I know a number of you actually go on-site to our websites and you see our wins and you see what we're actually talking about.

I think it's probably important to understand that AI is well-entrenched and embedded in the Hansen business. Like probably many established companies, this is not our first rodeo if you think in terms of navigating changes over the decades.

We've very successfully, along with all the big names, the SAPs, the Microsofts, we've actually moved from things like mainframes, client-server, we've navigated into the internet, we've navigated COVID, etc. AI is no different to that.

AI is not a concept inside Hansen. It is a structural shift, and we are early adopters in it.

If you think of Copilot, which is the coding used by programmers, has been installed in Hansen for over two and a half years now. It's important to understand we're not trying to retrofit AI into our business.

Now, this gets a bit technical, it's called RAG, which is Retrieval-Augmented Generation. To probably best explain that is to understand our business, we're the custodians and sit across key data.

Just trying to dumb it down as much as possible, it's a bit like you are using AI to ask a question in the internet versus asking a question with very specific data around your customers. We sit at the very heart of the customers, whether it be their call records or usage, their payment records.

We use AI based on exact data rather than asking. It's quite a barrier when we are actually the custodians of that data.

Because we're not retrofitting it, that means we can use that domain expertise cause we're deeply embedded in our customers and our customers' relationships and certainly strengthens us. AI is now embedded in our business now across day-to-day workflows.

Not only the way into which we retrieve data, but we make changes, how we do engineering, that also works the whole way through sales and delivery. We are certainly internally much faster execution, particularly speed to market.

When you're talking in a highly-regulated market, when people are still making massive changes, trying to be fresh and new to the marketplace, we are actually hitting the ground running much faster than we historically have been. AI has been fantastic as far as that's concerned.

Key advantage which I talked about is that measurable productivity and that deep data which we're involved in, because we've got decades of data to which we can retrieve from and looking at that. It is that key advantage Hansen has.

We also deliver high-value AI outcomes, it's actually meaningful data to someone rather than there's no hallucination which takes place with AI at the moment now. We're certainly expanding our AI centers.

We have two centers at the moment now, which is actually just specifically AI products are being defined, which is actually in California and London, mainly in those locations because these aren't people which have been in the industry for we're doing it 10 or 20 years ago. This is actually new and emerging.

On top of that, we developed our AI Champion Network inside our business. We do things which are called hackathons where we bring all our technical people together, and our technical people find new ways and quicker ways of doing it, which we actually roll out in our business.

It's important to understand, guys, AI, we've moved well beyond experimentation. This is actually real.

We now have eight products using it. I'll go into some of those in a moment now.

Once again, we're addressing real customer problems at the moment now and able to find a clear ROI. Probably like a lot of organizations, but where our absolute focus is how we're adding more to our customer.

It's a bit like buying a car and we're throwing in lane change or climate control. We're actually putting more and more around our products to actually deliver greater value to our customers.

We do have a clear AI strategy because we have this unique data, we have this strong balance sheet inside the business, we will continue to invest because we see fantastic opportunities for someone like Hansen in the marketplace. It is embedded, it's commercial, and it's already contributing to our business going forward.

Turn to slide 15. I'll just run over the top of these cause these certainly some of our AI solutions are more relevant to our customers in the way they see it.

products, and certainly some more. These aren't pilots, they're already embedded in it.

We have a trading application, and the trading application actually uses predictive intelligence to look at the predictive consumptions of power, and it helps our customers using our trade products futures in the marketplace and, therefore, better contracts and more money for them. We have agentic IVR Improving first contact: when someone rings up, they can direct the call where it best goes to.

Then you've got the next one that goes to a workflow and exceptions, which helps resolving issues because of the deep-seated history, because, once again, with RAG, we've got the knowledge of calls coming in the past and we've got that history. We also want, as we go forward, and certainly in Europe in the Nordic region, we're behind the meter where people have solar, you've got EV cars, all these matters now.

What AI to help orchestrate how the best utilization of that stored asset and how it directs where the power gets taken from. Product catalog, trying to use natural language, in other words, simpler questions and rather than coding for people to get products to market much quicker than they used to.

EV charging stations. It's a little bit like the first one, but it means in home where to actually charge their car or use the battery themselves rather than going to the marketplace.

Even in Australia here, there's a number of energy companies which provide opportunities now for where you can actually wholesale your power back to them because we know the feed-in tariffs are so low at the moment now. We also have where it's a natural, and once again on our website it will show you, you're actually talking to a machine now answering your questions.

Why? Because with AI, we're able to have the history, similar situations, etc.

Once again, that whole RAG technology built into our software, it's just looking at our data and that history of that data going forward. Taking together, we're already embedded.

It is contributing, but it's certainly reinforcing our long for 2 and 1/2-plus years now at the moment now. If we think about AI once again, and people are talking about it, but I think there's a number of people who truly want to understand it.

We understand AI is shaking up the software industry. We understand everyone seems to be AI into their name, etc.

We're using AI in a RAG situation with the deep history and knowledge of our customers and all their data sitting there at the moment now. We know our systems are very complex, highly regulated, and integration-heavy environments because they have to comply with rules and regulations.

Hansen works very hard to add as much value as we possibly can to all of our customers as they go forward. We are embedded.

We are the domain. We sit at the center of that great big data lake of information as it goes forward.

Because with the database of record and that source of truth, and certainly compliance, it's really important to understand Hansen's role going forward with our customers is actually more deeply entrenched than it probably ever has before. These systems are complex because changing over a vendor or a customer in our case sometimes takes years, but then you lose that deep history.

Customers now understand to look at the buying patterns, change patterns, usage patterns over a long period of time helps them predict their business going forward. Eroding decades of logic and metering inflows, etc., could become detrimental to them at the moment now.

Rather than rely on that as some sort of heavy moat, we're trying to add value to that moat, which is why people are actually entrusting us moving forward. Coding, there is no doubt our ability to code now is much, much quicker.

The last number of calls on this, you've heard me talk about subject matter expertise. Hansen is promoting very heavily subject matter expertise, that deep-seated understanding of the industry, the compliance, and the data to move forward.

Our customers don't wish to gamble away which affects their revenue, their infrastructure, or that absolute trust for their citizens, their compliance. Guys, we're not a generic SaaS organization.

We have always, and will continue to be, this mission-critical lifeblood of hundreds of organizations around the world. That's our quick talk on AI.

I hope it's helped a little bit to explain what RAG and LLM stands for and how it actually works. Richard, if I could hand over to you in a bit more detail, please.

Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, everyone, for joining the call.

I think you can hear the passion in Andrew's voice. We are taking the AI journey very seriously and you'll see from our slide pack that we have already a lot of products in market and revenue-generating.

Let me walk you through the financial slides, and I've got a few key points to make as I move through them, and I'll draw your attention to those as we go. Top-line growth: 7.3% growth year-on-year.

Admittedly, last year the first half was softer than the second half, and you can see there that last year we did $178 million versus 215 in the second half. Nonetheless, $191 million of revenue growth again driven out of EMEA.

You'll see in our slide pack that EMEA now represents over 70% of our business. It is the growth engine of Hansen.

We've also made a recent acquisition into EMEA with Digitalk, it continues. There's been a lot of talk in the market around FX and the impact of FX on revenue.

For companies like Hansen, of course, we are exposed overseas. We had some modest FX tailwinds, immaterial, but the Aussie dollar was depressed against the four key currencies that we deal in, being the Canadian dollar.

You would have seen in recent probably two, three weeks, the Aussie has strengthened, and we're now expecting fairly modest full-year FX headwinds at the top line, and I'll talk to what that means on a cost base shortly. They won't be material, but there might be a small headwind based on the current spot rates.

Andrew will talk shortly to the full-year numbers, but we've done 191 million in the first half and we are expecting our second half to be stronger than that, which is very, very positive. Moving on to probably just as an important metric for us is around our profitability, and underlying EBITDA, this is one of the key points to mention, the EBITDA performance is particularly solid.

Our margin is 29.2% in the half versus 21% at the same time last year. You can see a material step up in our second-half numbers.

Andrew talked to AI initiatives, speed to market, productivity gains. You can see in our numbers it's absolutely clear across all of our delivery function, and in fact all of our corporate services function as well, and there are legitimate productivity gains that are evident in the first half and will continue to be so over the next 12 to 24 months at least.

Moving down to underlying NPATA, look, it's a reflection of the underlying EBITDA going up. Obviously, NPATA is up.

Income tax rate: 26.2%. I think for the second half of the year it'll be around the 25% to 26% mark.

Then finally on cash EBITDA, which really is the key metric for us, this is our profitability excluding R&D capitalized from an accounting standpoint. 16% cash EBITDA margin last year jumping to 26% this year, we are well and truly back on margins that we have talked to the market for many years.

We are heading towards 30%-plus, and Andrew will talk to that shortly. In terms of FX, I mentioned the FX tailwinds in the first half from a revenue standpoint and the headwinds in the second half.

That's obviously negated on the cost base. For those that know Hansen, we have a lot of our costs sitting overseas in areas where GBP, euro, Canadian dollar this jurisdiction.

The strengthening of the Aussie dollar actually assists in reducing that cost base. From a group standpoint, the FX is probably not a material issue for Hansen coming into the full-year results.

R&D perspective, we disclosed in recent times our R&D expensed and capitalized, and for the first half we expensed or capitalized approximately $15 million of R&D or 8% of our turnover. A significant portion of that is now going directly into our AI applications, toolsets, as Andrew walked you through before.

You can see we've been busy over the last 6 months. Moving on to the next slide.

I think everybody's probably sick of hearing me talk about our diversification, but it's real, it's genuine. We have now over 700 customers, multiple products, two mission-critical verticals, we operate in three regions, and we invoice in over 20 different currencies.

Diversification is key to us being predictable, bulletproof, and robust during I think we all agree some interesting times around the world. In terms of the diversity, you've got the EMEA region now representing 72% of revenue turnover.

That will increase as the year progresses with Digitalk coming into the business from the 1st of January. On the flip side, energy is currently 57% of the revenue turnover.

That will naturally reduce as Digitalk rolls into the comms division for the second half. We expect at this stage it'll probably deliver another or circa $10 million contribution, $10 [to 11?]

million contribution to the second half from Digitalk. My second key point is around support and maintenance.

Now, this is really key for us. Support and maintenance is the predictable, profitable backbone of this business.

You can see here the material step up in the first half of '26, and more importantly over the last 3 years. CAGR growth of 18% in 3 years on our support and maintenance, lucrative, predictable on the first half '25.

That's off the back of rolling out implementations that have now rolled into ongoing support and maintenance contracts. It's a really important point, and I'm glad it hasn't been missed in the community that this is a sign of a very strong business, that support and maintenance is continuing to grow.

Finally on license revenue, there's often a lot of talk around Hansen and licenses. This year will be a low license revenue year.

We expect it to be no more than 8% to 10% of revenue turnover. You can see the large uplift in license fees last year where we had some big wins.

We had a VMO2 license deal land in the second half of FY '25. This year the number will be substantially lower.

I think that goes to the point that we are delivering, and we are expecting to deliver, margins of around 30%, and that's with a much lower license revenue cadence for the year. I think that's important to draw out.

Communications and media, Andrew talked to the growth, 13 and 1/2% year-on-year. Again, EMEA, we're doing some really great things over there in EMEA, and it continues to be a source of growth for the business.

Excluding Digitalk, we think the comms and media business will be growing half-on-half into the second half of the year. We had Scott Weir, our president, here this week.

He presented to the board his pipeline, and there are some sizable opportunities out there. We are optimistic that this momentum can continue into FY '27 as well.

Bottom left-hand corner, you can see the license revenues. I just touched on that.

You can see the $29 million in second half '25, primarily VMO2 and a few other licenses. I will say that our second half '26 we're expecting license fees to be slightly higher.

Overall, if you look at the contribution margin on the table on the right-hand side, this is the perfect sort of table to illustrate what we're doing here. We're growing the top line 13 and 1/2%, and we're maintaining and actually reducing our cost base by 3.2%.

That, of course, results in contribution margin expanding from 48 to Talk the talk for a while now about utilizing AI and other applications to drive efficiencies, and you're seeing it in our business now. Moving on to the next slide, to energy and utilities.

You can see here the business is up 3% year-on-year. The energy business has been through a transition over the last few years in EMEA Nordics with the energy transformation, digital transformation.

They are leading the charge globally on what happens. We are front and center in the Nordics.

More recently, we rolled out one of our applications from Finland into the North American market, we're taking our best-in-breed products and expanding them globally. What is something worth highlighting is the margin expansion.

We're going from 30% last year to 42% this year. Again, revenue growth of 3% and cost control with costs coming down 11% year-on-year.

Again, I talked to pipeline. David Castree, our president for energy and utilities, he has a very solid pipeline.

He's actually expanding that pipeline into parts of North America. There's a lot of activity happening in that market with the municipalities.

More recently, we expanded into new regions. We won a deal in Lithuania and looking at other opportunities in the Baltics as well.

The business is doing well from an energy standpoint and obviously from a profitability standpoint as well. Moving on to what is my third key point to draw out.

I've talked to the margin expansion, our support and maintenance uplift, but our third point is around cash generation, and that's the reason we're in business. We are generating a substantial amount of cash in the first half of the year.

The headline number of 418% seems hard to believe, and I'll just break it down a little easier for you. Operating cash flow is $54 million in the first half versus $10 million at the same time last year.

Remembering, last year we had some buildup of working capital. We also had the restructuring costs for Powercloud and other funding that went through the business, not exactly an apples-with-apples comparison, but this has been a particularly strong first-half cash generation for us.

I mentioned before the R&D investment half. Obviously, we acquired Digitalk net of cash for $65 million, and that closed on the 31st of December.

We also paid out a dividend, $10 million. Then finally, and really importantly, leading to the next slide, we paid down about $30 million of debt.

I think from a cash generation standpoint, this has been one of our strongest halves in many, many years. Finally, on to the balance sheet and leverage.

Off the back of the acquisition of Digitalk, our leverage ratio right now is 0.4, and it's actually declining as we head into the second half of the year. I expect our position will be net cash positive at some stage in FY '27.

We're going to be paying down further debt. We've paid down more debt in the month of January.

This, of course, is a dividend coming up in March. We're paying out another circa $10 million of dividends in March.

That brings our dividends paid out to our loyal shareholders to $71 million in the last 3 years. We're in a very strong position to do further acquisitions.

There's a lot happening in the market right now with valuations for tech companies. We're not going to change our thesis.

We are buying very patiently, very prudently. The valuation is obviously very important to us.

To be in a position where we're sitting with a leverage ratio of 0.4 right off the back of an acquisition is a great place to be. I hope I've drawn out the three key points to me.

We've got some strong margin expansion and increasing to the second half. The support and maintenance, which is the rump of the business, the backbone of the business, is accelerating.

We are highly cash-generative. Over to you, Andrew.

Richard, thank you. Mate, even I'm slightly amazed when you talk about how much we provide our own working capital, use capital to buy businesses.

It's amazing. Thank you, Richard, for your fiscal management.

I just want to touch on Digitalk just for a moment because it is a new acquisition, even though we've spoken to everyone about it. We did complete, as Richard said, on the 31st of December.

It is a great business with some great management sitting in the business. I think we already alluded to that the founder of the business after 30 years uses an opportunity to retire.

We're still transitioning Digitalk under the Hansen unified brand strategy at the moment now. It's very good customers, strong customer retention.

Where we're seeing is some cross-selling opportunities, but I think the thesis when we actually did that deal was based on what Hansen brings to the table. That's a small business up in Milton Keynes in UK with global customers.

What we are able to do is help expand that reach by utilizing our language and culture around the world. We're very, very optimistic of how that's actually going.

We truly believe that global reach. On top of it's reasonably advanced on AI, the fact that we can come in on things like AI and help the G-talk actually move their products forward probably leans a little bit more into if we think about things that we have to buy well.

We've always bought well, and we've always traded on Hansen's key assets, which is our know-how, our etc. I think going forward, we would find other opportunities like a Digitalk to take advantage.

It's a great one, and we certainly welcome all the Digitalk team to the Hansen brand. We certainly keep on looking at other verticals.

I know we talk about it, but I'd probably like to be rewarded for not doing some acquisitions. We've always tried to find where Hansen can add value, and where it's not just be one deal or one transaction in isolation as an island.

We want to move forward. We're heavy into it.

In fact, we've actually team members in our M&A team now in our European office. We welcome them to the thing going forward.

Look, turning to outlook. Guys, we expect our second-half revenue to be higher than the first half, and we're certainly targeting full-year EBITDA margin of approximately 30%.

We told you a couple of years ago we would climb there, and we certainly are. Hansen's always had a long-term view of really about the predictable, the execution, the tailwinds.

As far as the first one, that's visibility. That's the recurring revenues from our customers and the high level of predictability.

Is mission-critical, and the way we're thinking in terms of that is making sure that we're not giving a customer a reason to leave. Execution: it's a proven playbook at Hansen.

We have these deep deep customer relationships with over 6, 700 customers around the world at the moment. Trying to identify increasing license share.

From now, our way at the moment now is how do we add value to our product and our product investor to that thing going forward. Also the opportunity: the decarbonization, smart grid, cross-sell, AI multiplier is happening to all of our customers around the world at the moment now.

We certainly are very lucky to have some great staff, some great innovators in our team. Subject matter experts, etc., and giving AI the tools, as we've done the last couple of years, we're seeing the benefits.

We remain extremely confident. It's not a made-up number, it's something which is real.

Sustainable EBITDA margin of at least 30% over the medium term is the way we're aiming. That's my outlook.

Thank you for listening to our presentation. I'm always sure there may be a question or two, and be more than happy to answer if someone has one.

Hi, Andrew and Richard,

Morning, Josh.

Great. I generally make a habit of not congratulating people on results, but you guys did a really good job on the AI discussion there and really helpful.

First question is on that topic, around AI. Just in terms, you obviously talked about that being an execution multiplier in terms of speed.

In terms of look at your existing customer base for potentially developing those new products, and maybe if we can just expand a little bit more on the new product pipeline. Does that accelerate the time to market on new products, and does it also add additional opportunity for pricing uplift?

Mate,

that's a very, very broad question, Josh.

Yeah.

I don't want to give too much information out, but let me answer the question this way. Efficiency is not just about the way you spend money, it's actually the value for the money you actually spend.

Two, 3 years ago, our journey on AI was how can we add more or do quicker for our customers. That's what we're trying to execute upon at the moment now.

If we can give in the hands of our customers more value for what we already provide, Josh, at the moment now, that's what our goal is. Now, if that means if we can do it quick and we can do it faster, but we maintain the same wallet, that's a great outcome as we go forward.

Our view at the moment now is because we've got these long-term contracts, there's a lot more in terms of our R&D. Part of your question was, we are certainly developing quicker than what we did before.

We're getting things out there quicker in a more natural language out to our customers as we go forward, and they are seeing the benefits. It does mean that we should be able to get newer products or newer services, newer offerings to market quicker than they once were.

I don't want to really give examples, but some complex product offerings or new tariffing or new regulations, which may have taken 3 months, we can now do maybe in 2 weeks. In fact, I was in our Indian office recently having this whole conversation with where we're seeing the benefits of our business.

As far as the business is concerned, it's a bit like releasing a new model of a car: we're just adding more features to the model because we can, and we're utilizing that excess capacity to deliver more for less.

That's great. Thanks, Andrew.

Second one just on support and maintenance, obviously extremely strong result there. You did note that's sort of continuing to accelerate.

Can we just give a little bit more detail about how should we think about the profile of that continuing? I guess as to the second part of it, bringing back in AI, obviously support and maintenance and updates and things that go through, how much more effective and efficient can you do?

Both the revenue side and also maybe just to talk on the margin support profile there as well, how that's aided by

Josh, just in terms of the growth rate, it is right. When the year there's been a particular step up.

I mentioned some implementations that have now rolled in. Some of the customer contract renewals are not such common business-as-usual step up for us.

There's a bit of an uplift from that that's more of a one-off. The message I was trying to get out is that the underlying business continues to grow.

In the year, obviously, substantially stronger. Over the last 3 years, you can see it's a steady growth rate, but I would probably temper it a touch heading into FY '27.

I think it's all heading in the right direction. Your second question around efficiencies, that's exactly what we've been doing.

You can see it in our financials. There is significant product 6, 12, 18, 24 months at least, and it's across the whole industry, it's not just in technology.

It's in many different parts of the world, but we are leveraging it, and I think you'll see some further margin expansion in that area as well. It's

actually, Josh, it's a broader thing. There's also some pent-up changes which regulators want to make at the moment now.

Often the market's having to push back cuz that they can only absorb so much change so quick. It actually goes, if there's more capacity, the regulation will be making more at the moment now.

We do feel regulatory changes will probably be on the uptick the next number of years as well.

That's great. Richard, you're talking on the cash EBITDA margins, obviously strong performance in the period.

I think you've mentioned maybe trending towards 30. Did I get that right, or you're more discussing the other margins?

Yes,

trending towards 30, and that's the outlook from a cash EBITDA standpoint. I think we're at 26, and that will naturally lift as underlying EBITDA lifts as well.

Obviously, we've seen listed market disruption with AI. How are you seeing the pipeline and potentially some of the opportunities that may come up over the next few years?

Do you think you'll be able to take advantage of some of that disruption in the market, and maybe just to give us a little bit, Andrew, a bit more flavor on where the current pipeline is sitting, what you're seeing out there? Obviously, listed multiples have come back a lot, how does that change your view, your parts of your

Yeah. We certainly want to use this reduction in multiples, Josh, to our advantage.

That means a bit of a focus of the team, also looking at listed entities. It's down to where Hansen adds value.

If we can't add anything to the equation, we tend to walk away. We like it where we think because we're reasonably advanced on AI, a lot of companies aren't.

We're trying to find those where we can actually bring value to. Our book is full of just as many opportunities today as it was last year.

It's not moved. You're dealing also with people having to relook at the valuation multiples.

Means if you're privately owned, if I was talking about buying your house for $3 million, now I'm offering you $2 million, you've just got to sometimes let that work through the system. If Hansen some listed opportunities, which Hansen not really done in the past.

We've done some divisions, but there's a number of companies in our space around In a Digitalk, which hadn't been a public company, it never had the legs to truly globally expand, and we just gave it to them for nothing, etc. Our team is just as busy as ever.

You're right, we probably more than ever, we want to buy well, and we want our asset, which is really our know-how, our Hansenization AI, to be used well to optimize any business we buy.

Excellent. Thanks, Andrew.

Thanks, Richard.

Morning, Andrew, Richard, Peter. Good result.

A couple of questions on AI and also energy. Thanks for flagging around the eight embedded eight embedded solutions you guys have put out into the platform.

Just trying to get a sense how many of those are in market versus proof of concept, and maybe just a sense of the quantum of revenue. I understand it's early days, but just trying to get a bit more color around those eight, how many are actually in market, and roughly how much is being produced from a revenue perspective?

All of them

are in market and a proof of concept. Proof of concept means that a customer is actually using them, maybe not the full scale, Garry.

That's where we are at the moment. Business with customers because they don't want to break their businesses.

As far as the commercialization of the offering, if you think in terms with this is not replacing the existing product. Because what you do with RAG, you use RAG on your existing products.

You actually have a module added to your existing app to retrieve data in different context to what we're doing at the moment now. Because we've been able to get these things out quick at the moment now, we're probably less thinking how to use our surplus capacity to add this value to actually be more entrenched for our customers.

Understood. Thank you.

Or a fair bit about margins and talking about the efficiency and productivity improvement, which has been super impressive. Realistically, where do you think that contribution

Garry, I know we all want to disclose where we think it's headed. Look, we're in the same market as a lot of other tech companies.

We are seeing efficiencies. You would have seen it last year and yesterday coming out with an announcement.

There is certainly a speed to competency that we're seeing. Say is that we think this has got some legs to run.

I mentioned 6 to 24 months of productivity gains. I think our best bet, to be honest, is we'll keep updating the market every 6 months with our views.

Our views are no different to the rest of large tech companies out there. You're seeing it every single day in the papers, and I'm just pleased that we've been able to embrace it as

Garry, it's also goes into all your supportive parts of your business, like these new applications which our legal team actually use now, or what happens in finance. We're still 20% of our business is actually operational support for the business.

We're looking across the board where these efficiencies are taking place.

From an energy perspective, looking at the energy segment, it grew 3% of the top line. I just wonder, is there any impediments to faster growth that you're seeing on the ground?

I guess is there any risk around deprioritizing energy transition policy, just in the midst of the geopolitical tensions? We obviously see what Trump's doing, etc.

Has there been any slowdown around that? Cuz I guess I would have thought that the top-line growth for energy

Look, Gary, we probably have a similar sort of view. The problem is when you've got destabilization, and we've all been around this industry for a long time, it does play into the marketplace.

Destabilization, the revenue is not sometimes lost. They've actually just moved out.

It's a longer decision-making process when people are looking to deploy capital or making changes. In the energy market, if you think in terms when the regulator puts a change out, that is compliance, they must do it.

When it comes to their operational efficiency, that probably becomes second to an organization. We think as Richard said, we've got a number of initiatives at the moment now, which we've never taken advantage of.

This is cross-selling into different regions. To sell a product which is very strong in Europe, our first one going to North America, is a catalyst for us to tackle a market we've never gone after before.

That's actually MDM, part of it that we've never tackled before. We certainly see some changes.

I can probably answer it this way and you'll probably understand. We're investing much more in sales and marketing in the energy market than we ever have as a sign of confidence and what the potential opportunity is.

Understood. Last question is probably a devil's advocate question just around AI and the proprietary data.

Hansen's a system of record that acts as a truth for billing and settlement. You mentioned there's proprietary data within the platform which generic AI can't easily access.

Why can't generic AI or agent access that data? I guess the market somewhat worries around systems of records becoming commoditized and reduced to the back end while users interact with an agentic front end.

Maybe just, again, long-winded question, just trying to get a sense of a walk-through why why you don't think that's a material risk?

If you look in terms of our customers' data, they're tasked from their CRM to their general ledger to their compliance, their market responses, their data, their billing, and all those things there. They're all databases of records.

That's exact data. See, the trouble when you start looking at LLM, large language model, it actually is looking at more and not being able to focus into it.

Secondly, a lot of this data is not out in the marketplace. This data is not shared.

It's not on Google, you can't find it. An amazing tool.

As we say inside Hansen, AI is the answer. People just don't know how to pose the question.

There's a degree of in our industry actual data must be accurate and can't be compromised. There's so many stories about the troubles when you go out into the ether, the hallucinations of data which is not real.

Our customers can't afford to ever be looking at data which is not their data. Therefore, to ring-fence it in a RAG is the way to achieve it.

It is, by nature, So, someone trying to enter our market, historical, decades worth of data at their fingertips, all they have is what's out in the ether, which doesn't make any sense when you're trying to make sense of the data, because it doesn't have a

Understood. Thank you.

Stock's up about 16%, well done. Done today.

Thanks for letting us know.

Hi, guys. Good morning.

Morning, guys, I should say. Can you give a bit more of the 2H revenue growth expectations?

Being above is a big range. Any sort of additional information you can give would be appreciated there.

I think we're being a bit cautious, Ian. I mentioned FX and, honestly, in the last week you've seen it change even further.

We have some pipeline opportunities that if they land, it will obviously change things as well. In our view, Where are we?

We're in February. We came out last year with an update to the market in July.

I'm not suggesting we'll do that, but we're just being a little bit careful. We have, as you remember, withdrew full-year formal guidance for FY '26 back in August, and we're just consistent with that theme going forward.

Okay. All right.

Maybe just sort of said in your prepared remarks, Richard, that license sales will be 8% to 10% of revenue this year. It won't be more than that.

I think they were about 6% in the first half. Just confirming then, there will be some level of step up in the second half from the licenses.

Then Yeah,

there will. I mentioned Sorry, Ian.

You had to finish.

All right. Then, as well was the other just the final part to that.

Mate, I won't talk about specific contracts. Telefónica is one of many large Tier 1 customers we have, but I did say that license fees will be stronger in the second half, and that's primarily in the communications and media space, but nowhere near the level of last year, which is why I think the results are particularly strong when you're coming off circa $50 million of license fees last year.

It's a substantially lower number in FY '26.

Yep. Agreed on that.

Just one final one. I just noting the growth and expansion, you've sort of talked through in the energy business throughout Europe.

Probably still the biggest opportunity remains that German market. Can you just speak to I guess how you're thinking about that business or that region returning to growth in FY '27, and any data points you can give us around how the RFP pipeline is shaping in that German region, please?

Look, it's a massive disruptor, as the rolling out of smart meters and getting behind the meters. It's a very immature market at the moment now.

We had a massive change to the market and the regulators, which rolled out about 7 months ago. We hit that on time, etc.

It's fair to say the mines, as they're on their journey at the moment now. When we first talked about the German marketplace was always this 10-year view.

It's one of the third-largest economy in the world, technology. Mate, we're very happy with our purchase, very happy, excited by the marketplace.

The biggest change will happen with the forcing of smart meters and new regulations coming forward. It's tabled.

It's just we're just waiting and it's all about positioning ourselves and our applications to be ready for it. We're rolling out some AI into that marketplace, etc.

We're doing all the right things, but it was never going to be in the next 12 months. It was always, as there's another 5 years to go for this regulation to be fully rolled out.

Okay. All right.

Good one. I'll pass it on.

Thanks.

Thank you, Ian.

Hi, guys. Look, I don't mind complimenting.

Really strong today. Just one question, if I could, Richard, just on the revenue.

Just to sort of be clear, we can see that the A dollar is stronger and who knows where it ends up in the second half, on average. Just from an underlying perspective, ignoring the currency, have your expectations changed at all around revenue generation in the second half versus, say, August?

We're largely on track, Jules, to exactly where we thought we'd be from a budget standpoint. The rates we set from a budget standpoint for FX change quite a lot.

The Aussie's strengthened, but when the business is turning over what are we going to call it, circa 400 million-plus, a few million dollars here or there is not material to us anymore. It was when we were a $200 million business, but not now.

What I wanted to draw out was, yes, the top line will be impacted by FX, and it won't be overly material, but we're hedged on the cost side as well, EBITDA is largely protected.

Thank you. Those messages are loud and clear.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thanks, Andrew, Richard. Done on the result today.

I know we're all sort of flogging AI like a dead horse today, but I noticed a drop in the capitalized development costs from about 9 million to 6 [unclear] Oh, sorry, from 9 million to sort of 6 and 1/2 in that cash EBITDA number. Would you attribute that all to AI?

Is there anything you can kind of quantify in terms of have you done a headcount reduction? Is there anything quantifiable from those development costs?

Then when we look forward to the second half of the year, would you expect that to fall again? Or what are you sort of thinking?

Amelia, we're getting a lot more done for less is the simplest way to put it. AI toolsets, Andrew talked to the RAG, which, for those that know technology, are essentially multiple products is actually quite difficult.

We've got that up and running a long time ago, and we're now seeing the ability to get development done far quicker than we have. The R&D actual capitalization probably won't increase a lot because we're utilizing tools to get it done quicker.

Then in terms of Sorry, what was the second part to your question there, Amelia?

Can you quantify anything in terms of headcount reduction? Anything that you've

Yeah. Look, it's a sensitive topic.

We talked to it at the full-year results that there had been some reduction in headcount. Obviously, there has been, right?

In the first half of the year, you can see it in the financials that some headcount has come out of the business. If you look at the trends globally, that's where the market is typically going, going forward.

It's a combination and it's a balancing act between speed to competency, getting more done with less, but also having the right people in the right seats.

Particularly in the energy side of the business, been hearing a bit of commentary from sort of adjacent players and different people in the space about a bit of an increased competition that they're seeing. Anything you can give us in terms of the dynamics you're seeing in the market at the moment?

There's the standard players, Amelia, that have been around forever. The two key ones that come to mind are SAP and Oracle in the energy space.

If I was in their shoes, they've got probably some bigger challenges than most. One of them is end-of-lifing their current software and looking to migrate to a new stack.

They've got some challenges. There are hundreds and hundreds of billing providers out there.

Many of them are on legacy tech stacks, which we are not. We look at this as a great opportunity on the energy side.

You hear about these new entrants into the market. Honestly, we think that's quite a good thing.

It triggers the market to consider more RFPs and moving off legacy tech stacks, we're all for new entrants into the market. On the comms side, it's a global product we have.

There are the standard two or three competitors that there have been for the last 5, 10 years. We come up against them on a frequent basis.

We punch above our weight, I believe, for the size of our company. If you look at the ranking of our products at bodies such as TM Forum, which is a global body for communications, we are ranked consistently at the top of the pile.

Competition's everywhere. It's obviously good for some and bad for others, but we look at it as a positive.

You're not seeing any pressure on implementation costs or anything like that in energy space? We've just heard that first.

I'm not probably sure what they're saying. There's no doubt implementation times will be coming down, etc.

all these things. It's still your subject matter So whilst we can talk about developing is quicker, that deep-seated knowledge of the data and the people, that doesn't really change.

There's no doubt some of coding and other things, and certainly migration, helps. We would like to think, like all the applications out, our plan is to implement our software quicker into the future.

We're already doing it quicker now. I don't know it's actually driven by customers, because all customers, once they make the decision, they want the application as soon as possible.

That's always been the case. The fact that we can do it quicker is to our advantage.

Terrific. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Good morning, Andrew and Richard. I just wanted to start with revenue in energy and utilities, and specifically EMEA, which had 9% growth, but this also roughly includes 21 mil from Powercloud and the 1.5 to 2 mil from Based on that, which implies 6% to 7% growth in the underlying business, can you provide some color on whether there was any growth in Powercloud over the half?

Then I guess as a follow-up to that, given any growth in Powercloud suggests deterioration in the underlying EMU growth, can you just give us some color on, I guess, the churn in EMEA that you might be seeing?

It's been a pretty optimistic day, but we'll go with the negative question. We don't disclose Powercloud anymore.

It's part of the CGU, Michael, that it just rolls up into the energy space. We talked to this year not being a growth year for Powercloud.

We've got hundreds of customers up there in the Nordics. Sure, there might be a few that drop off, but we've also won plenty of new deals.

There might be some more color at the than what you're after, but Powercloud is now Hansen Germany. It's just part of our business.

The product we sell in Germany for Hansen is not just the Powercloud products. We sell our MDM, our EDM, our trade solution, and others.

To be honest, mate, we don't even talk to the Powercloud solution anymore as a standalone business.

Was there any growth then? Or just happy to leave that for the full year, I guess?

Yeah.

Like I said, it's part of the CGU, it's irrelevant really. We don't even report on it separately anymore.

Okay. Then moving on augmented generation and how this distinguishes your business from, I guess, the overall view on SaaS and the AI disruption.

I'm just kind of wanting to Hansen's current RAG capabilities versus those being developed and deployed by some of your competitors. Is Hansen more of a traditional RAG with a traditional router module, competitors are looking into, which is agentic RAG?

Mate, you might have full details on what our competitors are doing. I don't, it's very hard to compete against someone doing.

Mate, that's probably a more deep-seated question, which might probably goes more to ourselves, etc. I'll probably best to leave the more technical element to people who better understand, or understand the context of the question.

Yep, sure thing. Then lastly, because you've touched a lot on it, other factors are the switching costs and the fact that the data your customers hold is not openly available.

Just with the world's gradual move towards open data reforms, do you think this eventually starts to impact on the moat currently held by some of your peers and yourself? Or is it still something that you think will just not have an impact overall?

Do you think our customers want their data out open? They don't.

Their data is their asset. If you think about all these companies, I can just predict we support the industry.

The industry does not have an open mind to presenting all their customer usage data, call center data. Outers will work very, very hard to have their own moat about their own data and not wanting to put it out there as an open architecture retrieval process.

Just with open data, you can still have it open but encrypted, so that the average consumer can't see it. It's more so that it enables switching costs amongst some of your peers to, I guess, make it more sustainable and more open for customers to be able to, I guess, not be locked into these long-term contracts.

I can only say from our side, I've not necessarily heard of any customer at the moment now which is actually in favor of doing it. I'm sure maybe someone's mentioned, maybe an energy company said, "We're happy to get our data out to the ether."

I've not heard of it myself yet, mate, to be honest.

Cool. Thank you very much, guys.

All right.

Thanks, mate. Thank you.

For taking questions. I've just got one follow-up on margins.

Clearly you've talked about a lot of opportunity coming from efficiencies and AI as well, but just with 31% in the second half, if my math correct, should we think about this run rating into or even expanding into '27 just given some of that commentary?

The way to look at it, Annabel, is we are talking consistently, and have for 3 years, that we'll be getting back to a 30% margin-plus, and we're delivering it now. For FY that will continue.

Whether or not there's further upside to that, we'll go through our budget process and we'll update all of you in August.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you very much, and also thank you for the questions which came through. I think we've provided a bit of color to what we're doing as an organization.

We enjoy your support and our continual journey together. Thank you very much, and goodbye.