EROAD Limited

EROAD Limited

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Q4 2026 · Earnings Call Transcript

May 25, 2026

APIChat

John Scott

Good morning, guys. My name is John Scott.

I'm the Executive Chair of EROAD. Welcome you to the EROAD financial results for the financial year 2026.

With me, I have Ciara, our CFO; and Ryan, our Chief Transformation Officer. So we'll get into it.

So today, we've got about 30 minutes of us talking and hopefully 15 minutes of you guys asking questions, and we'll try and get you back to your day in about 45 minutes. So in a slightly unusual term, we'll start a financial report with an overview of all of the strategy.

The reason we're doing this is because of just how much of this is actually has our financials, and it's important for you to understand. So I took over or joined the company in March, and I took over as Executive Chair in October.

Over the 8 months, I've got to meet a lot of our customers and realize what just a wonderful little business we have here. We have unbelievable product market fit in New Zealand, a really, really easy-to-understand value proposition.

But the thing I've learned most of all is you have to talk about our business by country because the dynamics are completely different. You'll see there across the top, the revenue has been stable.

We've undertaken a whole bunch of initiatives to get back to basics and Ryan will talk to them. We're clearly focused on the Australia and New Zealand region.

We have this back to basics or customer-focused program around just restoring our key metrics. And -- there is a headline which a lot of people joined during the year for EROAD, which is the eRUC opportunity.

And we just want to sort of signal that it's a significant opportunity, but represents less than 5% of our OpEx. So this is a new slide for us.

It will be the first time many of you have seen that. And it's in line with the narrative that each country is different and has a completely different dynamic.

And again, you can see the trends there. New Zealand is obviously the biggest bulk of our revenue, and it's sort of flat to modest growth.

You can obviously see the American situation where we've gone from growth to declining over the 3 years, and it's reduced a proportion of our sales. And then you can see the Australian business, which is obviously experiencing really good double-digit growth.

So I'll pass over to Ciara to give you some flavor for that detail.

Ciara McGuigan

Hi, everyone. I'm Ciara McGuigan, as John said, CFO.

I've been with the group nearly 9 months now. Thanks for joining us today.

The results reflect a year of review and reset. Consequently, noncash accounting adjustments of NZD 152.9 million were made to the financial statements in the year.

They're defined in some detail on Page 35 towards the end of the presentation. Turning to the headline numbers for FY '26.

Normalized free cash flow margin is 7.4%. The free cash flow that underpins that calculation is NZD 14.4 million when normalized for the impact of the 4G upgrade program in New Zealand, which has now closed.

Reported revenue was NZD 195.2 million. Growth was muted by softer conditions in North America and previously disclosed customer nonrenewals.

ARR closed at NZD 174.3 million. While lower year-on-year, the reduction was concentrated in North America with ANZ continuing to perform strongly and deliver growth across higher-value products and enterprise customers.

Normalized EBIT was NZD 2.9 million, lower year-on-year, owing to investment in resources to improve platform stability, increase service levels and deliver on product enhancements. While the top line numbers are below where we want them to be, the year also included decisive action to reposition the business to strengthen operating discipline and focus investment where we see the strongest long-term returns.

I'll hand you now to Ryan.

Ryan Brosnahan

Thanks, Ciara. I'm Ryan Brosnahan.

I'm the Chief Transformation Officer, and I started with EROAD in October to help establish this transformation program that's represented on this slide here. And we've got a clear and focused plan that we're executing against.

The slide shows the key themes that we are executing against, along with the key measures that we're using to both measure our progress against this work and to also prioritize the work and ensure we're optimizing our allocation of capital. The first 3 pillars are all about getting fit to play.

The first one, operational excellence, ensure we stabilize our platforms and redesign and automate scalable processes and ensure we have real-time dashboards available to manage the company and make optimal decisions. The second pillar is all about product competency.

So uplifting any gaps in our product suite to meet our target markets. The third is around customer intimacy, which, as John has already mentioned, we've reorientated to a regional model to ensure we are making decisions close to our customers and also recognizing the fact that our 3 countries are each quite different businesses that are at different stages of maturity.

This pillar also includes improving customer onboarding and customer support. The final 2 pillars are important options on our future.

The AI capability we are embedding across the business both creates operating leverage and also mitigates disadvantages of scale. While eRUC, which we'll talk more about later in the presentation, is a growth option that we are well positioned to execute on given our history.

These pillars are underpinned by enterprise-wide uplifts in leadership and capability, platform modernization and data. These uplifts are critical to successfully executing the plan.

And when we think of this execution, as you can see on this slide, we started in July last year and are achieving solid progress towards objectives across all of these pillars.

John Scott

Yes. There's a bit going on, on this slide, guys.

So first of all, you'll see the Harvey balls at various states of completion. I want to call out the ones that have got 0, we are underway.

And if you had a look at the previous slide, something like platform simplification is one of our bedrocks, which we call platform modernization. The big 3 callouts, which I get questions on all the time are the CEO timing.

Our aim for that at the moment is to appoint a person straight after the AGM. The second thing is, and it's not quite clear here, but we bought Coretex about 5 years ago.

There is still significant integration to undertake on both process business systems and products. We have to do that every single year, it gets harder and that the systems and the products actually get older.

So that's a key focus for us and is built into this year. The other thing that's probably not easy for you guys to pull out, but we're a company that actually sells digital transformation for our customers, and we need to do it for ourselves.

And the dashboards and the live data for our team is actually critical for our decision-making. So I'll take a second now and just talk to you about what we're up to with AI.

So one of the most pleasing things since I've been here is we ran a hackathon about 4 weeks ago. We had 27 teams in every single one of our countries.

We were doing things from product enhancements to installation software all the way through to order to cash programs. I asked every single one of the 27 people how much OpEx or how much money it would make us and how big the productivity increase was.

The smallest response we got from one of our teams was 5x. And some of the call-outs we got 5 years of coding done over 3 days.

It really is that remarkable. So the way we think about it is pretty straightforward, and we've got 3 leaders running each of these.

But operational efficiency is the stuff that you could see that AI would help with in last year. It's stuff where you have large amounts of data and you want to access it, perfect for call centers, perfect for order advice, dispatch advice, fast triage, all that sort of good stuff.

It actually only affects OpEx. So the savings you get there and your P&L are limited.

The next one is platform modernization. One of the challenges EROAD has it has to compete against some pretty large American-based companies.

And with our current revenue in the old world, we were probably subscale to compete with them. But with the advent of AI, we actually have distinct advantages with our size.

And that platform modernization, again, it's a core undertaking we're doing this year, and it will fit both our OpEx and our cost of goods sold. The third pillar in a lot of ways, is the most exciting, certainly for CEOs because it affects the revenue line, and that's the data intelligence.

We have considerable amounts of data, especially in New Zealand, it's one of our largest moats. And we're moving very quickly to develop features and software to sit in our top tiers of functionality that will allow us to deliver real benefits for our customers, and we will see some of those in this financial year.

So a real easy way to think about it is operational efficiency is sort of a onetime effect because it's OpEx, platform modernization is sort of about a 5x because you get both OpEx and cost of goods sold. And data intelligence, it's sort of 10x because once you start to get revenue, you get acceleration.

So Again, this will be a new slide. I haven't been here long enough to say, but it feels like this is the inverse of the strategy that we previously had.

So obviously, New Zealand is the jewel in our crown, and we -- it's a nonnegotiable. We will do everything to protect it, and we're going to drive both our Net Promoter Score, our customer satisfaction and the way we handle that to be world-class level.

The next one is Australia. You can see with the double-digit growth, what we're doing there is resonating.

It's a fragmented market, and we care. And the combination of us caring and the fact that the Australians look to be following the same regulatory trends in New Zealand seems to be the key conditions for us winning.

You can see we've got a dotted box around. And clearly, if we can get Australia and New Zealand to work, it's going to be very, very hard for anybody to compete with us.

A few of our customers are Trans-Tasman, but certainly, with the way the regulatory the same and they're quite homogeneous market. So there's a real sort of multiplier effect if we can get Australia and New Zealand.

The top to the right are what I call optionality. So -- and I will talk to the eRUC opportunity in detail.

We are known for our universal road user charges. We know the government of New Zealand is moving that way.

We don't know the timing, but we are going to position ourselves to be the provider of choice and the partner for the New Zealand government. And in North America, our focus is to be free cash flow neutral.

So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to let Ciara take you through the financials of the regions in details.

Ciara McGuigan

Thanks, John. So starting with New Zealand.

New Zealand remained stable throughout financial year '26 despite executing against the final phase of the 4G upgrade program, which has now closed. ARR increased 5% to $93.5 million.

Overall revenue increased 1.1%, generating nearly $25 million in free cash flow to the firm, while ARPU improved 3% during the year. That ARPU uplift is actually worth calling out as although asset retention was impacted by the 4G program, the units churned were predominantly lower value, whereas our higher-value customer relationships and workflows continue to deepen.

Strategically, New Zealand is becoming increasingly important beyond its traditional role as a mature market, particularly with the government progressing towards universal RUC over time. We believe EROAD remains well positioned given our scale, operational capability and established position in the electronic RUC ecosystem today.

John Scott

So again, I've mentioned there's a lot of interest in the universal RUC. Bit of information on this slide for you guys.

The things I would like people to take away is that we're funding it from our free cash flow. We're using the AI-assisted technologies that I spoke to on Slide 11.

And we'll keep it under 5% of OpEx at all times. If that ever changes because of the opportunity, we'll obviously come back to the market.

But at this point, we're going to fund it from our existing cash flow. And again, the key aim here is for us to build optionality.

I love what the team have done. You can see down there, we've got 3 audiences.

We're going to obviously put a product in the market for consumers. That will be good for our brand building.

It will allow them to experience EROAD. We will then take that and we'll commercialize it with our existing fleets.

We don't have 100% fleet penetration for any one of our customers because they have vans, electric vehicles and cars. And one of the nice things about this is we can take this product and introduce our customers to the benefits of telematics across the rest of their fleet.

And then the third part is, which where it gets really exciting is we've got all sorts of other benefits from congestion, monitoring, tolling and insurance benefits. All early days, but we'll start to see those turn in market mid-'27 of the calendar year.

So I'll give you back to Ciara for Australia.

Ciara McGuigan

Cheers, John. So Australia.

Australia delivered another very strong year of growth and remains the group's key near-time growth market. ARR you see on the left increased 73% to NZD 21.9 million, and revenue increased more than 40%, supported by enterprise customer expansion and increasing platform adoption.

The Cleanaway deployment continues to progress well and remains a significant proof point for EROAD's enterprise capability in the region. We also continue to see significant gains in ARPU performance as larger fleets adopt broader workflows and higher value platform functionality.

We see substantial runway in Australia given the fragmented market structure and increasing demand for integrated safety, compliance and operational fleet solutions. Moving on, North America.

North America remained under pressure during the financial year following previously disclosed customer nonrenewal and ongoing softness across the U.S. freight environment.

You can see on the left that ARR declined 20% and revenue declined 7.1% as those impacts flowed through the installed base, while ARPU remained broadly stable during the period. We are not satisfied with these results.

And during the year, we took deliberate actions to reset the regional operating model, including leadership changes, tighter investment prioritization and broader operational restructuring. In the meantime, our focus remains on supporting customers, improving operational execution and ensuring investment remains aligned to the current market environment.

Our target is to be free cash flow neutral. Now on to an overview of the financials, so you've got me for a little bit now.

Revenue and EBIT. As we touched on earlier, FY '26 was a year of mixed regional performance and significant operational change across the business.

Revenue for the year, you see on the left, $195.2 million, broadly stable on prior year. Growth in New Zealand, strong momentum in Australia largely offset the impact of the customer nonrenewal in North America.

Subscription revenue increased to $185.4 million, continues to represent the substantial minority of group revenue. Operating costs, which are also impacted by the accounting adjustments and one-off spend of $14.5 million, increased during the year as we invested in customer service capability, platform stability and operational transformation initiatives.

I'll break down those movements in more detail shortly. The far right-hand side of that slide, trigger happy there.

Reported EBIT was a loss of $155.9 million impacted by $152.9 million noncash accounting adjustments, as I mentioned earlier. The largest being the impairment of $134.7 million that was recognized at half year.

In addition, there is a further $18.2 million of adjustments as we modernize our accounting practices to reflect our AI strategy and how we're moving forward in our transformation through changes to useful economic life, minimum thresholds and things like that. In addition, we consider a further $5.9 million of OpEx to calculate normalized EBIT of $2.9 million.

Normalized EBIT, $2.9 million compared to $9.9 million last year and the decline driven predominantly by investment in customer and product capabilities. Operating costs.

So on the face of it, it looks like a material increase year-on-year. Reported spend of $156.2 million you see on the right, includes $14.5 million of accounting adjustments, one-off items.

These one-offs include net transformation costs of $1.1 million, some significant legal costs for a patent infringement claim in North America that cost $1.7 million, along with some one-offs to do with the 4G upgrade program. We also revised the estimated useful life of certain capitalized software assets to better align with the pace of technology change.

That reduced the amount of development expenditure capitalized during the year and increased costs recognized throughout the P&L. Excluding one-offs, recurring operating costs increased 5.1% year-on-year.

And that increase, as it said on the chart, largely driven by deliberate investment in customer service capability and platform stability. While those investments impacted earnings in the financial year, they will drive improved customer execution and stronger retention outcomes and a more efficient operating model moving forward.

Operational efficiency. So customer acquisition costs on the left remained relatively stable over the 3-year period despite ongoing investment in enterprise sales capability and customer growth initiatives.

On the right, support and servicing costs increased to 8.9% of revenue during the year. The reason for this being our investment in customer-facing resources and implementing a revised regional service model.

We've made a deliberate decision to invest in customer execution as responsiveness and operational support capability is important during a period of organizational and regional change across the business. Research and development.

So R&D, the total R&D investment for FY '26 was $34.6 million, the bar on the right of the chart, representing 18% of revenue, broadly consistent with prior year. But you can see that the blue shaded bit clearly shows our change in policies and our changes in accounting adjustments in the year.

The mix between capitalized and expense has shifted materially. And the shift was driven by increased investment in platform stability, ultimately in operational capability, including those changes to accounting estimates.

We continue to prioritize and improve disciplined investment approach to initiatives. Free cash flow.

Despite the earnings impact from the higher operating costs and one-off items, the business continued to generate positive underlying cash flow during the financial year. So you see in the far right, reported free cash flow to the firm was just over breakeven at $100,000 for the year.

After normalizing for the temporary impact of the 4G upgrade program, underlying free cash flow is healthy at $14.4 million. Cash generation continues to be an important strength of the business as we prioritize ongoing discipline around working capital and capital allocation.

John Scott

So I'm going to chime in here. I like this slide.

It will be new to a lot of people. Hopefully, actually, it will be new to everybody on the call.

So Again, what this really does is help you guys understand your model. You combine this with Slide 6, and I think you have a new way to think about our company.

So again, you can see the difference. You can see the gem and why we're so excited about the New Zealand business.

You can see the Australian business while growing at double-digit growth is actually using a lot of hardware, which you can see why we've got negative cash flow. But it also sort of shows you when it gets to a reasonable size and if it could mirror the New Zealand, why we'd be so excited about the Australian and New Zealand business as one.

And then you can also see the challenge that we have in front of us to get the North American business to cash flow neutral.

Ciara McGuigan

Thanks, John. The group finished financial year '26 with total liquidity of $49 million, including cash on hand of $10.1 million and nearly $39 million of available facility headroom.

During the year, the bank facilities were extended through to October 2027, providing additional certainty and flexibility to support execution of the group's strategic priorities without requiring additional capital. I'll now hand back to John for final remarks.

John Scott

All right, guys. This is a bit you've all been waiting for.

So we think we're about 6 months into this transformation project, and we think the program is probably going to be 18 months. The reality is you never really finish these.

But in terms of the cash and OpEx burn that is incremental what we think our normal business is, we think we should be through it in the next financial year. There are a few callouts here.

We -- one position short of having a full exec, which will be our CEO, which again, we will introduce straight after the AGM. Our dashboards, we've seen our first versions of the live ones that they're coming into play, which really will allow us to make our customers happy.

And we will know stuff before they do and we can start to do preventative maintenance and all of that good stuff. Again, we've got a really big program to start tracking Net Promoter Score.

We're talking to every single one of our customer quarterly about how we're doing. We're creating customer scorecards, so we have the same view of the world.

I feel like it will take us about 6 months to get what I call table stakes or to a threshold level before we can start to put our foot down or accelerate. One of the things that I did over the last 9 months as I sat with our salespeople in their cars as we were driving to customers and just listen to the phone calls that they were taking.

And really, it's very, very difficult to sell or to move forward when you're on the back foot. And so I feel like midway through the next financial year, we'll start to move on to the front foot where we can start to accelerate customer engagements, drive new customers.

One of the key things to getting new customers is actually having reference customers who are widely in your favor. And I feel we're starting to see the green shoots with some of the customers that we've done early engagements with.

And yes, midway through next year, I feel like we'll be in a place where we can really start to accelerate. And that's especially in New Zealand.

And so I'll finish off here. So the guidance one, it's new for us.

We are guaranteeing that we can be free cash flow positive. We're just not sure of the scale of it, and we're not going to give revenue headlines.

You can see what we will be is completely transparent with the revenue, which you can see on Slide 6 and the profitability of the regions, which you can see on Slide 24. But given how early we are into this transformation program, it doesn't feel prudent to give top line guidance because if we do give you guys guidance, we want to be able to guarantee that we can deliver it all things being equal, and it's just too early.

So with that, I'm going to stop talking. Thanks for listening, and we'll move to any Q&A if you guys have any.

Jason Kepecs

Thanks, John. I'm going to open with a few questions that have come in.

[Operator Instructions] First question is regarding the AI threat. How do you see that both competitively and in terms of AI being brought into vehicles to help with predictive changes?

John Scott

Okay. So top of the hour, I feel like you could actually see that in the Australia.

We're not a straight SaaS company. As we're accelerating in Australia with Cleanaway, you can see how big a piece hardware is of our implementation.

So I feel that we probably got unfairly caught in what everyone likes to call the SaaS Apocalypse. But in terms of what it means for us, I think it's only good things.

I feel like we're a 500-, 600-person company, and we can do a lot AI assisted. Previously, we were subscale, I would say, against some of the big guys, and they could do things with their balance sheet and their P&L that we couldn't.

So at this point, I can't see anything but only goodness. Obviously, if you don't adopt and you don't move fast, then you're going to come into trouble.

But crisis is the mother of all kind of focus, and we are in there and we are deep in it. Again, if anyone came to our hackathon, I think -- well, I know we had 10 of our providers partner with us.

All of them said it's the best thing I've seen in New Zealand, and we -- some of them actually said it was better than their own one. So I'm really confident that we're doing the right thing.

We've got so many people who are enthusiastic. We've got 3 leaders across the operation, the platform and the data.

I think we're in good shape.

Jason Kepecs

Second question is, given the guidance that you'll be free cash flow positive and you're targeting to be free cash flow neutral at some point in North America. Where do you see -- how do you reconcile the difference?

Where do you see that money being spent?

John Scott

Yes. Look, there's a lot going on.

So the Coretex thing is a hangover. And obviously, we've got the eRUC, and obviously, then all the transformation costs.

So the first thing is we told we will be free cash flow neutral. So we are going to balance the revenue that comes in with the transformation costs.

So I don't believe we can eat the entire Coretex integration in the next year. So we'll be prudent about that.

But the faster we transform and the more profitable we are, the quicker we will finish the Coretex integration. And my aim is, hopefully, by the end of the next financial year, we start the next one, essentially on something like an integrated platform, integrated processes and integrated business tools.

When you say it all out loud, I realize it's probably a pretty ambitious goal, but we're going to give it a go.

Jason Kepecs

Third question is, how do you see the New Zealand market? Is it a mature market?

Clearly, you're moving your focus on that? And where do you see that moving?

John Scott

Yes. Clearly, it's mature.

I think I mentioned in my opening, if I didn't, I should have, I had not seen a customer who doesn't want more from us. So we're not fully penetrated with any of our customers.

So if you think about 100% of our portfolio, I don't think one customer takes a lot. And some of our largest ones, again, we may only have 30% or 40% of their fleet because we don't have a light vehicle option, which we're developing under the eRUC banner or they don't use our cameras.

Lots of the reasons or the friction to adopt the rest of our platform sort of goes to our customer satisfaction and meeting our SLAs and our platform stability and all the stuff that Ryan is fixing for us. So if you do anyone the Bain or the McKinsey courses, they tell you there's always the most upside in your core market, and I probably tend to believe that.

I don't think we fully understand the potential of what we've got. Again, when we come back to you guys in September or later in the year and talk about our business, I hope to see some of that upside.

But Yes. It's obviously a stable market, and we're well penetrated.

But you do a good job. I think there's quite a bit of upside here.

Jason Kepecs

The next question is on the universal eRUC and light passenger eRUC. When do you expect the light passenger eRUC will start?

And what effect or what impact will the upcoming election have on that outcome?

John Scott

Yes. So that's a plug for you guys to come to the AGM.

We've got a lady called Sabine, who's our General Manager for that, and she will introduce you to both the what we call direct-to-consumer and direct-to-business models, but they will be out over the winter.

Jason Kepecs

Next question is, how much of the double-digit Australia revenue growth is precontracted? We get a sense of what positive delivery looks like in FY '27.

Ciara McGuigan

Yes. Most of the -- all of the growth is precontracted.

So the growth in FY '27 will continue at strong mid-digit growth year-on-year.

John Scott

Yes. I'll add a little flavor.

I can obviously see the pipelines of the opportunities, and this is not obviously the close rates, but of any pipeline that we have, the Australian one is the most robust.

Jason Kepecs

The follow-up question on that is, is it new clients or existing clients that make up that pipeline?

John Scott

I would say it's new for the vast majority. Obviously, Cleanaway, we are only early days.

But again, that market is so fragmented. And with our revenue, you can see we're actually a very small part of the market.

So the vast majority is new. But again, we've got our existing clients coming off contract.

And again, once our products work as defined and we delight our customers, there's probably upside in our existing base as well and with some pretty big names on that list.

Jason Kepecs

Next question is, will there be a 5G upgrade over the next 5 to 7 years? How do you see technology obsolescence for this business?

Ciara McGuigan

What I was going to say is no, that won't be in the next 5 to 7. I think 4G is expected to last another 10 years.

So that would be the answer on that. What did you want to add, John?

John Scott

No, there's so much going on. I feel like there probably won't be -- I mean I'm talking like 5, 10 years in the future.

I imagine the next upgrade will actually just be straight to satellites, and that will be the end of it. But now I'm just speculating on road map stuff.

Jason Kepecs

Next question. You're looking at a consumer app that fits the current RUC system.

Do you think an app would still be appropriate if the RUC system changes as has been proposed?

John Scott

Well, you're asking me to guess the government, so good luck with that. What I would say is without giving away too much that the consumer app is just a start.

The direct business actually will require a hardware piece. And so look, just roughly hardware cost for a truck is like $1,000.

We need to have a $100 solution to get into vans and so we do understand we'll have to have some hardware for compliance reasons, but it will be a totally different cost base. Again, if you guys are interested in that, I can get Sabine to talk about at the AGM.

Jason Kepecs

Next question. You're targeting free cash flow neutral for North America.

Any specific time line that you have in mind?

John Scott

As soon as possible.

Jason Kepecs

And can you elaborate on the initiatives you're taking to better match the North American cost base with the revenue as the nonrenewal last year annualized into FY '27?

Ciara McGuigan

And we need to remember that the customer that churned was a low-margin customer comparative to some of the other customer base, and that's the focus of the new Executive General Manager also. So that will help gradually improve the margin.

There has been a significant improvement already in our higher-margin customers.

John Scott

Yes. I think is getting something really important.

Some of the loss of some of those customers actually increases our profitability. The cost to serve some of those big U.S.

elephants is a lot. I think it's what you're getting at.

Ciara McGuigan

Yes.

Jason Kepecs

The free cash flow turned negative in the second half from $16.7 million in the first half. Other than what was spent on the 4G hardware upgrade, what were the contributors?

And how much of that increase in the cash outflow was one-off?

Ciara McGuigan

So there's a number of timing issues, which I guess is just what happens to free cash flow. In the second half, we -- that's when the transformation commenced in earnest.

So we have the transformation net cost of $1.1 million that impacted the second half. We also had the patent infringement challenge of which $1.7 million costs to do the challenge from our side were paid in the second half, actually in the last quarter.

We also have a timing difference with our Australian operation where the timing of spend on hardware going out before we receive cash coming in. So that's what made it go negative in H2, but a lot of them are one-off and timing in nature.

Jason Kepecs

There's a question about the commercial model. The hardware leasing model that you run can create complexity in -- during times of hardware upgrade, such as what you just recently went through.

Would you consider switching to a hardware upfront model? So selling the hardware rather than leasing it.

John Scott

Look, I'm banging the drum about customer first. If a customer wanted to do that, but I haven't had one customer talk to me about it.

And if you look at America, the way some of our competitors are winning is obviously, they don't try and make breakeven to way later in the contract to take longer contracts. But look, if a customer came to me said they would want to buy it all upfront, I just haven't struck that customer yet.

Jason Kepecs

Has the patent challenge been resolved now?

Ciara McGuigan

Yes, it has. It was resolved before year-end and with a positive outcome.

Jason Kepecs

And can you speak about the New Zealand economic conditions and how that has impacted your revenue in the last 6 months and 12 months?

John Scott

Yes. So one of the beautiful things about our business is I am not -- I mean, every business is impacted by macroeconomic trends.

But the value prop that we have, our customers can't operate without us. So we're actually pretty well insulated.

But the effects that you're seeing in New Zealand are more to do with how much our customers love us much more than the macroeconomic trends.

Jason Kepecs

And the final question, there seems to be a lot of moving parts in the business. Can you give us greater detail on what to expect for costs and free cash flow.

Ciara McGuigan

Yes. So overall, we are really strongly focused on financial discipline.

We would like to exit FY '27 with a lower run rate on OpEx. We are strongly focused on operational efficiency, which means making things easier and better for our customers and internally to cost less.

Our shift towards a Manila -- a Manila workforce for some activities has reduced our average cost of employees in the right direction. So all I'm giving at this stage is our financial strategy towards reducing costs and focusing efforts towards go-to-market and customer and product.

Jason Kepecs

Thanks. That's all the questions that we have.

I'm going to turn it back to you.

John Scott

All right, guys. Thanks for your time.

Everybody knows where to find us. I'm sure they do.

Let's hope we get this transformation project on the same timing as this update because we finished 5 minutes early. So we'll give you 5 minutes of your day back.

Thanks, everyone. Have a great day.