Technology One Limited

Technology One Limited

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Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptMay 19, 2026

Operator

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Edward Chung, CEO.

Please go ahead.

Edward Chung

G'day everyone, and thank you for the introduction. This morning we've got Stuart MacDonald, our COO, and Cale Bennett, our CFO, presenting directly with me, but from various different parts of our business.

Welcome to our 2026 half-year results presentation. These materials were lodged with the ASX this morning.

The DNA of our business is that we set ambitious goals and we deliver, whether that's moving 1,200 customers from on-premise to SaaS without missing a beat for our customers or our growth, or whether that's entering the UK, passing our expectations. All of this also gives us confidence in the pipeline, and we don't guide up unless we can see it day in, day out, year in, year out.

That you can see behind us. I'm proud to present the following results.

We're generally conservative by nature. For those who know us, we talk about heartbeats and rhythms.

That heartbeat and rhythm, increasing our guidance range from 10 to 15% to 12 to 16% in FY24, to 13 to 17% in FY25. Upgraded our profit guidance range because of the visibility and momentum in the business, which gave me confidence to guide up early.

We reaffirm our upgrade of 18 to 20%, again targeting the top end of the range, PBT margin, an expansion of two points from 30% to 32%, and full-year cap. Our continuing strong results will be driven by the investments we're making today, such as our AI strategy, including Plus and Guide.

There are no carve-outs. Our guidance is fully inclusive.

H1 has come in exactly where we said it would, ARR growth of 17%, squarely within our 16 to 18% full-year guidance range, with strong momentum heading into H2 and beyond. PBT growth in the high single digits, and that's in line with the phasing we flagged at our AGM.

As TechnologyOne has landed exactly on plan with no surprises. Now, taken together, the half delivered exactly what we committed to at the AGM, and we remain confident in delivering the upgraded full-year guidance and four-year free cash flow equals net profit after tax.

We have clear visibility and confidence through H2, and we will deliver a full-year step-up, as we flagged. Currency into the underlying engine of the business, what we refer to as the heartbeat of the business.

This is our half one results on a constant currency basis as well as normalizing profit. 10% and profit before tax growth of 21% and margin improvements of 30%.

On top of all of that, profit would have grown to 105 million consistent growth, and the confidence for the future, as I've already highlighted. Over the past 38 years, we at TechOne have ridden the economic waves, and the first, because it was a simple way to deliver through that graphical user interface.

The third generation leveraged the internet because it was a simple way to connect our customers with their customers. With one product all the way back in 1987, and we built products, or we've made numerous key IP acquisitions, such as Property and Rating.

Property and Rating runs... the government, also focused on healthy community services, asset and project intensive industries, and corporate and financial services.

This allowed us to build deep, deep functionality out. Years of hard work and product localization and customer reference and scaling our business.

The flywheel has turned in the UK, and we are now the de facto partner in the UK, serving over hundreds of thousands of residents of a council, opening up a new and unserviced market for us. Now, through the power of one, we became the world's first SaaS plus ERP in 30 days, not the thousands of days like our competitors.

Now, this is our strategy in action, long-term investments in R&D by staying close to... In 1987, we had 20 products today.

Each product has over 20 modules. That's over 600 modules in total.

We now have our AI strategy where we've added... They provide software that might help you automate your finance processes or human resource processes.

It's very generic functionality, and it doesn't include the deep market... specifically for that function, but then you have to piece it together with sticky tape and chewing gum, and it doesn't really work in a SaaS world, and it's even worse in an AI world.

Plus model. We've followed the path less traveled, and we've carved out vertical niches and specialties that result in strong, consistent ARR growth.

10 to 15%, which is now carefully and slowly increased to 18 to 20%, as I've discussed. We call it strategy.

Some in the investment community call it a moat. Serve highly regulated industries.

We've got the highest level of cybersecurity certification. We serve some secret agencies, but that highest level is built into all of our software.

Our world's first SaaS Plus model with fast go-lives, removing the need for that traditional, long, complex and expensive consulting, and 99-plus percent customer retention and 38 years of consistent execution. Let me remind you about our pricing.

The bear case is on the left of this slide, and it's a real bear case for many companies: AI agents replace knowledge workers, customers need fewer seats, vendors lose revenue per user, multiples rewrite downward. We sell ratable properties, which scales with ratable numbers, not headcount.

As communities grow, we grow with them. We sell on student numbers, so as unis enroll more students.

You can see it's very exciting. Stuart's going to take you through this in further details, and I invite you all to a product demonstration, hosted by Chandan, our CTO, this Friday.

AI agents do more work. Remember, agents faster, more complete, higher quality and cheaper for our customers.

We grow with that too. Another new opportunity.

We've introduced a new innovation to take friction away for our customers, and that's advertising revenue built in, and further advertising. Perceived world, every AI agent that replaces a human is revenue deletion.

In our world, every AI agent that does work for a customer is a revenue event. Our in-product AI: new revenue from our resident and student conversations with interactions in guide, and new advertising revenue from guide.

We've implemented this information right now. These investments enable us to continue to double in size every five years.

Over to Cale, our Headspace, who will now take us through the financials for the first half of the year.

Cale Bennett

Thanks, Ed. Once again, we are incredibly proud of the results we delivered in the first half of FY26.

The strength of our portfolio business came to the fore this period, with local government in Australia a standout performer in the first half. A total of $87 million in ARR was added over the past 12 months, resulting in ARR growth of 17%.

Typically, ARR growth is always stronger in the second half, the strong performance in the first half gives us great confidence in our path to the full year. UK ARR growth came in at 2 million, with recurring revenue now representing 93% of total income, highlighting a 25% uplift in the quality of our revenue.

Of high single-digit growth to deliver 9% PBT growth to 89.1 million. With such a strong result and great confidence in our future, by 24.

If we view this result on a constant currency basis, our first half of 26 would have been a record half for any period over our 38 years. For FY26, we delivered strong profit and ARR growth, meeting guidance.

We made the commitment in previous halves to keep our rolling 12-month rule of 40 above 40%. With another strong half of ARR growth, up 17%, and a free cash flow margin of 38%, we have again delivered an outstanding result.

SaaS and recurring revenue grew 13% to 299.2 million in the first half of 26. As mentioned, SaaS and recurring revenue growth at 13% increasing revenue as expected as we work through the backlog of legacy contracts.

This revenue is primarily driven by implementations not sold as SaaS Plus, such as government work sold on the old framework prior to us updating to accommodate SaaS Plus. Within our total expenses, our net variable costs of $42.7 million, an increase of 5% on the PCP.

This increase was driven by an increase in our SaaS platform costs as customers leverage more of our product. Our operating costs are up 13% to 190.9 million during the half.

These are primarily people-based costs. We did not have a comparative marketing event, and as such, to get a like-for-like picture of the cadence of the business, it's important to factor that in when looking at the increased cost base.

The effective tax rate for the half was 25%, which is where we expect it to land by FY26. Turning to the balance sheet.

Heading to cash collections due to the annual billing alignment with contract anniversary dates. Capitalised development has increased by 15 million in the half, which is offset by attributable to share-based payments, given the fall in our share price.

Other third revenue has fallen 42.3 million in first half 26. Six was a big one for our R&D team.

In the first half of FY26, we invested 26% of revenue, or 84.1 million in R&D, with 54.5 million in CapEx. Going forward, we expect to target investment in R&D in the 20-25% of revenue range, which we continue to believe is the optimal investment level.

Heading of our cash flow due to the annual contract anniversary date cycle. You will recall in first half 25, we benefited from pulling forward creditors into the second— 6 million, or 16 percent, to 245.5 million over the past 12 months.

We are incredibly proud of our results in the first half of 26. Accordingly, our board has determined an interim dividend of 8 cents per share, franked at 75 percent.

This represents a record interim dividend with increased franking. We will maintain this franking level going forward.

While the interim dividend is up 21 percent, this only represents a payout ratio of 40 percent, clearly showing our confidence for the future growth in profitability. In summary, our past execution has afforded us a very strong and clear— Over to Stuart.

Stuart MacDonald

Thanks, Cale. As announced at our Showcase kickoff event in October last year, 26A marked a watershed moment for our AI initiatives and rollout strategy.

It’s important to note that we have been leveraging AI across these capabilities. Before I go any further, I thought I would take a moment and talk about Showcase and bring you up to speed about the events that have now all been completed.

With Plus, an in-product functionality, and Guide forming the centerpiece of the strategy, I would also like to highlight the resounding success of the events across every— increasingly relevant for the verticals we serve. Most importantly, the pipeline generated from Showcase has significantly exceeded both historical— opportunity.

At the conclusion of the Melbourne Showcase event in October, we announced Plus, our agnostic AI solution for the ERP market. The boundaries we are prepared to push to better support our community.

We also highlighted to investors that Plus was designed to be a Trojan horse, a platform that would encourage customers to adopt more TechnologyOne product in order to unlock the full capabilities of Plus, and we are already seeing the strategy play out. We also stated that Plus would achieve the fastest adoption rate of any product we have ever launched, and that prediction is proving to be correct.

Although Plus was announced in October last year, it has only become generally available to customers in early April this year. Despite this six-month wait, we are already seeing breaking TechnologyOne adoption records with Plus, and we are excited to see how far this product will go.

In classic TechOne fashion, we did not stop there with Plus. We pushed the boundary even further with the announcement of Guide at our UK Showcase in February.

For more than six years, we have been developing products designed to empower our customer’s customer, whether it be students or ratepayers, through what we call DXP, or the Digital Experience Platform. Our goal is to extend our reach beyond supporting only our customers’ back office and instead empower our community and the communities they serve directly.

As you heard previously, our DXP LG product has been well received, and we have been running early adopter programs for DXP. We could have stopped there and realized that Guide using traditional and released Guide with traditional consumption-based pricing models for this product.

First like this product. As a result, we took the road less traveled and in fact rode never traveled in the ERP market.

We proposed delivering Guide— core values. We asked ourselves, if our customers are under pressure, how can we genuinely support their sector?

That led us to the decision to share at revenue. With Guide for students scheduled for release in 26A in August, we are already having universities compete to be the first institution globally to deploy a solution that not only empowers the students, but is generating new revenue streams.

Historically, I’ve highlighted three significant wins during our results presentation, and today I would like to begin with James Cook University. We’ve been proud partners with James Cook University since 1993, when they first acquired our financial solution.

Since then, they’ve been on a journey with us through major phases of technology evolution, from on-premise client server all the way through to SaaS, while at the same time adopting our student management solution. Over the past year, JCU conducted a comprehensive technology review and roadmap assessment focused on identifying their preferred strategic partner for the AI era.

As a result, I’m incredibly proud to share that James Cook University, a global leader in Great Barrier Reef and coral reef resilience research, with more than 1,700 team members and 21,000 students, has fully embraced our AI strategy. Not only have they adopted Plus, but they’ve also acquired every product and module within our OneEducation suite to create a rich data lake so that Plus can leverage and help support the university’s long-term strategic goals.

Further validating both the strength of our partnership and the alignment of our innovation and strategic direction, JCU signed a 10-year agreement with TechnologyOne. This is the perfect case study of partnership, innovation, and the power of our vertical strategy, and it reinforces why we continue to grow and lead now into what I believe is the fifth era of technology innovation.

Townsville Council has been an on-premise customer for many years, and were among a very small group who did not initially believe in our SaaS strategy. In fact, they invested in building their own data center to continue to host solutions.

However, once we informed them that we could no longer support on-premise customers, and they would need to transition to SaaS, they commenced a two-year evaluation program involving competitors such as Oracle and Infor, and in fact selected Oracle. Early in the Oracle implementation, they found that Oracle solution would not work, and I'm incredibly proud to say that during the first half, they not only returned to TechnologyOne, they signed a 10-year agreement embracing SaaS and adopting full SaaS Plus program as well as acquiring Plus.

We also secured the University of Suffolk. Historically, the UK market only sees one student management RFP coming to market each year, and as we've highlighted previously, we have a strategic goal capitalize on our unique position in the UK market as the only SaaS provider serving the education sector with both traditional ERP capabilities and mission-critical student management, curriculum, and timetabling solutions.

To secure Suffolk University as our seventh student management customer in the past two and a half years, and the confidence customers are placing in our AI vision. SaaS Plus has now embraced everything we do.

It defines us. We should have transitioned to SaaS Plus, and I'm pleased to report today that everything is SaaS Plus.

We've achieved this transition faster than expected, driven largely by the fact that it fundamentally disrupts traditional implementation models built around long, drawn-out projects. Some even joke referring me as the chairman of...

to consume additional products and drive greater operational efficiency. In the new world of AI, this also significantly increases the effectiveness and value...

visitor growth. It is clear validation that our strategy is driving momentum.

A 27% growth rate in local government is particularly significant and again validates that mission-critical SaaS Plus solutions designed specifically for the verticals we serve are hitting the mark. Importantly, guide technology.

Education also remains another significant pillar of growth with 15%, and the opportunities such as ACU, for mission-critical solutions in our verticals in the UK and the enormous opportunity coming off of our UK showcase events. Our pipeline continues to improve...

full year results. We closely monitor NRR and churn.

While NRR was 114, this was primarily impacted by foreign exchange movements, and we expect to return to our target range of 115 to 120 by the end of the financial year, notwithstanding any persistent strong Aussie dollar. Churn remains historically low at just 0.6, which is industry-leading and further validation of both our strategy and the critical long-term role we play with our customers.

Ultimately, it all culminates in our ARR performance. Overall ARR and ARR per customer continues to grow strongly, and with our FY26 guidance of 16 to 18%, the first half results clearly demonstrate we are on track.

In closing, our results demonstrate that we are continuing to invest heavily in the future and push the boundaries of both what the market expects and what technology can deliver. From being the only SaaS provider across our verticals to deliver mission-critical capabilities such as student management, curriculum, timetabling scheduling, property and rating, strategic asset management, and so many more, we continue to differentiate ourselves through innovation and genuinely improving our customers' outcome.

Combined with SaaS Plus, Plus, Guide, and our broader AI strategy, our R&D team continuously take the road less traveled because they remain deeply connected to our customers and the industries we serve. We cannot be prouder of the direction they are taking TechnologyOne, our industry, but most importantly the customers every single day.

Edward Chung

Thanks, Stuart. To wrap up the results quite simply, our investments made in R&D, in AI, in showcase, in SaaS Plus, they're delivering.

We achieved our 17th consecutive half-year record ARR, record revenue, record profit. Total ARR is up 17% to 598 million.

UK ARR is up 23% with a very strong pipeline for half two, driven by our showcase event in February this year. The flywheel is turning, and profit before tax of 89.1 million, up 9% as flagged.

These results enable us to continue our strong R&D investments for future growth, and that was 84.1 million dollars, up 22%, and a record interim dividend of eight cents per share, up 30%. We're on track to achieve our upgraded full-year guidance.

Turning to our long-term outlook. We've doubled in size every five years, and we're going to continue to do so.

As I've done in the past, I'd like to walk you through the key mechanisms on how we achieve this consistently amazing outcome. We have a total addressable market of 13.5-plus billion dollars, and it's growing.

We have and will continue to deliver strong net revenue retention within that range of 115 to 120%. Now, at 115% alone, we can continue to double in size every five years.

We have significant white space in our existing customer base, and it continues to expand. With that continuous investment in R&D, we release new products, features, modules two times every year, therefore organically increasing the TAM.

Now, once we land a customer, there are many, many new products and modules that we can provide to those customers. Our pricing model is tied to a true partnership with our customers.

As they grow, we grow. In summary, we benefit from population growth, and our contracts include CPI.

Now, SaaS Plus is a game changer. It was designed to differentiate us and to remove the long, complex, risky, expensive implementations.

We benefit from a 40% uplift in our price book, and we simplify our business again by removing one-off consulting revenue and replace it with high-quality recurring revenue, and leveraging AI to achieve our ERP in 30 days, you'll see significant margin improvement. Now, we continue to target acquisitions in that very disciplined way that adds new IP to our business, such as CourseLoop.

The leverage we're delivering in our business provides us with significant headroom for inorganic growth. We have a great vision and a platform for the future of ERP.

Now, as we enter the fifth generation, the AI generation, our total addressable market is exponentially turbocharged with the addition of Plus and Guide as our customers take on more and more interactions and conversation bundles. They take on ad revenue, and I'm sure many, many more will emerge.

This AI transaction-driven pricing will drive additional ARR and revenue from each customer and from the residents and the students of our customers. We say exponential because it's massive.

We just don't know how big it can be yet. From the initial conversations and feedback we're receiving from our customers, the usage of conversations and interactions is significantly exceeding our expectations.

Now all of this just increases the depth of our moat and significantly increases the opportunity ahead of us, underpinning our confidence that we'll achieve our next big goal of a billion dollars-plus ARR by FY30. Here's a summary of what that AI opportunity does for our business.

One, our AI pricing model, to which I've already spoken, is tied to rateables, to students enrolled, and now interactions and conversations. Two, our AI enhancements provide better outcomes and value to our customers and their customers, plus turns the ERP from thousands of screens into one single conversation.

Thirdly, the data advantage. We've got 38 years of vertical workflow data, compliance with laws and regulations, best practice, tacit approvals.

AI is only as smart as the data it leans on. Foundation models can't replicate this.

They might have the internet, but we've got the operating record of public sector in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Four, Plus is a Trojan horse.

As customers use Plus, they realize that more products represents more value for them and their customers. Five, the network effect.

Guide expands Plus from SaaS to end users. With Guide, we're inside every conversation that a council has with a resident and every conversation that a uni has with a student.

The customer surface area expands by orders of magnitude. The moat was wide before.

With AI, it gets wider and it gets deeper. Our people, they have a deep connection with our mission because they, their parents, their brothers and sisters, their family, we all live, work and play in the communities we serve.

They live and breathe TechOne way. They create and deliver the mission-critical products and solutions that power our customers.

None of these results would be possible without the talented and committed people who make up TechnologyOne. Our people are in the role.

They've got energy and momentum, and we would like to thank every member of TechOne across the globe. Firmly on the path to achieve a billion dollars-plus ARR by FY30 from our current base of 598 million.

We will continue to invest for the long term in R&D to build platforms for growth, and the economies of scale from our global SaaS ERP solution will also drive continued profit-before-tax margin expansion through to 35% and beyond. We'll now hand over to the operator for questions.

Operator

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question by the phone, you'll press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.

If you would like to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question.

If you would like to ask a question by the webcast, please type it into the Ask a Question box and click Submit. Your first question today from the phone comes from Lucy Huang from UBS.

Please go ahead.

Edward Chung

G'day, Lucy.

Lucy Huang

Thanks. Hi, Ed.

Thanks for taking questions. Perhaps start off with the first one.

Just interested in some extra color around Plus. I think in February you talked about 22 customers signing up.

Any color as to what that number or penetration rate looks like today? Then you also made some comments around kind of conversations with customers suggesting usage is exceeding expectations.

Edward Chung

So

Lucy Huang

any color you can share on how a customer is using Plus? Are we seeing a large number of them exceeding their usage caps?

Edward Chung

Yeah. Thanks, Lucy.

There's two parts. I'll answer the first part, then hand to Stuart.

In terms of customer take-up, it is firmly on track to be the fastest product, if it's more than a product, ever delivered by TechOne. We're just holding our powder dry to save some good news for the full year also.

Rest assured, it is getting into... The second part of the question is that how is it exceeding our expectations for take-up?

Stuart MacDonald

It's a really good question. We should remember, everybody, that we released it with 26K, and that's only been available with Plus for about three and a half, four weeks now.

It's very early days, and so a lot of the customers are still in test, not in production with it. The feedback related to their modeling is very impressive, far exceeds our modeling related to what we expected the usage to be.

If we talk about ACU, it's orders of magnitude greater than we ever expected. It's more than 10 times more than we modeled that they would use.

We don't really know yet because it's still early days, but we'll be able to give you our individual customer, like ACU, but it's quite large, as you can imagine. It's a large uni, or medium university, but student management and unis are big, but it's got every product and module.

When we modeled the interactions and conversation uptake, it was aggressive in our minds, or strong, but it is 10 times more, more than 10 times more. The ARR could double in that single customer base.

We don't really know yet, Lucy, but they literally bought everything. There was a new product we just announced called Invoice AQ, and it's ability to scan your invoices, and there's a competitor product that we're taking out.

When we model things, we're just seeing so much more usage coming out of this functionality than we ever expected, and we're just excited to see where it goes. That's just one very simple case study.

Break that out because everything is SaaS Plus, and Plus is just another product that we put through the system. We don't break that out at all.

Edward Chung

Lucy, if you like, we've got what we call a very diversified model. You can multiple products, multiple regions, multiple verticals, and to be honest, some are going to fire better in some halves and years, and some will fire even stronger in others.

We use that diversification of revenue streams to ensure that we can hit that 18% compound proposal.

Lucy Huang

Then maybe just the last one, just interested in guide and the advertising revenue model. Are you expecting to have to build a team of sales people to attract those ad dollars?

I'm just kind of keen to hear how.

Edward Chung

Very early in its evolution. We won't get too specific on costs other than to say that this is a fairly innovative approach to generating revenue for TechOne.

It will be incremental revenue and incremental profit for us, but exactly how that's going to fall through yet, we're yet to see. The customer excitement related to it far exceeds our expectation yet again.

We've got at least three customers that are trying to be the first ones to take it on board when it gets released in 26B, which will be sometime in August. Related to the sales team, it's the same sales team, we're verticalizing the way we sell.

We've got an education sales team that's selling that product, and we've been enabling them for the last six months, ready to sell the product. We will also go through a kind of a crawl, walk, run phase related to the ad revenue side.

We're early into this phase as well. We've been talking to a lot of other providers of ad revenue to see how they grew into it, to make sure that we do it the right way.

It's very early days, but very exciting, and it's got a real flywheel effect because the customer is servicing its customer better. The students are getting more information, therefore decreasing the cost for call centers and improving the NPS.

Exciting.

Lucy Huang

Thank you so much, Shad.

Edward Chung

Thanks, Lucy.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Andrew Gillies from Macquarie.

Please go ahead.

Edward Chung

G'day, Andrew.

Andrew Gillies

Hey, guys. Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Look, just following on from Lucy's questions, I appreciate the

Edward Chung

focus on really two metrics: PBT growth, number one, and then closely followed by ARR growth. For us it's total ARR.

It doesn't really matter if they land, and over many, many, many years, there's sort of second half skewed. I'll get this Stuart to you in a minute.

Now when you look at new versus existing, including the forex impact, then 114 for existing, including the forex impact, then new logo is 3%. It's just one minus the other.

Where do it goes? Everything goes into NRR, typically, or most of it goes to NRR.

Then if you go to higher education, we bought Scientia back in 21, I think. There's a lot of nuance in that conversation.

Our focus is on the entire market, that 18% day in, day out. One of the DNA parts, sort of the hallmarks of TechOne is we don't want to shoot the lights out one year and have a really bad year the next year.

It's just strong, consistent growth. Our commitment from a PBT point of view is that 18 to 20 at the top end, consistently, and ARR growth 16 to 18 at the top end, consistently.

Hopefully that just paints the picture, Andrew, firstly of the ARR, whether it's new or existing, and then Stuart, you'll fill in the sort of the dynamics of the year for the UK.

Stuart MacDonald

Sure. One piece I also put together as well, somebody's asked me, how did we get such growth in attendance at showcase?

We've always set showcase up as a prospecting event, but historically it's been a lot more of our customers coming and looking at new product and pulling it across. We had far more prospecting attendance than we've ever had before, and that's just a validation of our strategy and our brand in the regions we serve.

You'll see that play through. Related to the UK, a strong first half, great foundation for the second half.

The pipeline is far exceeding what we expected to have at this time of year. We've got some very healthy, exciting deals to talk through at the full year, and very excited where we're going, not only next year, but going forward as well.

We are the de facto provider now for local government and higher education in the UK, and it's putting us in a very strong position.

Andrew Gillies

Thanks very much, guys. Then just a quick follow-up, if I look at kind of that pipeline opportunity, is that kind of both UK and sort of ANZ?

Are you willing to kind of provide some color on the splits there, or just think about it as kind of 10 times that $9 million spend or the 7.4 on the showcase cost?

Stuart MacDonald

It's pretty even, to be honest, across the board. The UK is far more new just because it's the time we've had there, but across the board that growth of that pipeline is pretty even on both sides.

I wouldn't really put any more to it.

Andrew Gillies

Perfect, thanks, guys. Then just one last one on the product.

Obviously this shift to a consumption-based revenue model is a bit of a change for customers. Is there any kind of education required with that?

How do you balance the desire to grow transactional consumption-based revenues with the potential sticker shock of customers?

Edward Chung

It's like every generation, to be honest. It was similar in cloud.

Our first approach is that in the AI world, it's bloody complex with tokens. I don't know if you or your friends have played with it.

I've personally played with it, and you get millions of tokens, which means nothing to me, to be honest. At a first level, we simplified it by just having you ask a question and you get an answer.

That's a conversation, or you press the button in product and you get an answer. That's an interaction.

We've already, one, taken away the complexity from tokens, which means nothing to anyone. Two, when you buy Plus or In-product AI, you get a whole lot of bundles, and then you can buy on top.

Of course it's going to take education, but Stuart, do you want to add more to that?

Stuart MacDonald

I think the exciting part of this whole phase is what they're realizing is the value they get from AI. We have to really enable them and educate them related to the functionality.

Once we've done that, and if anybody came to the showcase, they would have seen how we showed that we were giving time back related to that functionality. It actually pays for itself because they can do the mental math of this interaction is going to cost me 30 cents compared to spending half a day to do the work.

We don't have to really position it anymore. We just have to inform them of the functionality, and then they adopt it quickly because they can see the efficiencies they're getting.

We're really breaking down that old way of thinking, which is I need to do a function. Now I need to figure out how to do function faster, and that's what AI gives them, and that's what we're getting the return from.

I've not had any pushback. In fact, almost the opposite from our customer base, and they're pushing us to get more and more functionality into AI and leveraging those interactions.

Edward Chung

Do you want to talk about the research we've done for local government customer service call centers and the value difference?

Stuart MacDonald

Sure. If I take the UK as a case study, we're working with the other product we really haven't talked much about, which is Guide for LG.

We released Guide for LG in 27A. If I look at a council, a decent-sized council in the UK, they spend about £2.80 for every call that comes through to their call center, and only 85% of those calls get answered, and only about 6% of those calls ever get resolved.

We can actually do the vast majority of that work for a 30-cent or a 15-pence cost. We can do all of their calls and actually push them through at an absolute fraction of what they're spending right now, they can take that money and put it to more meaningful things.

Once they start to understand that order is a magnitude of saving in efficiency, but also NPS results related to their students or rate payers, everything just kind of takes care of itself. It becomes logical, and that's what's making that flywheel turn so quickly.

Andrew Gillies

Thanks very much, guys.

Edward Chung

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Paul Mason from AMP.

Please go ahead.

Edward Chung

G'day, Paul.

Paul Mason

Hey, thanks for taking the questions, guys. Just a couple from me.

I just wanted to check, with the currency headwind, was that all on the UK? Would your ARR have been 59 million if not for currency, or is there some New Zealand in that as well?

Cale Bennett

Thanks for your question, Paul. No, it does include New Zealand, and if you’re a close watcher of the Kiwi dollar, it has depreciated quite significantly over the half as well.

Paul Mason

Great. Two other ones more on business.

Just in terms of the rollout of Plus, I was just wondering if you could make some more specific comments on the level of upsell that’s come from it with customers that have taken it? You said most major deals are taking Plus now, but are most major deals taking Plus and then something else because the Plus is lower, or how’s that?

Stuart MacDonald

I don't know the exact numbers, but some. I would say probably about 25 to 35 percent of the Plus deals are Plus standalone.

Almost everything else has a pull-through of some type. Maybe not at an ACU level, but some type of taking advantage and looking at the products that they want to take out and bring our product in, Plus can actually evaluate that information.

It’s definitely the majority of the deals are bringing other products through. And

Edward Chung

I think on top of that, if you think longer term, once they get Plus and they start using it and see the value and see the interactions, the surfacing insights they never thought about, the lights will turn on. There’s no doubt it’s a Trojan horse, not just for now, but for the dawn of time.

And

Stuart MacDonald

we can see it here. Look at what we’re doing.

We can see the usage here of what we’re doing. We’re an early adopter, and the amount of information it’s providing everybody is just fascinating.

Absolutely fascinating.

Edward Chung

It is. Yeah.

Paul Mason

Just the last one for me will be just on the consulting revenues you got application managed services business. Could you maybe just give us a bit of an overview of how that line’s going to go through time?

Can we see the absolute consulting revenues decline, or is that just going to change nature to this more ongoing consulting instead of the implementation consulting as time progresses?

Cale Bennett

Basically you're right. We will see that migrate from that line from

Paul Mason

finished. Is there much margin difference between the two, or are they pretty similar in terms of how the economics work?

Cale Bennett

They're fairly similar. They're quite different businesses, but they’re not materially different margins.

Paul Mason

Excellent. Thank you.

Edward Chung

Thanks, Paul.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Josh Kannourakis from Barrenjoey.

Please go ahead.

Edward Chung

G’day, Josh.

Josh Kannourakis

Josh Kannourakis (Founding Principal and Co-Head of Emerging Companies and Technology Research, Barrenjoey): Hi guys, thanks for taking my question. A few questions.

Firstly, just around, there’s been a lot of discussion and a few things that have come out in the last few weeks around sovereign AI and AI procurement in government.

Edward Chung

It’s very topical, tech sovereignty, in particular AI sovereignty, and we are a firm believer of buying local to support the local. Not only for TechOne, but for the industry at large.

Expect Albo’s push for Team Australia and for sovereignty to Josh Kannourakis (Founding Principal and Co-Head of Emerging Companies and Technology Research, Barrenjoey):

Josh Kannourakis

obviously start to couplet, James Cook, obviously a long-term customer, coming back to you guys, 10-year deals, obviously feel pretty significant. Just keen to understand, obviously there’s a lot of change going forward, but when you look at your pipeline on a go-forward basis, has there been any sort of that

Edward Chung

customers really want to take up AI and take the advantage of it and do the longer deals? Is there anything you want to add to that, Stuart?

Stuart MacDonald

No, we always position with a five-year.

Josh Kannourakis

Josh Kannourakis (Founding Principal and Co-Head of Emerging Companies and Technology Research, Barrenjoey): Expenses on that. I noticed as well the capitalized commission costs were obviously higher in H1.

Is that just because you’ve signed a couple of very important deals?

Edward Chung

There’s a little bit of nuance in that,

Josh Kannourakis

Josh Kannourakis (Founding Principal and Co-Head of Emerging Companies and Technology Research, Barrenjoey): but

Edward Chung

we did sign quite a lot of deals

Josh Kannourakis

in the half. Josh Kannourakis (Founding Principal and Co-Head of Emerging Companies and Technology Research, Barrenjoey): It was a good sales half.

Edward Chung

Sales

Josh Kannourakis

Josh Kannourakis (Founding Principal and Co-Head of Emerging Companies and Technology Research, Barrenjoey): people like to get paid, and

Edward Chung

they deserve to be. Josh, I might just add a bit to that.

It might be lost on people, but if you think about a salesperson’s commission, it is on the value of the deal they do for the first year, generally speaking,

Josh Kannourakis

Josh Kannourakis (Founding Principal and Co-Head of Emerging Companies and Technology Research, Barrenjoey): and

Edward Chung

they don’t have the forex impact. That slide that’s on, I don’t know, GA or whatever that slide is, it’s really important because Strip away, or bring back to constant currency, and one of the things that gives us confidence, and of course we can see a very clear pipeline heading into half two.

I think that message, up until now, it might have been a little bit lost, but they’ve done really well. Slide 25.

Yeah.

Josh Kannourakis

Josh Kannourakis (Founding Principal and Co-Head of Emerging Companies and Technology Research, Barrenjoey): No, that’s great. I had a couple of questions.

Thanks, Josh.

Edward Chung

Thanks, Josh.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Roger Samuel from Jefferies Australia.

Please go ahead.

Edward Chung

G’day, Roger.

Roger Samuel

Hi, Michael. I’ve got a couple of questions.

First one, could you outline your confidence in hitting the top end of the guidance range, which is for 18 percent in ARR growth in FY26, given that you reported 17 percent in the first half, whilst your net retention rate has come down to 114 percent? Just to understand how much heavy lifting do you need to do in the second half?

Maybe just to clarify, those new contracts, as you mentioned in the slide pack, the JCU, the Townsville, et cetera, did they land in the first half or the second half?

Edward Chung

Yep, I’ll start with that one first, Roger. They definitely landed in the first half.

It’s a good question you ask. I’m going back to slide 25, if I can find it.

Okay. The whole point of slide 25, although subtle, is to say if we didn’t have forex impact, Cale was 6 million, we would have done 50 mil in the first half.

It’s huge momentum going into the half, delivered solid results, and I wouldn’t say we’re coasting, but the team have done such a great job, and visibility in the pipeline, as well as the excitement for Plus, and every time we show our customers Plus or get pre-sales people in front of them, it just drags the deal forward because the buying C-level sees the value in it, sees the value in that interaction or conversation, such as the 23 pence compared to £2.38. It's so significant, Roger, that we are firmly committed.

We've got huge visibility in the pipeline for FY27 and forward conversation, and that's the excitement we have.

Roger Samuel

Got it. Thanks.

My second question is on margins. SaaS Plus so far hasn't impact on margins, and yet you're still guiding to margin expansion in FY26.

Is there any cost efficiency program that you're doing that drives that margin expansion? Also on SaaS Plus, when would you expect that margin dilution to get the full way?

Edward Chung

I might start and then hand over to Cale. I think if you lift the hood in TechOne, there's always cost outs.

We're always focused on efficiency of the business. It's probably why we're in the top quarter globally of companies in the rule of 40.

It's just part of the DNA. We keep pushing.

Get efficiencies in our business. You're seeing a whole lot of things play out there, DNA of the business, continue to focus on efficiencies, the use of AI inside our own business as well as in the products for our customers, and we'll continue to drive hard to slowly but carefully increase that margin.

Roger Samuel

And

Edward Chung

internally... So,

Cale Bennett

We have good confidence that that 35% margin that we put out a number of years ago, we have a pretty solid path to that, and we're pretty buoyed by how the business has gone with respect to cost through the first half of FY26. And

Stuart MacDonald

I think if you look at us against our competitors, there's also another piece to look at too. We've got massive initiatives, and we're playing on multiple fronts to support our customers, and we're still hiring.

Compared to our competitors that are actually downsizing, we'll still leverage AI and gain great efficiencies through AI, but we're still looking for the people to help us deliver these amazing initiatives. We're very different to everybody else.

We're still growing in that regard because there are so many things on our plate that we're delivering.

Edward Chung

That's a good point. We can scale faster and do more.

We've always had more ideas than we can stick at, and AI, cost efficiency, just allows us to do a bit of everything, to be honest.

Roger Samuel

That's great. Thank you.

Edward Chung

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Tom Beadle from Jarden.

Please go ahead.

Edward Chung

G'day, Tom.

Tom Beadle

G'day. Thank you for the opportunity.

Just a first question on ARR just to follow up on a few of the others. Just can you clarify, is it fair to say it's probably too early to have seen any of that impact in the first half?

Edward Chung

We can definitely see impact, no question. Again, if we started in October of last year, you'll start to see it flow through a little bit in the first half, but you'll start to see it in the second half.

Our numbers remain the same. Again, what I'm trying to provide you is the confidence related to the numbers.

We would be at this time of year very focused on Q3, Q4 as we're finishing off the year. We're very focused now on next year and the pipeline and the growth and the strategies and the campaigns for next year, because of the foundation that we built early in this year and through showcase, that's flowing through.

I don't expect at any time to increase the ARR numbers, but it's just more confidence and comfort of them that allows us to look further ahead, if that answers your question.

Tom Beadle

That's helpful. Thank you.

Just second question on NRR. Obviously, it's at 114%.

It's obviously very robust, lower size numbers possibly kicking in. Do you think that this is a sustainable target going forward?

Just can you talk to what you believe can accelerate your NRR growth back to that range?

Edward Chung

I think, to be honest, it's just the timing of the deals, right? I think our four-year guidance is 16 to 18 at the top end, and if we do about the same new logo, that 3%-ish, then we will do in the range.

That's the 115 to 120. It's part of the same story.

We have that visibility of the pipeline, strong momentum in the business. We're not concerned about that at all.

Tom Beadle

Gotcha. Just a final question on R&D costs.

Obviously they came in a little bit above your target range. Can you just talk to why that was the case?

Is it just as simple as your exit momentum into the second half is high, your R&D stack to sales will naturally just fall back into that range, or should we expect a continued acceleration in R&D in the second half just to match that momentum you've got?

Cale Bennett

No. The 26% in first half is really a denominator issue.

The cadence, as Stuart mentioned, with respect to adding people to our R&D team hasn't changed. You'll notice that our revenue increase versus the PCP was 11 or 13%, depending on which one you're looking at, and that was really driven by timing of

Tom Beadle

much.

Edward Chung

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Unfortunately, that concludes our time for questions today.

I'll now hand back to Mr. Chung for any closing remarks.

Edward Chung

Thank you, everyone. Thanks for attending.

Again, our people are in a tear. We'd like to thank each and every one of them around the globe and to thank you, our shareholders, for your continuing support.

Thanks again.