Good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming along to the inaugural half-year presentation of ActiveOps as we kind of get used to being a public company. In the next half an hour or so, I hope we'll run through our update from the H1, covering essentially the financials, but also the general outlook for the business. I know there's time for questions at the end, hopefully, we'll welcome any views or perspective you may have. Just cracking straight into the business, I'm conscious that as ever, as a new company, a quick reminder of what we are. We're fundamentally a SaaS company with some training installation revenues, we operate globally in three principal regions: Europe, Middle East, and South Africa, the North America business and the Australia business.
As you can see, some of the key stats on the left there, it's like GBP 19 million, GBP 20 million ARR, and we deliver our products through ourselves, but also through a number of key partners. In terms of the value proposition, what we do is we give organizations, large enterprises, banks, insurance companies, BPOs, that service those types of companies, we give them better control over their fundamentals of how they deliver their services. This graphic on the screen here just quickly summarizes that. Essentially, the challenge for these sorts of enterprises, they have siloed resources, which are therefore very subject to the vagaries or the ebbs and flows of workload. That drives essentially leakage of value, loss of capacity, because productivity is very driven by the presenting workload.
Using ActiveOps' software, which is these two core products of WorkiQ and ControliQ, and the data we provide on the back of that, which is the OpsIndex, embedded with our very clearly established best practice, you get the outcome of organizations being able to leverage their capacity better. The productivity on the bottom left-hand side there is essentially an outcome of better management of your capacity. The impact of that is very significant. In lots of ways, it gives a cost improvement, but actually, in the days of digital and increasingly diverse operations with more and more work being done by robots and automation, it gives organizations the stability and capability to exploit those sorts of technologies. That's really what we're seeing in terms of the market.
We've had a very good half year, and I think a lot of that is to do with the rising awareness of a lot of the established practices for managing the challenges of work and capacity are proving to be quite challenged, and it's putting better operations management onto a lot of agendas in the way as a strategic issue. For those of you who've seen us or listened to some of the presentations I've given over the last 6 months leading from the IPO, we were very clear on how we see this driving the business. I think the interesting piece is then the one on the right, because one thing's for sure, on the sort of post-pandemic phase, there is no real clarity about the sort of where we're heading to, which again, to us, plays to, you know...
When organizations aren't clear on their strategy and the deployment resources, the one thing they can work on is their agility, and I think that continues to sort of play to us. I'll talk more about some of the impacts in some of our more mature markets, about how we're presenting our roadmap to our customers and the outcome of doing that. Just to talk then about the headline figures, and I'll defer to Paddy in a minute for more of the detailed view. Fundamentally, we had a very strong half year. The key metrics across the range of activities all going in the right direction. Also, more importantly, the underlying, if you like, activity of the business, new business logos across regions, a slight regional variation in the sense of North America.
It's a more growth market for us, we've been very successfully cross-selling the new product, WorkiQ, which we acquired through OpenConnect two years ago, into the established base there. That's important because firstly, we've had to tackle different issues because it's fundamentally an on-premise solution, so there's the whole process of becoming an embedded part. Secondly, there's the value proposition. Does it add to what we already offer? The good news there is, it's adding an awful lot. The actual value proposition we can now take to other customers to say, "This client is using this software in conjunction with our other software, and they're getting amplified results," is a very powerful one. I think the other significant thing about that is the scope.
For every 1 customer that would be on the core ControliQ product, we reckon 3 customers. There's a need for 3 customers for the WorkiQ product. It extends the range of types of work that our software can help organizations manage. That's an important one in North America. In Europe, Middle East, and Africa, it's just busy. New logos, lots of activity, very strong pipeline. There seems to be much less lag, if you like, from the COVID uncertainty. The European end of the business had a real gangbusters Q2, which, given our financial reporting, is April to March. Typically, quarter two can be quite slow because it runs over the summer period. Absolutely not the case. Very pleased with the activity now happening in Europe. Finally, Australia.
The interesting thing about Australia, which has always been a very strong market for ActiveOps, it's a very mature market with ActiveOps as a solution embedded in most of the larger banks over there. You will have seen in the RNS, despite the fact that they've been with us for many years, like National Australia Bank have been with us since 2003, typically, we go through an annual re-renewal cycle. What they're doing, because I think of an increasing need for managing resources as a strategic issue, they've been putting us through the wringer a bit around our kind of strategic roadmap, and the outcome of that has been moving from a 1 year to a 3-year deal, which is a. It's, for me, less about the renewal certainty, and it's absolutely to do with endorsement of our technological pathway.
You know, they do see us as key partners. That is important because in many ways, Australia, for us, is a, is a, is a, is a, at the cutting edge, if you like, of this topic around the world. That's been some very positive outcome. I think there's a number of things as an outcome of the year. In terms of where we've been focusing, overall, we're still investing in the business, and Paddy will probably speak in a minute about the economics of our EBIT and so on, but fundamentally, we're still investing across the range of activities of the business. That's accelerating our development capacity.
We've completely re-platformed our ControliQ product, and that's creating opportunities to link much more specifically into the other organizational ecosystems, like around Anaplan or ServiceNow or the other kind of elements of the technology roadmap inside these enterprises, and that creates new opportunities. We're particularly excited about the link with Microsoft. Fundamentally, our Microsoft Azure software platform, which means our large enterprise clients get significant incentives to buy related Azure client services, such as ourselves. We're getting a real positive movement because essentially Microsoft, our salespeople are incentivized to sell and support our sales of our product. That, I think, will have an increasing gearing effect in the months and years to come.
We're investing in ourselves and customer support because if you take one of the key stats, our top 10 customers, the use of our ARR grew by 32%, which is, again, obviously the bedrock of the business, because history shows we expand across our new accounts very systematically. I think what the half year has demonstrated is that is still absolutely the bedrock of business. I'm very excited about that. On the back of that, I think the expansion opportunities, especially with the new software to extend, is very, very significant. Some of the investment is in direct sales, new business, but actually much more of it is in the senior client execs to help develop and expand our footprint within our existing customers.
Not all of that on the back of some really good areas of product development supporting effectively hybrid working. A lot going on and a lot of very positive activities for the business. I've touched on the different regional aspects, but, you know, the nice thing is we're a multi-legged business. We aren't dependent on sort of performance in any one region, and that strength is really seeing us through. The overall message of us coming to the market is, I think, probably no surprises, but as I sit here today, certainly looking back over the half year, I'm pleased with the where we are at. Certainly as I look forward, I think there's a lot to be excited about.
That's my quick summary, but I'll let Paddy, you pick up a bit on the, on some of the details of the figures.
Thank you, Richard. Just firstly, focusing on the SaaS model that we've got in the business and the annual recurring revenue. As Richard said, we had a very strong growth in our top 10 customers there at 32%, overall a 16% increase in our ARR to GBP 19.8 million. Those top 10 also now taking a larger proportion of the total. They're at 58%. The other really strong metric that we've got is our net revenue retention, so the growth of our existing customers over the same period last year, and that's at 110%. We just see an expansion across our customers in all regions with good growth in both ControliQ and WorkiQ. A very positive story on the ARR picture.
If I just move on to the P&L. SaaS revenue, that's accelerated to 12% growth, and that's a result of that sort of strong second half that Richard just talked about. The T&I revenue has recovered significantly versus the first half of last year. Of course, the first half of last year was COVID, and things weren't quiet. Very strong growth and back to normal levels that we were seeing pre-COVID, which is encouraging. Associated with that, we've got an impact on gross margins, so the revenue mix has driven an overall gross margin decrease of one percentage point. If you break out the SaaS margin, that's improved a small amount to 85%, in line with what you'd expect to see at a SaaS business.
Within the T&I training and implementation revenues, very strong margin improvement, up to 56%, and that's a result of the implementations we've done in high-margin regions and with some strong customers who are looking for our dedicated support in those implementations, as well as the fact that most of those deliveries are still being done from home remotely, and that gives us a stronger efficiency of our delivery team, as well as no travel or hotel expenses and so on, as if they were on site previously. Margins looking very, very solid. Richard talked about the investment in sales and the account execs and driving retention and growth in our existing customers, as well as the tech and development spend.
That spend came in towards the back end of H1, and we'll obviously have the full impact of that in H2. Whilst we're broadly break even in H1, we do expect to move to a loss-making position for the full year, and that's a result of that spend coming through and the full 6-month impact that we'll see in the rest of the year. Just below the EBITDA margin line, the only thing really to point out there is that the net interest charge has dropped away following the repayment of the loan that we had as part of the acquisition of OpenConnect a couple of years ago. That loan was repaid in October last year, so interest charging fallen away.
I then move on to the cash flow and balance sheet, the balance sheet remains very strong, over GBP 10 million of cash in the bank, and all the debt repaid, as I said. The cash flow is worth a couple of minutes because you'll see there's a one-off impact in that of GBP 3.5 million payment related to the IPO and the exercise of share options and the associated taxes that various people had on those. We received that cash into the business prior to the year-end. We paid it on to the tax authorities in early April, and hence, a significant one-off in the numbers. We also see a negative cash flow in the first half of the year, and that's typical for what we have experienced in prior years, so no surprises from our perspective on that.
We do expect that to recover in the second half. That's as a result of our billing cycle and our renewal cycle with our existing accounts, and the fact that the second half of the year for sales is generally strong, or it's previously been strong. That cash balance is expected to build as those annual in advance invoices are raised and paid before the year-end by our customer base, such that we return to a positive cash flow conversion against EBITDA for the rest of the year. As you can see, we've made good progress on that in October, with over GBP 2 million coming into the business as a result of that timing on the invoicing cycle. That's the numbers that we see for the first half.
I'm now gonna pass back to Richard to have a look at the strategy and sales opportunity.
Thanks, Paddy. I think overall, the continuing impact of COVID is just creating a sense of awareness. I think a lot of the established practices for managing capacity and work, which is sounds utterly mundane, but it's really been challenged for a lot of organizations. That need to now get better leverage out of capacity when it's not necessarily sitting in sheds and sitting in offices is just coming through very, very strongly. You're seeing that coming through in... We're highlighting a couple of things here in the analysts....
Whether it's Forrester or Omdia, the one that was particularly key was this IDC report. They highlight the fact that if you think about one of the other things in the market around Lean business processes and, you know, applying Lean to minimize, if you like, contingency and capacity in processes to make them more efficient, the effect of that is to make organizations very brittle. I think there is a growing recognition that whilst, you know, Lean itself is at reducing costs, you still have to manage the volatility. IDC did a really good piece around that. That's, of course, absolutely ActiveOps' sort of sweet spot, because what we give organizations is that capability to manage their overall work and time in a more systematic way.
You don't have to carry lots of siloed resources, you can effectively manage that as a collective. I think the context for our side of the solution is only growing. We're seeing that coming through in terms of the Australian sort of maturity of the strategic roadmap I talked about, but also in terms of the sort of presenting need, either in terms of North America. I mean, the Crosssell of WorkiQ was because the organization there wanted greater visibility to support the wellbeing agenda. They were concerned that people working in remote locations were working extended hours, and that kind of visibility was an important part of the process.
You know, the stories are different in different places, but there is just that rising awareness, need for better management or using technology to support better management of work and time. I think the overall context for our product is only getting stronger, and that's important because classically, in our environment, we're quite a sophisticated sell. You know, we have to make people more aware of the impact of a problem to present our solution, that's quite helpful. I think in terms of our focus, it remains what you will have heard from me before.
You know, our catchment is this banks and insurers and the American healthcare market in particular, where if you like, the cost of labor, the efficiency of labor is such a fundamental driver of the service people receive, their capacity to meet their sort of shareholder expectations. Also the big one, and particularly for banks, is operational risk. You know, evidence to third parties, whether it's a regulator or other suppliers or other customers, evidence that you're in control, and that's very hard when your back office is a bit of a black box, and again, ActiveOps is very strong at that. Our differentiation remains that focus on that particular business problem around the back office, and it's our credibility about being effectively the leading player in the world on this topic.
We have the most developed solution, we have the most developed methodology, and importantly, now I think we've got the, you know, we've got the technology roadmap and the integration piece to support that. You know, there's a lot happening, and certainly the teams around the world are very busy. Against that, you've still got the noise of the pandemic, you've still got the noise of selling to large enterprises is messy, complex and difficult, and, you know, when you've got multiple stakeholders, so none of this is easy, but it's a more sort of supportive environment we're in now. Again, just to emphasize, I think the value of our linkage with Microsoft is really coming through. That presence in at the CIO level of their sort of.
the relationships they enjoy, through which we can leverage our own sort of service and part of that sort of in central ecosystem of these large enterprises, is really changing, and I'm quite excited about that in terms of the outlook. Moving on to the H2 outlook, I mean, the trend is continuing. We've picked up another really good customer in South Africa, which is interesting because that market itself has been fairly flat for a few years, and I think there's a lot of activity warming up there. The expansion rate, 32% growth in our core top 10 customers over the last year, I think is the outstanding statistic of our results in half. Clearly, that is something that's the bedrock of the business, and the fact that it's continuing is great.
I think the significance of the term, you know, moving to these 3-year deals, that's testament, not so much to the low level of churn, I don't think that's changed, that's still the same. It's the endorsement of the strategic roadmap for the product and what we are doing, I think is a really good thing. You know, you take all that together, as I sit here now, looking forward to the end of the year, I and we've sort of indicated, I think we're confident of reaching it and possibly exceeding our sort of expectations. As you might expect, as a fairly new company to the public markets, we're not wanting to do anything that causes any great surprises right now.
You know, in terms of the progress we've made in the last year, or last half year, I think it's been really good. Certainly as a team, we're very pleased with both the process of coming onto the market, the impact it's having on us as a commercial organization, and certainly our ability to deliver what we promised to our investors, I think the confidence is very high. I think that's my piece, but I'm very keen to have and answer any questions, perhaps we can open up the floor.
We've got a question from Kai Korschelt from Canaccord Genuity.
Good morning. Just a couple, really. The first one was around how we should think about normalized growth rates going forward. I think your AR grew at 16%, and I think the T&I sales are sort of at a GBP 4 million run rate. Just curious how, you know, how much has this benefited from, you know, the COVID comms last year? The question is, you know, really is sort of how should we think about, you know, the growth of both of these elements and your top line, you know, sort of beyond once we've normalized, you know, for the COVID impact? That was the first question. The second one was really around some of the larger enterprise, you know, SaaS software platforms.
You mentioned some of them, you have APIs with Workday or ServiceNow. You know, the trend there has been that they, you know, keep adding new modules to their product stack to, you know, keep growing at 20%-30%. I guess my question is, how do you see the coexistence with some of these larger platforms? You know, is there a risk that at some point they launch their own MPA or EPM solutions, or, you know, how do you think about that issue? Thank you.
Thanks, guys. You know, of, so taking the second one, I mean, you know, we have a very specific domain expertise, and I think that that's sustained us very well. I mean, clearly the value and the, you know, what we have is a benefit focus, and we have that kind of constituent customer base, which effectively has built up our repertoire. So to that extent, the sort of threat of, of competitive modules in certain areas, it has always been there. I think our differentiation remains our kind of, the fact that we sit essentially above those the transactional systems.
Obviously, the onus on us, you know, the onus on us is therefore to leverage that position to do something that is fairly unique. Whilst I mean, the, you know, we have a number of competitors out there in terms of other organizations, probably more in the workforce management space, you know, the traditional contact center types. We've managed to sustain, you know, that over many years, and frankly, we're doing better at the moment than not. I think we're okay with that. Going back to your first question, and Paddy, chip in as well, but, I mean, clearly the comps on last year, particularly about T and I, are just, you know, are exceptional.
I think the basic answer to your question is we see a return to our historical growth rates. That would be. So to that extent, if you look back over ActiveOps history, there's no reason to believe, you know, mid-teens growth is the norm. And I think that's, that's the general outlook. I mean, that would be on the, on the, on the overall revenues, but certainly the SaaS ARR. T and I, training and implementation, we're budgeting for, and we plan on, you know, continuing element of that, but we don't see that in a linear growth, because we see the value to us in scalability is to develop and nurture our ecosystem partners to pick up that.
I don't see it dropping away altogether, but the actual rate of growth of our T&I think, will be lower, but that's gonna be more of a strategic policy thing rather than a constraint. Actually, I think it's healthier for the business to lay it off to third parties.
If I could add just to that, Richard, just in terms of the T&I, T&I revenue, it is a variable metric, just simply around the way that we install with our customers or implement with our customers. If we get a customer who wants the full-fat version of us implementing, then we're gonna get very strong T&I revenues and margins as a result of that, as you've seen in the first half. If we use partners or if we are in a low-cost jurisdiction, we still get the good SaaS growth, but the T&I revenues can be lower as a result of that.
you know, we're back to pre-COVID levels, as we said, and as Richard said, we don't see that necessarily scaling in the same way as the SaaS revenues.
That's great. Thank you very much, and congratulations.
We'll go to Kevin Ashton from Singer Capital Markets.
Yes, thank you. Good morning, gentlemen.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I've got two newbie questions for you, if that's all right. The first one, you mentioned your customer base of over 80 customers. Can you give us some detail on the split there between workforce optimization, and EPM, and any overlap? I'm obviously thinking about cross-sell. I have another question, if that's okay.
The core business is the workforce is our ControliQ product.
Yeah.
It's predominantly, I would call it not EPM. EPM is even as a descriptor, is fairly new, and Gartner only really coined it a couple 18 months ago. For us, it's a rather imperfect description of one aspect of it. There is a, I think a rising awareness of need for better visibility over time and work, and that's the WorkiQ product. The 80 customers are for our Enterprise ControliQ product. We have probably 3 or 4 substantial WorkiQ products, most of which we inherited from OpenConnect when we bought it, but now we are cross-selling.
The second point in your question is then the cross-sell. The good thing there, I say, with the WorkiQ, let's call it EPM technology, is its addressable community is just so much larger. If you take a bank, which we would sell to, we would typically reckon about 14%-18% of the workforce would be suitable for our ControliQ product because they're the core sort of back office. There's the vast majority of other roles within our organization, which wouldn't necessarily be suitable for ControliQ. Whereas the WorkiQ product is much more a visibility over work and time, and that itself has probably got at least three times the catchment. The exciting thing from my point of view is if we...
With the evidence coming through of the 2 plus 2 equals 5, with the 2 software products in conjunction coming out of our North America enterprise customer we sold to recently and another one in South Africa, that gives me a fantastic sort of sales proposition to then take to our, you know, 80 or so enterprise customers to say, "You really need the WorkiQ product as well.
Okay, now, that actually puts it in perspective. Thank you very much. The second question is, when you talked about, you know, GBP 750 million potential market from existing clients, I think the other number that you mentioned in the admission document was GBP 70 million. I can't remember exactly how you described that, but it was. I'm kind of keen on it's focusing on the GBP 70 million, if that's appropriate, just where that number comes from?
Right
... You know, how much is, I don't know, new versus existing? I would've thought new, but kind of asked you that. How many touch points you have with this GBP 70 million ARR, if that... It's kind of a pipeline question, I guess. Anyway, just general background would be interesting.
Just to explain the math on that, as you say, part of the admissions information was the 750 is our assessment. If you take the top 250 banks or organizations with whom we'd like to talk to and look at their size of their, if you like, our addressable community within that, which is my sort of 14 or 18%, depending, that comes up.
Yeah
... with a target catchment. This is the sort of within a, the Anglophile sort of, so our segment of a market within which, who are the people we want to trust? That's the 750 million market, right? as a kind of
Yeah
... sizing, target addressable within our kind of sweet spot. You come back to our existing customer base, the GBP 70 million is a really interesting stat. That is-
Yeah
... what we've done is take our customers, look at with whom we already have contracts with.
Yeah
In the same math, look at their workforces. Take a large outsourcer, for example, with whom we have a good contract with. They are quite a federalized organization. They are very large indeed. We, you can still do the math on what's our sort of addressable. The GBP 70 million is the projected revenue possible if we sold to the fullest state of our existing customer base. There's no new business, new logo in there. That's just an estimate of our target addressable within our existing customer base. That's a really positive number because...
It's evidenced by, I mean, if you look at our expand sales last year, the key stat, which is one that sort of really does underpin my confidence for the future, is this 32% growth in our top 10 customers.
Yeah.
That's getting after that GBP 70 million.
Okay, well, that, yeah, that's impressive. I guess the other question was, but, I mean, you don't disclose pipeline or anything, but you've obviously got touch points with these people because you're there. I don't know, is pipeline something that you monitor internally? Is it something you can talk about qualitatively, if not quantitatively?
Well, you're absolutely right. I mean, one of the investments we're making, for example, is, you know, our account executives.
Yeah
... because exactly that. I mean, if you think about our revenue security, right? Priority one, keep your existing customers.
Yeah.
Priority two, expand your existing customers, priority three is acquiring a steady stream of new logos. We mentioned five new logos. Those five new logos will not deliver a great deal of ARR, certainly in the first year, but actually in quantum, even in the second year. It's getting after the new and then expanding those. That, that critical bit in the middle of growing that estate of usage within an existing customer is just the sort of lifeblood of the company. Our pipeline, We have, you know, account plans and target a target addressable. It's I'm not going to give you any stats on the actual size of the pipeline other than the one we've just discussed already.
One thing that's interesting is it is very different, for example, to expand in what you might describe as a very federalized, let's take an outsourcer, which has a very sort of segmented customer base. Actually, it's almost like a new sale to cross across to a different account, even though…
Ah
... intrinsically, it's leverage. What we're having a real purple patch with, particularly in the UK and some of the big banks that would be well known to you, but we're not sort of disclosing, but we're growing strongly in those because fundamentally they're the same business. Once we've established our provenance and the value, there's only greater good by more and more people coming onto the platform. Pipeline in that sense is absolutely something we manage. We target our resources clearly on the areas where we think we're gonna get basic. You know, we've got the biggest yield. That, you know, if we can sustain the 32% growth in the area, that's good. Then you. Sorry, just keep going.
You add in the cross-sell, because that 32% really hasn't come from. No, that's not quite true, the North America was, but the large majority of that 32 is coming from expansion of our existing product, not cross-sell.
Yeah.
As we get cross-sell working, I think that will be a big driver as well.
Brilliant. Okay, well, that's really helpful, and congratulations on your successful IPO.
Thank you. Well, talk about that in three or four years' time, but it certainly is not something, you know, against the different choices we had, you know, over the last 18 months, it's certainly feeling like the right thing to do. Yeah, thanks for that.
No problem. Thank you.
A question from Kimberley Castens from finnCap: Are you experiencing any staffing pressure in sales and marketing or in your development teams? What potential effect does that have on non-growth-focused increases in OpEx? We're hearing some extraordinary stories of salary inflation for techies in particular.
Interesting. I mean, we've grown our tech a lot in this last year. I think we quote in some of the decks, you know, we've had a 60% expansion in our core sort of new tech build, around ControliQ, for example. In actual fact, the impact of COVID in some ways has been positive, because whereas before I would have probably been prioritizing recruitment of tech around Reading and the Thames Valley, what we now have is the capability to recruit pretty much anywhere in the UK, because the team operating model now is spread. Specifically around that, the answer is no, we haven't. We are seeing some pressure, particularly in the US, on sales salaries.
As a new business, where you're nurturing or new presence, let's say, you're nurturing talent, you know, the loss of one or two key people can have a hard, have a, you know, quite an impact. You sort of reset. It's not when, you know, you've got a team of 20, losing one or two is less impactful. There's a risk there, but touch wood, I think the opportunities and what we've been able to place has not been, you know, has not been too difficult. Another issue for us, just on that topic of resourcing, though, is the different delivery model.
I mean, as you can imagine, many of the people that are in the training and implementation side of our business are used to going out on client sites. That's, that's their history. That's what they like doing. Actually, we're recognizing quite a difference now as people get used to delivering by, you know, screen and Teams and Zoom and so on. There are some dynamics to the business. To go to the core of the questions, fortunately, and I, touch wood, I wouldn't say we've suffered anything that I'd describe as out of the ordinary in terms of our ability to resource the business. Again, Paddy, I'm just trying to give any particular color on that, but anything?
Yeah, no, I'd agree. As you say, we've a little bit of pressure on a couple of areas in the US on the sales and tech side. Fundamentally, we've, as you say, expanded the tech team in the last six months or so, and we've been able to hire the resources and skill levels that we'd be looking for at what we would consider, you know, appropriate salaries. You know, nothing out of the ordinary to note that from my side.
We have created the capability. We've taken on a relationship with a third party for sort of surge capacity out of one of the sort of Eastern European based, you know, technical teams. That's very much the sort of surge capacity rather than sort of core development. That's just proving quite a flexible and valuable resource. That's something we've done to try and mitigate some of that risk so that we do have access to more immediate resources for projects or specific needs.
Thank you. A final question, unless any more come in. Your OpenConnect acquisition was clearly successful. Are there any other areas of your product development roadmap where M&A may play a part?
Interesting. I mean, that OpenConnect was a huge thing for us, and if they could do one of those every year, then that would be great. I think the underlying point I would make is that, you know, we are very focused about what we do, and if there's opportunities to advance our roadmap through acquisitions, absolutely. You know, it could be. The criteria we have are quite tight about when we consider these things, because it, I mean, clearly it could be technology and roadmap.
And if that's an opportunity to accelerate development, which we would want to do, but we can effectively bring it forward, possibly, depending on the business, obviously, with a revenue stream attached, well, that would be. That's gonna be a good thing to do. I mean, we would look at that. It's also sort of market access as well. In the case of the OpenConnect, one of the reasons it, you know, it proved well, it gave us a very good, strong sort of basis of client with whom Client base to work from in the US. There's more than just product roadmap. I think, yeah, we're pretty disciplined internally about against it.
Sort of, it's amplifying, accelerating our own strategy rather than looking for sort of diversity and risk, you know, spreading risk, as. That wouldn't really be a logic for it. There's another aspect of being on the public market. It does, it give us the means to do things, and certainly, it's a new area of look for us. You know, it would have to be for very specific reasons.
Many thanks. That's the end of questions. Richard, do you have any closing remarks?
For us, this is a bit of a, as you know, our inaugural year. I'm hoping the information we've given has been useful, but more importantly, it's no surprises. I mean, that's the thing for us at the moment, is to be, I guess, very clear on what we're doing, and conveying that sort of sense of focus this business has, but also really our, you know, our confidence in the future without essentially overreaching ourselves. It's been a very good half year, and, you know, we're, as a team, pretty pumped up for where we're heading. That's good. Thank you.