I think we've got most people on now. Just a couple of points of admin to help everybody. First of all, this presentation is being recorded, if you do miss something, fear not, it will be available again shortly for you to go back and review. Also, the slides that Ric and Nick will be talking to are available on the Begbies Traynor website along with an awful lot of useful investor information. In terms of the format today, there will be a talk to the deck by the two executive management members, we will take questions and answers afterwards and hopefully get through them all.
For those of you not familiar with Zoom, you will see a Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. All you have to do is type in your questions as we go along. We will pick them up later on. Right. In terms of presenters, we're delighted to be joined again by Group Finance Director, Nick Taylor, and the Executive Chairman, Ric Traynor, who knows everything about the business, because he's also the largest shareholder. I will now pass over Ric to start the presentation in a few seconds.
Thank you, Andy, and welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us. This presentation is based on our results to the end of April 2023. I will start the presentation and hand over in due course to Nick, to give us more detail on the financial details, and then I'll resume talking about our strategy and the prospects for the business. If we move on to the next slide. This is the disclaimer, which obviously you can look at your leisure, but the more interesting slide, hopefully, is page 2, looking at our business and what our various services are. We're a leading professional services consultancy with what we believe is a differentiated service offering. 60% of our revenues are insolvency, so that's corporate and personal insolvency, over 90% being corporate.
We have a market-leading position from a national office network and selective offshore locations, and we provide advice and assistance to SME companies and mid-market corporates. All that's traded under the Begbies Traynor brand. In terms of the other 40% of our business, the advisory and transactions business, which includes our property services division, you can see there are various services there: financial advisory, transaction support, funding, valuations, project and development support, asset management, insurance, and we'll go into those in more detail throughout the presentation. Some of those services trade from their with their existing brand names, where we've acquired those businesses, and we believe there's goodwill attached to those brands. Overall, 80% of our revenues in the last year were from insolvency and defensive activities, and those services are coming from a common network of clients and professionals.
Moving on to the next slide. We're very pleased with our results for the year, being ahead of original expectations. Double-digit revenue and profit growth across both divisions. Increased insolvency appointments and an enhanced mid-market reputation. We've made acquisitions in finance broking and property advisory. We have organic growth in property as well as insolvency, reflecting the resilient nature of those services. We've further improved our operating margins, and we've continued to generate substantial free cash, paying dividends, acquisition payments of GBP 10 million during the year, and still having net cash at the period end. We recommended a 9% increase in dividend, which is the 6th year of increased dividends in a row, and we're in a strong position and confident of the further year ahead. Overall, a further successful year, continuing to build on our strong track record of growth.
We've doubled revenues and tripled profits in the five years since 2019. I now hand over to Nick to go through the financial and operating review.
Great. Thank you, Ric. We start looking at the financial highlights for the year, just to the end of April 2023, where we've seen revenue growth of 11% coming from a combination of both organic and acquired growth. We've improved our operating margins, 17.9% in the year. That's come across both divisions, and that builds on our history of margin progression. We go back to 2019, our margins were 13.3%. Over the course of the period where the business has doubled in size, we've made some significant enhancements in operating margins. Our Adjusted Pre-tax Profits are up by 16%. That's having absorbed a GBP 0.3 million increase in interest costs.
Our tax rate of 21%, that started to tick up following the increase in UK corporation tax rates, which came in at the back end of the year that we're reporting, giving growth in earnings per share of 15% in the year. As Ric said, increasing the dividends by 9% for the year. That sees our cover increase as well to 2.8 times from 2.6 times last year. If we look in a bit more detail on the performance by segment, the insolvency and advisory segment, where we've seen revenue growth of 10%, 6% being organic, which is principally from an increase in insolvency activity. We also saw the benefit from the Mantra acquisition, which came in towards the end of the first quarter.
Our margins increased to 26.8%, giving a profit uplift of 14%. You can see from the graph on the bottom right of the slide that we've made significant profit growth in this division over the course of the last three years. Insolvency revenue increased by GBP 3.9 million to GBP 70.6 million. There's an increase in insolvency appointments, which we took over the course of the year. That saw revenue up by 10%, also saw our order book increase by 19%. Our order book is places where we've already been appointed, and that revenue is still to be recognized. That will benefit future years.
Personal insolvency, typically under 10% of our revenue, there was a particularly high comparative in the comparative year, financial year 2022, when we had an extra GBP 1.8 million of revenue, and that's normalized to GBP 5.5 million in the financial year that we're reporting. Our advisory services within this division include financial advisory. These are activities typically very closely allied to insolvency, debt restructuring, debt advisory, business restructuring, forensic and investigation work. Our newly formed funding business, two finance brokerages, which we did through acquisition, the MAF Group, that joined at the start of financial year 2022, and the Mantra business, which joined us in July 2022, and our corporate finance arm, which does mainstream M&A work. That's 20% of divisional revenue, and it's performed well in the year, recording growth of GBP 4.4 million in revenue.
If you move to the next slide, property advisory and transactional services. This is our chartered surveyors practice, where we've seen revenue growth of 12%, largely driven by the acquisitions we've done to grow the business. That's both transactions in the year and also prior year deals. We've seen organic growth, 3% organic growth, which reflects the resilience of our service lines, in what's been a pretty challenging marketplace, with numerous headwinds over the course of the last 12 months. Our margins are up, and that's given a profit increase of 19%, and as you can see from the chart, we've seen good profit growth in this division as well, over the course of the last 3 years.
Just looking in a bit more detail, giving you a bit of a feel for the sorts of advice that we give and the service we provide to our clients, the percentages next to each line is a rough proportion of income that's generated in the division from that activity. Transactions, this is selling clients for our clients. It's about 35% of our income, where we have an auction practice, where we sell plant and machinery and property. Over the course of the year, we saw an increase of the insolvency stock going through plant and machinery auctions, and that offset a drop in property sales. We've continued to develop this team.
We did acquisition in the second half, of a Sheffield-based auction practice, and we're expecting the current climate, that our auction team would progressively be more busy, as we see more properties coming through at this stage of the cycle. We have a property agency team, principally focused in specific regions, that grew in the year from acquisitions and organic growth. What we've seen over the course of the year is corporate lettings, which is about half of the business, is, has been pretty robust. Our client mix, which is typically SMEs and independent landlords, together with the size of properties, which are a capital value of half million to two and a half million, has mitigated a lot of the market volatility.
What we've seen here, as in other parts of the business, although there were delays in transactions following the mini-budget, around the halfway point of our financial year, that was offset by a catch-up of those transactions over the course of the second half. We have a small business sales agency, actually it's an estate agency for small businesses, and that had a robust performance with organic activity levels in line with the prior year. We have a project and development team, which accounts for about a quarter of the revenue. A range of consulting services provided by our professional team. That's grown from building consultancy work over the course of the last year.
A lot of public sector work that we do here, and that's principally schools, and over the course of the last 12 months, we've seen an increased focus on sustainability work. Moving to the right-hand side of the slide, we have a valuation team. They're valuing assets, that's both property, businesses, and plant and machinery. Typically for lenders, to assess the value of security for loans, but we also offer advice, to insolvency practitioners, and also advise banks where loans might be challenged. Growing in the year, following the flow-through from prior year deals, again, we saw a robust organic performance, which was in line with the prior year. Activity levels over the course of the year, have normalized, in spite of the further rate rises that we saw coming through over the course of the 12 months.
The final unit that we have, which is about 15% of the business, where we provide an insurance brokerage, largely focused on insolvency, and also a property protection service, which protects vacant properties. That increased in the year with an increase in insolvency workflow. We have a team who manage commercial properties for clients, dealing with issues as such as collecting rent, paying service charge, operating under long-term contractual relationships. That, again, has had a good year with activity in line with the prior year. If we move to the next slide. We're in a strong financial position. We generate significant levels of Free Cash Flow, and looking at the slide, we can see the Free Cash Flow net of dividends and prior year earn-outs, GBP 3.3 million in the year, just over GBP 4 million in the prior year.
That Free Cash Flow enables us to pursue the smaller bolt-on acquisitions, funding those through cash. We also have significant liquidity in our committed facilities for any larger acquisition opportunities, and those facilities were extended in the year through to August 2025. In terms of our outlook, we are confident, anticipate seeing a further year of growth in line with the current market expectations. Anticipating that cost increases through both inflation and organic investment will be offset by revenue growth.
Within insolvency, we're well placed to continue the track record of growth I showed on the previous slide, benefiting from the increase in appointments we've seen recently, the increase in order book, which positions us well at the start of the financial year, and we'd also anticipate to see further growth within the mid-market, which includes administrations, and Ric will talk a little bit about the sort of what we've seen in the market and what we'd expect going forward over the next couple of years. Our advisory and transactional teams have multiple organic and acquisition opportunities going forwards, with an acquisition in May, right at the start of the financial year, a firm called Banks Long, which is a GBP 2.5 million turnover chartered surveyors practice.
Our cash generation, strong balance sheet, and headroom within our facility enable us to continue investing in both acquisitions and organic growth initiatives. Our next update is scheduled for September, at the time of the AGM. It's been another good year. Very pleased with progress to date, and I'll hand back to Ric now for the strategic review.
Moving on to the next slide, taking a look at the UK insolvency market. We can see here from the slide top right, that insolvency numbers were rising prior to the pandemic. We saw a significant fall due to government support measures and other things that impacted insolvency numbers during the pandemic. We're now back up to a level which is in excess of 2019, with over 20,000 appointments in the last calendar year, and we're heading for a much higher number this year. A lot of those appointments to date have been for smaller businesses, which is not surprising. They're the ones that face the headwinds the quickest and don't have the opportunity to look for alternative finance.
In terms of administration appointments, which are the larger appointments generally, and look at a business which potentially can be saved in some shape or form, the number of those appointments, as seen in the second graph, the lower graph there, is still below pre-pandemic levels. The current run rate of about 1,300 per annum is below the 2019 rate, as you can see there, and significantly below the peak that we saw in 2008. We are starting to see those numbers come back, not surprisingly. With the headwinds of inflation, higher interest rates, et cetera, we expect to see administrations continue to rise during the course of this year and into next. In terms of the market, it's gonna get busier, both for liquidations and for the higher value administration cases.
In terms of our capacity to deal with that, we now have over 93 senior insolvency practitioners, so they're the people who've got the appropriate qualifications and experience to handle a number of cases and to manage a team of people. That's up from 55 in the last recession, so we've plenty of capacity there, and we've a team of over 650 in total, dealing with specific insolvency cases. Moving on to the next slide. Just a quick look at who else is in the market. In terms of our position, we're first in terms of numbers of appointments, with a 13% share of the market overall. We're first in liquidations, and excuse me, we now rank second for administrations with 11% share, and that's an improvement from fourth position over the last five years.
We're moving very much into that mid-market, as well as doing the volume end of insolvencies. Some of that has come from the acquisitions that we made in 2021, particularly in London, which has increased the size of our London office, where a lot of these larger cases are sourced. Overall, you can see the various firms who operate at various levels there, so the very big cases, the international ones, are dealt with by Big Four and ex-Big Four practices, and some of the large international American boutiques. In terms of mid-market, it's the national accountancy practices, ourselves, and some of the other specialists with multiple offices across the country.
At the lower end, the liquidations and personal insolvencies, local boutiques, who still have over 70% of the share of the market overall, obviously focused on lower cases, but it just shows you how fragmented that marketplace is down at the bottom end. Moving on to the next slide. In terms of our own performance over the last year, we've seen insolvency revenues double to over GBP 71 million since 2019, and that's compared to a market volume of 30% increase. We've increased our market share, partly by acquisition, partly by organic growth. We have an extensive network of over 4,000 professionals and institutions who refer work into us, half of which on a very regular basis. In terms of our routes to market, over 70% of our work is generated from recurring work providers.
That's that 4,000 group of professionals and institutions. 10% of our work now comes from our digital marketing, where we're using the internet to make contact with smaller businesses that need our skills and expertise, and the balance comes from new introducers and one-off assignments. We've seen an increase in activity across all case sizes, as you can see on the graph there. Larger, more complex appointments now represent over 50% of our revenue due to that mid-market reputation increase from the acquisitions we've made, and just general progress over the years. Our regional network and digital marketing provide that volume increase of the routine cases.
In terms of interesting things during the year, we've started a campaign with one of the banks, but it's a project looking at Bounce Back Loans, where that bank believes those loans went into the company and went out again straight away, and were not used for the purposes of ensuring the continuation of the company. Should that pilot be successful, a much larger assignment could come on the back of that. In terms of larger cases, those Administrations we're talking about, Paperchase is a brand that I suspect most people are familiar with. Avonside Group, very large construction business. Worcester Warriors, of course, in the sports and leisure sector, and Cox & Cox, an online furniture distributor. All large cases, all mid-markets, all significant fees for us over the course of the life of those cases.
Moving on to the next slide. Advisory and transactional services, now representing 40% of our revenue. This was started from the acquisition of Eddisons in late 2014, and revenue has doubled to over GBP 50 million since 2019. There's a balanced mix of services across both operating divisions, and Nick went through some of those for property, a few moments ago. Countercyclical, defensive, and procyclical activities. 75% of income is derived from recurring sources. Our established clients are corporates and investors, banks and public sector panels, and fellow professionals and institutions referring their clients into us when they have a problem. Our increased scale enhances the opportunities for cross-selling. We've seen over GBP 3 million of the work be generated for service lines from other service lines within the group.
We have growth opportunities in all services, both organic growth, and developments across all of those service lines, and acquisitions in fragmented services, giving ability to add scale and increase margins. Moving on to the next slide. Just a quick look here at a case study, looking at how those various service lines come together. This was a case which started life as a distressed fundraise. We were looking at the opportunity to try and restructure the business, get additional financing without the need for a formal insolvency. It was clear that that was not possible in due course. We were appointed administrators. It was a complex trading company, requiring various service lines to come together. Lots of property assets. Property were involved, valuing those assets, looking at alternative uses or how to enhance the value. Our property security and insurance business was brought into play.
Our debt collection department looked at collecting the debts for the trading business, and our forensic team looked at the history of the business to ensure that all assets had been properly identified, so we could realize them for the benefit of creditors. Ultimately, a successful outcome for all stakeholders. It was a going concern solution and a restructured business through the administration, a significant return to secure creditors and the preferential creditors, principally HMRC. Total group fees of over GBP 2 million, of which 25% or so were for non-insolvency activities. It shows you the opportunities there are to bring our various service lines together, working on larger insolvency appointments. Moving on to the next slide. Complementary services, adding value and enhancing returns. Again, a further look at those service lines coming together.
The first bullet point we've dealt with in the last example, of how we can use different service lines on insolvencies. Looking at our key client sectors, financial services, principally banks, we're now working with them for insolvency and recovery, for business and lending reviews, and valuations, project consultancies, and also, it's complemented by our finance broking businesses, which are on the broker referral panels for the banks, enabling us to work with the banks, introducing work to them, so it's a two-way process. We're referring work to banks, and indeed, we referred over 800 million GBP worth of lending in the last year, and the banks are referring out to us those various different activities I've just mentioned. For property owners. It's our funding expertise, our asset management and insurance, building consultancy, acquisitions, disposal, and lettings.
All of our suite of property services and funding. For corporates, insolvency and restructuring advice, that's direct to corporates through the internet, funding and debt advisory, M&A, property, and insurance. All these services operate through a common platform of IT, HR, finance, et cetera. In all the larger offices, all the suite of services operate under one roof. We have a shared network of clients and introducers as well, which is part of the logic of adding these various services to our offering. Moving on to the next slide. In terms of our strategy for growth, it's that mixture of organic growth and acquired growth. In terms of organic growth, it's retention and development of our existing partners and employees, extremely important. We're a people business, so keeping the people on board and happy. Recruitment of new talent to add to the size of that team.
Enhanced cross-selling of our service lines and expertise to a wider client base, which we've discussed. Investment in technology and process to enhance working practices and improve the services to our clients. In terms of acquisitions, we're looking for value-accretive acquisitions across insolvency to increase our market share, advisory and transactional services to enhance our expertise or geographical coverage, and complementary professional services to continue the development of the Group and its service offering. Moving on to the next slide. Looking at our growth record since 2019, we can see we've doubled turnover here. Approximately 60% of that is acquired, 40% is organic growth. We've got a well-established process for identifying, valuing, acquiring, and, very importantly, integrating those targets into the business. We've made 12 value-enhancing acquisitions over that period, delivering revenue and operating synergies.
Our cash generation, strong balance sheet, and facility headroom underpin our capacity for further acquisitions. Looking at our track record over the last 5 years, you can see here all the charts are heading in the right direction, pleasingly. We've doubled revenue, tripled profit before tax. We've seen a doubling of Adjusted EPS and a consistent increase in dividend at 10% cumulative growth rate over the period. That dividend growth has allowed us to continue with investing in the business, so we've increased dividend cover. We have smaller acquisitions to make, as Nick has mentioned, and we're funding those out of cash. We're also increasing the dividend at the same time. Finally, moving on to the summary.
With a strong platform to continue delivering our strategy of organic and acquired growth, given the increased scale of the group and a broadened base of expertise and enhanced client base and professional referral network, we're well positioned in the current macroeconomic, economic environment, with 80% of income from countercyclical, cyclical and defensive activities. Significant financial capacity to deliver our strategy with organic growth opportunities across the group and a good pipeline of acquisition opportunities across fragmented marketplaces. We're confident of delivering current market expectations for further growth. That's the end of the presentation. If there are any questions, we'd be delighted to take them now.
First one, even since your results last week, there's been a lot more data confirming an increase in the pace of insolvencies and indeed in profit warnings from quoted companies. Beyond your own considerable experience within the team, what forward indicators, or key metrics might you suggest that investors use as a useful guide as to what might actually happen in the next 18-24 months?
I think in terms of the things that we look at, we look at our own red flag statistics, which come out normally on a quarterly basis, which look at businesses which are suffering from stress, either significant or critical stress, and the movements over time in the population of those businesses, and we can see those going up at the moment. Other than that, it's looking at the obvious things, common sense indicators of inflation, interest rates, and the likely projection of interest rates, and the reports on bank activities, you know, bank lending and what banks are seeing in terms of impairment reviews.
Yeah, in terms of the results reported, and I think you've touched on this already, the actual pace in growth of insolvencies was not high, Administrations were reasonably stable, yet you've seen confidence in a very strong order book. Could you just elaborate a little bit more about why you think there wasn't more hitting the bottom line in profit last year?
Okay, Nick, do you want to discuss that?
As well, the first thing to bear in mind is that an insolvency appointment typically takes 3 to 4 years to progress, and our revenue and, therefore the profit, will be earned respectively over that time. We did see an increase in appointments, unsurprisingly, over the, what's been a busier market, albeit it's been focused more in volume rather than the higher value end. Over the course of the last 12 months, our corporate revenue was up by 10%, and probably more importantly, the order book was up by 19%. You contrast that with where we were 12 months prior, where the order book only ticked up by about GBP 1 million. What we've seen over the year is some benefit of those increased appointments coming through revenue.
More importantly, there is an increase in what we're starting with, effectively, on the shelves, that we know people will be working on and are working on at the moment, which we believe underpins the start of that growth number for this year, and that should be augmented by any further growth in the market that Ric outlined.
Very clear, Nick. Thank you. You mentioned your strong position. Do you have, as a board, any targets for your market share to achieve, in insolvency? What, related to that, do you think is the, potential to increase it significantly from where you're at at the moment?
We don't have a specific percentage in mind. The most important thing, obviously, is to see that revenue increase year-on-year. The mix of the work may favor larger cases in due course, which might mean that the number of appointments we get as a market share is slightly less. Overall, revenue and margins will be higher. We don't have a fixed percentage in mind, but what we do know is, from where we are at the moment, we think we can grow. We certainly would be disappointed if our market share of smaller cases and mid-market cases doesn't rise over the course of the next few years. 13%, to get into mid-teens and beyond, seems perfectly realistic. Hopefully that answers the question.
Yeah, I think that gives a good perspective. Thank you, Ric. A couple of questions for you, Nick. Could you give a bit of guidance as to what will happen to your tax rate on all these profits going forward in light of changing corporate rates?
Yeah. We'd expect our tax rate for the new financial year to April 2024, to be about 26%. Typically being just ahead of the main corporation tax rate due to disallowable costs. As that goes up to 25, we'd expect our rate to be around 26.
Good. Very clear. Thank you. A slightly deeper question for you, Nick. Could you expand a little more on what are the critical underlying components of cash generation within the group?
Profit and activity, clearly is the key driver. Our teams being busy. We're a people business. Three-quarters of our costs are our people, so them being actively engaged on good quality work is fundamentally important. Within the insolvency business, we get paid from asset realizations, so maintaining that flow of deal completions and enabling that cash to come through is important, and that's what we've seen over the course of the last few years. On the property side, on the more transactional and advisory work we do, the cash flow cycle is a lot quicker than insolvency, so if we're selling an asset, we will typically be paid on the completion of that transaction. There's quite a different working capital profile across the two sides of the business.
Following on from that, could you give a little guidance at the margins that you achieve or hope to achieve in insolvency work as opposed to financial advisory?
Well, at the moment, the margins are pretty comparable across insolvency and advisory. Within that segment, it's around 26%. There is the scope for insolvency margins to increase if we see that mix of work pivot towards some of the larger, more profitable engagements. We've seen that around 30% in the past, so there is upside to that margin on insolvency, whereas within advisory and within property, I think the range of the tramline to those margins is probably a little bit narrower.
Okay. Thank you very much. A question which I'm sure you'll answer very carefully is, again, coming back to mostly, I think, insolvency work, which is just a little more insight about what you're seeing in the current first quarter of the new financial year, relative to at the end of the old financial year?
What we're seeing is, in line with the government statistics, which have just been released for the second quarter. We're seeing numbers up, and that's both on liquidations and administrations. Across the board on corporate insolvencies, we're seeing a marked rise in activity. We'd anticipate that appointments for this year will be in the mid-20s, and if we bear in mind that the peak at the last recession was 26,000, we won't be far off that.
Good. Thank you. Capital allocation. We have a question here. I think you again mentioned, Ric, you were looking at the ability to pay dividends whilst leaving enough cash in the business to make bolt-on deals. Could you just elaborate a little bit more about how the board looks at that allocation? comparing internal investment versus acquisitions versus distribution to shareholders, and what of the, you know, the three uses is your priority focus at the moment?
There's an equal priority in terms of investing in the business for organic growth and for acquisitions. We're committed to growth from both of those channels. In terms of acquisition opportunities, a lot of them are relatively small and can come out of that cash generation. If there were a larger one, then we would dip into our facility to use that, or if it was even more significant, we would look at an additional fundraise. In the short term, using that cash flow for small acquisitions and investing in those organic growth opportunities is our priority, which is why dividend hasn't kept pace with profit growth. We are committed to increasing our dividend over time. We have shareholders who focus on that as their priority.
We've got a broad church of shareholders, and hopefully, we're keeping everybody happy.
Yeah. Here we go, the high priest, right there. I suppose a similar question, just in terms of the structure and the diversification of the activities within the group, which has been very successful across economic cycles. You know, the question is, are you happy with the current structure? To which I suspect the answer will be yes. But perhaps sort of turning that a little around you've mentioned that it is focused towards defensive revenues at the moment. Should the economic outlook change, how quickly can you respond? Again, I think related to that, are deals and bolt-ons likely to be driven by expanding the geographic reach of the group or by looking to add additional services into the group?
There's quite a lot in all that.
Yes. Well, we'll start with the latter first.
Mm-hmm.
We're certainly committed to increasing the scale of our current services. There's good opportunity to do that, both organically and by acquisition. In respect of insolvency, we've got a pretty good network across the country, so there isn't any particular geographic area where we're saying we need to be represented. Equally, if an opportunity arises to make an acquisition, then we'd be keen to do that. There's more of a chance nowadays that it will be in an area where we already operate, so we can actually add it to the existing offices, and there's cost synergies involved with that.
If it was somewhere where we don't currently have an office, then obviously we'd be delighted to take on a new office, and there are synergies on the demand side, in terms of making more of the contact base, et cetera, but less so on the cost side there. If you look on the property side of the business, we're still a relatively small player in a very big market, and we are weighted more towards the north of England. While we have offices elsewhere, they're relatively small in terms of the local marketplace, so there is that opportunity to grow that business into a fully national practice. Then, in terms of other service lines, we're actively looking at alternatives.
At the moment, the pipeline is focused on the things that we've actually got already. We are looking beyond the next few years, when the economy will change. Those growth opportunities will be in the certain service lines, which, you know, aren't countercyclical. We want to make sure that we have that ability within the group to grow.
Sounds very sensible. In terms of just the current climate, we have, I suppose a fairly predictable question. Is it easier or harder to find suitable targets at the moment? Are vendors becoming more or less receptive, and is there any change in price expectations, from vendors?
I would say that overall, there's no difference. We've still got the same sort of pipeline of activities. If you look on an individual company basis, it may well be that some businesses think it's the wrong time, either because they think that there's a good opportunity over the next few years to boost their activities, and then look for a buyer. They might think the opposite. That's at the moment, they're not maximizing their performance, and they don't want to look for a buyer at this point in time. Pricing-wise, we haven't seen any material difference.
That sort of rule of thumb we've got of an after-tax PE of 5, between 5 and 7, depending on the size of the business, still seems to be where most of the activity is.
Okay. Good to hear, and last question, I might be able to help you with this one, Ric.
Oh, good.
We will see how it goes. It's the question's come in as you've explained very helpfully and clearly, your successful record in buying businesses is there for all to see. Do you think that analysts and investors give you enough credit for this proven ability and experience to enhance returns in respect of deals that are yet to be done in the future?
Right.
I'll let you go first, and then perhaps try and add the analytical perspective.
Lovely. That's very kind of you. Well, obviously, our view is that that's not fully reflected in the numbers in the market, in terms of what we are expected to achieve over the next year or two, is very much predicated on organic growth. There's nothing in there for acquisitions. Our track record shows that year on year, we do make acquisitions, and this year, we don't think will be any exception, nor the year after. There is undoubtedly that element of our growth, which isn't embedded in those expectations.
... Yeah, and you'd be delighted to know I'm going to support you on that one.
Good.
It's very, very difficult, I would say, impossible for an analyst to come up with a revenue or a bottom earnings forecast on deals yet to be done. Thus, in terms of the rating that an analyst might ascribe to a company's shares, the price-earnings ratio, it is definitely something that should be taken into account, quality of earnings, quality of management, quality of turning revenues into shareholder returns. Indeed, I think the case of our own analyst, you know, Roger Lebus, his fair value for the shares, which I think is about GBP 1.75 per share, is a little bit higher than the current share price because he thinks they should be rated a little bit higher.
Part of that, I'm sure, will be good deals that are going to be done in the future. We end on a happy note of agreement there.
Good.
I think just checking now, that's all the questions dealt with. Thank you to our audience for a wide range of questions and for listening in through the process. Thank you, as always, to Ric and Nick. If you do want to see more information, as mentioned earlier on, the side deck and other useful materials are on the Begbies Traynor website. Roger Lebus's note is also there and on the Equity Development website. This recording will, I would imagine, be on both of them as well quite soon. Thank you very much for your presentation, Seth, and all the best for the summer, and we look forward to the AGM update.
Thank you, Andy, and thank you, everybody, for joining us.