Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the essensys half year results investor presentation. Throughout this presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your question and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. These will be available via your Investor Meet Company dashboard, and we will send you an email to notify you when they're ready for your review. I'd also like to remind you that this presentation is being recorded.
Before we begin, we would like to submit the following poll and would be grateful if you could give that your attention. I'd now like to hand over to Mark Furness, CEO, and Alan Pepper, CFO from essensys. Good afternoon to you both.
Thanks, Mark. Hello and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this half year results presentation for essensys for the year end 31st of January 2021. My name is Mark Furness, CEO and founder of essensys, and alongside me today we have Alan Pepper, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Just briefly, I'd like to recap our business for those of you who don't know us. Since 2006, essensys technology and software has really been at the heart of the flexible workspace revolution. We are the technology making flexible workspaces work. By most measures, we are today the leading global provider of mission critical software platforms and on-demand cloud services to that very flexible workspace sector. It is a sector which is undergoing massive and considerable change, particularly in light of the COVID pandemic.
Our platforms for the last 15 years have been designed to help our customers increase operational efficiency, engage with their customers more actively, provide services on demand, deliver in-building experiences that meet the requirements of occupiers, and actually help those providers of flexible workspace to make better, faster decisions. To cover the highlights of H1 FY 2021, it's been a year really where we've seen the headwinds of COVID really start to give way very recently to the structural tailwinds that are strengthening and actually that are growing in light of the changes to the way real estate is used, the way office space is consumed, and the way people think about how they work as we go forward. It's been a year that we've proved again our resilient performance. This year, again, we deliver performance in line with market expectations.
It's been a year and a period where we've increased investment in the U.S. opportunity. That's led to significant and strong and continued U.S. growth. We've got a well-developed opportunity pipeline. It's clear now that the future of real estate is one which is flex. It's an opportunity which is accelerating in front of us. While lockdowns have undoubtedly delayed the recovery of our sector and perhaps even our own recovery through the period, it is clear that the future is very exciting and very bright for technology providers and the flexible workspace sector at large. This year, and in the period we report recurring revenue down 1%, slightly up actually on a constant currency basis. Group revenue is down 7% on the period, and that's really a reflection of reduced occupancy in the spaces of our customers.
That means our Marketplace revenues have been reduced this year. We also have seen a reduction in the number of new site go lives. Our non-recurring revenues in the period have reduced accordingly. Today, we still have 91% of our revenues are recurring, gives us great foundations and a really strong business. Following our continued investment into the U.S. and go to market and also into product, we report EBITDA margin of 7%, which is in line with our expectations. Our business is straightforward. Our strategy is also very straightforward. Our model is to land, expand, and grow with our customers. This year, and particularly in the last six months, our primary focus has been the opportunity to land new logos. It's clear that essensys is in a land grab environment. It is the changing face of real estate.
That means we have an opportunity to go and find new customers that will provide significant long-term growth opportunity for our business. Again, we've executed this strategy really well in the period. We've acquired 18 new customers. Now we're working with some of the very largest major global real estate brands and landlords and flex workspace providers. That provides us with significant opportunity for expansion with those customers over the coming months, years, and even decades. Our focus to land new opportunities has been tempered somewhat by a delayed recovery through COVID. Recovery will drive an increased occupancy in these spaces, which means our Marketplace revenues will recover accordingly.
We'll also see new sites being delivered as the lockdown eases, and we are able to now deliver new sites due to customer expansion, customer growth, the new [Maildog] and the new opportunities that flexible working is providing us. Our growth opportunity is significant. The opportunity is accelerating massively. It's accelerating massively to the point that actually we know the opportunity needs investment. We've invested in a North American CEO to drive our expansion across the U.S. and Canada. We've developed our go-to-market strategy and started to execute that in Europe. We have a well-developed plan, and whilst we are delayed in executing, we still have a developed plan for APAC.
Our new product, our Flex Services Platform, which I'll talk about more later, we think will be an absolute game changer for the flexible workspace industry and the wider real estate at large as we look out to the future. Let's just talk a little about that recovery. This year, you can see our platforms allow us amazing granularity and visibility of what's happening real time in our customer spaces in these buildings. You can see with the graph on the bottom left, you can see the real time occupancy impacted by lockdown one, immediate reduction to pretty much zero on occupancy in all these spaces. In that period, we start to see a recovery over time as we move to around October. That was the last time we presented to our investor audience.
At that time, we noticed green shoots, and we thought actually that the route out of lockdown and the route out of the pandemic was just in front of us. Then lockdown two and subsequently lockdown three hit, you can see the impact to occupancy on our customer spaces that happened there. The lockdown, whilst having significant impact, you can see that we're on that way out. Actually, since the 1st of February, we've seen a 34% increase in U.K. site occupancy and an 11% increase in U.S. site occupancy. The U.S. now, our customer sites are broadly around 50% occupied at the moment. That's also supported by our very low site churn. We continue to have industry leading churn levels, so very low churn in our customer base.
That support gives us a great platform for which to compound our growth over time. This year, H1, we've seen occupancy impact in our Marketplace revenues, and we've seen those moderate. We've seen that site activation numbers reduce, extending sales cycles. We've seen reduced sales bookings, and we've increased our customer support. That's now giving way and those, if you like, headwinds are giving way to those tailwinds in the accelerating outlook. Occupancy is returning as we talk to. Activity in our customer base and with prospects and with the wider real estate industry is building rapidly. That means our customers are moving back into a hold phase, back to a growth phase. We see accelerating bookings, more of which later, and we've got a really strong and well-developed pipeline.
At this point, I'd like to hand over to Alan, who will take us through the numbers.
All right. Thanks, Mark. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining. Probably just touch on and just reiterate Mark's point of a moment ago, where in terms of the year we've had. Certainly this last 12 months has undoubtedly been the most challenging year the business has been through, and I'm sure it has been for everyone concerned. When we sat here last October, we were anticipating seeing some improvement in the first half of this financial year, which clearly hasn't come through. Nevertheless, we are very pleased to have met our expectations for the first half as we come out and report these financials. Revenue at GBP 10.6 million, as Mark mentioned a moment ago, down 7% overall.
In reality, the vast bulk of that is driven by the reduction in the number of new Connect sites that went live in the period compared to the first half of 2020, which was our first full half year post IPO, and was obviously the period immediately prior to COVID. The U.S. recurring revenue was up nearly a quarter in U.S. dollar terms, which is very positive, and we'll talk to the U.S. a bit more in a moment. U.K. recurring revenue down as reported this morning in the note, if you've read it, and that's primarily Marketplace, and as Mark talked to a moment ago, and offset in some element by increases in software revenues in the U.K. Our ARR run rate at a constant currency, slightly up at GBP 19.9 million for the half year from GBP 19.7 last half year.
You can see there on the slide the individual product elements of revenue. GBP 9.6 million for Connect. That's where most of the vast bulk of the non-recurring revenue sits, which is what's driven that. Operate, our ERP platform, up 11% in terms of revenue. I'll touch on the dynamics there in a moment. EBITDA for the half year, GBP 0.7 million, down from last year, and I'll touch on particularly the overhead movement driving that in a moment. Recurring revenue up six percentage points, primarily as a consequence of the reduced non-recurring revenue, obviously with the U.S. recurring revenue up as well.
Net retention was 94% in the year. That's the revenue that we had from the customers that existed in January 2020, the revenue we got from them in January 2021. That movement, again, same with the recurring revenue driven primarily by Marketplace movements downwards. Gross margin, however, was up four percentage points in the year compared to the prior period. There's a couple of drivers to that. Firstly, obviously, the reduction in non-recurring revenue as an absolute proportion. That's lower margin, that therefore enhances the overall gross margin. Probably more importantly and more of note really is the increase in the gross margin from our U.S. business, which was up six percentage points from this time last year.
U.S. business, much less mature than the U.K., got a higher direct cost base due to scale and the way our supply dynamics for part of our Connect product are. Very pleased to see that margin improvement coming through, and we would expect to see that continue throughout the balance of this year and into next year. Alongside that, U.K. margins are in line with where they were last year at 77% for recurring revenue gross margin. Notwithstanding a reduction in marketplace revenue, we've seen cost efficiencies and some improvements in software revenues, which are higher margin, maintain that overall margin for the year. Those are the financial highlights for the year. If I look to the products, Operate, our ERP platform, now 10% of the revenue was up from about eight last year.
Revenue up 11%, that's driven primarily by an increase in numbers of sites in recent months, and also primarily by revenue per site. This was a part of the business which at high significant, It managed churn where we had inherited a number of customers who were paying relatively low amounts of money for quite substantially capable software. It took through probably to the second half of last year before that had worked its way out. This is the first half of comparison, and that's what drove the reduction in customers and sites in that number, and also the lower net retention number. Notwithstanding all those things, revenue up as we've continued to bring in higher value customers who are paying more money for the product. On the Connect side, vast bulk of the business. Customers up slightly. Numbers of sites up 8% net.
Net retention at 95%, similar to the overall group number given as proportion of revenue. That number down from last year, but again, driven by Marketplace revenue, which we anticipate recovering in time as underlying customer site occupancy comes back. Margins overall are in line with last year as we balance out U.K. margins and the U.S. increase. That's how the products work. In terms of the financial statements themselves, clearly there's more detail available on the website. I've covered off the revenue and the margin elements. In terms of the overhead movement, which is the big element around EBITDA, the business is going through a phase of go-to-market, in particular investment in go-to-market capability. As Mark mentioned some time ago, new Chief Exec in North America.
We've employed some additional sales capability in North America, in the U.K., and in Europe as we expand our geographical capability and start to deal with higher profile, more intense, if you like, more professional landlords in corporate real estate. That's the prime driver about the overhead spend together with increased marketing spend. I said that's probably all of immediate on the P&L. In terms of cash flow, we slightly cash out from working capital in the half year. That's driven by reduced creditors. It's a timing issue. There's nothing structural in that. It's just timing issues we came to at the end of January. We continue to invest GBP 2 million-GBP 2.4 million is our sort of expectation in software development. We'd expect to continue to do that on an ongoing basis.
There, that's half a million GBP of equipment investment, which is as we extend our essensys Cloud data center network capability and capacity, both here and in the U.S., and in due course, in Europe. That's what matters. We obviously raised GBP 7 million last April at the start of the pandemic, and that made a big difference there, obviously, to the opening cash position. We ended up the half year in line with where we expected to be in terms of cash at about GBP 6 million. Well-funded for our expected requirements going forward. There's nothing of particular note on the balance sheet. On our key performance indicators, a few things to highlight. In the middle of the screen, the LTV, so lifetime value to customer acquisition cost is a measure of our efficiency of sales.
Where the benchmark, I guess, is three, or if you're lower than three, that would be not great. We're clearly very efficient in terms of our sales activity. That number was slightly higher. It was about 5.9 at the year-end, but we continue to invest and grow our go-to-market capability and spend, and therefore that's come down a bit. We'd expect it to come down a little bit more over the balance of the year and then start to recover into 2022. Still very efficient in terms of the amount of payback we get from our spend on sales and marketing. Customer concentration position remains static really, which would be no surprise given the market and customer base.
We'd expect that to start to come down in a more accelerated manner going forward, given the customers that we've taken on board, some of whom Mark will talk to in a moment. Again, we increasingly cross-sell products, both Operate and Connect, into our customer base, and that's particularly true of the newer, more traditional landlord or corporate real estate operator customers, for whom we provide the complete technology platform for operating a space when they move into this sector. Finally from me, a key performance indicator or a key indicator from a value and content perspective is Connect sites. We ended up the half year at 431, as mentioned a moment ago, up from last year and up from year end. We have 51 contracted sites for delivery at the moment.
Now that's up from when we reported our pre-close statement a month or so ago, which I think was 38 then, so we're up another 13 or so. It is the same number actually as we reported this time last year by coincidence and not design. Well-placed there for delivery of contracted sites over the next few months, and we'd expect that number to continue to move up over the next weeks and months. Mark, that's from me, so back to you.
Thanks, Alan. Let's talk now specifically about the market opportunity. This is a structural growth story, and we think the hero could be digital transformation. Everywhere you look, unless you've been living under a rock this past year, commentary, publicity, the media, and pretty much everyone has been talking about the future of work, hybrid working, the death of the office, and how we will adapt in a post-COVID world, and how we will go about our business. Actually, these meta trends we've seen developing over the last 15 years as a service models. Tech-enabled services, the cloud economy, the move to more agile solutions. All of these things we've seen gather pace in real estate in recent years.
Actually now, you're seeing the very biggest real estate companies, the very biggest landlords and asset owners becoming very, very active in the flex workspace sector. None more so than the world's biggest commercial real estate company, CBRE, who only a few weeks ago announced their significant investment into our biggest U.S. customer, Industrious. The reason they invested was because they have a huge global occupier base. According to their CEO, Bob Sulentic, he says that more than 80% of those global occupiers want to be in multi-tenant spaces with flex components. They need to respond to that demand from their occupiers. To do that, they decided that they could do that more quickly leveraging the Industrious platform, which is powered by essensys. That is a big moment for our industry.
Actually, you can see the examples of that through many different landlords, asset owners, and real estate companies globally. I said digital transformation is at the heart of this. Interestingly, digital transformation in commercial real estate hasn't really happened very much in the past few years. It's clear now that actually the future, it will be critical to digitally enable these spaces and the experiences and the operations of these businesses in order to win. The U.S. quite clearly, according to Deloitte research, the U.S. is further ahead in terms of its digital transformation journey for real estate than the U.K. and Europe or even APAC. Actually, we've seen that in the conversations with our customers, with the engagements we have with the industry at large, and you've also seen that pull through in the speed of growth in our numbers.
What's also interesting is Deloitte research in 2020 estimates that the cost of delivering and operating these spaces in a post-COVID world will increase by nearly GBP 20 per square foot. Now, that's a considerable cost to bear. The real estate industry is now looking to technology to deliver efficiency savings to help them offset that cost. As well as that, they're looking at ways to reduce their vacancy rates. Globally, more than 60% now of all occupiers and all real estate companies anticipate an increase in vacancy rates over the coming year. The backdrop is one where costs are rising and vacancy rates are also increasing, and the industry is looking to technology to help with that. It's that focus on driving compelling returns for the industry that brings us to today for essensys.
It's clear from research and from commentary from customers, occupiers, and the real estate industry at large. Deloitte's research, that digital transformation and the tenant experience is now a business imperative. This is critical to the success of workspace providers and landlords. It's critical to the future. Actually, landlords are recognizing this, with over 70% now accepting and knowing that it's essential and even critical to have the right technology as part of their operation and part of their value proposition in order to be commercially successful. It's also about delivering a compelling return on investment. We know now, and at essensys, we've felt this for many years, but we actually know that significant ROI from our technology is delivered because actually tenants and occupiers of spaces that deliver great digital and technology experiences are prepared to pay at least 20% extra per square foot.
Actually, when we're looking at how we offset those additional costs and deal with vacancy rates, technology is at the heart of this. We want to make sure that we are delivering the right technology for the industry, not just now, but for the decades ahead. We are in a unique position as essensys. In our 15 years in this industry, we've solved for many problems. Three years ago, we started to think about what the future would look like for these in-building experiences. What would our occupiers want? How would they want their journey to be? How efficient would we want them to be? Would we want masses of automation? Because of that, we started to look at how we could disrupt our own platforms.
We worked with some of the world's leading commercial real estate companies, our big customers. We took masses of input from big enterprise occupiers, as well as some research houses. It was clear to us that at the heart of everything needed to be security, digital and physical security. We needed to develop our platform and use our deep understanding of the security requirements of these spaces to deliver a protected experience. We also knew that at the heart of this needed to be integrated operations, so that actually could reduce time to value to zero in these spaces, and the operation would be very efficient. Yeah, sorry, Mark, I might-
Sorry to cut across. Just experienced a little bit of dip on the broadband and just to keep your audio in sync, if I could just ask you to turn your camera off, and perhaps Mark, Alan as well. That would be great. The slides will expand for investors, and I'll hand back to you. Thanks once again.
Yeah, great.
Cheers.
Thank you, Mark. Sorry for that, everyone. Joys of working from home. What we have is these pillars that are underpinning our platform strategy, and we knew that actually the space management, the operations, and the actual infrastructure, we needed to converge them all to deliver an amazing occupier experience in this space. To deliver true digital transformation, it needed to be the customer, i.e., the occupier experience, that we put at the very heart of this. After three years now of development and scoping and coding and significant investment, last week, we launched the Flex Services Platform. We think this is a truly game-changing platform for the future of not just the flex workspace industry, but the wider real estate industry. We think this is an operating system for the future of the way offices are used and managed.
The focus of that is, as I said, it's to really lay on the digital infrastructure and the private infrastructure we've built to deliver amazing autonomous and automated operations management, and an understanding, a deep understanding of what is going on in these spaces. If you like, a digital twin of the environment, all allied and converged to this amazing occupier experience. We've had great feedback from our customers and from the industry already. IDC, one of the research houses and one of the analysts, have already said this is a powerful enabler for the next normal. One of our major customers, Industrious, has said they think Flex Services Platform will absolutely transform the way not just our team, but also our members, their occupiers, engage with our workspaces. We're really excited for the future of our customers powered by the Flex Services Platform.
Not only do we have to do this for these spaces and the occupiers in the flex spaces, but we also realized that actually in these spaces, many of the existing tenants in traditional space want access to these experiences, too. They want mobile-first availability to be able to book and use meeting rooms, open doors, get access to a wider network of space, and that's going to be critical in the hybrid world. It's going to be critical as well for the enterprise to be able to customize and control that experience with security policies and guardrails. And that experience in terms of the landlord and the provider of the space will be really valuable because it will connect them not just in the space that they today lease, but also to the additional value in the rest of the real estate platform.
We're really excited to extend that capability into the world of the traditional tenant, too. Flex Services Platform today, it's clear that we are now in a world where we're needing to solve for new problems, and so we've recently launched essensys Labs. It's our internal skunk works R&D capability that looks at how we think about researching applications and new technologies such as machine learning or AI, big data, and IoT, to solve for the problems specific to how do you deliver flexibility in real estate. We're looking to deliver hardware products that complement our software platform, and if you like, to innovate where we need to and where no other products or services exist. We want to really converge this experience.
Where necessary, we're quite happy to use our own hardware to disrupt the commercial and technology models that have existed to date and are not fit for purpose for the new world of real estate. As well as investing heavily in product for the opportunity, we also continue to invest in go-to-market. Our new North American CEO, Jeremy Bernard, who was formerly head of real estate for Knotel in the U.S., has made an amazing start, and we think his focus in that market will give real returns in the months and years ahead. We've evolved our brand to really talk to the needs and challenges of the commercial real estate market. Now we are really focused about making sure landlords and the commercial real estate market at large understands how we add value and how we are compelling.
That all goes to the Flex Services Platform launch, which we just talked about, which gives us that wider access into a much deeper market opportunity and much wider opportunity. We are still focused on extending our geographic reach. We're currently recruiting for an APAC CEO to drive our go-to-market activities in APAC, which have been curtailed somewhat recently because of the lockdown restrictions that we all face. As well as the investments in go-to-market, I just want to touch briefly on how the commercial real estate market has evolved over the last few years, and particularly in the post, if you like, as it looks in the post-pandemic world. An interesting stat is that now 90% of all occupiers believe that lease flexibility will increase in the future. Lease flexibility is not at the heart of what will win for landlords and real estate players.
What will be at the heart of that is the experience in these spaces that they deliver. It's more than just saying, "I'll give you a six-month term instead of a 20-year lease." It's about the experience. It's about the living real estate platforms and networks, and we think technology is at the heart of this. Even Colliers suggests that you really need to think about the investment in the customer experience, because that will drive brand loyalty, it will drive value, and it will drive an increased yield. And that is critical obviously for us as we think about the market opportunity. And just an example of where we are today, I want to share a customer journey. Tishman Speyer are one of the top 10 largest office landlords globally. They own and operate Rockefeller Center in New York.
When they came to us after a big RFP process in 2018, they started with one location, one building, 33,000 sq ft of flex. Two years later, this a multimillion GBP opportunity and a multimillion GBP account, and they're giving 20 locations in nine markets with over 700,000 sq ft on our platforms. That is still small compared to their overall square footage. That is a 90 million sq ft business. We have still plenty of runway in that account to go for over the next years and decades. Many of our other logos, our customers, people like JLL, Cushman & Wakefield, EQ Office, and even Gecina recently in Europe, also provide that level of opportunity for us. We go in and we prove how compelling our technology is, and we will grow over time as they look to deploy more flexible solutions in their portfolio.
That leads us to how we're seeing momentum build, and momentum has been building significantly recently. That's a really strong foundation from where we stay today. Today we have 167 customers, and those 167 customers provide access to over 10 billion sq ft of commercial real estate globally. That means that we have massive opportunity with those logos alone to grow significantly in the years ahead. It is our job to make sure we continue to deliver the value from our platforms and from our technology that makes their businesses and their journey to flex more successful. Even now, we're starting to see those customers prepared and very happy to talk about how we're impacting their business. Cushman & Wakefield, Tishman Speyer, Industrious, all now clearly referencing the value we bring, how we've evolved from digital infrastructure to the full life cycle.
How we created a new digital experience, how we're transforming the way these operations and how these buildings and spaces engage with their occupiers. As we stand here today or sit here today, we're reporting that sales bookings are now in the current quarter at the highest level since pre-COVID. Real evidence of that recovery and momentum beginning to gain pace. Where do we sit in terms of our outlook? As Alan says, we are in line at the half year, and we expect to be in line for the full year. The outlook is much more than that. It's about the future of our business. This year, in which was a challenging period, we've strengthened the foundations.
We've really focused on landing and working with those strategic high-value opportunities that we know will provide a significant customer expansion opportunity in the future. As well as those existing customers, there is an accelerating market opportunity and a backdrop where more and more landlords and commercial real estate companies are responding to the requirements and the demands for flexible product. That market opportunity will continue to provide us with new prospect opportunities and new logo opportunities as well. We think that the Flex Services Platform not only meets the requirements of this industry now, but it extends the product reach with its capability and its value much further up the building.
It actually moves to the very heart of the building and actually becomes, if you like, a building operating system for the new way of working and for the flexible first models of the future. As we are now, we definitely saw significant headwinds in the previous period. We are now seeing them give way to very strong tailwinds that are driven by structural growth and a very significant change in the way real estate is delivered over time. Thank you very much. I'm now going to cover some of the questions that have come in via Q&A.
Mark, that's brilliant. Thank you very much. Let me just give you a small breather, and a chance perhaps just to have a look at that Q&A. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just while Mark and Alan take a few moments to review those investor questions that have been submitted during the meeting, I'd like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via your Investor Meet Company dashboard, and we will notify you when they're ready for you to review.
I'd also like to remind you that your feedback is important to the company. Immediately after the presentation has ended, you will be redirected for the opportunity to provide feedback in order that the company can better understand your views and expectations. Mark, obviously, Alan, if I could just ask you to have a look on the right-hand side of the screen, you'll find the Q&A panel. Thank you for bringing up your cameras. I will perhaps butt in if it looks like broadband is causing us an issue. For the time being, it all looks good. If I could hand back to you, if I could ask you to read out the questions, and perhaps give a response where it's appropriate to do so, and then I'll take the floor back at the end.
Thanks, Mark. Sometimes I look better pixelated. We have some questions, firstly from Alistair L. First question is, "Could you please comment on competitors? Is Teem mainly working for WeWork or does it have a wider customer base?" Teem, it's a visitor management and booking app that was developed in the U.S. and WeWork acquired some time ago. It actually has now been reacquired by the original founders of that business. Mostly it was working for WeWork, more recently. It does have a wider customer base, but it has a very narrow focus. It's very specific around visitor management and, if you like, meeting rooms as well. It doesn't really, if you like, cover the depth of capability and the operating capability or even the digital experience in these spaces like we do. Hopefully that answers that, Alistair. Moving on to Miles R.
How many sites came with the 18 new customers, and how many from the largest customers?" Well, obviously, Miles, those 18 new customers bring a smaller number of sites as they first come on board. Obviously, mostly they are commercial real estate companies and landlords, and downstream from their initial sites that they deliver or book with us or contract with us, there will be significant opportunity. Actually, you can see with the Tishman journey, as we talked about before, that there, and these 18 customers are, they're strategic opportunities. We only focus on multi-site, large scale opportunities now. So we will see significant downstream potential and expansion revenues from those customers over time. Carry on. I'm covering these. If I get stuck, I will shout. Alistair L. I think I'm losing network.
Yeah. Just a little bit.
I'll turn the camera off.
Yeah. Thank you very much. Let me just bring up the slides for you as well, just so we've got some point of reference if needed.
Okay. Thanks, Mark. Could you comment please on how you see spend on development evolving over the next five years? You've been adding lots of products recently. Do you envisage continuing at a similar pace or will things slow? That's from Alistair L. Undoubtedly, post IPO, we've significantly ramped up our spend on research and product and development. That is still at a very low level in comparison to many SaaS businesses of our size. We continue, if you like, we will continue at a similar pace, because there's many things where we can add value and deliver new product and capability. This is a rapidly evolving market and we want to stay ahead significantly. One thing to note is we will only deliver product that solves for real problems. We're not into crazy moonshots.
We're not into developing or using technology for technology's sake, or because it's the next big thing. We want to solve real world problems for our customers, and that's why we looked at access control, because there was no real time solutions that allowed me to walk through a space and just have the doors open that I need to have access to, having booked them five minutes ago. We'll continue to definitely invest in product and development. As a proportion of our revenues, obviously, we'll consider about how that proportion looks over time. Miles R, "Are Connect and Operate going to continue to be the reporting segments? Where do Step, Marketplace, and in the future Flex Services Platform fit into those?" Well, Connect and Operate will continue. We'll obviously add Flex Services Platform to the reporting lines as we go forward.
Step, if you like, was the precursor to the new commercial model that sits behind our Flex Services Platform. Whilst it's not a specific product line, it is a proposition element, and we'll be reporting on that as part of Flex Services Platform as we go forward. Marketplace, you'll see that mix of revenues change in the future, and we'll still reference those as we bring our results to market. Hopefully you'll see that the Flex Services Platform, which is on a price per square foot basis, is really aligned to the real estate industry and how they think about things. Actually it can go much further into the building. Actually, our revenue opportunity per building, we think is increasing significantly following the launch of Flex Services Platform.
Paul C. asks, "Would it be possible to illustrate what your competitive edge is in your business?" I think we have a number of things, Paul. I think firstly, 15 years of experience. Money cannot buy time, and so we are deeply embedded into the sector. We understand the problems, and we've solved for them through technology and software. We have a very deep understanding which comes out in our product. We are, if you like, really compelling from a product point of view. That experience allied to our, if you like, our resources as a public company, means that today we are the market leader, and that's important because real estate doesn't like risk. The real estate industry wants to make sure that when they make decisions, they're making these long term, and they're strategic.
We have that opportunity to leverage our brand, our product market fit, our proven records, and also our roadmap with customers, and we're highly referenceable. If you think this is a small industry in terms of many real estate companies all know each other. We see that network effect building. Undoubtedly though, we will stay paranoid, and we'll be very aware of competitive threats and competitive changes in the landscape. Miles R asks I've got a few more questions. I'll get through a few more. Miles R asks, "Can you give a little more color on the weakness in the U.K.? To what extent is that a function of the market structure with a more concentrated market, e.g. IWG, WeWork, and Workspace, and do those three have their own internal software systems?
Are they potential customers, or are they seen more as competitors to your customers? Undoubtedly they are competitors to our customers. IWG and WeWork being the two standout examples, have definitely tried, and in some cases succeeded, to deliver their own technology. Interestingly, we want to enable the rest of the market. For us, it's about WeWork and IWG being a much smaller portion of the overall opportunity over time. We have the opportunity to enable the rest of the workspace industry, the flex workspace industry, and the wider commercial real estate industry, using what we think is best-of-breed technology. The weakness in the U.K. is a little bit around, it's certainly a more mature market. It's certainly we've had a higher proportion of Marketplace revenues because of the consumption, the occupancy in these spaces.
It's certainly also a little bit behind in terms of thinking about digital transformation. We definitely expect the U.K. to move back to growth post-pandemic. Simon C asks, "Are you winning new business through new large landlords clients who are rolling out across their estates? If so, how much penetration on average of their portfolio do you have?" Again, I'll talk to that Tishman Speyer example. Our penetration is very low across all of our customers. You can see that's 10 billion sq ft of opportunity. For Flex Services Platform, that's a price per sq ft per year platform. If that returns GBP 1.50 or GBP 2 or GBP 3 a sq ft, that's a significant revenue opportunity just in our customer base alone. That's why the landing and expanding part of our model is really important. We underpin that with really low churn.
Our customers stay long-term, are very sticky, and we grow with those customers, too. Miles asks, "In the U.S. pipeline, how many sites is typical for the sort of operator you are targeting? What sort of software, et cetera, do they tend to have?" Well, interestingly, most of this opportunity is greenfield. The landlords are looking at how they convert their space to be more flexible, how they convert that building to be more flexible. Because of that, we can sit alongside existing software platforms that they use to manage the asset. The things that they use to manage quarterly rent rolls and quarterly service charges. We can sit as best of breed for the more flexible operations of a space, the more customer-centric experiences.
Actually, the back office elements that they've been used to dealing with for many years and have systems in place, we can work and integrate alongside those. They may even have things like CRM or HubSpot or Salesforce or data, or BI tools that we can integrate with. We're very much a best of breed for flex. We expect that to be more of the building over time. We expect to work alongside existing software stacks and technology stacks in buildings too. With Industrious, are you in the majority of their sites? The opportunity comes from growing with them. With Industrious, we're in all of their sites. We are embedded. With the CBRE investment in Industrious recently, we are also expecting that actually we'll become part of the Hana CBRE flex workspace product over time too.
Yeah, absolutely an opportunity comes with Industrious as they grow too, and we've seen that growth significantly over the last few years. Miles R., "How quickly would you expect existing customers to move over to the Flex platform? How would pricing compare to their existing services from essensys?" Well, interestingly, the pricing, if you like, comparatively per square foot is very similar. What the Flex Services Platform does is provides a lower and easier entry point for bigger landlords, but also it reduces the ceiling. As these expand, these services expand in the building, we'll expand with them, and obviously the upside potential for us and for the operator is significant. In terms of how quickly, we're working with all of our customers on that transition and the migration plan. We're offering grandfather pricing incentives to move them over.
Actually, the experience is much more powerful, the platform is much more capable. There is, if you like, an appetite to quickly move on to Flex Services Platform from those customers as well. Let's see how many more questions. Okay, we're catching up. "How much presence do you exist in U.K. and U.S.? Customers have in APAC and Europe. Is that the main initial routes of market?" That's again from Miles. Yes, our customers do pull us into those new territories. Tishman Speyer are taking us into Brazil. We've seen customer pull into APAC, and we've also had Tishman Speyer previously in Europe. We have customer pull, if you like, drag, but also we'll be able to, on the back of those customers, we'll have reference-ability, and we'll have new routes to market through, if you like, putting a go-to-market strategy together for those territories.
Miles asks, "What sort of product and services are you replacing for a customer at Tishman?" Well, to my answer before actually, because we are delivering the flex element and our software delivers against that requirement, we are complementary to some of the existing capabilities they have. As the journey to flex accelerates, our products, if you like, grow in those spaces. Tishman, for us, they looked at how to deliver this, how to deliver the technology and the experience. When they looked at it, they thought essensys was the right answer. Obviously we've grown with them over time.
Ozgur, he asks, "Do you have certain clients as super users to test new products and services?" Absolutely work alongside our clients and customers in terms of user groups, in terms of alpha trials and early deployments of products to make sure that the requirements meet the needs and we solve for those problems. Also, as you can see, we've got very early stage and very innovative products and services that actually might never make it out of essensys Labs if they don't meet the requirements of the use case or of the industry. Miles asks, "As the market leader, are there areas or products you might expand into by acquisition?" We're absolutely always looking for opportunities to accelerate our growth. Actually, whether that's technology acquisition in areas we don't currently have coverage, or whether that's acquisition of revenue or customer bases or even into territories.
We're obviously very aware and very keen to look at those opportunities. Not many exist, really. If you think about our evolution in the industry, we're the market leader. Most competitors are subscale, and most technologies have not been developed specifically for the use cases of flex. Thank you. Miles, thank you. It was a very nice comment at the end, which is thanking us for a good presentation, so thank you.
Absolutely, Mark. Thank you very much indeed. I think you've just come down to the last question that's not a question, but more just a reflection of your engagement during this Q&A. Thank you firstly to the investors that have submitted all those questions. We definitely do appreciate that level of engagement. Before we get interrupted by broadband, Mark, if I could just hand back to you just for a few closing remarks, then what I'd like to do is divert investors to provide feedback. If investors could do that would be most grateful.
That's great. Thanks, Mark. You can actually close the presentation, I think. Well, thank you all for joining us today. We think this is a really exciting time for essensys. We think the journey is really just beginning for us and for the industry and for the market opportunity. Our job is mostly not to cock it up, and to stay ambitious, stay paranoid, and stay committed to the sector. Listen, learn, and react. Hopefully you'll be with us for that journey too. Thank you all for taking the time to join us today, and we hope to see you on one of the IMC broadcasts in future. Thanks a lot, everyone.
Mark, Alan, thank you very much indeed for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback. If you access this meeting from our website, then the feedback page will appear. If you access this meeting via the link sent to you by email, you'll simply be asked to log back in to submit your feedback. I would encourage you, if you could, spend the time just to let the company know your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team of essensys, we'd like to thank you very much for attending this afternoon's presentation. That now concludes today's session, and good afternoon to you all. Thanks once again.