Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the FRP Advisory Group plc's four-year results analyst presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, attendees will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time. Please use the Q&A tab just on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions at any time and press send. I'd now like to hand over to CEO Geoff Rowley. Good morning.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for making the time to join us this morning as we provide our full-year results presentation for the year ending 30th of April 2023. As discussed to me, if I can just make some brief introductions, you have myself, Geoff Rowley, CEO. To my left, you have Jeremy French, our Chief Operating Officer. And to my right, you have Gavin Jones, our Chief Financial Officer. Taking you to the next slide, if I can just obviously reconfirm our value proposition, our desire, and what we believe we are achieving is to be a specialist advisory firm delivering services through five core pillars and demonstrating a strong track record of profitable growth. Throughout our time as a listed company, we've been focused on achieving organic growth supported by selective acquisitions. We strive to have a collaborative, entrepreneurial, and meritocratic culture, if I could speak properly.
We are pleased to say that we are seeing increasing market activity and demand for our advice. We achieve an ever more diversified and growing referral client base, both geographically and on a sector basis. We have an experienced management team and a growing reputation and brand as we deliver our services across our markets, and we have achieved profitability and cash generation that supports our quarterly dividend policy. As we often reference since on all our presentations, we remain focused on the basics, and for us, that's about achieving sustainable, profitable growth with a focus on organic growth and, as I said earlier, supplemented by selective acquisitions. Our five pillars remain corporate finance, debt advisory, financial advisory, on which we'll comment a bit more during the course of the presentation, forensic services, and Restructuring Advisories.
Of those basics, our business obviously is underpinned by our people and culture that is our most valuable asset. In that conjunction as well, our referral network of how we obtain the mandates for which we deliver our services is key to us and, again, is an incredibly important asset for us and something we cherish and seek to nurture on an annual basis. We continue to look at our infrastructure and invest in that to make sure that we are able to deliver our services effectively and efficiently for our clients. We have always prided ourselves, and we do see it as a differentiator that we give clear, honest advice, and in terms of the financials, we remain absolutely focused on having good quality working capital discipline. Gavin, I'll pick up on our financial highlights on the next slide.
Thanks, Geoff. So our financial highlights FY 2023, our revenue grew 9% to GBP 104 million, of which 8% of that was organic growth. Our Adjusted EBITDA, which is the profit metric that we invite people to judge us upon, grew 5% in the year. We always aim for a high margin and high 20s is our target. The team grew 9% year-on-year. And we have a strong balance sheet with GBP 22.9 million net cash, plus we have an undrawn revolving credit facility of GBP 10 million. And we recently refinanced those facilities for a further three years. Our adjusted total EPS grew 3% in the year. However, in June 2022, we issued some shares as part of a raise on a like-for-like basis. Our EPS grew 5% in the year.
We're proposing a final dividend here of GBP 2.04 , which makes dividends for the full year GBP 4.6, which is 7% growth year-on-year. I'll now pass you over to Jeremy for some operational highlights.
Thanks, Gavin. Some significant FY 2023 operational highlights. In terms of achievements, our restructuring team were again the most active in the administration appointment market. That's by number of appointments. And our improved market share rose to 14% in the period. We have material strengths in the corporate finance sector, being the 13th most active corporate finance advisor in the U.K. That includes our debt transactions. We've undergone and been successful in the audit and recommendation to receive ISO 27001. And we've put significant effort into some very well-received sector campaigns on travel, manufacturing, retail, and fintech as we broaden our expertise. In terms of people, yes, year-on-year growth 9%. Learning and development, people, business, it has to be at the core as we continue apace developing our people and the business.
Through that process, on the 1st of May, we've had 12 internal partner promotions across service lines and across locations that contribute to the effort that has been put in in building our people. On acquisitions, just one in the year, which was audit and advisory firm in Cyprus, December 2022, all about culture and strategy. It does certainly strengthen what we do globally with Eight Advisory in that regard. Always active dialogue and ongoing dialogue on other opportunities, but we will only crystallize the ones that are actually totally right for FRP. Geoff.
Yeah, I think, again, in terms of how we are going to market, it remains key to us that for all of our service lines and pillars, they are connected in terms of what we're doing. We've always been clear that we don't have a desire to have businesses that are not connected to other parts of our business. We will look at opportunities which see us into different areas, but we believe it's absolutely core to our underlying culture and the success we achieve that people feel as though they are part of one organization rather than sitting in silos that don't have connectivity to the rest. Obviously, restructuring advisory remains the largest part of our business with 59 partners, and that's covering the full range of services from solvent restructuring through to complex corporate restructurings and corporate investigations relating to companies that have failed.
As Jeremy said, we've seen good levels of activity within the corporate finance market. We'll make some further commentary in due course as to where that market is at the present time. That's underpinned by 12 partners and some good lateral hire discussions at the present time, which hopefully we'll see that team continue to be augmented. And again, that's through the full range of corporate finance services with the exception of we're not in the capital market space. That's not our skill set. Corporate finance supported by debt advisory. And that's both in the context of debt advisory supporting M&A transactions, but also clients looking at midterm restructurings, refinances, and obviously in the current world where the cost of debt is suffering from some fairly significant changes, those skill sets will ever be more in demand.
During the course of the year under review, we clarified our offering in terms of what we now refer to as our financial advisory offering, and that, again, has quite a broad range of services from transactional services around VDD and FDD, advising lenders, whether that's on pre-lend, whether that's on concerns around mid-term positions and looking at further support. We do quite a lot of financial modeling, particularly for owner-managed businesses. They may not have the relevant skill set in terms of what they need in order to support their debt requirements. We, within our financial advisory thing, have a valuations team. That's making really good progress in the market around supporting high-end restructuring transactions. There is the restructuring plan that some of you may be aware of, which was introduced in 2020. That is always underpinned by valuations.
And we've done a number of those, and thankfully they've been well received in the context of those restructurings. And then we have our pensions advisory as well. Finally, we have our forensic services, which covers from investigations, from disputes, forensic technology and compliance and risk. And again, really good progress during the course of the year under review and subsequent to year-end.
National coverage, significant focus on local contacts in all locations. The as of today numbers are 87 partners, including the 12 promotions on the 1st of May, 580 team members in total, and now 27 locations. Salisbury is the only addition on that U.K. map, and we're into Cyprus. We have the strategic affiliations, members of the Institute for Turnaround on the corporate finance front, the Alliance of International Corporate Advisors, and Eight International.
Turning to the next slide, we just wanted again to highlight this issue of one of the reasons we consider that we are succeeding in our chosen markets is because we are offering clients services across the various pillars in which we operate. We're very clear on not wanting a silo mentality within the business. There are a number of projects here that have involved colleagues, whether from different service lines, from different offices, but all around the fundamentals of trying to make sure that we are delivering what our clients need. You will have hopefully previously heard us say that from one of our internal mantras, and it remains true to this day, is that for every project we have, we need to be dealing with it from the right service line in the right office with the right people.
And on occasions, that will be from the right offices rather than just one. And if we can continue to make sure we think about that on every matter, we put ourselves in a great place of making sure we deliver what our clients need, and therefore our success follows on from there.
This graph shows that since 2010, with roots in restructuring, FRP has evolved its four other pillars. This graph shows that the group has managed to deliver sustainable, profitable growth regardless of the economic conditions. We can find solutions for clients regardless of where they are in their lifecycle. Overview of the restructuring market. Very well documented issues facing U.K. businesses. Disruption, headwinds due to a large number of factors. Clearly, costs are increasing across the piece. Interest rates continue to increase. End result probably hasn't fully hit the market. Again, I think this week we've seen potential energy costs swinging significantly by the day. Some of the larger pay negotiations are probably only reaching their end and haven't fully impacted as to where inflation does settle.
Weakening consumer demand because of those increasing interest rates and where people's mortgages are going to be heading to. Continued supply chain issues. Labor shortages potentially linked with some Brexit impacts, and obviously the removal of pandemic-related government support, but we're now into the territory of how will people be contemplating paying back that support or at least servicing the interest on that support, so the pressure's not fully impacted U.K. business as we see it this year. We are seeing many institutional lenders and investors more cautious on giving additional financial support without comfort around future viability. It's important for people to understand that the earlier engagement is with FRP enables us to be more innovative, to look more at turnaround and restructuring, and avoid formal insolvency solutions.
Administration market is increasing against prior year, and we are seeing an increase in the level of inquiries actually across our service lines. Next slide. Market share trends. The administration market, the bar chart on the right, is showing growth at least from 2021 and 2022 into 2023. There is growth. Chart on the left, which is all insolvency appointments. Liquidations are up. Year on calendar year, 20%. And market share remains around the same across all insolvency appointments. Administrations in the financial year, our financial year, they're actually up 40% on the previous financial year. We're still plumbing the depths on numbers of administrations. 2019 was still a very, very benign pre-COVID climate, and we still have a long way to go before we even get back up to that base level.
But again, we've reiterated in the financial year track for 2023, we did grow the number of administration appointments up to 14% of the market by number of appointments.
Just some commentary on what we've been achieving within the corporate finance arena. Obviously, that has been a newer service line for us, but we are growing our reputation and credentials. In the year under review, we contributed approximately 15% of our revenue, and that's being both lead M&A and debt advisory assignments. There were 73 transactions with an aggregate value of GBP 1.8 billion and GBP 0.8 billion of debt raised. So a good level of volume there and well spread. Our team was absolutely delighted to be named U.K. Corporate Finance House of the Year at the Real Deals PE Awards. And they very much see that as a good recognition of FRP being a sort of strong player in the market and being ever better recognized. That said, it will be no surprise to anyone that during the year under review, the market has become more challenging.
There's plenty of commentary out there about the fact that there is both a greater level of due diligence around transactions. Obviously, a lot of transactions, whether PE or otherwise, are underpinned by an element or potentially significant amount of debt. With the cost of debt increasing, that is, of course, giving rise to people making sure the structures are in the right place. There are discussions around value. As referenced earlier, we are the 13th most active advisor in the U.K., which from where we were not very long ago is significant progress. We continue to be committed to engaging fully with the private equity community. Approximately half of our deals involve private equity. Our deal size remains typically in the 3-150 million EV range, with an average deal size of 25 million.
While we're not immune to the wider position within corporate finance, we do see that segment of the marketplace as being pretty resilient. We're not in the mega deal bracket. We're in a world where people still want to realize and create value. It's a little bit of crystal ball gazing, but in the context of the prospect of a change of government, there obviously is quite a lot of people looking at what that might mean in terms of their guessing as to what future taxation policies exist, etc. So we remain sensibly optimistic about our corporate finance proposition and making sure we invest further in that team as we go forward. To the next slide.
As I said earlier, during the year, we launched our financial advisory pillar, which was fundamentally about bringing together various services that we were already providing to give greater clarity around what our financial advisory proposition is and to make sure that we're servicing sort of client demand from there. As I said, that ranges through financial due diligence, independent business reviews, financial modeling, valuation services, and then our pensions and company side advisory services. That's brought together a team of more than 20 of our experienced advisors. Most of those are very experienced and often some of our team with the greatest skill sets in terms of very technical and particularly around financial modeling, really high-quality members. And what we are doing is out there promoting that better, whether that's to lenders, to investors, and directly to boards. And we're seeing good traction in developing that through.
And then that obviously, in terms of our connectivity, works closely alongside the corporate finance, debt advisory, and indeed the restructuring business as well. And we are actively looking to make sure that we can undertake strategic hires in that space. It is not the easiest place to recruit because candidates are generally highly skilled and therefore often in demand. But again, because of our ever-increasing market reputation and branding and overall proposition, we are confident about making sure that we can grow that part of our business and develop it further. Next slide on forensic services. Again, another year of growth and expansion. Some really good recognitions in terms of sort of market-leading publications around Chambers and Who's Who, which are sources that people go to when they're looking at, particularly for high-value disputes as to the credentials and credibility of the people they will be engaging with.
Forensic services, again, particularly in where you're talking about things like expert witnesses, you have the world where obviously there is the umbrella brand of the firm, but equally, people then look at the individual CVs of partners and senior team members as to whether they see them having the requisite skill set. No major surprise that we'll continue to invest in the context of our eDiscovery through RelativityOne. And this, again, allows us to deal with the processing of large amounts of data with increased analytics and ability to use effectively quasi-AI on predicting various matters. Again, in the issue of that covering more than one service line, our forensic team works obviously directly with external clients who've got matters that they're investigating. We work with law firms who are looking for large amounts of data to be processed.
But equally, there are significant amounts of our restructuring assignments where, again, we are undertaking investigation as to what has happened, where's money gone to, are there avenues of recovery? And again, there's a very sort of collaborative and joined-up approach. We, in conjunction with our colleagues at Eight International, have again coordinated around making sure that we are promoting our combined forensics and dispute resolution skills. And that's obviously to a much wider market than the U.K.. And that's going very well. And we're looking forward to developing that further. And then as we moved into 2023, we've seen some really high-quality assignments around investigations, not least within the listed company environment. And it's in the public domain around our work with WANdisco, Braemar, and Inland Homes.
I'm sure most of you will be fully aware that, and this is not a detailed analysis, but I don't think it's controversial to say that we're probably in a world at the moment where we've never seen so many listed companies with shares suspended due to auditors not being either in a position or prepared to sign off on audits, and that's something that we don't see disappearing anytime soon, and in all these cases, the auditors have played a massive part around their requirements for what they need to progress, and we're very confident that we are going to see further work in that arena, which is high-quality and remunerative for us as a firm. We continue to grow the team and business. It's a competitive environment, but we are certainly continuing to attract very talented lateral hires across our service lines.
And we actually have a number of lateral hire partner candidates who are currently working through their notice at competitive firms. The stats there are the 30th of April 2023 numbers, which we've already commented on, and obviously which we've updated with the current numbers. On the selective acquisitions, we've now, since IPO, it's six acquisitions in total. And the aggregate contribution in terms of revenues is 19% of the FY23 revenues. We are engaged on some current and ongoing opportunities.
So before Geoff covers the outlook, I'm just going to highlight a few key things from our financials. In terms of underlying adjusted EBITDA, this is the profit metric we invite people to judge us upon. We only adjust for sort of non-cash items, the share-based payment expenses, and exceptional items. The employee incentive plan was funded on IPO. Those shares are in the EBT, so there's no dilution.
The deemed remuneration arises on acquisition. There's no future cash costs to that. Anything that's a real cash cost, we do take as an operating expense. In terms of the income statement, a few things to call out. We mentioned the revenue grew 9% year-on-year. Our personnel costs are up 9% year-on-year. That's partly due to the team. The team grew 9% year-on-year. That includes some acquired colleagues and some lateral hires. The pay rises we did back in May 2022 was around about 5.5%, which included normal pay rises plus colleagues that have been promoted. Recently, in May 2023, our pay rises have been around about the 6% mark. In terms of our other operating expenses, they grew 13% year-on-year.
To call out the big drivers of that, we've done quite a lot of extra investments in marketing and business development. We referred to some of the campaigns earlier on, but we've done a lot in terms of our thought leadership. And we've got our Salesforce subscription, our CRM system. There's a lot happening on the BD side. We've also invested in IT security. And when we have new colleagues come on, services, software as a service, the cost of IT does go up when we bring new colleagues on for the licenses. And when we've renewed some of our leases and brought new leases on, some of those have an increased cost year-on-year. So those are some of the key drivers in terms of our costs. Moving over to the balance sheet, a few things to call out here.
We have a very strong balance sheet with net cash of GBP 22.9 million. In terms of our work in progress or unbilled revenue, we spend a lot of time and effort making sure the valuation is appropriate. Anything that's contingent, we carry at nothing. Whenever we have any doubts about the recoverability of anything, we provide as soon as possible. For us, we spend a lot of time on making sure that the valuation is appropriate. Our work in progress, and I've said it before, it can be in the range between four and seven months. If it got below four, we would start to be concerned. If it went below seven, we would be concerned. During the year, our WIP did grow. If I go back to April 2022, our WIP date was around about four and a half months.
If I look at year-end, it was about 5.2 months. So our WIP has built, and we expect that might build a bit more. It might go north of six months during this financial year. It's something we monitor very closely. What we don't want to do is conclude projects too early. We find that we can very often add extra value to cases. Sometimes we do have WIP building where there's property and there's assets that need to be sold to realize fees. But from our perspective, we always make sure that the valuation is appropriate. In terms of the liabilities going forward, the main one is liabilities to partners, which is their profit share. All the liabilities that were due in IPO have now been fully repaid. There was a final payment in May 2022 of GBP 1.3 million.
In terms of the cash flow statement, the big thing to call out here, as you can see, is our WIP build and the increase in trade and other receivables of GBP 11 million is a bit of a cash strain. From our perspective, there is a commercial balance when projects conclude, but I predicted our WIP would build this year. It was an all-time low. And over to Geoff for the outlook statement.
Thanks, Gavin. As I said earlier, our five connected service pillars now include financial advisory. Our restructuring team are being engaged on projects due to a range of pressures on U.K. corporates.
As referenced during the course of the presentation, that is a multitude of pressures, whether that's the cost of financing and the increase following recent increases in interest rates, debt stakeholders such as HMRC, and we are seeing a more proactive HMRC as regards making sure that companies and individuals are paying their taxes, supply chain issues. That remains a challenge, and we will all be aware of government trying to address those at the moment. Sorry, that's on labor shortages. The ongoing impact of inflation, which whilst reducing, still is relatively much higher than Bank of England target, and as a consequence of matters such as increased costs of mortgages, a weakening consumer demand. We are seeing our institutional lender clients and investors being more cautious on providing additional support as they want to make sure they're supporting businesses that have genuine prospects of viability.
Where early engagement with our team occurs, particularly in the restructuring space, we are able to deploy innovative turnaround and restructuring solutions that might avoid insolvency. Some of those projects can be very lucrative for us, but there is an ongoing challenge within the U.K. PLC as a whole around getting directors and boards to engage. Our corporate finance team does continue to have a strong pipeline, but as I referenced earlier, there is increased demand for more pre-deal due diligence and debt advice, and therefore completion deadlines are being extended. Our team continues to grow the reputation and credentials, and we're named as U.K. Corporate Finance House of the Year. That recognition is seeing us being able to engage in further discussions with high-quality lateral hires as we look to develop our proposition within the corporate finance space.
Our forensic service teams have been very active on investigations, which have included a number of high-profile PLC mandates, and as Gavin has just referenced, the group has a strong balance sheet, and we recently refinanced our bank facilities on better terms with Barclays for a further three years, and in respect to the current financial year, trading to date is in line with the board's expectation, and we are confident of making further progress in the year ahead.
That concludes our presentation.
That's great. Geoff, Gavin, Jeremy, thank you very much indeed for updating analysts this morning. Please allow us attendees on this call to continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of the screen.
But just while I give you a few moments to do so, I'd just like to remind you of the recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides, and any published Q&A will be accessed via your Investor Meet Company dashboard. As you can see, you've had a number of questions from analysts this morning. So if I may, Gavin, if I could just hand back to you, please, to just read out the questions and where appropriate to give your response, and then I'll pick up from you at the end.
Thank you. And if you could close the presentation and have the camera fully on the three of us, that would be great. So I've got a question that's come through from James Bayliss. This is one for Geoff.
How has the competitive landscape evolved over the last year with regard to Interpath and Teneo, etc.?
So within those particular firms, it's been quite interesting to watch. So Teneo, I would say, have elevated their market position and have succeeded at the top end of the market. That's been underpinned by a low volume of high-value projects, not least they secured a number of very high-value Russian-related matters. I do know that those are matters that they would never have been permitted to deal with were they still with Deloitte. But they have had success in that space, and therefore that is working well for them. Interpath, we've probably seen them come down the market in the context they have a much bigger team.
And indeed, they have some very significant levels of debt on their balance sheet that they are having to make sure they're servicing and winning business. So they've been more aggressive in their pricing. Nothing I would say that's material in the context of our market positioning. But as we know from previously, whilst you can classify them as new entrants at one level, they are obviously a rebadging of existing competitors that are now outside of their former home. So no major impact, but we are always conscious of what's going on in our market and competitors. And the one thing I can reassure everyone today is that we will never be complacent about our own position, and we know that we have to remain focused day in, day out, month in, month out, and year in, year out.
So the next question that I'll take, it's from James again around utilization rates. What's happened and how does it vary by pay grade? So during the year, our utilization rates increased. We're now around the mid-60s mark, but that varies considerably by colleague. During our middle ranks of colleagues, people could easily be utilized well over 100%. Some of our more junior colleagues do spend time studying and preparing for exams and their licenses, etc. And at the top end, our partners are always spending a lot of time running existing jobs, but they're also working hard on business development, working new jobs. What I would say, though, is even though our utilization has increased, we do have plenty of internal capacity across our offices. And when one office particularly gets busy, it can borrow resources from other offices. That's part of our collegiate culture of helping each other.
We do have plenty of capacity within the business. I'm going to say at least 30% extra capacity. Question for Jeremy. I can see that you've opened a new office in Salisbury in June. Are there any other areas of the U.K. that you are targeting?
Salisbury was an opportunity with a small practice that wanted to exit the market. I wouldn't say it's an acquisition as such. It complements and expands our Southampton offering, and we felt it made sense. We continue to, as we're looking at some of the things we're progressing at the moment, if we get to the end of the road and we think it's a yes on the culture and the strategy, that could lend itself to a couple of offices in locations where we are not there at a reasonable distance from where we currently are.
But you still look at that map of the U.K., and there's just some places where there just is no industry or a hotbed for us to be there offering service. So it's not about being on every street corner. It is to continue to look for the very appropriate street corners.
So that is all the questions that have come through on the system.
Gavin, they're on a—Gavin, sorry. If you just scroll down, if you just make sure you're on the Q&A tab and under new, there are a few others that have maybe just come in. If you could just double-check on your screen, so on the right-hand side, where you've got chat, Q&A, and polls, click on the Q&A tab, and then underneath that on the left. If you wanted your help to read them out, there's something. Yeah, no problem at all.
Let me take those questions for you. Question here from Peter. You refer to your growing referral network. What is the main source of this growth? Competition, is it getting easier, tougher, or the same? And then there's a question that I'll come on to about partners.
So in terms of what's the main source of that growth of—I mean, fundamentally, that's self-generated in the context of us looking at our marketplaces, looking at the sectors in which we want to operate, looking at who—doing research around who we understand to be relevant potential clients. And obviously, there's the mix between that of probably the more prevalent, i.e., people who have the prospect of referring opportunities to us. But equally, we are trying to do more direct corporate activity.
Direct to corporate is more challenging, which comes back to the sort of world of, "Why do I need advice?" and people not wanting it. So that comes back to Gavin's thing around the investment in our overall business development. The issue where we've referenced about doing sector campaigns, that's increasingly important for us to be able to demonstrate that we have knowledge and insight, and therefore, if someone's going to engage with us, that we are able to serve their needs. But that fundamentally, I mean, there's obviously the wider ongoing effect as the firm grows and its brand recognition proves that doors will be open for us. But in the main, we've got to put the hard yards in to make sure that we are trying to open new doors, build new relationships, as well as maintaining existing relationships.
I think on the second piece around the sort of competitive landscape, as I've said many times, our marketplaces are always being competitive. It ebbs and flows in terms of where people's focuses and attentions are. And in regards to the restructuring market, in a busy market, you'll see the sort of natural thing of the larger firms focusing at the top of the market and a slightly quieter market. They'll look down the food chain a little bit from there. There's obviously a myriad of much smaller firms out there. But as I said earlier, we're not complacent around that, and we're constantly trying to make sure that our proposition for clients is relevant. And of course, in the world of, it's actually interesting in a different thing on the forensics where we have really seen significant activity levels during the course of calendar year 2023.
That has been interesting around seeing the impact of doing things like WANdisco, which received a lot of publicity and unpaid publicity in that sense, and that has seen inbound calls of people saying, "We saw you were on that. We've got an issue. Can you come and talk to us? And can we look at mandating you for—" so that's a real positive thing around, which is the classic thing of people seeing you being busy and then people wanting to talk to you and potentially engage you from there, so as I said earlier, we will never be complacent around where we are because we operate in very competitive markets. We've just got to keep plugging away and making sure we are relevant to our clients, both existing and hopefully new. Thank you.
Peter has one final question, which is the number of partners reduced slightly year-on-year, but there was a big increase in the number of fee owners. What explains this divergence?
I think if you're looking for a perfect world, you would probably like teams around partners to be slightly bigger. I think as you grow, it's probably easier to have that dynamic. We did have a couple of partners who are not retirement. We did have a couple of partners who did have serious health issues, and they're both hopefully going to be with us for a long term in the wider scheme of things. But it was right for a couple of people to step away. So we did see a couple more retirements in inverted commas that we were anticipating, which took the numbers down a bit prior to the 12 internals being promoted.
But as I've already said, ongoing quality lateral hires that are working through notice periods and ongoing conversations lead to increasing rather than reducing partner numbers. I think it's worth, on the 12 internal promotions as well, I think it's worth highlighting that there were two couple of key elements to that as well, one of which that is part of a wider succession planning and making sure that for all of our offices, we can see that there's a longer-term future. But we mustn't underestimate either the positive impact of people seeing that there is an ability to progress within FRP. And it's not an organization where the top gets full, and it's a long-term waiting game for opportunities to arise. And we're very happy to make sure that we are supporting colleagues as they develop on their career and to invest in them.
Investing includes giving people the opportunity to be partner and hopefully fulfill their potential. So it's not just a financial focus around that number of partners. There is a wider piece around the positive impact on the overall team and the firm.
Yeah. Actually maintaining a line of sight for whether 1st November or 1st of May, 24th November thereafter, making sure we're ahead of the game in terms of what we've got coming through, continue to accommodate good people in their aspirations.
That's great. Thank you. Let me just turn to a question, please, from Michael Donnelly. Thank you, Michael. Could you update us on the ERM/CRM implementations and what, if any, effect they are having on the current year margins?
So if I take that one, the ERM is an enterprise risk management, which is ISO 31000. That is in place.
That is a sort of a risk management tool. And I would say it ripples through the entire organization in terms of trying to manage risk, etc., in a more structured way. There would be a negligible impact to margin on that. In terms of CRM, we have implemented a new Salesforce system. We were previously with Microsoft Dynamics. That has been in place for well over a year now. It's going well. And I think there have been initial investments. Partners have been getting used to it. They've been getting used to how it works, etc. But to just point earlier on, we spend a lot of time and effort in terms of campaigns, reaching out to our referrers, making sure we go to the market joined up.
We don't want to have situations where two people go to a pitch and they don't know what the other hand is doing. So there's a lot more coordination around our business development and targeting referrers. That will add to margin going forward. But in the short term, it's a bit of a cultural shift, making sure we're all aligned, making sure we're aware of what colleagues are doing and who owns which relationships.
Great. And Michael does have a follow-on as part of that question is what market share level in administrations above 14% might be achievable? Could it get as high as 20%?
Well, the simple answer to that is, of course, that is possible. As to the likelihood of it, I wish I was qualified to give you a proper answer on that, Michael.
I can only come back to sort of my statement is that we will continue to make sure the team is as focused as possible to get into as many situations, as many transactions as possible. But as to that ability to do so, I can't put a percentage chance on that, but we will keep working away. A large percentage of the meaningful transactions because you do look back to K3 Quantuma, acquired a business called Champion and Co., which in early 2022 took 52 administrations, but it was probably one hold Co. and 51 very, very small entities. But that was 5% of a market. In terms of fees, I doubt if you could—it wouldn't be 5% of a market. It would be a very, very, very small percentage of a market. Great.
I think you've probably touched on part of Samuel's question that he has submitted in. It reads as follows: "Given a 6% wage increase, how much did they put up rates on the 1st of May 2023? And do they think administration volumes will rise above the 10-year average around 1.8K in the coming year?"
Yeah. So our fee rates were commensurate to, so we haven't taken a net loss or margin on that position. And as I know, well, it's not answering the question really. As an overall position, I would say our market rates remain sensible in the context of the mid-market, which is our core. The outliers still where the FTIs and the Teneos and others world are charging GBP 1,300, GBP 1,500, GBP 1,700 pounds an hour for a partner. We're GBP 775 in London and nearer the GBP 500 market out in the regions.
In terms of that 10-year average on administrations, if our economy functions in a way that reflects a capital economy where capital allocates itself to the right transactions, then logically, that 10-year average will come into play. And actually, we have seen, as we've referenced in our presentation, that lenders and investors are becoming more selective around what funding they're making available, plus the overlay of the true impact of companies having higher debt service costs to meet. So logic says that will occur.
As you know, those of you who've engaged with us previously, unfortunately, we're not a management team that has ever said, "This is definitely going to happen," or, "That's going to definitely happen." But if it is, then again, as I've said many times, the one thing we are always confident about is that we are very well placed to serve the market that is in front of us. We just can't create the market, but we do our best to make sure that we are creating the opportunities to get into transactions because that's the thing that we can directly influence.
Thank you. I have a couple of questions here from James. The first one with liquidations heavier than normal in the mix versus administrations in full year 2023, which presumably are shorter duration. Why has that not helped keep the WIP days down?
Is that purely related to property assets that need to be sold in order to be paid? Is that what you mentioned?
I can understand the nature of the question, but it's not necessarily as simple as saying a liquidation is an in and out because actually, quite often, liquidations have a reasonably, some of them can be in and outs, but a lot of them might have a longer tail where actually the recovery of the asset involves overdrawn directors' loan accounts or assets that have been moved out and stuff. So it's not as simple as saying it's, I can understand why people say, "Well, liquidation is a closure. Surely that's entirely procedural.
You get done, you get dusted, and off you go," and some of the more meaningful liquidations can very much have a proper tail to them around by the time we've undertaken investigations, which then often leads you to saying there are further assets to recover, and then you go through the process of recovering them. So that will be why it's not as, in terms of that overall WIP growth, it will just be the combination of an increase in volume and the time it takes to recover assets. The majority of a large part of our WIP growth was in our top 10 assignments, which I doubt if more than one of the 10 is a liquidation environment.
And the other thing that's always worth commenting on that top 10 piece, which is always a good validation for us when we look at the business, is pretty much on every single year, that top 10. There might be someone who stays in there one or two years, but that top 10 moves around. And that's always a good sign that in an overall sense, the work in progress is being realized. It's not like you've got three, four, five cases that sit there for three years and we can't turn it into cash. It's a very simple review thing, but it is always helpful to see that when you compare one to another, that there is a change of names in that top 10.
And there's a slide in the appendices that show we've got a good track record of almost turning our work in progress into cash.
That's great. Thank you very much indeed. James's other question reads as follows: "With corporate finance debt advisory revenues down from around 20% to 15% of the group, which other pillars picked up the slack? Was it a broad spread across all three pillars?"
Fundamentally, yes. Yeah. So there's, I'd say, good levels of increased activity, particularly in Q4 for forensics. They probably had their busiest time ever. And there were plenty of our team doing 12-hour days on 100% recovery, which is great, subject to making sure that we're balancing out the demands on our colleagues. And then wider levels of activity within restructuring and in the financial advisory. Thank you. And within that overall thing as well on the 15%, actually, the debt advisory team had a good, strong year.
It's more in the lead M&A territory, which is completely understandable given the wider macro piece and what went on from the Mini-B udget last autumn.
Great. Thank you. I have a question here from Emmanuel. Thank you, Emmanuel. I see that on Bloomberg that the EBIT consensus is 25.7 million for April 2024. How comfortable are you with that?
I think we've given guidance for Adjusted EBITDA for April 2024 via our covering analysts. We don't guide directly as a company. That's great. We'll see today a note published by Investec, published by Cenkos. We rely on people to use those guidance notes.
That's great. Thank you very much indeed. And thank you to all the analysts on today's call for your questions. And that concludes the Q&A session.
Geoff, before I redirect analysts on the call to give you any feedback that they may have, I wondered if I may just ask you for a few closing comments, after which I'll send them for feedback. Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, thank you, everyone, for taking the time this morning. I know there's a few interesting things out there in the marketplace at the moment that people probably wanted to pay attention to, but I think the one comment I would like to make in terms of wrapping up these results, which is we are very proud of what has been achieved in the year under review. It wasn't the easiest of markets across our chosen service lines, and it is a testament to what our wider team has achieved that we continue to make progress. We are confident of making further progress.
We will continue to keep our heads down and try and make sure we deliver year-on-year. Thank you once again for your time this morning.
Thank you. Thank you.