Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us at the half-year presentation for Idox for the period end of 30 April 2024. So, as you all know, Idox is a software company, a software company that builds specialist software solutions that power the performance of government and industry, driving productivity and a better experience for everyone.
For those of you familiar with the business, you'll know that we run and operate our business in three divisions: our Land, Property, and Public Protection division, which deals with the built environment, regulatory services, public protection, and also now includes our address management and geospatial applications. We also have our Community Solutions division, which will become very relevant for everyone, I guess, in the next month as we deal with elections, but also deals with social care, software for sexual health management, grants and research databases. Last but not least, our Assets division, which includes our EIM products, software products for facilities management, for tracking, and also for the transport industries,
Just to recap how we've done to the half-year, well, all on plan, really, and all as expected. So, a strong performance in line with our expectations, delivering profitable growth. So, our revenue is up 21% in the period to GBP 43.1 million, compared with the H1 last year of GBP 35.8 million. Our adjusted EBITDA has increased 8% to GBP 13.1 million. And our order intake was also up in the period, it was up 4% to GBP 54.1 million. So, overall, the business has performed extremely well. We have, as you know, been building strong foundations and capacity for the future all the time across our business areas.
And we're developing the group's geospatial division and capabilities to meet new growth opportunities that we see operating over the next decade. The integration of Emapsite, which we acquired in August last year, has progressed very well and in line with our expectations. And as Anoop will touch on in a few moments, we have good facilities in our business and a healthy M&A pipeline to progress on a number of strategic targets. So, with that, I'll hand over to Anoop, who'll take you through the financial review for the period.
Thanks, Dave and good morning, everybody. Welcome to our half-year 2024 results presentation. First, let me take you through the results for the group as a whole, and then I'll move on to the individual segments, pulling out the key points and themes for the period. Overall, the group delivered a strong performance for the period in line with our expectations, including a full half-year contribution from Emapsite. We delivered revenues of GBP 43.1 million, which are up 21% on last year, and demonstrates the progress the group continues to make. Our recurring revenue was up 29% at GBP 27.4 million, as we continue to focus on securing long-term recurring revenue income streams with customers.
The proportion of recurring revenue represented 63% of the group's overall revenue, with good growth in our Land, Property, and Public Protection and Communities divisions. Excluding the impact of Emapsite, our total revenues grew by 2% in a period. While recurring revenue, excluding Emapsite, was up 7% in a period, this was partially offset by lower recurring revenue than in 2023, which was driven by the timing of contract renewals and re-signs.
We delivered revenue growth of 35% in our LPPP division to GBP 28.9 million, along with a stable performance in our Assets and Communities divisions, delivering GBP 7.1 million of revenue in each division. Our adjusted EBITDA was up 8% at GBP 13.1 million and resulted in an overall anticipated margin of 30%, driven by the expected margin dilution from Emapsite and further investment spend into our geospatial capabilities. The group ended the period with a good order intake of GBP 54.1 million, up 4%, providing good visibility for the remainder of the year.
We delivered an adjusted EPS for the period of GBP 1.26 per share. While our EBITDA was up for the period, the impact of the increase in the UK corporation tax rate from 19% to 25% and increased borrowing costs resulted in a 5% reduction in the adjusted earnings per share for the period. We continue to focus on cash generation and strong cash management throughout the group, and this has resulted in a decrease of our net debt position by over 50% since last year-end to a half-year net debt position of GBP 6.6 million, giving a leverage ratio of 0.3 times.
In October 2023, we renewed and increased the size of our RCF facility to GBP 75 million and our accordion to GBP 45 million for a further three years, providing us with good levels of facilities for further M&A. Overall, we're really pleased to deliver a strong performance for the first half. On the following slide, we set out as a reminder the progress of the business since 2020. Through a combination of organic growth and M&A, we have grown the group's annual revenues by 28% between 2020 and 2023 to GBP 73.3 million. Over this same period, recurring revenue has grown by 22% to GBP 43.6 million, where our LPPP division continues to be the major driver for growth.
As just mentioned, we've delivered a 21% increase in revenue for the first half of 2024 to GBP 43.1 million and a 29% increase in recurring revenue to GBP 27.4 million. We've worked with customers to renew and extend existing relationships, as well as develop new ones over the long term, which has contributed to an order intake increase of 31% between 2021 and 2023 to GBP 82.4 million. Furthermore, we've secured a further GBP 54.1 million of orders in the first half, which was up 4% on a prior period, with good growth in LPPP and communities.
As a result, we've ensured the delivery of profitable growth and increased our Adjusted EBITDA by 42% between 2020 and 2023 to GBP 24.5 million and delivered an Adjusted EBITDA of GBP 13.1 million for the first half, up 8% on a prior year. Moving on to LPPP, first of all, revenues for this division have grown by 72% between 2020 and 2023, with a 78% growth in Adjusted EBITDA over the same period. The LPPP division accounted for 67% of the group's revenues and 70% of the group's Adjusted EBITDA at the half-year. Overall revenue for the division was up 35% at GBP 28.9 million, supported by a full contribution from Emapsite.
Excluding the impact of Emapsite, which was acquired in August 2023, revenue grew 4% with solid performances in local government cloud, address management, and thinkWhere. We're very pleased with the integration of Emapsite into the group, and the business performed well and in line with our expectations. It has built on its previous performance prior to the acquisition, with a revenue growth of 13% over the same period last year. Of the GBP 28.9 million of revenue, GBP 17.6 million was generated from recurring revenue streams, representing 61% of the division's total revenue and was up 50% on a prior year.
Excluding the impact of Emapsite, recurring revenue for the division grew by 11%, where there was good growth in local government cloud, address management, and thinkWhere. Recurring revenue in Idox Cloud was up 20% on the prior period, with good order intake up 48% in the period. New customers included Waverley Borough Council and London Borough of Merton, as well as customer migrations, including Adur and Worthing Council and Arun. Address management solutions revenues were up 7%, supported by recurring revenue growth of 9%. New business wins included Gloucestershire Constabulary and West Midlands Fire Service. Non-recurring revenues were up 16% at GBP 11.3 million.
Excluding Emapsite, non-recurring revenue reduced by 4% and was driven by the fact that the prior year was a strong year for customer re-signs, resulting in higher non-recurring revenue in 2023. We reported an adjusted EBITDA for the period of GBP 9.2 million, representing a 32% margin, which was consistent with the 2023 full-year results and was after taking into account the expected lower margins on Emapsite and further investment spend into developing out our geospatial capabilities.
The Assets division has delivered a broadly stable performance since 2020, with annual revenues of circa GBP 15 million-GBP 16 million, contributing GBP 4 million-GBP 4.5 million of adjusted EBITDA. The division accounted for 16% of group revenue and 12% of EBITDA. For the period, revenue for the division was stable at GBP 7.1 million. Within the division, EIM Solutions, which accounts for circa 55% of the division, delivered a broadly stable performance for the period.
Revenues for our asset tracking solution, iFit, were up 9% with the launch of several new programs into the NHS market. However, this increase was offset by a 12% reduction in our facilities management solution. Recurring revenue remained stable at GBP 4.7 million and represented a 67% of the division's revenue, whilst non-recurring revenue was stable at GBP 2.4 million. The adjusted EBITDA for the period is GBP 1.6 million compared to GBP 1.8 million last year and was impacted by slightly lower margins in our facilities management solution. Communities division comprises our elections, grants and databases, and social and healthcare solutions. The Communities division accounts for 17% of total group revenues and 18% of group EBITDA.
Revenue remained stable in a period at GBP 7.1 million, with a 7% increase in recurring revenue being offset by a 15% reduction in non-recurring revenue. With no major election events across the UK or Malta in the first half, election revenues were down slightly on the prior year, although order intake was up significantly in a period as customers gear up for the upcoming general election.
Recurring revenue in Lilie, our sexual health solution, was up 12% on the prior year as we continued our strong relationship with market providers such as Virgin Care Services and Solutions 4 Health. In the database subscription businesses, Grant Finder and Research Connect, recurring revenue was up 10% on the same period last year. Social care revenues were 2% lower than in 2023. However, recurring revenue increased by 5% as new customers, including Derbyshire County Council and St Helens Council, joined our social care user base.
Overall, recurring revenue was up 7% in a period and represented 70% of the division's revenue. The division ended the period with an adjusted EBITDA of GBP 2.3 million, with an expected return to more normalized margins at 32%, following the benefit of some higher margin non-recurring work in 2023.
Moving on to the group's cash flow, the group generated net cash from operating activities before tax of GBP 19.5 million. Against the group's Adjusted EBITDA of GBP 13.1 million, this equated to a conversion rate of 149%. The group paid GBP 1.8 million in taxes in a period and GBP 1.4 million in M&A outflows, which comprised a working capital payment in connection with Emapsite. The group invested GBP 4.3 million into development and CapEx, with investment in local government, cloud, geospatial, and elections.
The group paid the 2023 dividend of GBP 0.6 per share, which resulted in a total cash outflow of GBP 2.8 million in April. After interest, lease payments, and other items of GBP 1.1 million, the group moved from a net debt position of GBP 14.7 million at the start of the year to a net debt position of GBP 6.6 million at the end of the period.
Finally, moving on to our future guidance and outlook. This is consistent with guidance communicated previously, reflecting the medium-term outlook for the business. We expect to deliver double-digit revenue growth in 2024, which will include a full year of contribution from Emapsite. From an EBITDA margin perspective, while we expect a short-term margin reduction following the acquisition of Emapsite, over the medium term, we expect to head towards a 35% adjusted EBITDA margin through a combination of efficiencies and higher margin acquisitions.
In terms of cash generation, we continue to expect the business to generate good levels of cash against EBITDA over the medium term and therefore reducing net debt over 2024 and 2025 and moving into a cash position thereafter. Having increased the RCF to GBP 75 million and the accordion to GBP 45 million, we have significant facilities to progress our M&A work over the coming period. Just finally, in terms of wrapping up the numbers, we've delivered a strong financial performance for the first half and are on track to deliver in line with the board's expectations for the remainder of 2024. So at this point, I'll hand back to Dave, who will talk you through the rest of the presentation. Thank you.
Thanks, Anoop. So it forced me just to give a little bit of color, really, around our operational performance and the things that we're doing within the business to continue our growth and change. I thought it was interesting there to see the business growing from, you know, GBP 57 million back in 2020 to our expected outlook of sort of GBP 89 million-GBP 90 million this year. And those things, of course, don't happen just by chance.
They happen because we invest and build the business strategically and build capacity into our group in order to be able to incorporate that success as we go forward. So, as you know, we've put a three-divisional operating structure into our business that's allowed us to focus on customers and our revenue growth. And the growth in all of those areas has been supported by the things that we do in our operations. In particular, I would suggest that the investment in systems and our sales stratification efforts played a very significant part in our growth over the period. And our move to incorporate an offshore capability within our group has been very significant.
I expect, as we go forward, that partnerships will become more important to our group, particularly in that area of geospatial, where there's a very significant ecosystem of suppliers that work together to provide complex solutions to customers. And so our relationship, ongoing relationship with people like Ordnance Survey, like GeoPlace, will become more significant over the coming years.
At a strategic level, we've been very disciplined in our capital allocation programs. We're seeing bigger bang for our buck out of our development efforts. And we have built, as you know, a very strong staff culture across the business to allow us to grow and for our teams to take on new leadership positions as we grow. And indeed, each of our divisions, as you know, are run by people who were internal appointments and that were graduates of our own Leading Together program.
That's enabled us really to have and build capacity to add bolt-on acquisitions to the group as we go successfully. As many of you will know, I always say that it's very easy to spend the money on acquisitions, but the real proof of the pudding comes in their integration and their ability to mix with our business, both culturally and operationally. In those areas, we've been very successful to date. Of course, with our markets and products and customers, we've paid particular attention to pricing, making sure that we're getting a fair return for all the products and services that we deliver and helping our customers move to the cloud and build a combination of software and data services as they go forward.
So a very successful continued period of building those foundations, and that's resulted in a number of wins and re-signs with existing clients over the period. I know you've touched on some of those. And in a few slides' time, I'll try and bring one or two of those case studies to life for you, just to show how our new capabilities are helping our clients move forward and become operationally more efficient and more insightful in the way that they're conducting their own business operations.
So what always remains intact for us are our four pillars. We've built the business on a focus on revenue margins, communication, and simplification that remains in play and will always remain in play going forward. And as you know, in revenue growth, we've seen a significant increase in our recurring revenue in the period, up over 20%. And our order intake growth in our Idox Cloud solutions has been significant at +48% in the period. Anoop referenced our growth in address management solutions. That's also been supported by new customer acquisitions and expansions into adjacent market areas. And of course, we've had a full six-month contribution from Emapsite.
In terms of margins, we've been leveraging our matrix structure across departments to create efficiencies. We've been developing our customer success horizontal teams, which has improved our efficiency in the way that we deliver services to customers. And we've been integrating and increasing the size of our operational teams out in Pune, India. In communications, we've seen a tremendous amount of success. We've continued to embrace hybrid working. We think that's the way forward for us. A combination of home working and being in the office enables us to communicate and collaborate well.
We've opened a new office in Belfast as we've expanded our team in Belfast over the last period. We are now seeing a substantial return to the office in Pune, and we'll be moving to new, larger premises in Pune to help with our growth in that area over the coming 24 months. In terms of simplification, we've continued to streamline our technologies and processes across the organization. We've also expanded our sales desk and revenue assurance teams to enhance our customer experiences and further simplify our operations.
Those simplifications and streamlining of our other processes has meant that we've seen over GBP 200,000 of savings made in our procurement and supply chain management activity over the period. Great internal progress, good operational delivery. As Anoop said, we have a strong financial capacity to continue to add to our business through M&A. I think we've established a very strong track record of being able to identify, execute, and integrate accretive acquisitions over the last few years. We have a healthy pipeline of M&A opportunities leading into the second half of this year.
As Anoop said, our cash generation and refinancing in October 2023 provided us with significant firepower to keep that ball and that show on the road. Strategically, we're looking to enhance acquisitions that enhance our software offerings. We're looking to broaden our capabilities that create new innovative solutions. Also for acquisitions that allow us to draw upon the expertise and client engagements that we have and increase the size of the reach for new products and services to our customers. From a financial perspective, obviously our focus is always on delivering profitable growth, increasing our recurring revenue streams, delivering significant cash generation, and releasing synergies, all of which we hope drive shareholder value through accretion as we move forward.
Again, just to recap on the acquisitions that we've made to date, they go back to our original acquisition of Tascomi in 2019 and then the purchase of Aligned Assets in June 2021, followed by Exegesis in October 2021 and thinkWhere, of course, in August of that year. We subsequently acquired LandHawk in October 2022 and latterly, Emapsite in August 2023. Each of these acquisitions have been additive and largely based around our LPPP area of business and the work we do in geospatial. That's been a deliberate ploy for us.
We believe that geospatial is a sector with significant opportunities, and we believe that it will bring growth opportunities in geospatial software and data and allow for extensive growth of our geospatial revenues. Our expertise in location intelligence and geospatial data management enables us to provide transformative solutions that address complex challenges across various sectors. We believe that our geospatial solutions also allow us to move through software and data to provide strong curated solutions to both existing and new customers. Just to bring some of that to life, I thought we'd just cover a few examples of where our software is making a big difference to clients at the moment.
I was at the Geo Show last week down at the ExCeL Centre in London, and I was very pleased to see Alan Moore from our team presenting our collaboration with the National Collection of Aerial Photography, NCAP. So NCAP is the organization that manages the National Archive of Aerial Photography. It digitizes images for the nation, and it has a repository of historical aerial imagery that is addressable by a broad market.
And we've helped them to catalog and digitize millions of those images and provide a comprehensive data set that supports a number of applications, including environmental monitoring to track changes over time, solutions for urban planning for informed decision-making, and historical research to uncover insights to past landscapes and developments. And indeed, this is the agency that provides all of the imagery related to the MoD as they declassify their old archive as it goes forward.
Most importantly, the work that we do with NCAP allows them to become a self-funding agency. They monetize the accessibility to this brilliant archive. We've been helping them not just to catalog all of their activity, but also put that into a solution that helps them to monetize that route going forward and be the self-funding agency that they are. So it's a very powerful and exciting project going forward and one we're very proud to be involved in. Moving on, it'd be useful to bring to everyone's attention the work that we do around the National Geospatial Data Integration with our Uniform product in Scotland. There we're supporting the Scottish Government and the Spatial Information Service to create a national geospatial data set through One Scotland Gazetteer and Spatial Hub.
We're using a digital platform and Cloud Connector framework to automate the extraction of property data from 32 local authorities across Scotland, reducing their manual processes and saving time and resources. We're also providing solutions that automate and provide near-real-time updates to all of that property information and include enhancing the transparency of that through portals like Tell M e Scotland and improving the data integrity via Power BI dashboards. The automated geospatial data integration there enhances their mapping services and also is allowing them to think about ways in which they can generate revenue from that planning data, which is very exciting both for them and for us.
In communities, as you know, we're just about to come up to a general election, and we're already supporting a number of local authorities in their pre-work for that, where obviously providing a lot of support to local authorities who are looking to manage the postal voting process. We've been delivering software and services support to all of the parliamentary, general, and local elections, both in the UK and Malta since 2019. As you know, we should see revenues flowing in from that process during the remainder of June and July, giving us good visibility to revenues for us for the second half of the year. Finally, in our assets division, just bring to your attention a collaboration we have with DeepSea Development Services.
Here, we've implemented Fusion Live as an effective and safe document control process, and that allows DeepSea Development Services to see how they control documents across a wide and extensive array of partners. It's allowed them to deliver tighter project management, reduce delays in process for them, and increase their productivity. It provides optimized document management for a lot of enhanced efficiency and productivity.
Significantly, this is a program that we instigated within four weeks, and it was really our deep technical knowledge and rapid implementation and flexible configuration that were key success factors in that implementation. So in conclusion for us, as Anoop's pointed out in a lot of the numbers, a really strong half- year, a great performance from the business, and a continuation of our track record in delivering half- year after half- year.
You know, we operate in very attractive markets in which we have strong market positions and very strong insights, and that we're confident that we'll continue with that excellent progress for the remainder of this year and beyond. We're investing selectively to enhance and grow our opportunities and build out our strong recurring revenues. We've got a good, attractive M&A pipeline, and as I say, a strong performance for the first half of 2024 and remaining on track for the remainder of the year. So with that, we'll draw the presentation to a close. I'll be very happy to take any questions that you may have.
And we've got a question from James Lockyer at Peel Hunt.
Two from me, please. Firstly, just in terms of the signings you've done in the first half, could you talk through the process there and how that may have changed over time as you brought more competencies or offerings under the belt? Is it joined up? Is it the same person you're talking to to sell all these different products? How should we think about the signing process and how that's changed over time?
And just on geospatial, now that you've had six months of Emapsite and that grew strongly in the period, how's your sense around the market there in general in terms of the opportunities you can go after the different areas of your existing business, so be that public sector or private sector, and how we should think about that now that you've got to around, I think maybe it's a 23%-24% of your group is now geospatial revenues. It'd be good to think how your perception of that has changed over time.
In terms of re-signs with clients, I think always we think about resales probably than re-signs. Customers' requirements, demands are always evolving, and it's really important that we're looking to help our clients do more digitally than they've done previously. Some of our clients are working within obvious constraints of capacity and sometimes capability as they lose skills. But most importantly, we're always trying to bring the very latest of what we have to customers in our re-sign capability. Exposing them to as many products and services as we have across the group that we believe are pertinent to them in improving their business cases and operational performance.
During any engagement we have with the client, it's never a sort of passive engagement where we turn up once every three years and thank them for their business. We're continually engaged with them, showing and demonstrating to them that the products and services they have are the right things for them to move forward with, regardless of whether they're ready to enhance and move forward with further product offerings or not. I think that's a very significant thing for us, really. That has involved a tremendous amount of joining up of the business.
Obviously, since COVID, we do a tremendous amount of that online. We're always running teach-ins. We're always running virtual seminars to keep our clients abreast of new products and services, but also case study activity where other clients that are similar to them are doing tremendous things to improve their own outcomes. So I'd say that the whole process for us has changed significantly since I came into the business in late 2018 and continues to be very joined up over the period. And I think that's one of the reasons that we're successful in continuing strong engagements and relationships with customers.
May I just ask a follow-up on that? So I know the implication there is when you joined, you said you believe things have got better and you've grown your skills and capabilities and offerings. But does that mean that you're not necessarily pricing power, but your position as a negotiator against your competition, has that got stronger over that period as well because you can do more? So do you see yourself being more competitively strong against where you might have been a few years ago?
Yeah, I think it's fair to say, and I think we covered it pretty well in the period of sort of 2018 through 2021, that Idox had quite a lot of catching up to do in terms of pricing its offering to customers and having a fair return for the products and services that it delivered. And I always think that there is clients will happily and readily pay for products and services that give them extra and that allow them to provide a higher quality service, whether that be through increased productivity or more natural automation or engaging with the public to do more of the work through self-serve mechanisms, etc.
So I think we are in a stronger position group than we were at that time when I first came on board. And I think we have significant market positions, particularly in LPPP. We always say internally that if you're a market leader, you have to lead. You can't be a catch-up player. You have to innovate. You have to be showing your clients what is both possible and achievable. So we take great pride in doing that and spelling out the future for clients. But I think that does transpose itself into pricing over time, for sure.
If we take the second question, James, around the geospatial work, I think it's a really exciting area. We're putting out there that we think that's going to be a significant growth area over the next decade as existing clients and new clients see the power of delivering information through geospatial mechanisms. And that's not disappointing. We're seeing growth in our Emapsite business and also in the other areas where we've picked up products with thinkWhere.
And also with the work we've done with Aligned Assets and Exegesis over the period, recurring income continuing to grow. So we feel that that will continue to be a growth area for us. And as you say, it helps us diversify the group a little bit, not away from public services, but in addition to public services and connecting together some of the data streams and software products that are used across sectors.
So as we've seen in this period, telcos are obviously very interested in geospatial information and planning data, the same with utilities, of course. And clients in the housing space are very interested in products and services that allow them to think about their ESG requirements. So all of those things we think are great opportunities for us moving forward and will hopefully continue to build those things out and add further bits into the jigsaw puzzle of solutions that we can provide to clients moving forward.
And we'll go to Julian Yates at Investec.
I've got three questions, if that's okay. Firstly, great growth in order intake within Idox Cloud. Could you tell me how much of that comes from your installed base versus new customers? And then within the installed base, how much more is there to go in terms of sort of migration that you've got there in terms of realistic customers that could migrate over the next few years? That's the first one. Second one, M&A. You mentioned margin-rich acquisition. Emapsite obviously was lower margin. Just sort of thoughts on margin profiles of deals.
Clearly, I guess, they will be accretive, but interested in margin profile and business model. The last one, your new organizational structure, you're a year into it. Clearly, a lot is working well. You can sort of outline where you think it's working and obviously what areas may not be working as well as you thought and where that can be improved. Maybe it's all fantastic.
I feel that the jury is being led at that point, Julian, but we'll come on to that one, I'm sure. In terms of how many of our existing clients have gone to cloud, I think we're in the sort of higher 20% bracket now. We've still got about still over 60% anyway of our clients that have yet to make the move to cloud.
I think that's really a major issue around capacity in local governments and people being able to take on that challenge, if you like, as well as the other things that have been pressing them over the last few years. But increasingly, we are streamlining and improving the way that clients can make that move successfully. I think there's a lot of case material and studies out there. And I think inevitably, we'll just continue to see a route for people to do that over the coming years. I think it will continue to be a significant revenue, an ARR generator for us. In terms of the M&A activity that we're getting engaged in, I think we've been discussing that for a little while, really. High-growth businesses tend not to come with the margins that we're used to in a mature software business.
And you could see that with Emapsite. I think that was clear and plain for everyone. So I think going forward, we're looking for a mixture of M&A activity, really. Some things that will allow us to grow our existing software base and increase our scale and capabilities. And also add to that faster-growing areas that customers are interested in around geospatial that make sense for us and that build out the portfolio. But what we're hopeful of on each occasion, probably should have been a little bit clearer about this, is that as we then scale those businesses and we move them through the process of bulking them up, then we think, as with our other businesses, scale improves margins and improves pricing power as well as we go forward. So that's how we'd expect to see the margins improve over time.
I think the money that we're investing into geospatial as well, I think that will evolve the product and the offering to the customers. I think naturally then that will shift in terms of price point and margin accretion, I think, over the medium term.
Great. So in terms of your comments on M&A being higher margin, it's not so much the starting point, it's the ending point of the deals you're bringing in and what it brings to your business on that path.
Absolutely. I think we should have been a bit clearer on that. Yeah, absolutely.
And then I think in org structure, everything I'm responsible for is working brilliantly. How about you, Anoop? No, I'm joking.
Now, the org structure has worked really well.
I think what's been satisfying is seeing the contribution that each of the leaders that we've put into these positions has made in the business. They've shown themselves to be strong leaders with good views and opinions and great collaborative skills. So we see them working very effectively across each division, sharing their experiences and helping others to sort of take necessary shortcuts in process where they've already trodden the path, as it were. So that's worked really well. Inevitably, you always think you could do some things better, but firmly, I think it's been the right move for us. And generally speaking, it's worked incredibly well. We've also brought new capabilities into the group. We're always thinking about building capacity. So we hired a chap called Ian Churchill during the first half of the year.
Ian had spent a big part of his career at Capita, where he'd run their public sector business, but more lately, had been Chief Executive at BigHand, which was a private equity-owned business. So Ian's come on board to look at revenue growth for us and our operational effectiveness. That's been a great hire. And you'll see us announcing in the coming months new positions in the group, particularly around some of our internal functions like HR. So our people team needs to be strengthened as we go forward and grow. And you'll continue to see us building out our capabilities in that area. But I think overall, the org structure has worked as well as we could have expected, really. We'd obviously like to be moving a little bit quicker. I think our offshore capability has grown, but we'd like it to be a little larger.
And hopefully, we'll put our foot to the floor a little bit more on that one in the second half of the year.
And we'll go to Kai Korschelt at Canaccord.
I just had a couple—one was, and I apologize, I joined the webinar late. One was just around the non-recurring revenue growth, I guess, in the second half, which I think was down in the first half. Just due to the elections in the UK, I'm just wondering if you would expect that part to accelerate and then hence lift the overall organic growth rate of the group. That was the first question. And then the second one was just around the Blackstone buyout of Civica.
Just wondering if through the grapevine or from customers, you've heard any change in strategy, perhaps around maybe the UK business, or if there's any impact that that ownership change may have or may not have on the business that might impact you? Thank you.
So in terms of non-recurring, you're right, Kai. So it was down in the first half. And really, that's symptomatic of the nature of the contracts. So typically, we'll have contracts with customers that range between 3-5 years. It just so happened that last year, the seasonality was that the proportion of contracts being re-signed were higher. And then there was a non-recurring element relating to those re-signs, which is term license revenue. So that ends up being under IFRS 15, the accounting standard being taken at the point at which the contract is signed.
So in a year when you have a disproportionately higher level of re-signs, that'll be taken. So that happened in 2023. So that's come down slightly this year because the level of re-signs is slightly lower. The customers are still there. We're working through with them. And they will then naturally re-sign in the next 12, 18, 24 months. So that's the reason for the year-on-year reduction or the half-on-half reduction in non-recurring revenue. But as we go into the second half, non-recurring revenue will pick up because we've got elections to deliver over the coming weeks. So as a result, we'll see that a reduction in the first half get back to a more break-even position over the course of the year. And therefore, the overall organic growth of the group for the whole year should be better than it was for the half- year.
Yeah, I think in terms of the competitive landscape, no significant differences really for us. We've continued to see ourselves perform very well against both Civica and NEC Group with new wins in both those areas. I think the acquisition of Civica is a very interesting moment. Obviously, very large group now. And it would seem that a lot of their focus is going to, for growth, is going to move to the U.S. And they've obviously performed incredibly well over the last few years. But in areas where we're not actually direct competitors of theirs. So we'll just look to keep growing our business, keep our eye. We have enough things to sort of think about and worry about on a day-to-day basis. But as I say, no significant changes yet in the competitive landscape. So just continuing to do the things that we do incredibly well.
That's the end of questions. David, do you have any closing remarks?
Well, look, as ever, we appreciate your time. We know today's been really busy for a lot of you trying to catch up with a lot of companies. So genuinely, thank you for sparing a bit of time to listen to the Idox story. We remain a really well-positioned business with some great momentum. Really looking forward to the second half of this year and also to continuing to grow the business through both organically and through selective M&A. So thanks for your time and look forward to seeing you all during the course of the second half of the year.