Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Manolete Partners Full Year Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions 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's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we would like to submit the following poll, and I'm sure the company would be most grateful for your participation. I'd now like to hand over to Steven Cooklin, CEO. Good afternoon.
Good afternoon. Thanks very much indeed. Good afternoon to everyone on the call. Thank you so much to so many of you for joining us. I have with me today, our CFO, Mark Tavener. Mark, could you just introduce yourself?
Yes. Hello, everyone. My name is Mark Tavener. I'm a chartered accountant. I've spent most of my career with Deloitte in the city working within the corporate finance arena, and I've been with Manolete for the last three years. Thank you.
Super. Thanks, Mark. Turning to the next slide, just to remind people who are new to the company, we focus pretty much exclusively on UK insolvency litigation. The big attraction of insolvency claims or claims in bust companies and bankrupt individuals is you can almost always buy that case off the liquidator or off the administrator. You can't buy it off the trustee in bankruptcy. Maybe we can change the law on that in due course. Most of, by far the majority of our claims are corporate claims. You'll see at the bottom of that slide of the new investments done in this last financial year, 93% of them were duly purchased and just a small rump of 7% were on a funded model.
The benefits of owning the claim is, of course, you have complete control. You can choose the timing of when you issue the letter for action, whether you want to offer mediation, attend mediation, make all the decisions at a mediation, and then whether to issue a claim through the courts, et cetera. Absolute full control, which is really, I think, a key differentiator between Manolete and all other public and almost all private third party funders. The addressable market is large in the U.K. alone. Professor Peter Walton has done several reports now, most of which were done for the trade body R3.
We financed the latest one just for him to update his numbers, and that pointed to an addressable market of about GBP 1.5 billion a year in insolvency claims, of which about half that is recovered. Litigation funding, which is where we sit in that pie, accounts for about 20%. About three to four years ago, it's more like 10%. The share of the funders is going up. Manolete's share of that funded share is 67%, so we're by far the market leader in this sector. We're in a pretty dominant position. The final point is that there were two very important legal changes that really expanded our opportunity.
In 2015, there was a Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act which enabled us to buy not only the insolvent company's claims, for example, an unlawful dividend or overdrawn director's loan account. We were also now able from that date to buy the insolvency practitioner's claims which arise on the insolvency event. For example, a liquidator can go back six months and two years to raise new claims, to claw back transactions back for the benefit of creditors. That was very favorable to us that we could buy those, not just fund those and take control of them. The other point was in 2016, the Jackson Reforms applied to insolvency cases.
They applied to all other areas of the law in 2013, was applied to insolvency in 2016. That made the incumbent majority method of financing these claims, the no win, no fee CFA route allied with after the event insurance very unattractive because from that moment on any doubled up legal costs any ATE premiums had to be paid out of the damages recovered from the defendants. The cost of those tended to be 200% the size of the damages. It made a mockery really of the entire Insolvency Act because of course all the money just disappeared to the lawyers and the insurance companies, not to the creditors.
Manolete's historic, and current, and I'm sure future cost ratio to damages is just 15% of the damages recovered. It really was a very big breakthrough for our model. There you can see the effects of the model in our so-called vintages table, which tracks all 755 cases that we backed, completed 505. You'll see that the large majority of those cohorts of cases have been completed or have got literally one case left in them for the more recent years. The returns you'll see have really jumped since the IPO in 2018. They used to be around GBP 4 million, GBP 7 million. They're now up to GBP 14 million a year, very consistently.
2021 last year, which is starting to mature, 57% completed, already GBP 11 million. When the other half completes, that should be obviously significantly higher than that. Those are done in a very short period of time. Certainly in the world of litigation, the average is just 12 months across all those 505 cases, which is really unheard of in the legal world. That is because we own the claim, we force resolution, we sit down with directors, we can end the pain for them and just say, "Look, if you can agree on a reasonable settlement with us today, that's it.
Full and final settlement, and you can crack on with your business life and we can move on with our other cases." The returns are the best that I personally have seen in the financial industry. I maybe put Bitcoin aside for a minute, which has a somewhat high beta. But I remember when I was graduating in accountancy, the private equity industry spoke with great pride, rightly so, of 30% compound returns over, you know, seven-year gestation period of a venture capital portfolio. But you look at Manolete's returns year in, year out, IRRs of well over 100%, which is just tremendous. The next slide really just picks up the highlights that I've been talking through.
We look at the performance for financial year 2022, so that ended March this year. These really were, I would say, a historic anathema. During the last two years, we've had to operate in an extraordinary, almost wartime legislative conditions of the government legislating to suppress insolvencies in response to the COVID pandemic. Very understandably, the government wanted to protect jobs, livelihoods, so they made it very difficult to make companies insolvent. Despite that, our realized revenues, if you were to strip off a one-off very large case that we delivered last year, were actually marginally slightly ahead if you did that on a more like for like basis.
Certainly in terms of the number of completed cases, they were even better than last year. Operating within a pandemic, I really take my hat off to the team for producing those results. There you can see the split of realized and unrealized revenue. Good to see a very large proportion always of realized revenue. As the book rebuilds now with more new cases, that will probably be more balanced to 50-50. Because of course, they'll be unrealized at least for a year while we're executing those, but we should then swing back to this kind of profile.
What was very interesting when Mark and I were analyzing the numbers is that the number of cases completed accelerated actually really very fast in the second half of the financial year, which is when really the whole of the U.K. was under the full grip of COVID operationally. We increased the number of case completions by 67%. You can imagine the mediations and settlement meetings we were at with the directors and lawyers on the other side could have easily pointed to COVID reasons not to engage, not to settle, but they didn't. We forced the ball over the line and into the back of the net time and time again. That really translates into cash, not just from last year, but prior years as well. Completed cases cash coming through from those.
That really was the highlight for us this year, the very strong cash generation of the business. The gross cash increased by 28% to a record GBP 15.5 million. After you deduct the creditors' share and the legal costs, they increased by 31% to GBP 8.9 million. You can see the cash profile here. As we've always said, once we've completed the case, on average, there is about a 12-month payment period, mainly from the smaller cases. We had a very large settlement post year-end of GBP 9.5 million that was paid in less than three weeks in full. There was a case that we settled just last week for GBP 700,000, and the payment plan on that is just 6 weeks.
Until they pay, there are restrictions that we have on their residential properties, and if they miss any payments, we statutory demand. We then petition for bankruptcy, and sadly, if they still don't pay, we take a charge and go in their house and sell their house. Over the page, again, an interesting feature of the two halves of the year. The second half of the year saw 72% of the cash received. So you'll see, for example, in October, over GBP 2 million pounds of cash coming into our accounts from cases, 3.5 million December, and then 2 and 2 again in February and March.
Very very strong cash engine, being driven not just by this year's cases, as I say, the latency of prior year cases as well. The first 10 weeks of the new financial year, we brought in GBP 12 and a half million. That was obviously the big GBP 9 and a half, but also another GBP 3 million from 109 separate granular cases. Looking at cash operating statement, this is the way I kind of look at things. I get rather confused nowadays with the statutory presentation of cash. From a kind of businessman's perspective, if we look at FY 2022, we brought in, as I said before, GBP 15.5 million. We paid out of that to the creditors, GBP 5.8 million, GBP 800,000 in legal costs.
That leaves a Manolete's profit, if you like, of GBP 8.9 million. Overheads, cash overheads, GBP 4.5 million, and then corporation tax, GBP 0.8 million. That was a net inflow. Oh, the only thing missing is our investment in new cases, which obviously deliver these very strong returns. That was 400% up on last year on a like to like cash basis. At the end of the government's restrictions on the insolvency market, most of those came away, reverted back to normal on the first of October 2021. The remainder came away in March 2022. I think importantly, at the same time, furlough was withdrawn and various other supports for rent and rates and what have you were also withdrawn.
We were getting back to a normal world, but having had numbers suppressed, of course, in terms of insolvency. There graphically, this is from the Insolvency Service. This data, they announce, their numbers every month, usually around mid-month. Worth having a look 'cause it is a very good early indicator of where our numbers will go. You can see there in June 2020, the legislation was passed in an immediate sharp dive in the number of insolvencies of all types. Then they slowly started to lift as people started to realize that the government would overturn these. They said they were going to several occasions, and then finally they did in October 2021, the temporary measures started being lifted.
Around that time, the number of insolvencies in the UK started reaching the same level as they were pre-pandemic in overall terms. Certainly CVLs, which is where we get most of our cases from, had even surpassed the pre-pandemic levels before. As you can see, the trajectory on the number of insolvencies is almost a vertical line in the last month as the full support measures were withdrawn. That clearly for Manolete, certainly not other parts of the economy, very sadly. For Manolete, that really is a dramatic trajectory for our business in a very positive way. That starts to reflect now in our numbers.
There's always a time lag between an insolvency happening and then that turning into a case inquiry on this slide. You can see where we peaked and how it dropped after the law change came through and how it's coming back strongly now. I've added this next graph, which encapsulates the current quarter. You can see Q1 FY 2023, the numbers just to date. We're missing, you know, 10 days or so of trajectory of the new case inquiries is rising strongly. The one interruption was Omicron, which just hampered the IPs and the lawyers referring cases in the last quarter of the year.
As we move down the life cycle of a case, this reflects into signed cases for Manolete. There you see a very strong increase in the years before, leading on from IPO to the lockdown. The business increased something like 400% in those kind of two years, but then of course slowed down dramatically in response to the legislative change but is now starting to move upwards again. In fact, having had just seven cases signed up in April 2020 as Omicron blew itself out in our market, that jumped to 17 in May, and we're already at 17 in June. That's getting back to pre-pandemic levels for Manolete now as well, not just the market.
Our record number of cases in a month was 26, so we're gonna start nibbling away at that before too long. Looking forward, well, no one has a crystal ball in this crazy world that we all live in at the moment with wars and COVID, et cetera. I think across the board, almost all respected third-party commentators on the market are predicting a elevated and a elongated rise in the number of U.K. insolvencies. Certainly when you look at strikes, you look at inflation, you look at interest rates increasing in the USA and also in Europe and the U.K., I think we can all agree it only points to an elevated level of insolvency activity over the foreseeable future.
On cartel cases, we've kept the valuation of these cases unchanged for the last two years as COVID slowed down the Competition Appeal Tribunal. That's all back on now. BT and Royal Mail, the two leading cases are currently being tried in the courts. The judge has stayed all other claims, which means he's put them in the freezer 'cause he's suggesting once he makes his judgment on the level of overcharge and whether that should be reduced or any pass on, et cetera, what the interest should be. There should be a strong read across to the many other similar claims, including our 22 claims that one can apply. I think he's rather hoping that some sensible commercial settlement discussions will start at that stage.
We're expecting the trial to last 9 weeks. We expect the judgment to come out within 2 or 3 months after that, and that's when it'll be fairly ripe territory for some grown-up conversations to be had. We will certainly be issuing our claims. We've now got everything ready for that, and things start to get very interesting there. The QC who's been advising us throughout this, a specialist from Monckton Chambers, one of the leading chambers for competition law, had previously advised us to well, didn't really advise. The focus had been on the two biggest Manolete claims, which are CityLink and Comet Group. What he did advise us is that we should issue on all 22 claims.
There was no reason why not, having seen the particulars of claims from BT and Royal Mail. That's what we've done. Clearly the valuation now reflects the 22 claims rather than just the 2 that we had before. Close to wrapping up, so 2 additions to the board. I'll start with Andy at the bottom 'cause this was previously announced. Longstanding partner at PwC. He's joined as our chair of audit committee, and he's built a very strong relationship with Mark very quickly, which I'm delighted about. The new one that starts tomorrow is our long-serving head of legal, Mena Halton, joins the board of Manolete. Mena's been with us for 8 years. She's worked on literally hundreds of cases and delivered very strong returns for our shareholders.
Delighted for her to join our board. I'm gonna hand over to Mark now to conclude the slides.
Great. Thank you very much, Steven. I'll run you through the financial statements. Steven has already alluded to, in overall terms, FY 2022 was a challenging environment because of the unprecedented level of government support delaying insolvencies. With that background, we signed 159 new cases during the year, which was down on the previous year, where we signed 198 new cases. We did, however, complete a record number of cases, 139 case completions compared to 135 in the previous year, which has really driven our cash generation, you'll see in later slides. Looking at the profit and loss, we recorded gross revenue of GBP 20.4 million in the year compared to GBP 27.8 million in the previous year.
The prior year was boosted by a one-off large case that completed at GBP 9.3 million. If you normalize for this case, you have a prior year realized revenue of 15.1 prior year against 15.2 million this year, which is a more understandable comparison given the number of case completions. Our unrealized revenue relates to the increase of our valuations on our ongoing cases, and the GBP 5.2 million almost entirely relates to the uplift in our valuation of our cartel cases that Steven previously mentioned. Our valuation now relates to all 22 of the cartel cases that we hold. This resulted in a gross margin of 51%, which compares favorably to last year's 48%.
Overhead costs decreased by GBP 0.9 million in the year, compared to last year, as we continued to manage costs carefully during the year. This all resulted in an EBIT of GBP 5.3 million for the year compared to GBP 7.4 million in the previous year. If I could just draw your attention to the revenue composition in the bottom left-hand side. This shows our realized revenue, so actual case completions, versus unrealized, which is an amendment to the valuation of ongoing cases. The vast proportion, higher proportion of revenue relating to actual completions. I'll just go on to the balance sheet on the next slide.
We've continued to build our portfolio of cases during FY 2022, and you'll see the investments balance where we hold the fair value of the live cases has increased during the year. Investment in cases, in both non-current and current, was GBP 45.7 million at the end of March 2022 compared to GBP 37.5 million in the previous year. The current balance relates to 274 live cases compared to 245 live cases in the previous year. As I previously mentioned, the cartel cases is the long-term investment, the GBP 12.2 million figure that you see there. We hold trade receivables, both short-term and long-term, of GBP 20.5 million at the year-end compared to GBP 18.4 million in the previous year. It's a small increase over the year.
We held cash of GBP 2.2 million at the year-end, and our debt drawdown on our HSBC loan was GBP 13.5 million, which gave us GBP 11.5 million of unutilized core facility. Post the year-end, we have repaid GBP 4.5 million of the loan. As Steven mentioned, there was a large case that completed in April, which gave us cash resources, so the drawn down portion of HSBC loan as of today is GBP 9 million. Just turning to the cash flow. Gross cash receipts in the year were GBP 15.5 million compared to GBP 12.2 million in the previous year. There's an increase of 28% driven by both completions during the year and payment schedules of prior year completions.
We typically, on the smaller cases, agree scheduled payments for the defendants, so the cash flow is over a number of months. Cash flow from completed cases after payments to our insolvency practitioner partners and payments of legal fees still a very healthy positive GBP 8.9 million. Our overheads have increased slightly in the year, GBP 4.5 million compared to GBP 4 million of the previous year, and we've continued to invest in new cases and the existing portfolio. GBP 6.5 million was invested in cash during the year compared to GBP 5.9 million in the previous year. Tax payments were slightly lower due to the lower level of profits, and I've already mentioned the HSBC loan. Just looking at our aging of trade receivables balance.
It's an area where we've had some interest in the past. I've cut the data in two ways. The aging by the settlement date of the agreement, which shows that 55% of debtors related to settlements that have been reached in the last six months, so very, very current. Then the second graph, the lower graph, aging by the due date. This is taking into account the agreed phasing of the payment. As you can see, the vast majority of our trade receivables are not yet due. That's quite a healthy profile there. Just to look at the cash collection. Again, just making this point that cash comes in gradually over a period of time.
This graph shows for each month in the prior year, of the realized revenue, what proportion of the cash have we already collected as at the year-end. The dark proportion of the bar chart shows the proportion of cash received, and the lighter pink proportion of the bar graph shows the proportion still to be collected. That proportion will all come in really over the next 12 months. The final slide, just to give an update, on our HSBC loan. As of June 2021, we extended our facility with HSBC to GBP 25 million for the core facility, plus we've got an additional uncommitted accordion facility for a further GBP 10 million if ever required.
Our interest cost is a maximum of 2.9% above SONIA, which is the Sterling Overnight Index Average Rate. As of this week, we've also just taken out a one-year extension to the facility, so it now runs to June 2025. That means we're well positioned to take advantage of the upcoming increase in insolvencies. Great. That's all from me. Back to you, Steven.
That's great. That's actually the end of the presentation, so, if I hand back to our host just on the Q&A.
That's great. Steven, Mark, thank you very much indeed for updating investors this afternoon. 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 Steven and Mark take a few moments to review those questions submitted already, 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. Steven, Mark, as you know, you received a number of questions ahead of today's event, and you've received quite a considerable number of questions throughout your presentation. Firstly, thank you to all of those investors for your engagement this afternoon.
Perhaps if I may, Steven and Mark, if I could hand back to you and to read out the questions and where appropriate, give a response, and I'll pick up from you at the end.
Steven. Just looking at the questions, Mark, I think I'm gonna give you the first one from Robert. He said, "Why was there a GBP 3 million write-down of cases in progress versus GBP 1 million in the prior year? I don't know whether that is just a movement out of unrealized into realized or whether it's actually write-downs as such." Mark, can you shed any light on that?
Yeah. That's a combination of completions. We take completions out of the unrealized revenue category and put it into realized. We have been cautious with our valuations. Whenever we think a case isn't progressing as well as we might have thought, we immediately write the case down slightly in terms of its valuation. We're constantly kind of reviewing the valuation of the cases. We have a kind of all-company meeting every month then to check those valuations and go through on a case-by-case basis.
Yes. I think as the to answer the kind of indirect kind of element of that question, Robert, I think as the portfolio grows bigger and bigger, both in terms of transfers into completed cases and also conservative adjustments to any valuations because that's the way we like it to be, there'll always be cautious movements in in that sector. But I wouldn't think of anything untoward, and I certainly can't I was racking my brains as I was reading the question if there was any one, two, or five cases that you know alarmed us, and that's just not the case. I hope that's helpful. The next question is an interesting one.
Andrew asks, "I realize you can't make detailed forecasts, but when do you expect to be running cash flow positive, including investments in new cases? i.e., when do you expect to be free cash flow positive?" It's a fantastic question, Andrew. There are times during the year where we are hitting that. Mark's just mentioned that very recently we have paid down, I think Mark said GBP 4.5 million of our HSBC facility. Obviously that was excess cash above what we're investing at the moment. That hopefully gives a small current data point.
However, on a more consistent long-term basis, I think it's a tricky question because I think having had insolvency cases suppressed so heavily by the government for the last two years, we are now looking at an environment of very, very large opportunity for Manolete where it would be remiss of us not to invest heavily in high quality, high return cases. I must say as the CEO, that will be my priority to harvest those opportunities now rather than looking to kind of minimize investment to maximize shareholder distribution.
I think the thesis that we're running on is that now is a great time to be buying record numbers of cases to harvest two and a half times those investments, looking at historic rates in due course on those. When I say in due course, that's usually one or two years down the track, which isn't long in the world of litigation. I hope that's a helpful answer, but I can't be more precise about that. I think the other thing that could lead to a positive but more a one-off outcome there is the completion of the cartel cases, whether that's calendar 2022, whether that's calendar 2023.
If all goes to plan there should deliver a one-off outsized amount of cash, and we will have to look at how best to maximize shareholder return of that money when we see it in our account. Moving on to the next one, Matthew R. asked: What part does M&A play in your strategy moving forward? Excellent question. As I mentioned on the market shares, you've got the whole of the market, which is still dominated by the old and uneconomic way of this no win, no fee is still 80% of the use. As we educate the market, the share of the funded slice moves up from 10% a few years ago to now 20%.
Our mission is to transfer all of that market onto, frankly, the Manolete way of doing things. The judge who sat on our board for the last three and a half years, Steven Baister, when he and I sat down and discussed the model in his early days, his considered view, having been the most senior insolvency judge in the U.K. for about 17 years, his view was that all insolvency litigation should be done using our method. That's the mission. The point of this to M&A is that our next largest competitor only has 2% of the funded sector of our market.
It really doesn't make any sense for us to tie up capital or shares in acquiring really rather marginal competitors in our market. There is so much organic growth to go for, and that's what our money's spent on. We added two new very clever heads to our legal team in January and February this year. There will likely be more additions made later this year, but really very much an organic strategy moving forward. Robert asks: While you anticipated more cases due to the effect of COVID, do you now anticipate even further cases due to the effect of inflation distressing companies further ahead? Well, I do. Really, it's not directly inflation, it's I think interest rates.
We've had a whole army of zombie companies that, many accountants and lawyers have pointed to, and politicians have pointed to, suppressing the efficiency of the U.K. economy for the past 10, 12, 15 years. A zombie is a company that can only pay its interest. It can't ever pay its capital on its balance sheet. By interest rates going up, it's very likely it will tip a lot of these zombie companies into liquidation. Frankly, I think that's a positive thing. These companies are not growth companies. They're not employing lots of new people. They're not paying lots of tax. I think those assets being distributed to the stronger operators in their segments is the best thing for the U.K.
David B, who I suspect I know, asks: The carrying value of the cartel cases has increased substantially. Correct. Please can you explain the re-rating assumptions? I hope I covered that on the slide, David. It's really two points, in summary. Number one, having had these cases on our books for four years now, and an awful lot of work done and over GBP 1 million spent on developing these cases, we are now reaching what could well be the end game with Royal Mail and BT trials now well underway. That's point number one. That has only started recently. Point number two is, the legal opinion from the QC and our solicitors that we should issue on all of our claims.
We took a very conservative view in the past and just pinned everything on our two biggest cases, CityLink and Comet. Their view is that the data we have and the claims we have in the other 20 companies we should now issue on, obviously a valuation is attributed to those. Mark, I suspect the next one is for you. David M: Revenues for the year just ended were 92% higher than they were in the full year to March 2018 of GBP 10.6 million. However, latest profits are only 12% higher than they were back then, GBP 3.2 million. The EBIT margin appears to have fallen steadily over the years. What do you expect the EBIT margin to be in the future? David Martin, long-term holder. Mark?
Great. Thank you. Yeah. I'm impressed that you've compared it back to 2018. There's no particular. We don't foresee margins falling. We expect them to hold very much around the levels that we're at. Back in 2018, there were really so few cases that margins could fluctuate depending on one or two large cases. Whereas in the last two years, it's been much more of a portfolio effect where you've got hundreds of cases. So the margins are evening out now around the 50% in terms of gross margin. So I think we've got a lot more stable environment than we had back then.
I agree. Certainly in all the modeling you did with HSBC for the extension, Mark, I don't think we ever saw in the various scenarios any material decline in.
No.
coming out of that.
That's right. Yeah.
Yeah. Moving on to the next one, David B. "On a steady state basis, what would you envisage the realized to unrealized split to revenue be?" So again, super question. I'm expecting having had last two years very high level of realized to unrealized. I'm expecting as we now go into a period of many more case opportunity investment opportunities over the next year to 18 months to two years. I expect that to be much more balanced over the short term, medium term, and then into steady state, as David's question asks. I think the natural steady state for Manolete will be something like 75% to 80% realized and 25% to 20% unrealized. There is not a huge amount of science to that answer.
It's just what feels right as I was pondering that question while Mark was-
Mm-hmm.
Answering the other one. Mark, I don't know what your feeling is. There's probably some
Yeah. No, I think that's.
Yeah.
I think that's spot on. Obviously, as we grow, the unrealized proportion increases.
Yeah. Exactly
Yeah. I imagine going forward, we're gonna see the unrealized element grow again as number of cases increases.
Yes. Agreed. David B. again. "How many litigation lawyers are employed and total staff numbers?" I believe we're up to 13 litigation lawyers, in-house. Total staff numbers, I think we're up to 24 Mark, if I've got that right.
Yes. Yeah.
Including the board, I think.
Yes. Including the board.
Paul S. "Have Manolete ever had any interest from large legal firms or other entities with regards to acquisition? As a shareholder, I'm looking to establish what long-term build is for Manolete in terms of longevity valuation." Right. Let's get the Takeover Panel on the line. No, no we haven't. If we had or we were in any discussions, you would've seen an RNS about it. Paul, we keep being given these teachings by our Nomad, of course, every year on anything like this. I won't dwell on this too long 'cause it would be market and price sensitive. Please don't read anything untoward or, you know, unusually interested in that comment.
It's just something that we shouldn't talk about. James E. Question one for you, I think, Mark. "Debt is linked to SONIA, short-term variable. In the inflationary environment in which we find ourselves, rates are climbing fast. Would it be preferable to lock in a fixed term rate to hedge against rate risk?
Good question. I've been talking to HSBC about hedges actually. At the moment we're happy with the SONIA rate. We are watching it carefully. HSBC have been very supportive of the business and I'm sure they'll continue to be if we want to change into a kind of different interest rate arrangement.
Agreed. It's very difficult crystal ball. You know, some people are thinking that this inflation will peak relatively soon. Others think it's more embedded into the system. I think we, as Mark says, are very closely watching and briefed on that and what's best for the company, of course. Paul S. asks, "What is Mithaq's long-term aim for the company? Are they in for the long term or do they have a valuation time horizon to begin selling down?" Well, I'm delighted someone's asked me this. In the conversations I've had with Mithaq, who have struck me as very intelligent operators, people probably know they've got a large position in at least one other litigation, a quantitative litigation funder.
They have told me that they are a very, very long-term shareholder in the business. That really is the long and the short of it. There is no target price which they would trigger them. There's no target valuation. They're not looking at us to be in some roll-up with their other investments. No, nothing of the sort. I hope that that helps there. Paul asks another question, "How big is the opportunity on working with HMRC fraudulent bounce back loan claims, other government schemes abused during the COVID?" Well, this really is the golden question, Paul. You win the prize. It is the big question. There are hundreds of thousands of bounce back loans out there already in default, many of which were raised fraudulently.
The value of those is around GBP 10 billion. Lord Agnew, the business minister, resigned on the back of this calamity, him saying that the banks didn't do enough to check that these were valid claims for these schemes. Manolete has already been collecting and completing the cash in on bounce back loans within the insolvent companies just in the normal course. There are now emerging opportunities for very high volume application of our model to this market. I can't say more than that at the moment. I would say watch this space, but all sorts of fantastic opportunities. It kind of goes back to the answer actually to the when are you gonna start having free cash flow after investment?
I think because we're looking at these kind of opportunities, we just think in shareholder interest it'd be right to deploy that cash into what could be very attractive pool of claims. Reaching, I think, towards the end. James E, if the TAM is total addressable market is GBP 1.5 billion, the Manolete way as opposed to no win, no fee accounts for 20%. And Manolete 6%-7% of the business, that should reconcile to GBP 200 million. Can't work this out. Okay. Yeah. I work the numbers this way as well, James. What it says on that slide, although the addressable, the headline claim is claims for GBP 1.5 billion.
If you look at the next sentence on the slide, it says that the what's actually recovered, which is the most important thing, is about half that amount. So that takes you to GBP 750 million. If you then 20%. Yes, 20% is a more current figure. I think if you flex that to. I think when Morgan did his report, please do. It's all online. Please refer to it. I think he's got us the group of us at more like 15%, of which Manolete is 65%. I think that gets you close-ish to our gross revenue numbers.
What you need to be careful there is to inflate up the funded cases because we only recognize our profit share in our revenue, not the gross recovery. You've got to be careful you're dealing apples with apples there, James. Have a go at the numbers. If you can't get near, and I remember that our analyst at Peel Hunt, we had all sorts of hair-tearing-out when Peter Walton was putting this together. We finally got comfortable with it. Please do drop me an email and we'll take you through our logic in a bit more detail. Finally, Lionel says, "What is the staffing capacity to handle additional and increasing caseload?" Great question.
What would be the trigger for a share price re-rate based on the growing caseload?" We'll come to that one in a second. Staffing capacity, so as I said, 13 in-house lawyers. They should all be capable of managing about 30 to 40 cases at any one time. We've currently got live at about 275 cases, so our capacity is more like 400. For the next increase in volume that is coming through as we speak, as you saw from the slides, there is no increase in overhead costs needed to manage that. Beyond 400 live cases, which would put us in a profit realm that we've never been before, much higher than pre-pandemic.
Because we were running at about, I think 150 to 200 live cases at that time, and we're talking 400 live cases. We would be in a very, very strong profit position at that stage if and when we reach that capacity. That's when we would start adding people. On the bounce back loan side, if we start seeing a high volume of the smaller value claims, which we believe we can make very good margins on, we will be staffing that up completely separately. We have a completely separate in-house plan for that. I'd like to keep that obviously between ourselves 'cause that's rather proprietary. To scale that business, it's a much lower cost legal brains going into that. One final one has just jumped in.
Oh, sorry, I missed out. "What will trigger the share price re-rate based on the growing caseload?" Lionel, I don't know. You know, I'm not in the market. I'm not in the minds of the analysts. I don't know what KPIs we're gonna have to hit for them to start, you know, increasing ratings of Manolete, and I'm sure you're a much better public market investor than I am. James E, finally. This once in a lifetime opportunity in place at Manolete on the back of the forthcoming tidal wave of mis-ops use means that the years of future growth can be brought forward. Do you have the capacity and resource, human and capital, capitalizing this opportunity to the full?
Well, I hope I've answered the human resource capacity. On the finance side, yes, I do. Mark and I have spent a lot of time with auditors in terms of working capital and HSBC in terms of financial firepower. Under all our stretch scenarios, including very high volume uptick over the next 12 to 24 months, we are well within our organic as well as our debt facilities and covenants, of course, critically. I would just point you to the very high organic cash generation this last financial year and the fact in the first 10 weeks of this financial year, we brought in more money than for the entirety of the FY 2020 year or FY 2021 year, I think it was.
Yes, the model is throwing off a lot of cash in and of itself. I add to that Mark's point about repaying a very large chunk of debt just very recently. Hopefully, that has covered all the questions. As ever, I think people understand our style, that we are contactable at any time. Those of you who do contact us, you usually get a response within 24 hours. The line's always open. I'll hand back to our host.
That's great. Mark, Steven, thank you very much indeed for updating investors this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, please do not close the session as we will now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback too, so the company can better understand your views and expectations. This may take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure will be highly valued and welcomed by the company.
Indeed.
If I may, Steven, unless there's any further comments, I will then close the session unless you have any other further comments.
No. I think we've covered a lot of ground with some superb questions. Thank you very much indeed.
Okay. That's perfect. Thank you once again, Steven and Mark, for your time. As I said, ladies and gentlemen, we'll now redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback. On behalf of the management team of Manolete Partners PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session, and thank you and good afternoon to you all.