Thank you for joining us today. I'll start with an update on the business and the platform. Richard will then cover the financials. I'll come back with the outlook. It's been a very good first half for the group. At the center of that performance is our platform, Liberty. Liberty brings together automation, AI, and customer engagement on a single platform, giving organizations a fast, flexible way to build, automate, and change processes that power customer services and operations. Today, around 700 customers rely on Liberty, including more than half of U.K. councils, a large share of NHS hospitals, and a growing number of customers in financial services and other service and operation-led sectors. We have a high quality, increasingly recurring revenue base, now over 80%, with a consistent land and expand motion as customers broaden usage over time.
You can really see that in our cloud net retention, which is consistently in the 115%-120% range. That tells us customers are choosing to do more on the platform over time. That matters because buyer behavior is changing. AI is reshaping how services are delivered through automation and agent assistance. Many existing estates weren't designed for AI-enabled operations. That's putting real pressure on IT teams and on the legacy systems they're managing. With so much spend still committed to keeping those systems running, buyers are looking to consolidate onto fewer platforms to reduce technical overhead and free up capacity for change. We think Liberty is well-positioned for that dynamic, as it allows organizations to modernize safely without adding new layers of technical debt. Looking at the first half overall, execution across the business has been strong.
Revenue grew 15% year-on-year to just over GBP 26 million. The majority of that growth was organic, with an initial contribution from Jadu acquired towards the end of the half. You can see that momentum most clearly in cloud and AI. Cloud ACV was up over 40% year-on-year to more than GBP 42 million, with an underlying organic growth of around 25%. Total ACV reached a new milestone of over GBP 50 million. AI is becoming a bigger part of customer programs, with AI-related bookings more than tripled year-on-year and now making up a growing share of new ACV. Alongside that growth, revenue quality continued to improve. Recurring revenue increased to 83% of total revenue, and cloud now represents 82% of that.
New customer bookings were up, and cloud net retention was sustained at 115%, driven by customers adopting more modules, moving to the cloud, and adding AI. On profitability, Adjusted EBITDA increased 13% to GBP 6.5 million in the half. Underlying margins improved, we expect the temporary acquisition effects to unwind as synergies come through and operating leverage build over time. We also maintain balance sheet strength and strong revenue visibility, ending the period with GBP 14.8 million of cash and no debt, and a record GBP 92 million contract order book. I think this is a very strong first half, and we're well-positioned as we go into the second half. We're seeing Liberty deliver real operational improvements across the sectors we serve. Different industries, the same story, better service and lower cost. Take insurance.
At Baloise, automation is now over 70% overall, with more than 85% straight-through processing and claims. That's driven a 75% uplift in broker Net Promoter Score. In healthcare, the impact is just as tangible. At University Hospital Sussex, Liberty manages digital patient engagement, reducing unnecessary contact, including deflecting around 1/3 of calls from the booking center. That allows agents to focus on patients with much more complex needs while dramatically cutting waiting times and Did Not Attend rates. In local government, at Newcastle City Council, Liberty Create and Citizen Hub are supporting service modernization and application rationalization across multiple service lines, delivering more than GBP 2 million in third-party cost savings.
Finally, in transport and infrastructure, Transport for London uses Liberty to manage equipment certification across the whole of the London Underground, actually reusing an application first deployed in Network Rail to significantly shorten time to value. Across all of these examples, the outcome is the same. Liberty proves value quickly and then becomes a core part of how organizations deliver services. The reason those outcomes are repeatable is the platform underneath. Liberty is designed as a single platform that underpins multiple workflows and interactions, and it's not just another point solution. It enables organizations to consolidate tools and standardize how services are delivered. Because Liberty is modular, customers expand naturally across departments and services, making the platform increasingly central to day-to-day operations. AI sits across the entire Liberty platform. It's a core pillar of our strategy, and I'll come back to it in more detail later.
Beyond AI, we continue to strengthen Liberty in three ways. First, through deeper industry packages. For instance, in healthcare, we continue to enhance PatientHub with new chargeable modules, including one for patient-initiated follow-up. In fact, that was a national first for Rotherham NHS using Liberty to enable this capability through the NHS App. Second, continued adoption across local government and Citizen Hub. We're seeing case volumes grow around 50% year-on-year, now spanning over 2,500 services across our customers. Third, through targeted acquisitions, most recently with Jadu adds a new digital experience capability that will be natively integrated into Liberty, opening up cross-sell in both directions. Everything is native to the Liberty platform, new capabilities are immediately available to users and builders without any integration work.
Together, all of these extensions create additional opportunity through increasing AI usage across the platform, deeper industry adoption, and new products over time. Across the markets we serve, the way service work gets done is changing. Automation and AI are now central to how organizations think about modernization and productivity. They're looking to automate a much larger share of workflow and interaction and to use AI to support self-service and frontline agents. That's driving very strong demand for automation and agent assist within service platforms. We're starting to see these capabilities appear in live services, and they're changing the economics of service delivery. As routine work moves from people to software, spend follows. As software takes on more of the work, the platform that enables it are expected to capture a larger share of spend. Two things are happening in parallel. First, consolidation.
A significant amount of IT spend is still tied up maintaining fragmented legacy estates. Organizations are looking to rationalize those environments and redirect the savings into modernization. That's driving a clear shift towards more converged platforms with more customer service system replacements moving away from point solutions. We're seeing that play out in practice, Newcastle being just one example. Second, the builder base is expanding. The number of citizen developers is expected to grow significantly, broadening adoption and driving usage across the organization. Together, these trends favor platforms that are easy to adopt and able to scale naturally over time, you can see that in the size of the market. It's a very large market with global spend across automation and customer engagement technologies estimated at around GBP 58 billion and growing rapidly.
In the UK, that's a multi-billion-pound opportunity with roughly half of it in the sectors we serve. Today, we're present in around 16% of those target accounts, which gives us a strong base and a lot of headroom to grow. Let me touch briefly on the strategy because it hasn't changed, and I think it's working. We start by landing Liberty in business-critical service operations with partners helping us reach new regions and sectors. From there, growth is driven by customer adoption through cloud migration, automation, and increasingly AI. Innovation follows customer priorities, so we're continually assessing next-generation capability, and when they're relevant, and importantly customers are ready, we invest to bring them straight into Liberty, so customers can adopt them easily and safely.
At the same time, we stay focused on the industries we serve, and we strengthen our industry-specific packages and capabilities, so Liberty remains highly relevant in those sectors and can become more embedded in day-to-day operations. Acquisitions support that strategy. Targeted bolt-ons like GovTech, Párle, and Jadu extend the platform and open up more cross-sell paths to customers already on Liberty. Overall, we think that's a very coherent approach, more ways in, faster adoption, and deeper value creation over time. Given the changes we're seeing in service delivery, this gives us a repeatable way to land Liberty as organizations consolidate services and modernize for AI. You can see that in our new customer momentum. Last year was a real step change, with new logo additions more than doubling year-on-year, and that momentum has continued into this period.
We added around 30 new customers in the first half, with particularly strong traction in local government through both direct wins and partners. Spark plays an important role in that motion as it helps customers map processes, identify automation opportunities, and act as a practical front door into Liberty. Once customers are live, growth comes from adoption and capability. We now have over 12,000 community members, that's up more than 20% since June of last year, building Liberty skills inside customer organizations. That's important because it supports high retention and very strong advocacy, with more than nine out of 10 customers saying they'd recommend Netcall. From there, customers expand across the platform, adding modules and AI over time. You can see that in practice. You know, Lancashire County Council expanded Liberty to digitize their front door services.
That's now a multi-million-pound program, around four times the ACV of where it started. An S&P 500 financial service customer grew its subscription to around GBP 1 million a year, three times its starting value, in under just 12 months. As we've shown before, these expansion patterns are repeatable, with clear step changes as customers move to cloud, adopt automation, and then expand usage across the platform. Automation penetration is now 37% across customers using our engagement modules, up six points year-on-year. Together, this gives us a significant expansion opportunity within the existing customer base on a scale comparable to the cloud business we have today. That's why net revenue retention remains strong and why the land and expand model continues to be a durable growth driver for us. AI is moving very quickly, and for the organizations we serve, that creates two real challenges.
The first is how to deploy AI safely in live operational services. The second is how to keep pace as the models keep changing. That's exactly where the platform matters. Liberty embeds AI into workflows and interactions so customers can use it in production without re-architecting their systems. This isn't new for us. We've been doing it for some time. More than half of Liberty deployments already include embedded AI today, with machine learning, natural language processing, supporting live services. The reality is that AI models and commercial terms are evolving rapidly, and customers don't want to keep revisiting model choices or rebuilding workflows every time something changes. Liberty gives them a stable layer as models evolve underneath. We manage usage, control, and governance at the platform level, so customers can adopt new capabilities without rework or unintended cost exposure. Deploying AI safely also changes how software is built.
AI can generate code quickly, production still demands security, change control, and proper monitoring. With Liberty, AI accelerates that delivery, but what gets deployed stays inside those guardrails, so customers get speed without losing control or creating unmanaged technical debt. As AI starts to support actions at the workflow level, Liberty provides a controlled, auditable way to do that across processes with human review where is needed. Economically, as AI supports and automates more of the journey, usage naturally increases. That expands the model from seats alone to seats plus usage over time. We're already seeing that adoption build. Around 70% of Liberty CX customers have chosen to add generative AI modules to their subscriptions, and generative AI related Liberty bookings more than tripled year-on-year. As that adoption scales, we continue to embed AI more deeply across the platform.
For instance, reusing knowledge across products, strengthening human in the loop control, and making it easier for customers to turn ideas into live services. We've shown consistently that we can integrate acquisitions into Liberty, and in December we added Jadu. Jadu is a digital experience platform with accessibility at its core. It's trusted across public sector and higher education in the UK, North America, and Australia, and it's recognized as a leader in accessible design. That matters because in digital public services, accessibility directly affects adoption, and adoption is set at the very entry point. That's why Jadu and Liberty are such a good fit. Jadu sits at the start of the service journey, with Liberty handling workflow and resolution behind it, connecting the experience end to end.
We're integrating Jadu directly into Liberty, so Liberty customers can deploy it, and we're linking its content into Liberty AI, so it can be reused across workflows and interactions. Jadu also brings two additional products. Agent-X, an accessibility-first AI-powered search capability. It gives clear answers by voice or text in multiple languages rather than long lists of pages, reducing avoidable contact and cost to serve. Jadu Connect, a no-code CRM for leaner teams, provides another on-ramp into the Liberty platform. In practice, these give customers more natural ways to start and then expand across Liberty over time. Strategically, Jadu strengthens our position to one in two U.K. councils, and in the U.S., it gives us an established partner channel with over 25 public sector customers in a significantly larger market where accessibility regulation and enforcement is increasing.
On the numbers, Jadu adds around GBP 6 million of new ACV with low overlap and clear cross-sell potential, and is expected to be earnings enhancing this year with its earn-out aligned to performance. Now I'll hand over to Richard, who can take you through the financials.
Thanks, James. We're turning to the key metrics. We've delivered a strong first half performance, with growth underpinned by both organic expansion in cloud subscriptions and the contribution from current and prior year acquisitions. Revenues are over GBP 26 million and up 15% year- on- year, with cloud continuing to be the primary growth engine, delivering 34% year- on- year growth. Demand for cloud subscriptions drove total ACV 28% higher year on year to a new milestone of GBP 50.5 million, which was 14% higher year- on- year on an underlying basis. Higher ACV levels flowed through to our contracted order book, which grew 30% to GBP 92.4 million, enhancing the visibility of future revenues further.
EBITDA margins were in line with expectations at 24.3%. Absolute Adjusted EBITDA was 13% higher year-on-year at GBP 6.5 million. Adjusted diluted EPS increased by 10% year-on-year to 2.41 pence per share. Cash conversion is typically higher in the second half of the financial year due to the timing of annual billings of both cloud and support contracts. During the period, nearly GBP 13 million was paid out for M&A related items, resulting in a net cash position of GBP 14.8 million at the 31st of December. Turning to cloud ACV. Cloud subscription revenues continued to scale, representing over 67% of the group's revenue during the period, a year-on-year increase of 5 percentage points.
At GBP 42.6 million, cloud ACV was up 42% year-on-year, is now nearly four times higher than the December 2021 position. Customer expansion, new business wins, and acquisitions all contributed to the strong cloud ACV growth. With Net retention remaining strong at 115% and reflecting continued expansion within our existing customer base. Cloud ACV from acquisitions in the period was GBP 5.2 million, meaning year-on-year underlying growth was 27%. Moving to total ACV. Total ACV, including maintenance contracts, grew 28% year-on-year to over GBP 50 million. As referenced earlier, this represented a 14% year-on-year growth on an underlying basis. Higher margin cloud ACV is now 84% of total ACV, up 8 percentage points since December 2024.
Cloud deployments were just short of 100% of new product bookings in the period at 99%. The migration of support contracts to the cloud gathered pace, meaning supported ACV reduced 17% year-on-year to GBP 7.9 million at the period end. Over 55% of engagement customers are now cloud hosted. Our significant cross-selling opportunities continue to expand as a result of the group's acquisition program. Example of those opportunities are where we continue to sell automation products into engagement customers, which now delivers approximately a 3 x uplift in their ACV. At the end of the period, around 37% of engagement customers had purchased automation products, up 6 percentage points since the June 2025 position. If these metrics apply across all customers, this represents an annual opportunity of nearly GBP 23 million.
Additionally, when we migrate our on-premise contact center customers to the cloud, we see a 50%+ uplift in ACV, which represents around an annual net GBP 5 million cloud subscription opportunity. We also see significant ACV opportunities for cross-selling automation and engagement products into Skore, Govtech, Párle, and now Jadu customers, along with the inverse of selling acquired products into existing Netcall customers. Moving on to RPO. Contracted future revenues or RPO was GBP 92.4 million at December, representing a 30% year-on-year increase. 90% of this relates to cloud and support contracts. Our current order book, which is contracted revenue that is expected to be recognized in the next 12 months, grew by 29% to GBP 47.9 million and represents 52% of the total.
RPO greater than one year grew GBP 10.4 million or 31% to GBP 44.5 million. Total RPO from acquisitions in the period added GBP 10.7 million, of which GBP 4.7 million is to be recognized in the next 12 months. The order book covers a significant proportion of revenues for the second half of the year and into FY 2027, and as a proxy, current RPO covers around 71% of FY 2027 consensus revenue. Turning to revenue, total revenue growth in the period was 15%, and excluding the impact of acquisitions, rose 11% year-on-year. The business continues to become more predictable, with recurring revenues 20% higher year-on-year at just less than GBP 22 million and representing 83% of total revenue, an increase of 4 percentage points on the comparative period.
Cloud subscription momentum continues to underpin overall revenue growth. Following the same pattern in ACV, revenue was up 34% year on year to GBP 17.9 million and is now nearly 4 x higher than the position at December 2021. Support contract revenues of GBP 4 million again followed ACV levels and delivered revenue 17% lower than the comparative period, reflecting continued migration to the cloud along with churn, some of which was from end of life products. Revenue from products and services of GBP 4.6 million, shown within the gray box, is made up of three areas. Reoccurring revenue from communication services, which at GBP 1.1 million was GBP 0.4 million lower than the comparative period, reflecting a decrease in callback volumes.
Professional services revenue, which increased 25% year-on-year to GBP 3.3 million, supporting the delivery of cloud ACV growth. We do tend to see fluctuations in this particular revenue line as customer demand for full application development versus support of their own development teams can vary from period to period. Finally, product revenue and software license sales with supporting hardware of GBP 0.2 million, which was GBP 0.4 million lower than the same period last year and was in line with expectations. The higher ACV and RPO positions provide greater visibility of revenues into the second half of the financial year and beyond, with opportunities to drive further expansions throughout the period. Moving next to profit. In addition to ACV growth, another KPI we track closely is operating margins.
Our strategy remains focused on disciplined margin expansion while continuing to invest for growth. Over the last few years, we have targeted around a 30% flow-through of incremental revenue growth to the bottom line. We continue to deliver against this objective on an organic basis. Absolute Adjusted EBITDA grew 13% year-on-year to GBP 6.5 million, which includes a GBP 0.7 million full half contribution from prior year acquisitions. EBITDA margin in the period was 40 basis points lower year-on-year, reflecting the impact of acquisitions in the period, with cost savings from the Jadu acquisition anticipated from half two onwards. Adjusted EBITDA is now nearly double the level delivered four years ago in the first half of FY 2022. Moving on to cash flow.
Annual upfront billings remains a key feature of our business model, supporting excellent cash flow generation on an annual basis. As expected, cash conversion is weighted to the second half of the financial year due to billing cycles, we are well positioned for a consistent half two delivery. The first half of the year showed a stable delivery of adjusted cash flow from operations versus previous first half periods and which has now normalized following the timing impact in FY 2024. Cash flow in the first half also reflected billings of over GBP 20 million, an increase of 23% on the comparative period. Moving forward to EPS. Adjusted profit before tax was GBP 9.5 million or 10% higher than the prior period, which has led to a 10% year-on-year increase in Adjusted diluted EPS to 2.41 pence per share.
The different rate of increase in adjusted profits compared to EBITDA predominantly reflects lower net interest income of GBP 0.05 million in the prior period due to acquisition related payments and GBP 0.12 million of higher development cost asset amortization than the prior period. In line with the company's dividend policy to pay out 25% of Adjusted EPS as a final dividend, we paid GBP 0.94 pence per share to shareholders in February, which totaled GBP 1.6 million. Finally from me on net funds. The table on the left analyzes this period movement in net funds with a reduction to GBP 12.6 million at the half year, primarily reflecting disciplined investment in M&A.
It's important to note that the previous year-end cash balance of GBP 27 million allowed us to fund the acquisition of the Jadu in December 2025 out of existing cash resources. We also continue to operate with a strong debt-free balance sheet. I'll now hand back over to James.
Thank you, Richard. Just to wrap up, it's been a very good start to the year, and we enter the second half with very positive momentum. AI is a good example of that, with AI related bookings more than tripling year on year. That performance is underpinned by a business model with high recurring revenue, strong retention and increasing visibility. With multiple avenues for growth, you know, landing new customers, expanding within our base and continuing to innovate, supported by selective M&A. We have a strong pipeline, a record GBP 92 million contract order book, and a debt-free balance sheet. Board remains confident in its outlook.