Okay, so good morning, and thank you for joining us on what is a beautiful day. It's very nice to meet you all again. My name is Sam Knights. I am the new CEO here at Next 15. My background comes from the world of Procter & Gamble, where I spent much of my early career working up through the business and marketing program. A lot of my time spent running marketing through to that in Western Europe. The past 12 years, my career has been spent building a business called SMG. Here are the key headlines. Our first 100 days have been about decisive action. We've addressed legacy issues in the group. We've made clear progress on simplifying the portfolio, and we've clarified the direction. Trading has been resilient with strong growth in consumer, government, and digital transformation, offsetting some weaknesses that we've seen in technology clients.
We've maintained strong margin discipline and operating margins edged up despite slightly lower revenues. Our balance sheet remains strong, net debt is down, and we'll maintain our dividend. Perhaps most importantly, we are sharpening our strategic clarity. We're focusing on the businesses that we believe have the greatest long-term opportunity. Whilst we will not go into that detail today, we will be announcing much more detail on that in the shareholder event in the coming months. Let's look at the details. This is the market context and performance. I should say at this point, all the results in this presentation are adjusted to exclude MAC49 on the basis that it will be treated as a discontinued operation, and its results will be reported separately for the full year. Context of the market remains mixed. We've seen economic uncertainty in tariffs that have hit discretionary marketing spend.
We've also seen technology clients continue to shift their investments away from marketing towards CapEx for things like AI development. As a result of that, we've actually seen technology revenues down for our group by just over £12 million, £12.1 million, around 15% year on year. At the same time, our growth markets are performing strongly. Consumer and retail revenues grew 9% by £6 million. For the first time, they now represent the largest spend in our group, 31% of group revenues. We're actually seeing the marketing mix change. We're seeing more clients investing in channels that can be targeted through first-party data and that can be measured through closed-loop measurability. We're also seeing an increase in the work that we're doing, helping the UK government prepare for the advent of AI and digitization. In fact, Transform, which is our digital consultancy, grew more than 50% through government work.
Crucially, our simplification program is well underway with consolidation and disposals delivering efficiencies across the board. I'll come on to talk more about that in just a minute. As a result of all of this, our net revenue was down slightly, 3.6% to £230.8 million. Our margin edged up through our disciplined cost control, and as a result, our PBT was broadly flat at £30.9 million. All in all, a robust performance despite some tricky market conditions that we're operating in. Mickey will come on to talk in more detail about many of the measures that are highlighted in this summary slide. The important takeaway that I want to give you is that we're in strong financial health with an improving EPS, a reduction in net debt down to £45.3 million from £74.8 million a year ago.
That's leveraged at just 0.5 times EBITDA and working capital has materially improved too. We're able to maintain our dividend at £4.75, which is supported by the strength of our balance sheet. A business that is in strong financial health. What have we been doing? I'm the new CEO. I don't know whether I can still claim that. It's just over 100 days into the job. What have we been doing in those 100 days? It fits under three big headings: resolve, simplify, and clarify. Let's break these down independently. Under resolve, we've taken decisive action on some of the legacy issues that we discovered, specifically MAC49, which is now being wound down and will be treated as a discontinued operation by year-end. Mickey will talk to this in a little bit more detail later in the day. Arbitration continues but does not change our financial guidance.
We've also done a lot of work in enhancing our governance following an internal review. Under simplifying, we've divested BYND and Palladium, the first two businesses Next 15 has ever divested. We've integrated Savanta and Plinc. We've begun integrating House 337 and Elvis, and we've brought together four B2B agencies under Project Goose. In total, in the last 100 days, we've reduced the portfolio from 22 different businesses down to 12. We've also had a firm hand on cost control. We've reduced headcount by 8%. We've also looked at our board as well. Our new board structure also reflects a simpler, more focused group. Finally, under clarify, we've had a really good look at our business. We're doing a full portfolio review and we're shaping our business under what will become three pillars of data, technology, and activation.
This will help us to determine who Next 15 is today, but actually crucially, what we want Next 15 to be in the future and what makes a Next 15 business and what doesn't. This will be the framework for the next chapter. Whilst we'll not go into this today, we'll be announcing much more detail about that in the coming months. A lot of work has happened in the last 100 days, but the result is that we are moving towards a simpler, leaner, more focused Next 15 that's ready to grow into the next chapter. Actually, despite some of the challenges that it's faced, Next 15 is really strong at its core. It has strong strengths that we're building on. We're really data-rich for our size. We've got proprietary data sets like BrandView and PlanApps, which track over 4,000 brands and over £1 billion of media spend.
We're agile at scale. We're large enough to compete globally, but we're also small enough to move quickly, as you can see in the last 100 days. Whilst others are talking about AI, we're actually helping our clients to deliver through proprietary products like synthetic personas, what I call Delve and Maestro, which are out there in market today and helping our clients as I'll come on to talk in the next slide. Crucially, we have exposure to high-growth markets like retail media, data and analytics, and digital transformation. All of these markets are growing at a CAGR of over 10%, double digits. Finally, what struck me the most in the last 100 days is working throughout the group is that our culture and our talent remain a defining strength. Our retention and engagement are ahead of industry norms.
All of these core assets give us confidence for the future and the ability to shape the group into something that is going to be incredibly competitive. Perhaps we have been guilty of not sharing enough of the work that we're doing. Actually, when you look across the group, these strengths are already translating into real outcomes. To bring this to life for you, for HMRC, the Transform team have automated parcel identification using AI under the Windsor framework to cover 120 million parcels a year with record accuracy over 80%. With Boots, SMG's PlanApps has activated first-party data from their Advantage card, lifting ROAS for clients by around 30% and improving supply spend by 20%- 30% too. With NatWest, Savanta, it's about a bespoke communication testing platform. Tested over 300 high-risk communications, helping to avoid regulatory fines and saving over £1 million in service costs.
With I Manage, Project Goose, which is the four B2B marketing agencies that we're pulling together, have delivered an integrated campaign, doubling initial revenue and unlocking long-term growth. These are really clear examples of where we're really strong and where our model is in action, which delivers impact, efficiency, and compliance for our clients. We have also, as a result of this type of work, increased our confidence in our pipeline, including some good strategic client wins, which, because of the nature of what we do right now, I can't talk to them here as much as I'd like to, but it gives us great confidence for the future too. In summary, before I hand over to Mickey, we've acted really decisively. We've resolved some legacy issues. We've simplified the portfolio. We've clarified our direction. Our trading has been resilient. Margins have held firm. Cash flow has improved.
Balance sheet remains strong. Dividend is maintained. Most importantly, we're creating a simpler, more focused Next 15, which we'll be able to unveil to you in more detail at another event later this year. I'll hand over to Mickey.
Thanks, Sam. Thanks very much. Thanks for hosting us here this morning. I've known most of you for quite some time, and I've met all of you. I'm also very new. I'm as new as Sam. I've been in the role now just over three months. The good news is that a lot of the things that we're doing, most of the things that we're doing, are very, very familiar to me. I've been in the industry in a similar role for considerable time. Prior to joining Next 15 Group plc, I was CFO of a private equity-backed business called Dept, roughly the same size as Next 15 Group plc and very, very similar. Prior to that, I was also in a very similar role as CFO of M&C Saatchi. Hence, a lot of the elements of this business are so very familiar to me.
If we look at the results now and the P&L, we think it's a good set of results for the first half of the year. I'll take you through some of the highlights. First of all, at the revenue level, you can see that our revenue declined marginally by 3.6%. That decline was down to a number of factors, including a somewhat weaker U.S. dollar. There were clearly global economic challenges that have lingered, continued. There have been policy shifts in the U.S. We've seen tariff uncertainty in the U.S. There's been the continued effect of reduced client spend. All of that has been somewhat partially offset by strong growth in a few of our businesses, including Transform, SMG, and M Booth. We'll talk about those in a bit more detail in a second. At the operating profit level, it was pretty much flat year on year, 32.7% versus 33.7%.
Most notably, perhaps, here is the fact that our margins marginally, very marginally improved in the period from 14.1% to 14.2%. That is a function of the fact that we had some restructuring, cost restructuring last year that fed into this year. We continued to focus on cost management this year. PBT was also flat, 31% versus 31%. Our diluted EPS also improved. The primary driver for that was the reduction in our minorities as a result of the buyout of one of our companies, Agent 3, last year. This slide looks at our revenue performance half year versus half year. The big thing to really focus on is the organic revenue, which declined at a constant currency basis by 5.3%. The chart, there's two charts here. The chart at the bottom really is maybe one to focus on because there were two components to it, up and down.
We had several businesses that grew. We talked about Transform, SMG, and M Booth. Transform, in particular, grew significantly last year. We did, however, have some declines that were spread across a number of businesses, including Marker, including our B2B marketing businesses, and also our creative business, House 337. Here we look at how our operating profit formed. First of all, it was flat, 33.7% last year, 32.7% this year. Margins pretty much flat, slightly, slightly up. That margin improvement was due to restructuring from last year and strong cost management carrying on this year. We saw the full year, we're beginning to see the full year benefits this year of FY 2025 savings. We're also seeing productivity improvements coming through this year. That's kind of measured by the fact that our headcount this time last year, we had an average of just over 4,000 heads.
This year, we've just got, our average is just over 3,700. Onto the segments. We continue to report the same four segments for H126 as we've always done. We will move to a new segmental reporting format when we come to year-end and the full year results. This is probably almost certainly the last time when we're referring to the business based on these four segments. If we take each of these in turn and start with business transformation, this was the one that grew by 31%. That was down to the growth in Transform. That grew by 51%. That's our government and public sector transformation agency. Not only did it grow, it also had stronger margins as well. Customer insight declined by 6%. The main reason for that was the decline in our Savanta business. That business actually had improved operating margins.
You've seen margins improving in that business due to cost cutting. Customer delivery declined by 8%. There are a number of factors here. We had relatively weak trading in Activate, which was down fairly sizably by 20%. That was partially offset by growth in our SMG business, which grew by 14%. Margins in this sector were down. That was due to two factors primarily. One, SMG incurred some investment spend this year. Despite growing in revenue, as it was growing in revenue, it also spent. We saw some negative operational leverage effects taking place in Activate. Customer engagement, our last segment, declined by 10%. That was down to weaker performance in Marker, Brandwidth, and our creative business House 337. Although that was partially offset by some very strong growth in M Booth. Finally, on this page, our head office costs, they came down. This half, we reported £7.5 million.
Prior H1 2025, £10 million. Onto what our customer base looks like. This is a slightly different picture to one from previous halves. For the first time now, our consumer and retail segment is our largest segment. That now takes up 31% of total revenue versus 27% a year ago. That's fueled by expansion in the retail media business that we've been talking about, as well as influence of marketing. Technology, which was our largest segment, is now our second largest segment. That's now 30% of our total revenue. It was 34% a year ago. It's well written. It's well documented across the board that tech clients have reduced their spend on the kind of products and services that we and our peers deliver. Public sector, it's worth noting, is our fastest growing vertical. That's all through Transform, focused on government, public sector spend.
That's grown now to 13.5% of our total versus 9% a year ago. On cash flow, we think it's a pretty good picture on cash and net debt. There's two slides to come. Net inflows from trading were £30 million. Those were offset, understandably, by significant outflows for earnout payments of £26 million. Within our cash flow, it is important to recognize that there's a lot of work that's been done over the last 12 months. It predates me, but it's continuing now, whereby our operating cash flow grew or strengthened by £4.3 million of working capital inflows. That compares to a £32 million outflow this time last year. That's a significant swing. Onto leverage and liquidity, our net debt is at £45 million. It was £38 million a year ago. Our net debt EBITDA ratio is at half of EBITDA. We have a covenant limit of 2.5 x.
We're well, well within that. We really are focused on managing this. It's a priority item for us. We'll continue to be. Even, and we'll come on to talk about MAC49 in a minute and the MAC49 provision for earnout. Even if we include that in our calculation, even if we were to pay that out, our net debt EBITDA ratio is still 1.5 x EBITDA, well, well within the covenant limit. Talking of earnouts, this just gives a picture of what our earnout liabilities look like and have looked like and how they've come down. A year ago, they were at £37 million. Six months ago, they were at £44 million. They're now down to £19 million. Of that £19 million, we've already paid down about £5 million or so. That's come down tremendously over the period.
We do refer in this chart to the MAC49 liability, and we'll talk about that in a bit more detail on the coming slides. This looks at our adjusted PBT versus our statutory PBT. Our adjusted PBT is £30.9 million, coming down to a statutory PBT of £2.8 million. There's probably just two big areas to sort of talk about here. There's a number of items in here, but the two that I'll focus on are, number one, the goodwill impairment and the intangibles write-off. That's £10 million. All of that relates to goodwill and intangibles in MAC49. All of that's been written down to zero. We also have an item that is normal and appears regularly, which is the acquisition accounting related costs. These relate to the £12 million.
These relate to the amortization of acquired intangibles, the continued charges for employment-linked acquisition payments, and the movement in the value of our earnout liabilities. As you can see, we have a very, very solid balance sheet. We've got a good level of cash. We've got a minimal amount of debt. We feel we're in a very, very helpful position to be able to announce an interim dividend of 4.75%, which we're maintaining at the same level from prior year. This comes at a cost of £4.75 million out. Onto MAC49, there's probably three points to mention on this. Number one, we've mentioned this once already, but we will be treating MAC49 as a discontinued operation by the end of this financial year, and so its results will be represented separately in the financial statements to our ordinary results. There are a number of costs associated with MAC49.
We had an operating loss in the first half of the year of £2.9 million, and we expect further losses in the second half of the year. We've also incurred legal fees and associated fees in the first half of the year, about £4 million in the first half of the year, and we expect additional costs in the second half of the year. As I mentioned, we've taken some write-downs in goodwill, £9.1 million, and we've written off the intangible in MAC49, nearly £1 million. We also have an earnout liability that we've retained our position on the balance sheet of £60 million. Based on the evidence that we've received to date, we maintain our position regarding the non-payment of that earnout. However, for prudence, for this half year at least, we're keeping that £60 million on the balance sheet.
Finally, for me, just the outlook for the rest of this year. The first half was in line with our projections, and the first couple of months of H2 are also performing just as we expected. The phasing of revenue and of profit, of adjusted operating profit, is consistent with previous years. With all of that, we feel comfortable keeping our forecast as is, and we anticipate our results to be in line with market expectations. Back to you, Sam.
Thanks, Mickey. In summary, these are the headlines that we touched on at the very start of the day. Next 15 Group plc has a really strong core. We've got good data for our size. We're agile at scale. We're early practitioners in AI. We have businesses that are really exciting in strong growth markets, leading those markets in some cases. We have really strong culture people.
Mickey and myself and the team have worked incredibly hard to resolve some of the legacy issues quickly and decisively in the first 100 days to simplify the group and to clarify our future. For now, you can be confident that we're in control, we're executing with discipline, and we're positioning the group for sustainable growth into the future. Any questions? Should we go this way?
Very impressive performance in Transform. I just wondered if you can expand a little bit more on what was in there, but in particular, how penetrated are you and what the pipeline sort of feels like on a forward-looking basis? The second one, just kind of the impressive working capital performance, particularly versus sort of where we were this time last year. Is that sustainable, that positive working capital, or should we be mindful of a bit of seasonality in there and how that looks for the full year?
Transform is a really exciting business. The way that they talk about their business is solving nutty problems. They're experts in digital transformation, early adopters of AI, and their way of working is to actually integrate teams within other businesses, which is what we're seeing as a trend, I think, in the future of how agencies and partners work with clients. In my day, P&G used to write a brief for a week, send it to a client, wait for six months, come back, and it was a very transactional relationship. That's not how it works now, and that's not how Transform works. They actually send teams in to work alongside senior members of the team to tackle really difficult problems that might involve structural problems, digital problems, how you unknock the spaghetti that exists in terms of some of the legacy systems in these businesses.
As a result, they're seeing major success, specifically in government work at the moment, but I think there's potential to go beyond that. Yes, in answer to the question on the pipeline, it looks strong. We're feeling really confident about the potential of that business. Interestingly, I think there's also a big role for that business internally for us in terms of knitting together some of the data and the AI abilities that we have across the room to allow it to be more accessible to some of the other businesses that we have.
On the question of working capital, yeah, it's definitely been an impressive performance year on year, very impressive. That's in large part down to the focus of working capital as an item, whereas perhaps, you know, historically, it hasn't been, but certainly over the last 12 months, and as I said, predating me, this is something that the team, the company is really, really focused on. We're not going to let go of it. The gains that we've seen this half, we are going to focus on continuing to improve on. We won't, naturally, we can't get these levels of gains continuously, but we're not going to go back to where we were before. It's also worth highlighting that within the portfolio of companies, there are a few businesses that are really working capital hungry, really intensive working capital, particularly the retail media business.
That's just the nature of that business. Even there, we're taking a very close look at it with a view to even enhancing that.
Firstly, on the integration of Savanta and also House 337 and Elvis, I'm just wondering if you could shed a little bit more, share a little bit more detail on that, what the benefits are. Is it primarily around go-to-market and driving cross-sale, I guess? Or is it more about cost and taking further cost out of that? Secondly, in relation to that, with the restructuring program from last year, is there further cost to come out in H2 that could help support the margin? Finally, just a little bit of progress on SMG and its expansion into the U.S. What sort of action is to be taken, any early positive indicators in that job?
Let's start with Savanta and Plinc and House and Elvis. There are two different types, I think, of integration. Savanta and Plinc is a really interesting one because I don't know how much you know about Plinc. They've got some very interesting technology that allows you to identify individual consumers and target communications based on a large data set. Obviously, Savanta has a large data set. What side of business that we're seeing growing in Savanta is the data and technology side. That's being dragged by the more kind of traditional legacy research side. By integrating Plinc and Savanta, we enhance those capabilities. That allows us to go to market in a slightly different way. We're really excited about the benefits there. On House and Elvis, that is more about scale. They're obviously two businesses that are working in similar areas.
We have a breadth of clients there, and those clients can benefit from the combined scale of those two groups. That's why we've decided to do that. There are obvious benefits on top of that in terms of cost and simplification and how we manage those businesses too. They were more strategic choices than they were P&L choices. In terms of restructuring costs, do you want to hear that one, Mickey?
Yeah, yeah. Back to the simplification, that program is continuous. It didn't stop in the first half of the year. It's something that will be ongoing for a while, which does mean in certain businesses, particularly those businesses which are perhaps most challenged, we are going to continue to manage margin by taking costs out. There are a few businesses within the group for which there is a continuous program of restructuring with the aim of, as your question points out, maintaining the margin into the second half.
I think the final question was on SMG's global expansion, which we're very pleased with the progress. They launched their first retail media network earlier this year, and we have a lot of interesting leads. It takes time. I think when you expand globally, what I've learned in doing it over the last four years is that you have to tread carefully and make sure that you're spending your money wisely, which we're doing at SMG. In the early signs that we're seeing, we're very confident behind that business and its ability to grow in other markets.
Just a couple from the, just to follow up on SMG. Reinvestment of growth, revenue growth into expanding its footprints in sort of overseas, particularly North America, has been a feature for a while. Are we seeing that as an ongoing process of reinvestment, or is that a phase of reinvestment which is now coming to an end? Now the new infrastructure has been put in place into that market, and now it sort of focuses around client wins and market penetration. That's the first question. Second one is taking a step back. Obviously, it's good to see the rise in sort of reasonable maintenance. When you look at the sort of revenue environment out there, do you see it as a continuation of the trends that we're seeing? Continued weakness likely from tech clients, but being largely offset by sort of gains and growth elsewhere in the portfolio?
Are you beginning to see any sense for the tech clients, particularly in areas starting to stabilize and perhaps early signs of any recovery there? I'm wondering what sort of assumptions are sitting behind your growth outlook for the second half.
Yeah. Starting with SMG, interestingly, with SMG, it's got so much potential in so many areas. Global expansion is one of them, but also there's a big technology opportunity too. Whilst we'll see initial investment in global development, which we've put into growing in North America, I'd imagine that we'll continue to invest in that business because we also see opportunities in growing their technology arm. Some of the areas that retail media needs improvement, SMG is very much at the forefront of that. On tech, we are starting to see very early signs of recovery, but none that would give me a huge amount of confidence that the trend is going to reverse very quickly. I do see a continuation in some of the trends we've seen short term. However, the very early signs that we're seeing out of our market businesses in the U.S.
is that we have more confidence in the future forecasts for those technologies.
Got three, please. There's been lots of debate about how with AI, revenue models within the industry will change in the future. I guess with the AI that's going up within the company, and the simplification process, how do you see the revenue models of the group evolving for the future? The second one is just on, you've mentioned enhanced governance. How are we thinking about, does that mean slightly higher central costs going in the near term? The final one is, I know Mickey talks about kind of the program of, okay, costs will continue in the near term. With kind of investing a bit more in AI and adding AI into your processes, does that mean it's not just the weaker agencies which you could take out costs, but actually across the board, you can take out a bit more because of AI?
I'll take the first question. Can I take the second one? Both answer the first.
AI is undoubtedly the major driver of what we're thinking about and what we're seeing. I don't think anybody knows quite yet exactly how it's going to change revenue models, but I can give you some early indications of what we're seeing. We're seeing that the kind of time and retainer models are becoming less important and actually clients are investing based on outcome. Where we can create tools and technology that allow us to use the data that we have to provide client outcomes that then drive more data, it allows us to reinvest in our technology and drive more client outcomes. You start to create this incredible flywheel that, once you have AI at the core of it, is incredibly scalable in every market in the world. We're starting to see some really early signs of that working brilliantly in some of our businesses, specifically in SMG.
As we talk later in the year, I'll be able to talk a little bit more about what we see the future of that being. For us, it's incredibly exciting. Do you want to talk about central costs?
Yeah, sure. Jess, your question was whether with more governance, enhanced governance, we're going to have to spend more money at a central level. I don't think those two things are necessarily linked. We're not planning, we're not budgeting to spend more centrally to deal with that. It's just we have, as you know, historically, a very, very decentralized model operating. What we would like to do and what we are going to do is just make it a little bit less decentralized. We're not centralizing things. We're just making it rather less decentralized. That requires a little bit more focus and effort than before, but that isn't necessarily going to result in any way down or any more sort of software-related costs.
Yeah, I'd add to that. I think the kind of phrase that we're using internally at the moment is unified, not uniform. Trying to bring into the center things that are going to help each of our businesses to grow whilst allowing them still to be their businesses and to be entrepreneurial. I'd agree with Mickey there. That comes to your final point on AI. We think there's a big opportunity for Next 15 to become more of a platform in the middle of those core businesses that we see as the future, driven by AI. That will, in turn, help us to reduce costs. Obviously, that doesn't mean we get to keep all of those costs because clients will expect that. We need to be on the front foot. We're already having conversations like that with a number of clients saying, I don't need all these people anymore.
Surely you can do that in AI. Where we're finding real value is in helping them to deliver things more at scale, allowing us to reduce our costs and pass some of those savings back to them, which allows us to remain competitive. Certainly, that's been the case in a lot of the bigger contracts that we've negotiated.
Not much left to ask, really. I have got some questions. Just first of all, in terms of the retail DX data insights area we talked about, how much of group revenue does that now represent where you might disposal? Just an idea on that. On MAC49, the losses there, I sort of can't see quite where you're at in terms of people going and all the rest of it. Just give us some idea of where that's at practically. If you go through the chapter from an outshot the doors, or is it ongoing? There's still going to be some losses going through there. Just sort of picking up on some of your comments, should we expect a sort of wider move into performance media to go forward?
Just looking at the way the marketplace is going, trending titles in performance, payment on pay on that basis, and just obviously your success in SMG.
Yeah.
That's the thing we should expect.
I'll do the first one. You do, sir.
Yeah, I can do the first. Retail DX and data represents just over half when you look at the businesses that play in those areas. MAC49 wind-down process is very much underway. It is very much still operational. We have an obligation to a number of clients, and we're fulfilling those obligations. We will close that business, wind down that business when all those obligations are satisfied. We're on track to do that by the end of our financial year. There are people there, and working really, really hard until that time. As a markets here at heart, I hate the word performance media because I think all media should be performing in some way. This kind of, we used to do it at P&G, this above the line, below the line, upper funnel, lower funnel.
We've used the term quite a bit there to try and.
It's all changing. Actually, what we're seeing, I could talk about this for a while, but what we're seeing in SMG is that that old split between kind of brand media and performance media is all becoming one thing now. The way that brands are targeting their media has changed to first-party data, and that means that they can measure everything. Actually, I think businesses that will perform well in the future are those that can do all of media, whether that's upper funnel, fame media, awareness media, lower funnel too, in a way that can be measurable. I think, you know, will we see a move towards more performance media in that sense? Yes. It's critical that you back that up with the right measurement and the right data.
That's kind of what's exciting about that side of our business, the comms side of the business, is that we have an SMG that can do that, and we have a Savanta that can measure it. There's good opportunity there.
I've got a couple of questions from the website. The first one's from Roddy Davidson at Singer Capital Markets. Do you have a number in mind for the optimal number of operating businesses within the group in its current?
Yes.
Next question is from [Steve Gentry] from [Deutsche Möbel]. MAC49, please can you clarify how the arbitration process is working at the same time as founders having left the group post-issues bound and working with financial authorities on that?
Do you want to take that?
Yeah, sure. I think everyone can understand that this is an ongoing case, and we are limited by what we can say. Effectively, we've therefore, unfortunately, said everything we can say in our public announcements. That case is ongoing, and we would expect an outcome in the first half, latest first half of next year. In terms of the details of that case, there's really nothing more that we can say.
Question, can you give any more detail on AI products and services in terms of the in-market revenue that's being generated now?
We can certainly follow up with that. I think I don't have the numbers to hand, but I think a lot of our revenue now in some form touches AI, so it'd be quite difficult to spit out, but certainly that's something that we can talk about.
Question 15 is, how are you managing need to invest in growth versus cost reductions?
Next 15 Group plc has a very good track record of delivering good margins relative to its competitors. That's something that we will continue to focus on. As we've talked about, there are a few high-growth businesses, a lot of them high-growth businesses. We will continue to invest in those. We'll continue to invest in all of those. At the same time, even in those high-growth businesses, there are opportunities to manage costs as well. It's a difficult balancing act. The business has a history of doing it.
Sorry, just a couple, going back to Transform, and I know we touched on it earlier, so sorry to repeat, but I was wondering around the sustainability of that 50% growth. If there were any disruptions in the comparative period last year, the lead-up to the general election, whether that made for an easier comp this year and how you see that going forward. Secondly, thinking about the growth trajectory and new business, could you give a bit more color in terms of the new business activity and then how much revenue comes from repeat and existing customers as well?
Yeah. On Transform, there is a good comparative. We can't deny that. The sustainability of the work, though, I think is very good. The pipeline that we're seeing moving forward is probably stronger than we've seen at any point. When we look at that business, I think there's also a ton of expansion opportunity too. It's in different sectors. It's in different markets as well. It's a business we're really excited about. We've got some great leaders in that business too. They've done a brilliant job. I'd hope that we can really continue to grow that. Whether it's at 50% every year, not sure, but we'd like to see strong growth. On new business, on average, I'd say we tend to see somewhere between 10% to 15% of our revenue come from new business each year.
I think that we're feeling really good in areas about the new business that's coming into the group. We've got some really exciting new clients I'd love to tell you about today. I'm told I can't. That's an area where we're really starting to see progress. I think that comes back to focus. A lot of what we need to do with the group is explain why a new client would come to Next 15 or come to one of those businesses in a way that attracts people in an easier way. That's what we're focusing on as an executive team over the next few months.
Thank you.
Any further questions? Thank you very much for your time.