Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome and thanks for attending today. A quick word of introduction. My name's Gary Bullard. I'm the Chairman of Oxford Metrics. I joined a little over seven months ago. I had the opportunity to get a bit more up to speed with the company over those months. The format for today is, it's an opportunity for us to tell you how we see the group developing into the future and how we're going to increase shareholder value. We've got a number of you in the room. We're also live streaming it as well. The plan will be that we'll go through a number of presentations and then we'll have plenty of opportunity for Q&A at the end of it.
In that time, I've got to know a little bit more about the company, having had a chance to meet the management teams, see some of the clients up close and personal, get an understanding of the sort of work that we do in the space. I'd like to give you some of my first impressions of the company. Annoyingly, one of my first impressions is that there's a lot that we do that we can't really talk about. As we engage with the clients, we're quite important to their competitive advantage in a number of cases. I've been exposed to situations where we're working with gold-medal-winning sports teams or S&P 100 companies who are using our technology, and what we're actually doing for them in some of the entertainment space as well, is so important to them that it isn't actually disclosed.
We've built up an enormous amount of experience, particularly in the motion capture space over the past 40 years, I guess. We're critical to these companies and to many others in the sector as well. I guess one of my first questions coming in was the degree to which the technology that we've developed, to what extent is that some form of competitive moat that we've got around our chosen sectors, as against what are the threats of the new technologies coming in? It's become clear from certainly my engagement over the past few months I've been in, that very much the various different technologies, particularly in the areas of AI and robotics, our business is converging and becoming much more relevant to these sectors rather than being threatened by them.
I thought I'd like to touch on what I see as some of the longer-term opportunities for the company, and then also maybe touch on some of the highlights of the activity in the shorter term before handing over to the team, who'll go into all of these areas into a bit more detail. Firstly, focusing specifically on Vicon, which is our motion capture division, where we focus on capturing motion information, analyzing it, measuring it, looking at real-world behaviors. It's really critical to a number of different sectors that we work with now. I think the opportunity going forward is much larger. You've seen a lot around the creation of digital humans, digital twins and AI generation. A lot has been done in terms of the work around that in using voice and image generation.
Motion capture, in particular human motion, is one of the areas that's most difficult to actually replicate. It's one of the areas where viewers pick up most quickly that something isn't quite right. I think we've got an enormous opportunity in that space. We've seen examples, obviously the big tech companies, the AI companies like NVIDIA and Alphabet are investing in that space. We've got also newer companies that are now multi-billion valuations, companies like Unity Technologies, BRANDTECH, Synthesia, ElevenLabs, that are focused on that area. I think we can bring something unique into that environment in terms of really fleshing out the content and making motion capture a part of that real experience. The second area is in what I think NVIDIA have coined the term Physical AI, which is where the AI interacts with the real world.
What we're looking at there is, for example, areas like robotics, humanoid robotics, where we're looking at replicating human behavior, human action, and bringing that to bear, whether that's in the factory or the workspace. Again, you see massive investments in humanoid robots, multi-billion GBP investments in that sector. In that sector, what's happening is that the physical ability of these robots, the way that they can operate from a mechanical perspective, is well behind their ability to program them. Talking to one of the robotic companies the other day, he was saying that they've got robots which are perfectly capable of tying shoelaces, but it's probably two or three years away before they can actually get the programming to do that. I think this interface with humanoid robots, robotics generally, could be a massive area of opportunity going forward.
Another area which is slightly less easy to quantify, which is do we have movement itself and human movement as an asset that can be exploited? We've seen actors and athletes exploiting their image rights, exploiting their voices, exploiting themselves in the world. Is there the opportunity to capture motion data and have that as an asset that can be exploited as well? We've already got actors and athletes looking at how do they exploit their digital presence in the future, whether it's for advertising or into gaming or things like that. What part of the motion part of that can be used in the future? If Messi wants to appear in a football game or whatever, it needs to look like Messi rather than Paul Scholes.
If you've got other people in an acting discipline, they want to come back, or their estate wants them to come back and play a cameo in a new movie, how do you get it so that it's in the most realistic way? How can you use those assets? We're seeing significant interest in trying to maybe capture and develop that. I think with the experience we've got over the past four decades or so, we've built up the data to be able to train these models, to be able to build out these technologies. Slightly closer to hand, though, are the real opportunities we've got around the stuff we're developing already, the obvious one of those being Markerless. That's a technology which exploits all the relationships we've got, the software that we've developed, the capabilities that we've got. It does a number of things.
The first thing is it brings this technology into a much lower entry point. Something that was available to only a leading teaching hospital could be brought down to a health practice, something that could only be afforded by the very largest entertainment or gaming companies, it can be brought down a level for a lower entry point, something that's used in elite sports at the moment only at the highest level, maybe can be used down at a club level or something like that. There's a way of getting in without the very large upfront investment that's required on the technology that goes with the non-Markerless systems. The other thing about Markerless is potential new application areas.
Because of the nature of the technology we've got at the moment, applying this into large open spaces like sports arenas or battlefields, whether those be real or virtual, those sorts of things are out of the scope of the current technology, and those are brought into with the new technology. Also ones where there's the physical limitation of what the current technology is in terms of putting on a suit covered with the different markers. Removing that opens up new application areas, again, in something like elite sport where you can't do that, or even extending into something like gait analysis in racehorses or something like that. It's rather difficult to put a Lycra suit on a racehorse. In those sorts of applications, become an enabler, I guess, as you go forward.
The other opportunity we've got short term, partly that is Markerless, but more than that, is extending into other sectors. We've been very focused on the sectors that we've become known as and probably dominate in terms of the high end, which is entertainment, gaming, and health. We have very high level clients, multi-billion market cap companies that use us in a number of other sectors. Whether it's in aerospace and defense, whether it's in automotive, whether it's in consumer electronics, they use our kit. Generally, these customers have found us and come to us because of the technology they needed at the highest level. We've done comparatively little in stepping away from these, and being proactive into those sectors. I think a combination of Markerless and also exploiting these sectors is a short-term opportunity that we can develop.
The last one is sort of related to it. I don't think it's specifically Markerless, but that is just the opportunity to transform the business into an annuity business. Pretty well every technology business and a lot of other sectors as well, they've moved their business model away from a large capital sale and maybe some repeat business five or 10 years down the track. We have not made that transition, as the team will take you through, but that's got an enormous opportunity for us because in any other sector that's made that transition, they've been able to demonstrate that the margins can be higher, they're more repeatable, they're stickier, it's easier to take clients through the upgrade journey, and it's easier to sort of continue to sell stuff into the clients as well. Just that transition, we're using Markerless as the step into that.
Beyond that, I think we can do that for the rest of our business. Short-term opportunities, I think, to grow significantly our footprint. I've talked mainly about Vicon. I think there's a big opportunity in IVMS as well, which is our vision metrology sector. I've touched on the fact that a lot of companies are now focusing on a much higher degree of automation in terms of their manufacturing processes, in terms of traceability, automation, AI-enabled measurement systems, and the like. A lot of them have turned the wheel in terms of doing low-cost manufacturing, and they realize now to improve their processes, it needs to be around all the automation and the technology. They've seen, in particular, China, who've made great strides in terms of the automation of their processes, and they're all trying to play catch up.
We've got a great position there where we're known in our dealing with the metrology and measurement side, and we've proven that we can take what is previously really done at the workbench or done at the end of the quality control process. We can actually pull that into the live environment and do testing and quality manufacturing and automate some of the processes there as well. This is an area that we see ample opportunity to grow organically and, or inorganically around the space that it occupies at the moment. Beyond that, there's the very simple sort of blocking and tackling, which is, I think my observation in the company, that it has been largely R&D-driven over the past decades.
That has got enormous advantages in terms of the IP that we've developed, the customer relationships that we've developed, the skills we've got in our people. We've fallen a little bit behind on some of the more traditional disciplines, and we've got the opportunity to catch up there, I think, relatively quickly by adopting new processes, also bringing some new people in with more experience of what's done in other sectors, some of who you'll speak to later on today. We can be much more effective around our sales processes. We can be much more effective there. We can farm our existing clients. We can be much more joined up with marketing. We can better manage our distribution channels. There's a lot of efficiencies there around the sales processes, which I think are relatively low-hanging fruit.
Similarly, on the R&D development side, that has been driven by the challenges that have been brought to us by the clients, the things that have seemed interesting in the sectors. We've got teams of people who have been with the company for decades with enormous subject matter expertise, but we haven't really caught up with the latest development techniques, the use of AI, and getting our processes to be as efficient as they should be in terms of our software development. Similarly, on the hardware side, everything is done in-house. We haven't really looked at the opportunities around supply chain outsourcing, automation ourselves even, that are there as well.
I think in that area as well, there's sort of ample self-help opportunity in the short term on top of the ability to just reduce our overheads through some of the work we're already doing in terms of consolidation of various parts of the group and closing locations and things like that. In the three stages, I think there is enormous opportunity out in front of us if we can grasp some of these, to be honest, multi-billion opportunities, some things we can do to grow the company much more quickly, and some things we can do in the very short -term to improve our margins and to improve our competitiveness. That's what the team will take you through, hopefully in some more detail in the presentations today.
As I've gone around the shareholders, a couple of other points have come up which we'll try and address today to some extent. One of which is this really an integrated company? Have we got groups that we're trying to bring together to a single sort of integrated company, or have we got two separate divisions that can operate largely independently of each other? I think our current view on that is that we've got such enormous opportunity in front of us with both of these different divisions. They've both got to act with speed and pace. They've got their existing brand image. They've got their existing client relationships. The view is that in the shorter term, we want them to manage independently and drive their own strategies, both of which will be outlined in the presentations that follow. There are opportunities for cooperation.
Obviously, there's the overheads there, the processes. There's our own use of our AI, there's our facilities, the corporate overheads, and there will be areas like humanoid robotics, for example, which have got a very direct crossover between the two. Those are secondary, I think, to letting these two divisions grow as they go forward, at least in the medium -term. That's been one of the reasons why we've done the branding and we've kept the branding separately between Vicon and IVMS as we go forward. The second question, again, which Zoe will answer in much more detail, is capital allocation. I'm not used to coming into a company where having a large cash balance is seen as a disadvantage to the company. We've had many questions in terms of how we are going to deploy that going forward.
We've shown that we will give money back to shareholders, particularly through the buybacks that we've done recently with the valuations where they are. We can continue to do that. Similarly, with the dividend, we have given substantial money back in dividends over the past years. Our feeling is that the company has got enormous opportunities for growth, and we want to keep strategic flexibility around that. We want to have the ability to speed up our transition into Markerless, to be able to speed up our transition to annuity-based businesses, and to do as we have done before. We see opportunities for selective bolt-on acquisitions that we can immediately deploy into our current client set or will accelerate some of the transformation I've talked about before. Zoe will go into that in much more detail.
Hopefully, we'll give you clarity about our plans in the future as to how the split of those things will work and what our dividend policy will be. Our plan is to be a growth-oriented company, albeit sort of maintaining good disciplines around that. I hope that. I'm very excited to be with the company. I'm astounded at the amount of opportunity there is there, some of the things we're doing already and some of the things we can do in the future. I do think it's a company with an enormous potential in terms of growth for its shareholders over the coming relatively short period of time, and I hope we'll be able to demonstrate that to us. For the rest of today, we'll hand over initially to Imogen and then to the divisional leads, and to Zoe who'll take you through in more detail. Thank you.
Thank you, Gary. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today, whether here in the room or online via our webcast. Here is the agenda for today's event. Obviously, Gary has welcomed and introduced. I'll take you through a bit of the history of Oxford Metrics, how we've got from 1984 to 2026. Also start to set out the strategy, and I'm really delighted that our two divisional managing directors, Andrew and Simon, are joining us today to take you on a deeper dive of Vicon and IVMS. Obviously the main event, which is Zoe with her financials and capital allocation, and then we'll wrap up and have Q&A at the end. Oxford Metrics is a measurement technology group delivering visionary momentum for more than 40 years.
We were established in 1984 as a spin-out from Oxford Instruments and floated on AIM in 2001. At our core, we use our technologies to capture human and object movement and our vision IP and measurement techniques to provide data that customers can rely on, insights they can trust and act on. Behind that sits deep domain expertise. We work in specialist areas, and that focus lets us build technology that is genuinely differentiated and highly relevant to our customers. Those customers come to us because they must get it right. They need accuracy, reliability, and high-quality data, because what we provide is often tied directly to critical business or research outcomes. Over time, that has built a strong position based on deep technical knowledge and IP, long-standing relationships, and solutions customers know they can depend on.
You see it in the quality of our customer base, in our retention levels, and in our ability to grow as our customers' needs evolve. We've won a technical Oscar, an Emmy, two Queen's Awards, and the 2023 AIM Award for Best Technology along the way. The Oxford Metrics of today is a business with differentiated technical capabilities, clear customer relevance, and a loyal, high-quality customer base, which is all a very solid foundation for the next stage of growth. Over the years, we've taken a deliberate approach to shaping the group. We have been an R&D technology business from day one, when Oxford Metrics set out to commercialize gait analysis systems for the study of human movement, initially for cerebral palsy in children, an application still in use 42 years later. That R&D heritage is how we create value.
We use our own intellectual property to seed new businesses. Yotta and 2d3 both began this way, and we grow our businesses both organically and through acquisition, where the IP geographic reach or customer base strengthens what we offer. For much of our history, Oxford Metrics has been a group of differentiated businesses. Our current structure is not new. It has been central to how we've built and evolved the company. Critically, it gives us optionality with strong, distinct businesses, each with their own IP and markets, and each able to be developed or combined to create the most value. Looking back to 2013, the group comprised Vicon, 2d3, and Yotta, each serving different markets. As 2d3 and Yotta matured, that optionality let us act with discipline. When the right buyer came along, we realized value through their sale.
2d3 to Boeing in 2016 for $25 million cash returned to shareholders, and Yotta to Causeway in 2022 for GBP 52 million cash. We build strong, differentiated businesses, we grow them, and we keep the freedom to create the most value from each. Today, that means building businesses with the recurring and compounding economics to create lasting value within the group whilst preserving optionality for the future.
In a world where data underpins decisions and innovation, accuracy and precision is no longer optional. It is expected. At Oxford Metrics Group, we meet that expectation with confidence. We operate at the intersection of science, technology, and real-world application, setting the standard and continually raising it. We deliver trusted precision, intelligent insight, and real-world impact, turning complex motion, imaging, and measurement data into actionable intelligence at scale. Our approach is rigorous, repeatable, and built on decades of experience. We capture and measure with uncompromising accuracy, revealing detail beyond human perception. We analyze, applying advanced AI to extract meaning that drives confident decision-making. We optimize, translating insight into measurable business performance gains. We enable action, delivering intelligence our customers depend on when it matters most. We don't innovate for its own sake. We innovate to solve real-world challenges and anticipate what comes next.
In sports, science, and academia, we advance biomechanics and inform new product design. In robotics, we provide the ground truth that underpins autonomy. In life sciences and healthcare, we enable more accurate diagnosis and rehabilitation. In entertainment, we bring movement to life. In engineering and industry, we enhance design, safety, and production. In science, we reveal. In healthcare, we heal. In entertainment, we create, and in industry, we perfect. From the studio to the lab, from the clinic to the production line, Oxford Metrics is redefining how the world understands, creates, and improves. As demand for precision and intelligence accelerates, we are not just positioned to deliver, we already lead.
Any runners in the room? That video did show the Adidas behind-the-scenes two-hour marathon shoe project with Sebastian Sawe. Vicon was used to help design the shoe that did the sub-two-hour marathon. The Oxford Metrics of today is a group organized around two specialist divisions, motion capture and vision metrology. I'm delighted that our two divisional managing directors, Andrew and Simon, are here today to take you through Vicon, our motion capture business, and IVMS, our vision metrology business, in more detail shortly. Vicon gives us a leadership position in motion capture, serving life sciences, entertainment, engineering, and research markets. In vision metrology, we are building a differentiated offering in automated inspection with customers in aerospace, automotive, medical, including pharmaceutical, and semiconductor electronics. Together, these businesses gives us exposure to two areas where accuracy, insight, and reliability are central to customer outcomes.
Importantly, our technology sits close to customers' core workflows, and whether that's in a hospital lab providing clinical services to patients, or on a production line inspecting and measuring medical devices at speed. This matters because it underpins our value, supports the resilience of our revenues, and reinforces our strategic relevance to our customers. When you look at Oxford Metrics today, you see a group focused on areas where we have genuine expertise, established customer value, and a strong platform for the future. This is the leadership team structure we've put in place to support disciplined execution as the group continues to grow. At its center are our two experienced divisional Managing Directors, Andrew Knox and Simon Gunter, supported by their own executive management teams that bring together the core functions needed to run and grow the businesses effectively.
Alongside the leadership structure, we also create value through synergies and the sharing of best practice across the organization. While each division remains focused on its own markets, there are clear benefits from working more effectively as a group. That means sharing expertise across core functions, transferring successful ways of working, applying common disciplines where they can improve execution. In practice, this helps us drive greater consistency and capture efficiencies that the individual businesses might not achieve alone. Before I hand over for the deeper dives into the two businesses, let me tell you where we're taking the group so you can listen to Andrew and Simon with the destination in mind. Our medium-term ambition is a higher quality, more predictable business, more of our revenue recurring, shorter and more predictable revenue cycles, stronger margins and cash generation.
We get there through two engines, moving Vicon towards a platform technology business and adding recurring revenue on top of its current revenue base. Moving IVMS from bespoke projects to repeatable products, improving order to revenue cycles and margins. The work has already started with a deliberate optimization of our organizational structures to enable our ambition. For now, hold those two strategies in mind, products to platform and projects to products, because you'll hear the details for both in the businesses you're about to meet. Our medium-term financial goals is the doubling of revenues through both organic and inorganic activities, adding around 25% of recurring revenue to the group, and an adjusted EBIT margin percentage in the mid-teens. Zoe will cover this in more detail in the financial and capital allocation section later.
Having outlined the history of Oxford Metrics, where the group is today, the organizational structure that supports execution, and where we are heading, let's turn to Vicon, which is a core part of the Oxford Metrics story as the founding business of the group. I now hand over to our Vicon Managing Director, Andrew Knox, to take you through the Vicon story. Andrew.
Oops. Thank you, Imogen. I'm Andrew Knox, the relatively new Managing Director of Vicon. Little bit of background to myself. I've been involved in as a Managing Director, General Manager, Sales Director, and others in various SaaS businesses, sports technology businesses, and other technology businesses. Always had a track record of sales transformation and growth. Took a SaaS business through a 500% growth and a Nasdaq IPO in Sweden. Have been involved in a variety of M&A transactions, including notably integrating for synergies five acquisitions across four countries in a recent company. As a little bit of background to sector relevance, I was actually the Founding Manager and establisher of the IBM Virtual Reality Solutions business, and then more recently have been involved with various sports labs in motion capture and sports technology analysis. What is Vicon?
For those, if there are people here that are not familiar with it. Quite simply, it really is the gold standard in human movement capture. You've seen from videos and other things, but on the left there, a typical motion capture suit which will represent human movement in very accurately and very detailed. This is not a new thing. This company has been leading the way for 42 years and is trusted by some of the world's leading sports labs, leading biomechanics labs, as well as film, computer game, entertainment companies, and increasingly, engineering and industrial conglomerates looking at human factors and robotics. Everything that follows is built on that foundation of knowledge and 42 years of leadership. The company at a glance. We have thousands of clients across hundreds of different use cases.
We have four offices around the world, in Los Angeles, Denver, Oxford, and in Germany. The main industry verticals are listed there. We're seeing a lot of new market development within what we've called engineering. Another thing that I'm going to bring out later in this presentation is we're looking at approximately 75% repeat business, 75% of revenue from existing customers. That's something that really tells you how much the technology is embedded in our customers' workflows. Even though the IP's proprietary, hardware, software designed and built by us, we've been the benchmark for 42 years, I really feel like we're only just at the beginning of extracting full value from that proposition. Before I tell you a little bit about where we're going with commercial model and the business, let's just set the scene and explain where we are currently.
Obviously, everything varies, but a typical value of a deal could be around GBP 70,000, and it's currently 90% hardware, 5% software, and 5% support and services. Our order to delivery time could be anything up to three months. Three months, sometimes weeks, and I mention that because I think Simon's going to talk a little bit about his journey around order to fulfillment in the IVMS piece. Our clients, as I said, are premium organizations. They're leading sports lab, film, computer companies, et cetera, and they keep coming back. 75% repeat business from existing customers. It's not just any customers. You'll hear this again. I'm going to talk you through some of the logos and customers, but it's the likes of Boeing in human factors, it's Nike in sports performance, it's General Motors in robotics.
These are top quality clients that buy from Vicon and keep coming back to buy. The final piece, just to give you a little flavor of the current commercial model, is the current model is overwhelmingly CapEx led. The upgrade cycles can be between four and five years with very limited recurring revenue in between. That, in a way, is the specific opportunity that we're addressing and this transformation addresses. We can and we aim to deliver increased revenue per client, stronger recurring revenues, and shorten and make more predictable the revenue and upgrade cycles. I had a slide which showed all of our Not all of our, a variety of clients across those three different verticals, but I just wanted to take a little bit more time on this, because it's such a USP to an organization like Vicon. I'm relatively new to Vicon.
Every day, my jaw drops, and I'm amazed by the quality of the clients and the client relationships that this company has established. The customer base, as I mentioned earlier, is world-class, it's diversified, and it's international. It spans leading sports organizations, research labs, performance, visual effects, entertainment studios, and engineering companies. If we take the first column, Industry Vertical, Life Sciences, Biomechanics. When I put names like that up, most companies would be very proud, and we're very proud. As Imogen mentioned, sub-two-hour marathon with the help of Vicon Studio and Research. If those of you that are into athletics will have noticed that Nike responded with a PR blast in America, which also showed a whole load of videos of their sports performance lab with very similar cameras and very similar sensors being used in the background.
You can make your own conclusions on that. Obviously, companies like Red Bull are known for great innovation in sports and also use our technology. Not only. Let you read them, everything from the NHS, Loughborough University, Oakley, and that's just a subsection of our biomechanics and sports organizations using Vicon technology. In entertainment, many of the world's leading AAA game studios and household name film companies like DreamWorks, Disney, Sony, Electronic Arts, they've entrusted their very precious animation and content production to Vicon Systems. Again, not just them, a whole series of other game companies and film companies across the globe. From Los Angeles to London, to Japan and Korea.
Finally, in engineering, this is where some of the applications are particularly interesting. We're helping organizations like NASA design spacesuits for their athletes, okay, so they're very comfortable with human movement in space, as an interesting example. Dyson, at the other end, we're actually helping them with robotic vacuum cleaner design and tracking. In addition, we're also working or providing the technology to help companies like Meta and Google look at human factors and product design. Again, not just those companies, a whole series of other leading large multi-billion organizations. A sort of interesting fact there, we're working with a significant portion of the world's automotive companies as well, as you'll see from some of the logos there. One thing that's sort of consistent in all of this is all these organizations have exceptionally high bars for precision and reliability.
That's why they choose Vicon and keep coming back to choose Vicon. I think now I'm going to show you a short video just to show you some of those applications in use.
Precision in motion is a competitive advantage. For over 40 years, Vicon has defined it. We capture motion with uncompromising accuracy, down to fractions of a millimeter, revealing what the eye cannot see. We capture, analyze, optimize, and enable, turning movement into intelligence at scale, advancing performance, training intelligent systems with ground truth data, improving diagnosis, accelerating recovery, bringing motion to life, powering global storytelling, testing, validating, refining with absolute precision. Trusted, proven, essential. Vicon, visionary motion capture, redefining what's possible.
If we take a little look at the market opportunity, I think it's very exciting. We're at the intersection of two growth stories. The traditional optical motion capture market on the left here, where Vicon's been the gold standard for 40 years, is growing at 1.8 x by 2030. As Gary mentioned, that in itself is healthy, sustained growth in our home market, in our home patch, if you like. As Gary mentioned earlier, we can now layer on top the really compelling opportunity of Markerless. That market is growing faster. It's growing 2.6 x in 2030, faster than optical, but it also opens up customer segments that maybe optical couldn't reach or would find it hard to reach in a financially sensible way. Two examples I would just give you to make sure you've got the flavor of Markerless.
In professional sports, there are many things that you might want to measure about the movement of players in real-time activity, but you obviously can't put them in marked suits and ask them to play football or basketball or something similar. With Markerless, you obviously can. A second example is maybe in entertainment, where a film director may want to get a very quick view of a whole scene with a whole load of actors, and rather than get them in and out of marked suits, and time is money, you can use Markerless to get a very quick approximation of that scene. The director's happy, and then they can move to another part of their content production. In the entertainment industry, we're already seeing a significant uptake of interest in our Markerless system, but also what we call a hybrid offering.
These are companies that may well have an existing studio with our cameras and so on, and they're taking the Markerless solution and blending the two together. That gives us a really interesting upsell to our existing customer base, as well as a point of differentiation in talking to new customers. We're one of the very few and arguably the world's leader in offering this blended or hybrid opportunity of optical and Markerless simultaneously. Obviously I would say that, but if I just point you to a customer quote here. This is Electronic Arts, Ripple Effect, one of the leading game studios for computer games, and the technical director there has been putting Markerless and optical through its paces together, and has been finding that to be highly efficient for him and time is money for companies like that.
This is the market that we're positioning Vicon to win in, and we're already making good inroads into. We have excellent product development and some good customer and partner wins. In a general sense, what's our response to the market opportunity? Well, we're repositioning Vicon from a hardware systems company to a hybrid hardware, software, and services platform, AI enabled and built to scale. We're not abandoning our leadership in hardware. Our cameras and devices remain best in class, but that's the foundation on which we're building. We're building on top of that scalable software platform, a growing services layer, and AI capabilities that compound over time. Let me talk you through the four pillars that will describe exactly how we get there. Platform pillar one is platform, higher efficiency. We're consolidating our technology so that we can move faster and it costs less to operate.
In terms of the operational excellence, we're currently rightsizing the business for that platform model. Thirdly, we're deepening and extending our client relationships. We have an extraordinary install base and very good loyal relationships, but we're extending that to build recurring revenue. Fourthly, AI-enabled innovation is front and center of everything we're doing, back office and front office. We're applying machine learning across product and operations, and I'll talk you through that we have significant strength in-house. It's not just slides. On the platform front, today, Vicon's verticals are served by different software products. We have Shogun for entertainment, and biomechanics labs would run something called Nexus. Together, they create duplication. There are separate code bases, calibration systems, release cycles, et cetera. Our One Platform initiative eliminates that. It means we'll have one camera SDK, one data pipeline, one real-time engine underneath all the verticals.
The same core infrastructure that maybe tracks a stunt performer in Hollywood could also track a running or a gait analysis in a rehabilitation clinic. The strategic case over on the right is probably even more exciting for me. We have a lot of opportunity in very fast growth new areas, and this platform will allow us to develop the application layer even quicker and therefore be a more nimble market entry into those very fast growth and CAGRs. It also allows us to add these new verticals without proportional cost, this is how we can deliver scalable, profitable growth. On the operational excellence side, platform companies have fundamentally different cost structures to hardware companies, we're aligning ours accordingly. We're restructuring the team around platform capabilities, typically software engineering, AI, and then on the go-to-market side around customer experience rather than purely product lines.
To drive technology efficiency, we're consolidating onto one platform as a North Star, which cuts engineering overhead significantly. Fewer test environments, fewer repositories, et cetera. On the revenue architecture side, we're balancing away from lumpy hardware CapEx towards recurring software and services. This should smooth the revenue, improve both customer and investor visibility and forecasting, and a healthier business. The customer relationships. For 40 years, Vicon has grown primarily on inbound demand. Customers found us because we were the gold standard, and that heritage is a genuine asset. Around 75% of our revenue comes from the install base, and we have a variety of repeat clients, some of which I mentioned before, and, well, a lot of them, because 75% keep coming back. However, inbound is not a growth strategy in isolation.
In the last year or so, we've built and are continuing to build a much more modern go-to-market engine to run alongside that. We now have outbound prospecting and SDR capability in the U.K. and Europe, and we're now expanding after a successful trial in the U.K., that method to the U.S. We're already bearing fruit in terms of new logo wins, new customer wins, and I've mentioned a couple there. Leonardo, the defense contractor, and Hundred Star, a smaller game developer, have both come through our outbound initiatives rather than inbound. The final pillar on the right is probably the most exciting for me. Our install base, as I said, is our strongest commercial asset, and we're investing in that.
We've put together a dedicated customer experience function, some key account management and sales disciplines that Gary mentioned earlier to develop deeper, more regular relationships and cross-sell opportunities that currently are largely untapped. Again, we're seeing the fruits of that effort. With professional services support and benchmarking, lab configuration for the golf manufacturer PING. That was where they asked us to put together a series of studios and compare different hardware so they can analyze golf swings in minute detail to put into their new product development, and some other professional services support with Northrop Grumman. It's a little bit an example of where we believe we can take by listening and responding to clients' concerns, desires, and they trust us as a value provider for many years, take that further down the revenue and professional services path.
Underpinning this go-to-market change is an equally important commercial model shift. We regularly survey our customers, we talk to them. In a recent survey, I've played out the four key points they asked us for. They consistently came back saying they really want the highest accuracy systems, a seamless tech stack compatibility, CapEx budget pressures was something that they were all facing, and a responsive expert support. Our response has been clear. We believe, and they agree, that we deliver this already. We do have integration and we do have various elements, but we're increasing the integration into theirs and complementary ecosystems with our developments of APIs and MCPs in the AI world. We're putting together a series of OpEx related recurring revenue offerings. We have some already, but we're accelerating that.
The clients have been very interested in that because sometimes they're under huge budget pressure not to make a big CapEx investment in one year, and they just can't afford it, and they're looking for more regular updates and features. We put that in place. Finally, we do get very good feedback on our customer support team, who go above and beyond and actually have MSCs and PhDs in computer science and biomechanics. What we're doing is listening to what the clients have wanted and formalizing certain professional services offerings, and the clients are very happy to pay for that in certain specific instances.
The customer pull and our reaction to that has led us to a revenue model where we're moving away from the historical 90% hardware CapEx, and we're transitioning more to annual software licenses, maintenance contracts, and professional services with a resultant uplift in software services and recurring revenue. I'm sure you've sit through many investor presentations, I'm sure everyone's got an AI slide, maybe sometimes you roll your eyes and sometimes you're very interested. I can assure you this is not a slide we put together to look current. We've been building AI machine learning capability for years. We have 12 highly experienced AI engineers, machine learning engineers in-house, and we've recently supplemented that with a couple of execs with very strong AI expertise in certain areas.
Together, they're already delivering internal gains in areas such as AI sales intelligence, engineering copilots for product development, then in the slightly less exotic but very bankable back office automation. Back office wins are good. They save us money. I like that. Some of the customer facing and the product tools are really exciting. We've got some AI customer tools that are helping customers compress their post-processing from two hours to 20 minutes, and if that's rolled up, that saves customers time and money, and customers pay for that. In the key area of Markerless R&D, we have 40 years of high precision motion capture experience and data, and it's one of the richest data sets in existence.
If we can leverage that data and the close relationships to build on our platform with workflow and AI tools that customers really need, this is a moat that competitors cannot replicate overnight. What I hope I've covered off a little bit in the past 10, 15 minutes is our key pillars of our growth strategy moving forward. Products to platform, we're evolving from point solutions to scalable, many-sided platform, which means we can enter more markets at a lower marginal cost. In the operational excellence area, we're already structurally realigning for the platform model, cost efficiencies, and revenue predictability. On customer relationships, we're already converting that install base into durable, recurring revenue through customer experience and professional services in between the CapEx cycle. AI is front and center of everything.
We have the engineers, we have data, we have a roadmap, and we believe it's a genuine differentiator for us in our product and in our operations. I've mentioned down the bottom, we're executing now some of the examples. I'm happy to expand on them. This is not just a strategy. We're already on this journey and delivering. I guess as a summary, we're 42 years in, we're market leading, and yet in some ways I feel like we're just getting started. Thank you. Simon next.
Click me on, please.
There you go.
Hello. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Imogen, Gary. Afternoon, everyone. I'm Simon Gunter. I run the IVMS division of Oxford Metrics. I'd love to take you through the business itself and give you a view on where we are, what we're doing, and where we're going. Much of what I will talk about now is already in train. We're effecting our strategy as we speak. I will cover why we think we are heading into fertile territory and how we grow. I'm conscious this is the first time you've probably seen me. I thought I'd give you a very brief biography. My background, chiefly growing VC-backed technology businesses complemented by M&A and integrations in a range of sectors, including manufacturing itself, energy, IoT, telco.
Even platform builds in the fashion industry, which I must say is much more fun than the rest of it. I also act as an Advisor to companies and investment funds looking to scale hardware and software businesses on technology and organization profiles that could support growth at scale. Many years of scaling, taking technology and products to market as an agitator to the status quo, and producing notable exits in telco, energy, and IoT along the way. My research background is in Computational Fluid Dynamics, where I've solved manufacturing problems for the likes of Unilever and Corning, minimizing waste, increasing production efficiencies. In a sense, I'm coming back to my old passion, solving complex challenges in production environments using technology and my first love, mathematics. IVMS is a division formerly formed in March of this year.
It's a combination of two acquired companies, IVS and the Sempre Group, Industrial Vision and Metrology, hence the name. Both strong companies in their own right, but stronger together. Although formally brought together this year, we've been operating together over the last year or so, forming the teams, establishing our approaches and systems, especially our increased outbound sales activity, with a growing team of around 10. We have three offices in the U.K. and Ireland. Our principal partners are in Germany, U.S., France, and in the U.K., and our deployments are worldwide. What do we do? We deliver vision systems and precision measurement equipment to meet stringent requirements for quality and compliance, plus yield and efficiency enhancements in manufacturing environments. We deliver precision at scale, efficiency, and high-frequency throughput.
We occupy the space where vision meets metrology, where quality needs to be assured, and where the challenges of both precision and speed need to be met. We operate in booming markets, the growth driven by real trends in production, propelling manufacturing forward and carrying us through with it. Digital transformation is happening, and it's not just in the latest Industry 4.0 buzzword fashion, but in real applications of technology to address real areas of priority in such businesses. Businesses where compliance is not an option. We work with blue-chip customers and established partners, some of which are listed on this chart, providing solutions using the right technologies for the right application.
By revenue, 75% of our business comes from follow-on orders from this established base, and this gives us the opportunity to underpin our growth in our existing space and also leaves significant room for growth above and beyond. We predominantly operate in sectors with their own challenges in compliance, precision, and the need to be more efficient in their production. I've highlighted them here on the right-hand side. For example, in medical, we work on high-throughput lines relating to items like contact lenses or surgical blades and the production of artificial joints. In automotive, we work with companies in the manufacture of motor cars and are experiencing the growing requirement for technical solutions regarding EV battery cell performance. We also work with Formula One companies to enable increased performance where microns of precision can add significant performance benefits. You'll see real-world applications across these in a moment.
We are a trusted partner. We have built a reputation for our technical expertise, reliability, attention to detail, and understanding of our customers' needs. Many of our customer relationships have been in place for about 20 years, and we cherish that history. It's always good to hear kind words, some of which are shown here on the screen, we do not take that for granted. We work hard to ensure that we maintain our levels of service and deliver to our customers' needs. This also holds true for our equipment partners. We have an open dialogue with the OEM companies that supply through us into the U.K. and Irish markets, we value their insights, support, flexibility, and willingness to go the extra mile to satisfy our customers. Let's show you what we do in practice.
In manufacturing, quality is everything, requiring both precision when it matters and assurance at scale. Today, it is an expectation. IVMS transforms imaging and measurement into trusted intelligence, detecting defects before they become costly. We capture, we inspect, we analyze, we assure. Computer vision and precision metrology data to control quality, to sort, to inspect, to guide, whether that's offline, in-line, or in real-time. Reduce waste, improve yield, right first time, every time. From submicron level accuracy to production line assurance where there can be no margin for error. This is vision and metrology intelligence. This is quality you can trust. Reliable, repeatable, proven. IVMS, where quality is engineered and production is assured.
You'll have seen there some of the systems and technologies in action in real-world environments. You've seen the results of how we combine machine vision and metrology measurement with software and AI algorithms to serve specific applications in our sectors. Today, our business consists of two core elements and an evolving third. The first element on the left here is our own bespoke and repeat projects for high-frequency specialist automation. By high frequency, we mean up to around 180 parts being inspected per minute on production lines. This is not an aim, this is real, this is right now, and we seek to capitalize on it further.
The pictures shown here are of real systems and real deployments across the sectors I spoke of a moment ago, and cover a range of image capture using robot-mounted cameras and light sources, designed cartridges for medical components for inspection, to automated feed systems at the bottom on the left there. The second element I show on the right, these are the equipment we provide with our OEM partners, some of those named on the right-hand side. These address precision measurement in quality and maintenance departments, but more commonly now in shop floor production environments.
These technologies represent the evolution of metrology beyond traditional tactile coordinate measuring machines, CMMs, the workhorses of precision metrology, into more mobile and even handheld systems that bring measurement closer to production, moving away from fixed probing and into more dynamic tactile and optical systems that capture relevant data at the appropriate level of accuracy and speed. The market is changing. We value our partnerships, and we are wedded to the growth of our volumes and returns, and to our partners, too. The third element is one that having a close, collaborative, open, and adoptive approach allows for. Integrations. Partnerships and openness are a fundamental attitude and approach that this business takes. Best-of-breed technology, adoption of those elements that can enhance the solutions we provide to our customers. This requires close collaboration, and we are here for it. Finally, this is not just about selling individual tools.
The bigger strategic point is building a platform for technology leadership. When you combine connected hybrid sensing equipment with AI software and automation, you create something more powerful than a standalone measurement product. You create a system that can sit at the heart of a customer's processes and workflows, generate insights continuously, and play a bigger role in how quality is managed across production. The markets we operate in are significant and growing at a rate. The global machine vision market is set to double over the next five years with a compound growth rate of 13%. Metrology shows a similar trend at 6%. The rate is driven by the transformation of manufacturing and the adoption of technology, the themes I referred to earlier. These themes are echoed in the commentary across the industry. Quality control is becoming automated, eliminating human errors, and ensuring consistent and compliant product quality.
Measurement is becoming a real-time capability, embedded into production, making quality a built-in part of manufacturing operations, not just a final checkpoint. Metrology is shifting from an end-of-line inspection element to a production integrated control function. IVMS is well-placed to capture this structural growth in production-led inspection, automation, and precise precision quality assurance. The business is positioned to address the expanding demand taking place in our industry. As manufacturers automate more of their operations, they need better ways to inspect, measure, and control quality in real time on the lines themselves. Our customers' products are becoming more complex. Specifications are becoming tighter. Customers are also less able to tolerate inconsistency or error. Second, there's a strong production margin-led impact story at play. If real-time measurement takes place earlier in the production flow, defects are measured at source, not after the fact. Actions can be taken more immediately.
As a result, the technology is helping prevent waste, improve yield, and keep throughput moving efficiently. This all has real value for our customers, and it also supports a more compelling economic decision when considering the ROI of automated inspection. These aspects come together in the combination of precision and frequency towards automating quality to be a 100% in-line process factor, providing continuous assurance. Of course, such dynamics in such growth markets are attractive not just to us, there are very large players out there too. There is an element, of course, of all boats rise as we all engage in upgrading manufacturing operations. Some players contribute with hardware and sensors. Some play parts of the production line where we don't play. We believe that we have a niche in the combination of technologies we deploy and in the way we solve specific operational needs.
We feel these dynamics play directly into IVMS's placement in these markets. It allows us to play to our strengths. Credibility, 25 years of proven deployments of value engineering. Integration, taking best-in-class components to build appropriate solutions, a multi-sensor approach, rather than trying to make the problem fit the solution in inverted commas. Specialism. We're not a one-size-fits-all solution, but we're not a piecemeal approach either. We cater to specific yet widespread system needs. We sit in a market where adoption is increasing, the economics are attractive, demand drivers are strengthening, and the technology can evolve into the next area of quality leadership. Let's move a little deeper into the business. Let's begin by showing here our main revenue streams and our go-to-market approaches. Imogen mentioned projects to products at the beginning of this session, and I want to orient to that now.
You can see its highlight at the top of this slide. At the heart of our business has been the two aspects in the center of the chart. Number one, our bespoke projects. These are customer builds to satisfy a real need. Coming from inbound inquiries or through our sales activities, this is our engine room, the basis for our current products and the generator of future products. This is where our engineers excel and solve complex challenges, giving rise to fulfillment and repeat business. We have proven this evolution where bespoke projects become repeatable products. This gives us the confidence that we can go further and grow the business with this approach and drive further scale to the top of this chart. Projects to products, direct or through specialist system integrators as a part of a specified rollout program.
Number two, our partner equipment sales are also core to our offer. The right solution and technology for the right application. This continues to be our focus of our direct sales activity and is very much part of our growth, allowing us to satisfy more broadly our client needs, and it gives us cross-sell and upsell opportunities across our accounts. We also work closely with our partners to increase our range of offer and accelerate its development through integrations. Combining our technologies into a system, this enables us to experience the growth together, a virtuous circle with our partners. In the nature of those integrations, we continuously scan the market for M&A opportunities that can give us privileged access to knowhow, IP, and technology that can enhance us. Our regular scan of the market brings about 30 companies into view.
We typically narrow those down to four or five for analysis, but we will be patient for the right opportunity on the right terms. Everything is underpinned by service, from installation, calibration, all the way to term support contracts that are in place today. We strive for a deeper connection with our customers. Our broad technology span allows us to navigate and guide our customers on what to expect as their needs evolve. We have positioned ourselves to proactively plan deployments with our customers rather than reactively respond to the future needs and issues and problems. We stay out of the data sheet game, and we avoid the value-damaging simplicity of a price contest. You can also see here on the right-hand side, which Andrew made reference to a little bit earlier, the order to revenue cycles that we have in the business.
As you might expect, complex bespoke projects carry the longest period between an order and the delivery of the end product, up to 12 months. However, we should note that we are able to recognize revenue during that period. All other revenue streams are dependent on delivery, and this delivery has a range in itself. Service revenue is bookable upon completion of works, and equipment delivery can range from one to six months, dependent on the specification and component lead times of the OEMs. We constantly assess our capital requirements and take decisions on working capital investment to reduce lead times if we have a high degree of certainty of order closing. It's the repeats that show the most meaningful change. As we deploy projects to products, those repeat deliveries move from a 12-month horizon to more like two to four.
Our projects to products strategy drives our multi-factor growth. It underpins four areas: scale, profitability, and revenue visibility. Our growth in repeats, allied to outbound sales efforts, pushes us forward on a build one, sell many approach. The more we deploy repeat products and leverage delivered projects, the faster we accelerate. Revenue per head grows and outstrips the head count additions we make as we scale. More repeats means a greater move to scale in operations and delivery. Our cost per head reduces as we take on more heads to cover logistics at a faster rate than we take on engineers to develop tomorrow's products. Our projects and products deliver our highest gross margin. As this volume increases, we receive a higher margin contribution to our mix, achieving margin expansion as a result.
Repeat orders for these now products do not carry the costs of engineering, development, and design that were fully costed into the initial project. These liberated costs therefore flow straight to the bottom line, thus lifting EBIT. Finally, we see a reduction in the order to revenue cycle. Products carry two to four month order to revenue timeframe rather than 12 months. This gives us greater visibility, proximity, and predictability of our revenues, making forecasting and delivering numbers more controllable. This is not just a push dynamic. There's an imperative for the market to pull also. We see the natural evolution that we mark from bottom to the top in this slide, from a specialized solution to an integral part of operations across sectors. This is already happening.
For the last two to three years, we have followed this trajectory and expanded on it in the broad contact lens manufacturing market, for example. We have embarked on a similar path with another two medical customers, we're moving through a second stage in automotive as we speak. We want to embrace this opportunity and take it to scale. The path, well, we initially deploy, that needs a three-month period in situ to ensure continuous running. Once proven, as we have experienced, the customer looks to systematically upgrade their operations across their existing site with repeat orders. Thereafter, we become specified in for further deployments across their estate of operations and any increase in capacity to new lines or new sites that the customers make. We become universally specified and baked in as part of their operations.
We are therefore building our moat through our structured approach as we move along this arrow, making us a key element to our customers' performant business. The final aspect is to broaden the system solution to other customers who have similar needs in the similar sectors. That's a real-world description of how projects to products push is being met by market pull, and an opportunity to do this at scale across multiple systems and sectors. In summary, I'd like to leave you with some key takeaways. Whilst we talk about strategies, know that we are executing on them now. We are a combined division, reorganized, refreshed, capitalizing on our opportunities hand in hand with our partners. We operate in significant growth markets, helping our customers meet the challenges in progressive manufacturing environments.
Our clarity of approach is landing well with partners and customers alike, we are seeing good cut-through. We are well positioned to capture the market. We have specialist knowledge, experience, and a breadth of technology based on best-of-breed hardware, software, and AI algorithms. We have some existing projects at completion, and we've already identified the repeats for. Our projects to product strategy. It's fundamental. It's the fulcrum of our nonlinear growth and profitability trajectory, making revenue and delivery more predictable and visible. We are seeing proven deployments already in scale rollout with more planned. These are exciting times. I'd be very happy if you came along with us for the ride. Thank you for listening. That's my full stop. I'll hand you back to Imogen.
Thank you, Simon. You've heard from Andrew and Simon around the structural shifts that are reshaping our customers' worlds. Automation being adopted across more and more of what they do, and with it comes rising demand for precise, reliable measurement of both people and objects. These are not cyclical swings. They are structural market changes that play directly to what we are best at, and we meet them with our two core capabilities. In motion capture, the growth comes twofold. The first is from the optical motion capture market, which shows that 1.8 x growth profile to 2030. That's a good market, and it's one we lead. The breakout market sits right alongside it. Markerless tracking is smaller today than optical but has a 2.6 x growth profile. A nice, fast-growing adjacent market where we have the technology to compete.
We do not have to choose between optical and Markerless. That is why our strategy is hybrid. Our optical leadership and install base are an advantage, and hybrid is a very elegant route for those customers to adopt Markerless alongside what they already trust. We meet the Markerless market from a position of strength rather than defending a single technology. The growth in Markerless expands our addressable market. We intend to capture it, not be displaced by it. The second is in vision metrology, and these are large and growing markets. Global machine vision is set to roughly double by 2030, with that 13% compound growth rate, and industrial metrology grows more steadily but offer substantial base with 6% compound growth.
The important point to remember is the transformation happening inside both of these markets with metrology used to be this simple quality checkpoint at the end of the line. That's changing. It's becoming that real-time capability and with data flowing straight to engineers and automated systems. That's your shift in vision metrology, technology moving into the heart of manufacturing where our capability is strongest. For decades, Oxford Metrics has built technology embedded in how our customers work, and once our technology is in a workflow, it isn't easily replaced. That install base is our foundation. What changes here is how each business turns that strength into higher quality, more predictable revenue, and each does it in its own way. As you have already heard from Andrew in Vicon, that means moving towards a platform business.
Historically, we capture the value we create once at the point of sale. The strategy moving forward is that Vicon will monetize this differently by layering recurring revenue on top of our hardware we already sell, turning the intelligence in our algorithms, our data, and our models into an ongoing service. The capital sale continues, the recurring layer sits on top, and every system we place becomes the start of a deeper customer relationship rather than just the one-off sale. As Simon has covered in IVMS, moving from projects to products, moving more of our revenue away from that bespoke one-off project, which has to be custom engineered and won individually every time with that less predictable path from order to revenue. By turning those into those standardized products we can sell again and again, that shortens that cycle, makes it more predictable.
It's a pipeline of products rather than a sequence of one-off engagements we have to win and build from scratch. Two divisions, two different moves, one destination with execution already underway. One adds a new stream that recurs, the other shortens and steadies the revenue cycle we book. Together, they reshape the business over the medium term. Higher quality growth, a materially larger share of revenue that is recurring and predictable, stronger margins, and strong cash generation. Those earnings that are not just larger but more visible, and we capture this on top of the value we book today, not instead of it. This is the strategy, and the work to execute is already underway, as Andrew and Simon have explained. Let's, before I hand over to Zoe, show how this comes together over the medium term because this sequencing matters.
Right now we're in phase I, 2024 and this is where we are shaping our organizational structures and cost base to execute effectively on the strategies. With the right resources, the right structures, and cost base in place, we're positioning these businesses to execute on platform in Vicon and productization in IVMS. The proof points this year are more structural. The combined IVMS management team in place, the further restructuring cost program delivering, and the first standardized products and recurring propositions moving into the market. Phase II is where that revenue quality and increasing predictability starts to show in Vicon. Recurring revenue builds on top of, not instead of, our continued capital sales. Repeat business rises in IVMS as more bespoke projects become products sold on repeat. That order-to-revenue average cycle starts to shorten, and that revenue timing becomes more predictable.
The signals here will be that shifting revenue mix and improving operating margins. As we move forward from there, recurring revenue becomes a reported predictable line in its own right. Productized IVMS delivers shorter predictable cycles, but at volume, and our differentiated technology drives that growth. Because the cost base is being reset in 2026, all that incremental revenue and product revenue and recurring just drops straight down to operating margin and cash. What we're saying is it's not a single leap, because each phase earns the next, with the structural proof points being put in place this year, and the outcome being a higher quality, more predictable and more visible business. I'd now like to hand over to Zoe, who will take you through our financial and capital allocation strategies. Zoe?
Thank you, Imogen. Good afternoon, everybody. Over the next few minutes, I'll set out the financial framework behind the medium-term ambitions that you've heard about today, the targets, the drivers, the shape of the financial journey, and how we intend to allocate that capital. It's an ambitious plan, but there is building blocks behind the numbers. First, let me briefly cover where we are today. On screen are the first six months of trading of our current financial year 2024. Please remember, this is an extended financial year, running 15 months to the 31 of December 2024. I'll cover only the highlights, as a full interim results presentation is available online. The first six months have been a period of progress, execution and optimization. Revenue and profitability improving year-on-year.
Strong shareholder returns maintained, meaningful steps taken to sharpen the operational base of the business. We deliver an annualized savings of approximately GBP 800,000 from rightsizing the office space. Order intake was GBP 18 million, down 21% on prior period, reflecting timing of certain vision metrology customer projects, which we now expect late in financial 2024. Revenue improved to GBP 20.7 million, a 3% increase on prior year period. A solid step forward, particularly given those timing headwinds in vision metrology. Gross profit was 66%, up half a point on prior year, reflecting that continued margin quality of our businesses. Adjusted EBIT improved by 50% to negative GBP 200,000, benefiting from overhead optimization, as well as that increase in sales and that improved margin. Adjusted earnings per share also improved, turning positive at GBP 0.38, reflecting the improvement in our profit after tax and the impact of the share buyback.
On the balance sheet, we remain in a strong position with cash fixed term deposits just under GBP 32 million, and that is after returning GBP 5 million to shareholders through our dividend and buybacks. It's a good basis for the rest of the year and the start of executing of our strategy. Moving to our medium-term ambitions, recapping on the targets that Imogen shared earlier. Starting from our financial year 2023, revenues of GBP 44.8 million, we intend to double revenue, roughly GBP 90 million, through both organic growth and through M&A. We will improve revenue quality, taking recurring revenues to approximately 25% of the total. This has also assumed some of our M&A will also be recurring. We intend to take group EBIT margin to mid-teens. Today, we're at GBP 2.2 million, and that's just less than 5%.
As you've heard from Simon, Andrew and Imogen, this isn't just a revenue growth strategy, it's also about improved margins. We're pursuing quality revenue to make our financials more reliable and improving our cost base to scale profitability, building a scalable business. Product-led platform with predictable high-quality revenue. We're already in execution mode. How do we get there? As you've heard from the divisional presentations, there are several drivers. First, platform and product-led growth. In vision metrology, we're shifting from projects to products, cutting the order-to-revenue cycle from six to 12 months to two to four months, turning one-off projects into repeatable product revenue. It's the single biggest lever on revenue quality and growth, and it improves profitability non-linearly. In motion capture, we're moving to a platform, growing annual recurring revenues, commercializing and expanding our services and support. Second, strengthen the core and execution.
We've restructured the divisions to drive non-linear revenue that grows faster than the cost base. We've delivered annualized savings of about GBP 800,000 so far, with a GBP 1 million-GBP 1.6 million identified to deliver from 2027. That could be up to GBP 2 million of overhead reduction over the next two years or so. We're also expecting probably to do a little bit more. The benefit shows directly in that improved EBIT. Third, market expansion. Our Markerless technology widens the addressable market, and we move into adjacent markets, cross-sell, and upsell across the existing base. More market and more each customer. Finally, complementary M&A that align with our midterm ambitions, that add technology, IP, or market access. Buy and build done with discipline. This accelerates the plan. It doesn't replace the organic engine. Four drivers delivering more revenue, better quality, and higher margin.
Our revenue mix changes as we move forward, improving quality. In motion capture, the shift is from that hardware to software services and support, recurring with higher margin revenue. In vision metrology, it's projects to products. With close partner collaboration and today's bespoke projects becoming tomorrow's products. We also layer in organic growth through our M&A, which is estimated to be approximately 15%-20% of the total revenues. As the mix improves and we layer in cost efficiencies, the EBIT improves. The shift is already in progress. This is the operational picture. Revenue grows as we layer in recurring revenues, extend markets, partner collaborations, M&A, and the projects to product strategy. Build one, sell many. As revenue grows, overheads grow more slowly. The savings we make on the operational costs have a compounding impact on the profitability. We are building a business that is fit to scale.
Revenue climbs and EBIT climbs faster. The overheads as a percentage of the revenue come down. As our medium -term ambitions, we expect overheads to reduce to below 50% of the revenue. They currently today sit approximately 65%. That is the operational leverage in the business. It's the mechanism that takes us from that sub 5% margin today to mid-teens. This slide brings together the margin story and shows how we get from where we are today to that mid-teens percentage. We start with the FY 2023 adjusted EBIT. That's just under that 5%. The first step is the revenue quality. As recurring revenue repeats, products become a large share of the mix and gross margins improves. The second step is the cost optimization work, the GBP 1 million-GBP 1.6 million of efficiencies that have that compounding impact.
The largest step is that operating leverage as the revenue grows towards double its current level, overheads grow more slowly, taking our operating cost to sub 50% of the revenue. Put together, that bridges us from sub 5% today to that mid-teens. Better quality revenue, a leaner cost base, and operating leverage as we scale. Before we go into the capital allocation strategy, just a quick look at our historical returns on investments. Over the past five years, we have put our capital, we have put it in three areas. We've returned over GBP 25 million to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. Nearly half of this was actually returned in the last financial year.
That's a meaningful number, and it reflects the confidence we've had in the businesses and the ability to generate the consistent free cash flow, and importantly, the strong balance sheet we have. At the same time, we've invested GBP 11.5 million in M&A net of the cash acquired in disciplined bolt-on acquisitions and a further GBP 14 million in R&D and product development. For every GBP returned to shareholders, we've invested roughly the same amount back into building the businesses, neither starving the business to fund distribution nor hoarding capital of late without returning any of it. It is, however, time to change the balance as we see improved opportunity with greater returns for the cash held on the balance sheet and cash generated. How will it change? It will operate a clear rank hierarchy of deploying capital.
We will consider the highest returns as priorities, and we have a defined order of priority. The capital flows down that hierarchy, once higher priority uses are fully funded. The objective is simple. Invest in growth opportunities that deliver the highest strategic aligned returns while keeping the flexibility to act on strategic acquisitions and a strong balance sheet. We're shifting from a dividend-led model to a reinvestment-led one because the returns on reinvestment we see are stronger. This underpins our medium-term ambitions. Shareholders will still receive a return. It will be proportionate to our profit. Aligning capital allocation to our medium-term ambition while maintaining a sustainable investor returns. How does it work? First, reinvestment in the business growth. This is our primary use of our capital. Product, people, systems, the compounding investments that build long-term value. Maintain balance sheet strength is our second. We keep a liquidity buffer.
The balance sheet needs to be strong enough that we can move quickly when the right opportunity arrives, whether it's M&A or internal investment for growth, or enough to weather a difficult period. Third, selective and disciplined M&A. Acquisitions that accelerate growth or add capability. Targeted additions that fit our model, align to our strategy. Fourth, return surplus capital. Dividends paid as a percentage of free cash flow and buybacks when the board considers it appropriate. We will adhere to guardrails and metrics. We will stay debt-free. We will ensure there is sufficient cash on the balance sheet for working capital and flexibility. We will continue in our investment in our R&D between 5% and 10%. In FY 2025, this was 7%. We have roughly allocated GBP 20 million to our M&A, funded from the balance sheet. We have and will continue to be patient about deploying this.
Shareholder returns and dividends and buybacks come out of the free cash flow. What we won't do also matters. We won't overpay for acquisitions. If the price doesn't stack up, we will walk away, and we will not hold excess cash on the balance sheet without a purpose. That's the hierarchy. Reinvest first, once priorities one to three are satisfied, then the surplus cash is returned to shareholders. M&A is a large part of our medium-term ambitions. Let me recap. We have spent GBP 10.2 million net of cash acquired on Sempre and IVMS and Amber Optics, and we expect payback within three to five years of purchase. We are actively looking across both divisions, vision metrology and motion capture, and the target profile is unchanged. We're looking for IP-rich businesses that bring technology, good people, or new markets with proven market acceptance of their technology.
Clear commercial and technical synergies enable management teams who share our culture and values. They, of course, need to be earnings accretive. Over the past years, we have paid between four and 10 times EBIT and will continue with those metrics, looking to also hit our return on investment targets of three to five years. We are looking predominantly on bolt-ons, but also will consider opportunistic acquisitions which could enhance overall output and are aligned with our group's medium-term ambitions. Right acquisition, right place, right price, right reasons. If the valuation doesn't work, we pass. To sum up the capital allocation, rank priority, clear guardrails, and reinvestment first. We have a good track record of putting capital work sensibly, and we're not changing the underlying discipline, just rebalancing the mix for now towards the uses that generate the highest returns and align to our strategy.
My last slide, to pull the medium-term ambitions together from a financial view. Our medium-term ambition is to double that revenue, improve revenue quality, targeting recurring revenues at approximately 25%, and scaling the business and delivering mid-teen EBIT margin. The direction of travel is straightforward. Concentrate on the markets where our technology is most differentiated, improve the quality of our revenue, and allocate capital with discipline, which should translate into a business with a stronger strategic relevance, better growth visibility, and a more attractive financial profile over time. A deliberate shift towards higher quality, more predictable revenue with a cost-based scaling more slowly than the top line. What we've set out today is a clearer vision, a more focused strategy, aligning the business in areas where the best long-term returns. It's an ambitious plan. It's also a clear one, with clear building blocks behind the numbers.
Thank you. I'll now hand back to Imogen to close.
Thank you, Zoe. Okay, just land on the final slide. You've got these as your takeaways as we move to Q&A. Those two divisional strategies, all the Ps, products to platform, projects to product. Should be able to remember that, hopefully. That destination of that higher quality, more predictable business with those clear plans to get there, and just a restatement of those targets on the bottom. Thank you very much for your attention this afternoon, and we will now take questions.
Please come in.
Yes. Can the presenters please come to the front like at school?
Sure.
Ian.
Right. Historically, you've been quite specific about what you've been developing, because you've been talking about particular products. Is there anything particular in the way of technologies or products that you feel you're missing now and that you're going to be investing in organically to sort of deliver over the next two, three, four years?
I think if we talk on the Vicon side, we're very clear that the Markerless opportunity is the right place to invest, potentially both organically, as we have done historically, but potentially inorganically as well. I think I'd leave Simon to maybe talk a little bit more about on the IVMS side, where we would be looking on that front.
Yes, we're building and we're combining best-of-breed technologies. We're always looking for the gaps in those technologies as we go forward. Principally looking at vision technologies and how that develops, and whether we build capability or whether we accelerate ourselves and buy capability. Also aspects of the combination of, for example, robotics, with taking technology from the tabletop into an arm and into production environments. We do have some roots for that. We'll probably do that in partnership. As that grows and grows, we'll probably keep looking in that area to look at our developments.
Right. Thanks.
Just to add, the other area that's really exciting for us is the humanoid robotics. We're already delivering on that with standard products, but we're learning there's a couple of specificities-
Well said
in the industry, which is very exciting because I think we have the elements to tweak our offerings to make that very relevant for the humanoid robotics market.
Quick question.
Simon? Simon?
Yes, Philip. Hi, sorry. Can you give us an example of the products that you are moving to, what sort of products, and how that affects the margins? From my understanding, you're going to get better margins out of the products, but what sort of products are they? Are they going to be multiple use, build once, sell many? Is that like a software thing? How does that work?
Yeah. Typically, over the company's history, it's taken projects on that solve a very specific need, and that usually plays into a space of automation and improvement of efficiencies and yield in a production environment. We take those on at a quite healthy margin, fully costed in that production environment. That's where the margin sits. As we then move to the next implementation and the next implementation, all those costs of development then go straight to the bottom line, because you're selling on and on. What we've done is to do that with an existing customer, and then now into about three customers now who are placing forward orders for the next example, for the next line, or whichever is appropriate to their environment.
Could be in production itself, could be in automation of some of the training environments that they need, and some of the test environments that they need. As that grows, we then harvest and reap the rewards for doing the initial project. What we do is to say, "These can't be the only customers in this area that has a similar need," and we now systematically are going out into the sector to look for broader applications. What we're finding in some of our examples, when we're at final acceptance test in our site, we're bringing in other customers to show, where we can, of course, because some of this is under wraps. Bringing other customers to show and say, "Our estimate is, do you have a similar need?" We're finding that there is a similar need.
Maybe slight modifications from the way things are fed into the lines, but not too different from a customization perspective. That's the way we want to build up, and then we want to build out.
These, when you're selling on, are these competitors to the original, or is it the same customer?
Not necessarily. Not necessarily. You can move from, say in a medical space, you can move from a hospital environment. You can move into an alternate environment that's looking other aspects for contamination of vials and things. Different environments, different need, but a system that serves the same kind of purpose.
Yeah. Just about customization perspective as well, maybe cover that.
Yeah. That customization, by the way, it usually feeds, and we're finding that it shouldn't be any more than like 20% of customization.
Yeah
Off the basis of a sound project build.
Thank you.
Okay.
Trying to check, when you talked about the growth you've got in the addressable markets, roughly how much of that, especially in Vicon, do you think could come from your existing customers, versus how much do you think is going to come from new customers with new applications? Related to that, I think for both divisions, you talked about 75% of revenue from your existing customer base. Where do you want that number to get to over the next three to five years?
I think the first point is, we are genuinely looking to expand our revenue per customer from the existing customer base, and we can really see a path to that, and it's already happening. That would indicate that bit would grow. At the same time, we're also getting a lot of demand for use of the technology in new markets. Some of those new markets are small, but very fast-growing. We keep talking about humanoid robotics, but it's actually large and very fast-growing. A lot of the ergonomics and human factors design work is, again, equally large. I'm not sure about the CAGR on that. Then there are weird and wacky things like we supply technology to VTubers, which is influencers creating avatars. Very big in Japan and Korea, but actually we have clients in Paris and other places.
We're actually getting growth on each side, which means that, in total, I'm not absolutely sure where we end up as a percentage of revenue from existing customers, because we're actually growing both at the same time.
Would you like me to cover that from the 75% angle? From my perspective, 75%, good place to be because it allows us to harvest existing customers and make sure we fulfill their needs, and have a bit of flexibility now that we're bringing other technologies into play. I wouldn't want to top that out anymore, because when we're talking there about moving a project into an environment and then broadening the appeal to others in the area, I need a bit of room in that to add new customers to avail themselves of the project. The 75%-80%, good, solid. The absolute value of that needs to grow, but I do need some space to replicate the model of project or product across industry, across sectors.
Hi. Can I ask, I think, three questions? On IP, how much IP could you share between the two businesses? You clearly talk about vision at the core. Accuracy is very important. As an outsider looking in, is there any sort of synergy between the talent required to do Vicon's products and counting and measuring things at high speed in factories? I just wonder if there's anything you could do across.
It's not counting, Harvey.
Counting. I like counting.
It's inspecting.
I like counting.
I think, the obvious place is when you're looking at machine learning, because both divisions use machine learning, albeit slightly different ways. Over in IVMS, it's more pattern recognition, image recognition, whereas on the Vicon side, it's actually movement recognition. With all due respect, cameras and hardware and automation is one thing, but where is the actual value add and where the IP is going, the specialism, is in what you do with it and how quickly you can assess and how high quality your AI algorithms are. I think that is the best use of synergy at the R&D level. Everything else is kind of standard best practice that we do.
Yeah
These two guys have got a place to play.
I mean, I'd agree. We've just getting started on synergy. We're talking about, you saw the automotive client base that we've got in Vicon. Simon also has automotive relationships, and whereas ours are about the design, the, what do they call it, in and out, ingress-
Ingress, egress
From the cars and the movement within the car. Simon's are more about the manufacturing thing. We can see a similar take-up and synergy from some of the automotive manufacturers. We're talking about that already as an example that maybe as we develop that further, there are some synergies and IP together.
Yeah. There's also opportunities where we can potentially sell IVMS systems alongside Vicon. There is actually an active opportunity exploring around that in aerospace.
Yep.
Okay. Just a question on your midterm numbers. I mean, midterm is a broad church. If we take the view that five years is midterm, and we look at your market forecast, Vicon should pretty much double over that five-year period if it moves in line with the market. I mean, slightly under at 13%. If it was 14, that would double. Rule of 72 is always quite useful. I.e., you're not suggesting much market share growth in that. Be interesting comments on that. Then you obviously add some GBP 15-ish million, would be my math, on in terms of acquisition, you hit that number relatively. I mean, it looks conservative to me, is my view. Then more detail for Zoe.
If I add GBP 45 million of revenue at 65%, that's GBP 30 million of incremental gross profit. Your slide seems to suggest you're going to add GBP 10 million to OpEx. That would mean that margins start with a two, not a one. Some comments on that, thanks.
They are our midterm ambitions. I think we've been, as I said in my presentation, said building blocks behind the numbers. We probably all think there's more to absolutely go at, particularly on that operational leverage. Harvey, give us some wiggle room, please. 15% margins underneath it is where this group has been before. That's one of the intentions here, is getting it back to where it's been before. Yes, if there's some upside, then that will be good news all around.
That's great. Thank you very much indeed. Maybe Imogen and the rest of the team, if I may just ask a couple of questions as we're wrapping up for time, from those online. The first one is, how much of Vicon's Markerless system is third-party IP? Are there competitors that embed the same technology in their solutions?
Sorry, what was the second question?
Are there competitors that embed the same technology in their solutions?
When we kicked off the Markerless development quite a few years ago, there were some public data sets that they used as a baseline for the technology, that's a really standard thing in the industry. What we've done ever since is supplemented that with our own data sets and IP. We have a studio in the office where we're constantly recording and adding to that in our movement domain, also with other expertise from our optical systems. We're now at the position where it's nearly all exclusive Vicon IP, our roadmap is to have 100% IP in the Markerless system in a relatively short period of time. The second question was, do competitors-
Embed the same technology-
Same thing
In their solutions?
Embed. Well, a lot of competitors, by definition, were started out in the same place. I would be very surprised if they've moved as fast as we have in terms of developing and turning that into their own IP, because that's the challenge for them coming new to the industry. I actually don't know the answer in specific cases of other competitors to be honest.
That's okay.
I think most people will start with that open source data, because that's how you do. Everybody does, and then it's how you then iterate on that and add your own proprietary data, and how you move away from that initial research phase. I would probably guess, best guess would be most people start in the same place, and then it's how you
Sure
You progress from there, and how you take it in your own direction to your own strengths.
Thank you. A whole bunch of other questions, but I think you've touched on a lot of them through the Q&A in the room. Perhaps one on market share, how has your market share in motion capture changed over the last couple of years?
Okay. If we're going to take an optical motion capture only, SAM, not TAM, and then we would basically look around the market at where all the other competitors land in terms of their revenues, I'd say we're probably about 33% market share.
That's great. Thank you very much, and thank you to everybody for your engagement online. Imogen, that concludes the questions-
Okay
online. Perhaps as we come up to the second hour, we could ask you for a couple of closing comments before, I guess, you-
Sure.
Okay.
Well, we want to thank everybody who's joined us today in the room and online, and if we can get to some of the online questions afterwards and respond to them, we will do. Thanks once again for listening to us today, and enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.