Welcome to the Pebble Group Interim Results webinar. All attendees are in listen-only mode, and questions will be answered at the end of the presentation, although you can type in your questions using the Q&A button at any point. This webinar is being recorded. I will now hand over to Christopher Lee, CEO, and Claire Thomson, CFO. Chris, over to you.
Thank you, Tamsin. Hopefully you can all see and hear us okay, and welcome to Pebble Group's half-year 2022 results. For those who've dialed into this call before, we'll give you a headlines of the group numbers, then we'll dive into our individual businesses, and happy to take any questions at the end. My name's Chris. I'm the chief exec, been part of the business and the group and what it's evolved into for the last 22 years, and hugely supported by Claire, who's our CFO, and we've been together running the business for about 15 years or so.
Im going to talk about the industry to start with and the industry we operate in and then from there, go through our numbers and the individual businesses themselves. The promotional products industry is much larger than a lot of people might think. It's around about a GBP 50 billion industry overall. The reason why it's so large is all businesses, all sizes, sectors and geographies really, are proud of who they are and really enjoy using products to make an emotional engagement with their stakeholders. That might be their employees, their customers for general marketing purposes. Again, any size, any type of business really enjoy putting their brand out there to engage and make an emotional connection with their stakeholders.
that $50 billion, we estimate around half of that industry is in North America. The way the industry is built up is, we have the brands who create that demand, and then behind that, I'd just like to talk you through a little bit of the supply chain. We have our suppliers. So suppliers are often product focused, so it might be drinkware, writing instruments, clothing, but the actual brand wants all of those items and, with the suppliers being specialists, it creates a need for this group in the middle of distributors. That's really how our industry's operated for many, many years. We think a little bit that's changing, though.
The more technology comes into play, it's really helping the smooth and efficient flow of orders between suppliers, distributors and the end user, and we feel that's really changing quite quickly at the moment. Then secondary to that, what else is coming into the change is actually talking about sustainability and ESG. There's been a couple of, I think, false starts regarding sustainability in our industry where it's become important and something else has happened and it's gone backwards again. But I think that's really changed over the last two years.
I think sustainability and ESG is really here to stay and the people and the customers and our brands are really demanding an understanding of where the product comes from, whose hands it's made in, et cetera. So that move of technology and that move around sustainability is really what's changed over the last year or so. Where do our businesses fit in? Well, Brand Addition is a large distributor. Brand Addition focuses on supplying product to some of the best-known brands in the world, and that's under contract and internationally. Quite complex services that Brand Addition's doing for its customers and supporting them in their marketing needs. Then we have Facilisgroup.
Facilisgroup is a technology business and actually pushes its technology across all three of those points of the supply chain. In bringing into distributors order workflow that supports distributors and the smooth and efficient running of their businesses between the suppliers and their customers. Those two points at which Brand Addition operates in the promotional products industry. They're quite different businesses, but very common in terms of the industry they work in. The working capital there is flowing between suppliers and distributors, and distributors and end users. Brand Addition has working capital, and Facilisgroup really doesn't, and Claire Thomson will go into a little bit of that detail later. That's the industry we operate in. Looking at some of the headlines of the Pebble Group in the first half, it's gone very well.
Business has been very good across both Brand Addition and Facilisgroup. That's group revenues nearly 30% up, and adjusted EBITDA 50% up. That very good performance, we don't see any drop-off of activity at the moment. We continue to do quite well. Where's that come from? Really excited that Facilisgroup, its uninterrupted growth has continued. We really have a clear strategy to scale that organization, and we'll go into that in a little more detail. Then at Brand Addition, new client wins that we talked about in 2020 and 2021 are really beginning to come through and making a difference to this half's revenue. We get a lot of questions around supply chain at Brand Addition.
We've got some wonderful people across the globe managing that for us and right now that feels very well managed and under control. A slight introduction from me. I'm going to hand over to Claire. She's going to talk you through the numbers.
Yep. Thank you. Sharing here all the KPIs for the group, and the message I'm wanting to give to you is that these are all moving in the right direction. We've got that nice growth in revenue that Chris referred to that's translating through to EBITDA, which is a combination of the volume increases in revenue and also some margin improvements, which we'll come onto in a little bit. That's flowing through the P&L and into our cash flow, where we're GBP 4 million ahead of where we were this time last year. On here, just giving you a visual of the financial dynamics of the group. When we get into the detail of the businesses, you'll see Brand Addition is that products business and that dominates the revenue of the group.
We've got the SaaS revenues from Facilisgroup, which generates some very special EBITDA returns, and that means that at an EBITDA level, the group is pretty much 50/50 split between the businesses. P&L here for the record and very happy to take any more detailed questions at the end, but we've still got revenue growth at 30%. That's Facilisgroup, is continuing to grow our partner numbers and also continuing to increase the share of spend that we get through our preferred suppliers. At Brand Addition, we've seen, continued growth in our new business, and also we're benefiting from the stabilization in working patterns that we're seeing on some of our like-for-like customers. The gross profit numbers move forward, and again, that's coming from Brand Addition, and we've pointed to that at the start of the year.
A really well-managed supply chain is coming through in our numbers, and we're getting back to the 30% levels that we would always indicated. We've been through a period of investment in our strategic ambitions, particularly to scale Facilisgroup, and you can see that coming through in the D&A charge in the P&L. That's all translating through to an operating profit that's moving ahead of last year. Cash flow, really nice and straightforward, and where the numbers reflect the words that we use to describe our business. We grow an EBITDA, we get that movement in working capital and that's all associated with Brand Addition, but with that increase is proportionate to the growth in volumes in that business.
We've got the additional capital expenditure with which is us investing in our ambitions to scale Facilisgroup. Balance sheet, again, I'm quite boring here, but in a really straightforward and simple. It's blue chip backed assets, again, all linked to Brand Addition and the customers at Brand Addition. The increases that you can see there are proportionate to the increase in revenue that we've experienced in that business. We'll get into a little bit more detail on Facilisgroup, so I'll quickly go through the results and then Chris will go through the business model, how we're progressing with Commercio, and then how we see things moving forward.
At Facilisgroup, we've achieved 30% ARR growth in GBP, and that's 21% in U.S. dollars, and that's as I said, a combination of, great retention on our existing partners, incremental new wins, and then there's also benefiting from the increased contribution from our preferred suppliers. We've managed to maintain those fabulous EBITDA returns, and that's while we are investing to grow, and that number's coming out where we indicated it would do and where we expect it to be. Again, as I've just said, you can see the additional depreciation and amortization charge coming through as a result of us investing in our future for Facilisgroup. Yeah.
Thanks, Claire. There's some specific numbers in there. Facilis is a really great business that we're really focused on growing. First I'm going to through some of the numbers behind those historic financials, but then talk about the plan that we have in place to grow the business going forward. Again, for the record, our revenues in sterling and in US dollars, but we split that between H1 and H2, and what you should think about is always H2 is slightly bigger than H1 due to the volumes in our industry can tend to be a little bit slightly back-end weighted as well.
You're looking at those on the right-hand side. Facilisgroup is a US dollar denominated business. We'd expect our revenues to be higher than that $9.5 million in the second half than they were in the first. Behind those numbers, what makes those numbers work are these three things really. Our partner numbers, the gross merchandise value that goes through our system from those partners, and then the spend that those partners make with our preferred supplier purchases. If each three of these, the graphs are moving in the right direction, we know our business is progressing and scaling. Again, another good year. We talked about uninterrupted growth in Facilisgroup and all through 2020. You can see we've grown partner numbers, GMV, and spend with preferred.
Again, looking on the right, split it out between H1 and h2, expect H2 to be larger than H1 on some of those dynamics that are flowing through. All giving us, an indication that the business is in good shape. I'm going to talk a little bit now about the industry and how we're and how Facilisgroup fits in. Hopefully you recognize these slides from what we spoke about a few minutes ago, and where Facilisgroup fits in, we'll go through. I think it's important to try and understand the scale of the organization and what's happening. We're providing technology and services through to distributors, which are then using those technology and service to interact with suppliers and end users.
The volume that's actually happening there, so trying to piece it all together, you can see we talked about the 218 partners that we have, and they sit as those distributors. The volumes that have been created here, we're trying to put them all on one slide. Nearly 1 million orders those partners are creating with their customers. That's creating, on a rolling twelve-month basis now, around about $1.3 billion of GMV. Taking the gross margin away, you can see around about $1 billion of purchases go back to the suppliers.
That really gives you a sense that in the industry, and if the US industry is around $25 billion, or the North American industry, you can see there's an awful lot of volume and a decent market share that we're beginning to do. About Facilisgroup's revenue model and what it does, we have a product called Syncore, which is really helping the order workflow of our partners and making orders smoothly run through the system, all the way from discussion, quotation to invoice. That happens through Syncore. It allows our partners to professionalize, to grow their own organizations and spend more time with their customers than internally on their system. It's a really supportive piece of technology that does that.
We have income from two areas through Syncore. Picking the middle point first, point two, is that our partners pay us a subscription for that technology on a monthly basis. Then secondly, each time there's an interaction between our suppliers and the partner and there's a transaction there between them, then our partner benefits from that, and so do we in terms of some income. That is the business that all the historic numbers are based on to date. Really excitedly, we're trying to kinda grow the business. We're trying to do other things. Now we're going to be trying to work on the right-hand side of this chart and helping our distributors work with their brands and end users.
In June, we launched a product called Commercio, which delivers e-commerce stores to partners or distributors to help them sell more to their customers. Our partners are already using some technology from lots of different suppliers to do this. If they can do that through us, if we can integrate that with Syncore and really bring some great efficiencies to them, we see it's a great offering for our partners to help their businesses continue to grow and develop, and a really good tool for us in terms of acquisition of new partners, retention of existing partners, and growing the share of wallet as well. Also on Commercio, it's been built that not only does it serve our own partners, but it can serve the wider industry too.
There's something like over 20,000 small businesses in our industry in North America, and Commercio is the first product coming to market that we can place and point towards those businesses as well. It's a really big and important step for us looking to scale our business from what we're really proud of what it is today and where it's come from, but really excited about where it might be able to go to. Just a little piece here on Commercio. We've got commercio.com website is out there, so please take a look at that and see that opportunity. What we really do, we built a sales team over the last 12 months particularly and continue to grow that.
Not only now selling in Syncore, but also selling Commercio and a slightly different sell, but building a team around that and extremely motivated, and the audience for Commercio is much larger, something like over 20,000. By using our industry knowledge, attendance at trade shows through the trade magazines, we really believe we can get to that audience. The Facilisgroup name is very strong in the industry and bringing a product to that audience, we're very hopeful. There's some green shoots coming through in terms of early accounts and contract wins, but we're, very hopeful for where that product goes in the next 12-18 months.
We set ourselves some targets, looking to get to a GBP 50 million recurring revenue number, and 50 million we certainly own and are looking to get there. When we started on this journey, I think as a PLC, we were around about GBP 12 million of recurring revenues. We expect to be over 20 in 2022. You can see going from 12 to 20, 50 is definitely our initial target of where we want to be going through there. That's not just owned by me or by Claire, that's owned throughout the whole team at Facilisgroup are really motivated and very, dedicated to hitting those numbers. In terms of progress we've made at the moment against our milestones for 2022, we've brought those into play.
You can see there, ramping up the income offer, the income streams that we have by bringing Commercio into market, and I'll come back to where that 263 comes from. Our partners, an increasing number of partners are doing well and getting that GMV on a rolling twelve-month basis to GBP 1.3 million. On the back of there, the spend through our preferred suppliers is doing well as well. We'll keep tracking against these numbers, and as I say, to us, GBP 50 million is a really important target that we do own. To us, it'll be really, when rather than the if is certainly what we're pushing on internally on that milestone. Just give you a little flavor of how Commercio is helping us grow and develop.
206 Syncore partners at the end of the year, and really nicely, that's turned into 218 right now. We're ambitious to keep that number growing. Where Commercio comes in now, it gives us access to that 22,000. Got 14 in the first couple of months on top of another 31 of actually our existing Syncore partners. You can see here now we've got 260 plus income streams that going from Syncore to Syncore plus Commercio allows us to do. Obviously in our aspiration of coming to market, we want to grow all of those numbers. You can see how there the opportunities begin to roll up and come through. Really exciting opportunities for this business.
Got a super team and a growing team who are dedicated, and got that GBP 50 million in their minds, that's for sure. Brand Addition, Claire, do you want to talk through that?
[cross talk] Thank you. We'll go through the numbers for Brand Addition and then share a little bit of our thinking on the outlook for the rest of the year. Fabulous revenue growth at Brand Addition. That continues against what was a strong comparator last year and we're 30% up at June 2022 versus June 2021. That's a combination, I think, as I've already said, of, continued success with new business and also us seeing the impact of the stabilization of working patterns across our customer base. , the team have done a brilliant job at getting that gross profit number back up to 30%. Last year we were impacted by the additional cost of Brexit and the heavily escalated freight rate prices.
The margins over the historic period at Brand Addition have always been around 30%, and that side of the business has got back to maintaining. That volume and the increase in gross profit is moving through to EBITDA and again, moving that percentage forward. Sharing here a split of our revenue by client and by geography. I think this is just telling us that there's a really nice spread across sectors and across geographies that gives Brand Addition some insulation against what might be coming, but also, gives us opportunities to grow as well. Here, hopefully those of you that have been with us on these presentations before you'll recognize this slide.
This is us just giving a view of where we see 2022 turning out. 115 is the number that's out there in the market for us at the minute. I think, as we stand today, we feel that we're in a sensible place against that and feel quite comfortable with it based on what we've invoiced to the end of June and what we know in terms of activity that's happened since then. How will we get to that, then, we had amazing growth in our consumer promotions division between 2020 and 2021. Our expectation is that we'll hold on to that growth.
That pale blue line will be a similar number when we get to the end of 2022. , I've said already, we've had great success with new business, and we see that number moving forward versus what it was in 2021. Then again, the gap will be plugged by those like-for-like businesses where we're seeing additional volumes as our worlds stabilize and the new norm has appeared. Thank you.
That's a bit of detail on the two businesses. We're going to finish on some ESG and then some highlights, and very happy to take questions after that. ESG is really important to us. It's not hard. It's not hard for us to do. We want to embrace it and we want to do it really well. We have some super people who are dedicated to it, who are based with the Pebble Group, but then they're liaising with our businesses on a day-to-day basis to make sure what we talk about is lived and breathed and in the businesses, and it's just a part of the business as anything else. We published our first report last year. We're really pleased.
I think in October, our second report comes out for 2022, and working hard on that. Here's showing the four cornerstones that we pulled together after talking to our people, our customers, our suppliers, our investors, saying what's most important to them when they think of us. From that feedback and from all the best practices out there, really try to make something our own and own it and put it in our tone of voice. That's translated as some four principles into what goes on a day-to-day basis in the business. Our businesses are different, so we have to have a different view of things and a different focus in different areas.
I'll leave that there for the record and just say, it's just a good thing. Why don't businesses want to work hard at, doing the right thing for the environment, for their customers, for our people, for our investors? I think that's what we see ESG as. Something we really want to do and embrace on a day-to-day basis. F inishing, with our outlook and our messages. It's a strange world out there. We're out there seeing investors on a day-to-day basis and you're getting a lot of questions about the defensive nature of the business, and are we seeing any softening of orders right now.
The answer to that is, we feel really well-placed. I think behind us, we've got a good set of results and a really set of results we're really proud of. I think ahead of us, we've got clear strategies. Where we sit today, we feel very well-placed against the expectations that are out there in the market. I think, the results that we just talked about for the last 20 minutes or so, they don't happen by accident. They happen because there's a really dedicated group of people working really hard to a good plan.
when you pull those two things together, I think that makes for a good business and a business I think that is, Claire and I have been working together for 15 years. We've seen all types of economic cycle, all types of currency changing, all types of change in the market, but we feel we've our business and our people are good enough to adapt to all of those situations. As I say, good set of half-year results behind us, and I think, we feel well-placed for the rest of the year as well.
It's always a great opportunity at this point for me to say thanks to those teams who are behind it from Asia, Europe, and North America, across the Pebble Group, Brand Addition and Facilisgroup, and just say thank you to those guys for all the hard work. We really appreciate it. It's definitely, comes through in the results and the feedback we've had from our investors so far. That was really us. There is some further financial guidance or some detail on customer movement at Facilisgroup in the appendices. I think, that's us really giving you the headlines in the business and where we are, and really pleased to take questions right now.
Thank you, Chris. If you have a question, click on the Q&A button and type your question in. We already have one question. How much more incremental cost is required for Facilisgroup over the next couple of years? What would be a sensible margin expectation for Facilisgroup when it gets to $50 million revenue?
I'll say the first one. I'll let Chris say the second bit of that. So I think, what we've said is to focus on a 50% EBITDA return for, 2022 and 2023 feels like a sensible number. I'll let Chris give where he thinks we can get to. I think, our view is once you start to get towards 50 million ARR, it's clearly really difficult to keep that number down at 50% and we would definitely, that definitely will be moving north. We'll just, have to see where it is when we get there.
Yeah, in terms of CapEx, it's going another next couple of years.
Yeah, yeah. I've given some guidance in the back on CapEx because obviously that will come through the P&L, through the D&A. I think, I've split that between tangible and intangible, and that intangible investment is largely all Facilis. I would say that we should expect that to repeat next year at a similar level, and then we'll expect that to, to taper off and become a more maintenance level of CapEx.
Thank you very much. How many new contracts were won for Brand Addition in the first half of the year?
It's not a number we'll actually disclose. Think of Brand Addition typically would win , between five and 10 contracts per year. You might say then there's probably three or four of those become quite meaningful. I would say the sales and new business team done an amazing job over the last two or three years. I can't think that to have that trend in your mind. I think Claire showed the slide that had the pieces of new business. I think new business over the last couple of years has rolled into GBP 10 million, and think of that pattern as repeating itself. I think would be the right thing to do.
Thank you very much. How much visibility do you tend to have over orders at Brand Addition?
We have, visibility on that consumer promotions piece, which is, again, if you go back to Brand Addition's column chart, the GBP 46 million that's attached to the consumer promotions business, we have great visibility of that, so that's , between three and six months in terms of what's coming through there. In the corporate program business, slightly different. We do have some projects that give us two or three months visibility. I suppose what's really kinda nice about the mix of business that we have, we have some large pieces that we have great visibility in the future, but we can really generate orders on a day and weekly basis as well.
As Claire alluded to, where we got to at the half year, from what the outlook is, and the analyst is GBP 115 million revenue, and what we have built and ordered in between there, it feels like, a very achievable number for us to get to by the end of the year.
Thank you very much. New client wins from 2021 have driven a lot of growth you're experiencing now. Looking forward to 2023, how is the new client pipeline looking?
I think, growth, we put the new, and that new bit isn't just, it is growth from 2020 and 2021 and anything that comes in 2022 as well. We set the points for everything from 2019 is included in that number. We've had great success and the business has done extremely well. As I said, we always point people to Brand Addition to think of high single digit year-on-year growth. That can come from doing, better with our existing customers, either geographically or through their other brands as well as from new business as well. I always point people when they're thinking of Brand Addition, think high single digit revenue growth year on year.
The great thing about that business with consumer promotions, so working with some of the best brands in the world and the corporate program business as well, we're doing that over multiple geographies of some amazing brands and a couple of different routes to market. That allows that high single digit growth to come from a number of areas. But we'd always point people high single digits year on year.
Thank you. You see growth across all regions?
Yeah, I think many of the contracts Brand Addition are winning are that's why that business is winning them 'cause it's multi-region. Great people and offices of substance in Europe, Asia and North America. That means a new business pipeline or a new business target based in North America. Actually, we'll get that over the line because we're able to service that in Europe and Asia, and that counts across all the different regions. A lot of the new business we're in now the reason is the investment the infrastructure that's been put in there and good people translating that across geographies that's why the business is winning and growing.
Thank you. In Brand Addition, it sounds like you're not seeing any slowdown from the weaker consumer backdrop. Is there also a risk that retailers decide to stock fewer products? If so, would that have a direct impact on the business?
Brand Addition in retail is about that consumer promotions piece again, that part of the column that's GBP 46 million. There what we supply to our customers is gift with purchase really. That's the main thing. We are helping our customers sell their product. If you went to an in-store and saw a pack of product and it actually had a gift with it to help push the core product itself, that gift with purchase is what we're supplying. We're a really key part of our customers making sales to their audience. Actually we've never found through recession, they haven't pulled back on that. , we're actually a key part of making sure they can keep their sales in front of the consumer.
If the consumer's making a choice, that gift with purchase helps them make that choice towards their product. These are on long lead times as well. As of now, we're not seeing any softening in that part of demand of our business.
Thank you. I'd guess Commercio is going up against Shopify. Is that correct? What's your edge against them and Commercio's other competitors, given their much greater scale?
There are hundreds of providers of e-commerce platforms. I think what became clear to us is that our partners were using something like 25 different options. That says to me that nothing's really working, ? , nothing had a good market share at all. Our partners were coming to us and saying, "Look, can you produce something that's bespoke to this industry and integrates into Syncore?" Rather than us push something into the market, just as a me-too product, we believe we're bringing something to the market. In this, we really know well, bespoke for this industry that integrates into Syncore. It's been pulled from our partners rather than us pushing it to them.
In knowing the industry, we do believe there's . It's huge. It's $25 million in North America, 20,000 businesses. If we can capture some of that market share, I think it can be a , really exciting , second product that we bring to market.
Thank you very much. Facilisgroup overhead has risen in line with revenue. When do you see that leveling off? Or is it quasi-variable with revenue?
Where I go wrong, you let me know. I think, we're putting more people in sales, into marketing. We're also now back doing events, which is really great. We had, I think, over 750 people in an event in Orlando. Our partners, our preferred suppliers, our team, all coming together and interacting. It was fantastic. That spending money in that way is a really good thing. That supports retention of our partners, it supports our community at Facilisgroup, which is a really important part of the business. that, is a good thing that that's been going up, for our organization.
I think, as Claire said earlier, there's a point at which we scale the revenues, that the margins do get bigger because you can't possibly, spend at the same rate as we should grow. The point at which that is, I think we're not really sure. But I think it's such the right thing for us to do now is to spend money on scaling, because if we do, I think the rewards are really powerful. Investment today is absolutely going into our teams, our sales and marketing teams, our partner success teams, and also into our technology teams as well. I think investing, spending money now is a really good thing. And I appreciate that's my , .
Margins are still 50%, ? It's still an amazing number. If we can scale that, I think, the next two or three years of margins will be really special.
Thank you. Within Facilisgroup, is the GMV being driven more by price or volume?
I think there is more partners, so therefore, that has a direct impact, but I do think our partners are doing better. I hope Facilisgroup plays a part in that. , their relationship with their preferred suppliers plays a part in that too. They're good businesses that join Facilisgroup. good, very professionally run ambitious businesses, and we are there to help them grow. they're, making the decisions. They're doing it at the end of the day, but I'm absolutely sure that it is based upon their growth, not on the back of inflation. Their growth in terms of their own businesses growing better, attracting more customers.
, I hope we play a part in that, but our partners are ambitious and bright, excellent business people and, it's, we're thrilled to be helping them on their journey.
Thank you. Can you increase your share of transaction value in Syncore?
I think , we want to make sure it's a win-win situation for everybody. Retention is really high. If we help our partners grow, we think we should be able to share in that. If their GMV grows, I think our fees growing in tandem with that, I think is a good thing, and that's in place. Bringing products like Commercio to market is increasing the share of their spend in technology, and I think that's a really good thing for us. I think that's how, how our business model works today. In terms of, we help our customers grow, and in turn, we grow with them.
If we can bring new products to market that help them sell, that help them become more efficient, again, that extends the share of wallet. Our target of GBP 50 million is based upon that premise as opposed to simply increasing their fees.
Thank you. Could you talk about the operational footprint of Brand Addition? For example, how many warehouses there are and where they're located, and how did the consolidation of the European warehouse progress go in the period?
When we talk about Brand Addition, I think, we put a nice, you put a map of the world, and it's easy to put some pins on there, isn't it, and say, "This is where we are everywhere." I think, Brand Addition's got centers of excellence or offices of substance in three major regions, in Asia and in Europe and in North America. We have warehouses in each three of those regions. Our warehouse in North America is in St. Louis, where our business is based there. In Europe, we have two warehouses, one in Germany and one in the UK, and in Asia, a warehouse in Shanghai. The way Brand Addition works is our offices of substance in all three of those regions.
If one of our is, big in one area but has still smaller important parts of its business in the other regions, we can support them as well. I think the question is the consolidation. We've put the majority of our warehousing now in Europe into Germany, and that is all. I think we consolidated three warehouses into one, and we have, one of our really experienced team members has managed that process. Now orders have been received, orders are going out the door, and that business is working, very smoothly between Germany and Manchester and working with the Brand Addition teams across Europe. I hope that's answered that question.
Was there another part of it?
[crosstalk]
Okay.
Many thanks. In Facilis, EBITDA increased double-digit, but operating profit declined double-digit due to amortization of capitalized R&D. Should we not be focusing on operating margins given the R&D spend required to drive GMV, et cetera?
Yeah. I think, I feel like we've been fairly transparent about that as we've been through this process. we, we've been really clear that for us to get to that GBP 50 million, that we need to invest in CapEx, and which is what we've done. As we're releasing those products to market, then we can see the impact of that coming through, and that will have a short-term impact on our operating profit returns while we grow the revenue line from those new products. I think, yeah, we can, we can look at that. I hope it's not a surprise to anybody.
We've shared what our investment's been, and, we've got a really clear three-year amortization policy and we're on that journey, and that's why, and that's what the impact on the operating profit margin has been.
I think the answer, we should look at all the main ratios and KPIs because it's all part of the story. We've been trying to be, and I say that's definitely our aim, to be really clear about the strategy, how we're looking to come to market and how we're looking to grow. It's really important for us, I think, that our words and our numbers sit together, and you can come on a journey with us. Investment is being made, but not to drive GMV. , investment is being made to drive new products coming into the market to widen our addressable market and help scale the business.
I think if you go through our materials, you , put the words and the numbers together. I think it. , we shouldn't concentrate on any single line in our numbers, particularly in this period where we're trying to scale and grow. I think, from our KPIs on preferred partner numbers, customer numbers and GMV to top-line growth and, EBITDA growth and operating profit, it all plays a part in understanding the business that we're running and trying to grow.
Thank you very much. Do you have any other new product plans which might require significant investment?
, we haven't touched upon it in this set of results, but our strategies are consistent with what we talked about last time. We are , as Commercio brings, as a product that we can bring into that tail of 20,000 smaller distributors, we are looking to bring an order workflow product into those smaller distributors as well, and work is going on with that. That isn't over and above what Claire's talked about in terms of the investment. That is part of the investment that's going in. It's just a little further down the road than Commercio. We wanted to concentrate on Commercio today.
When we come to speak in march, we'll be bringing that orders to the smaller business, that product, into view for everybody then.
Thank you. I think we might have time for one more. How are you reaching non-Syncore customers for Commercio?
The North American market is huge, . To repeat, $20+ billion of sales, 20,000+ distributors. It's very large, but in some ways it's quite small. It's the same , industry trade bodies, industry service providers that are out there. We all go to the same shows, read the same websites and trade magazines. , we do have a sales and marketing team that are really focused on engaging, communicating with our audience. Facilisgroup has a great reputation, long-standing in the business. , we can go to that market in a slightly different way to what we're doing for Syncore users. We'll learn, I've got no doubt, as we go.
We believe it's an audience that we can understand, we can find and hopefully communicate well with. As I say, it's 22,000. Doesn't take us too much market share to making some good inroads and of that scale and exercise that we're trying to do.
Thank you very much. I know you've got a very, very busy roadshow, so I apologize to anyone whose question we haven't been able to answer. Chris, do you have any closing remarks?
I think I only try to take this opportunity every time to say, results don't happen by accident. It's an amazing group of people I've got the pleasure of working with. , Claire's definitely among that, but everyone else, out there too across Facilis, Brand Addition, and Pebble Group. So always a big thanks to them for their efforts and hard work. , we'll be here in six months' time and to communicate our second half results and look forward to that.
Tremendous. Many thanks, Chris and Claire. To everyone listening, you'll now be taken to a webpage to give some anonymous feedback on today's presentation. If you're unable to complete it now, you'll receive a follow-up email about an hour afterwards. We'd be really grateful if you could take a few minutes to complete. Many thanks for joining. This is the end of the webinar.