The CEO and Claire Thomson, CFO. All other participants are in listen-only mode. You are welcome to submit questions either at the end or during the presentation using the Q&A tab at the bottom of your screen, and management will attempt to answer all your questions at the end of the presentation. Thank you all for joining today's call, and I'll now pass you over to Christopher Lee, CEO. Chris, please go ahead.
Hi everybody, thanks for joining us. We're going to run you through the half-year results for The Pebble Group plc for 2025. We'll follow a normal sort of course that we do. We'll give you a little overview of the market we're operating in, some highlights, and then Claire will take you through the numbers, and I will kind of take you through Facilisgroup, one of our divisions, and Claire, Brand Addition, and it'll be great to answer any questions that you have at the end. This is us. In terms of, you know, a CEO, CFO, we've both been in the business for a long time. I think I'm 25 years now. You must be kind of 20, 18, 20 something. What does that mean?
We're really very emotionally invested in the story and the business and the people, but also financially invested as well, so very much aligned with our shareholders. In terms of the market that we're operating in, it is the promotional products world. I'm here with my Pebble Group pen and pad in every office, in every home, in every car. Promotional products are used by consumers and businesses and stakeholders, and businesses use them to engage with those stakeholders to make sure there's a lasting impression and a memory and an emotional connection created with people and a particular brand. Even as our digital world gets more and more complicated and crowded and use of AI is coming up now, promotional products really cut through all that noise and really make a lasting and emotional connection with an individual to a brand, and that's why they're so popular.
In terms of the size of the market, annually, $50 billion is spent, we estimate, on promotional products. What that says to you is all companies, all sizes, and geographies are using promotional products to engage with their stakeholders. We have quite a good lens into that market through our two businesses. The Pebble Group plc being the holding company and the ownership company, but within there, we see $1.6 billion of the $50 billion through our two businesses. Facilisgroup, a technology platform, but then also with a market network and a great community attached to that. Technology is at our heart, but the business is much more than that as well, and that's why we have such kind of great retention rates.
That business helps medium-sized promotional products companies run their business really efficiently, and we get to see about $1.5 billion of their sales annually going through our system. A tremendous amount of data and understanding of what's going on in the market. Then our products business, Brand Addition, a really great business. That's where both Claire and I come from in our heritage years. That business sells promotional products and related services to many of the best companies in the world under contracts on an international basis, selling about $140 million worth of products on an annual basis to one of the best businesses across the world. Facilisgroup and Brand Addition are really great lens and both market-leading businesses in the promotional product sector.
In terms of why we think we're a great business and why we're really proud to be associated both with the brands that we work with in terms of our operations, the people that work there, and also the customers and the suppliers that we work with, I do think we're about long-term relationships. Clients is Brand Addition, partner being at Facilisgroup, and we really focus on not just selling something once, but developing a long-term relationship with our clients and our partners. That builds a great trust. You get through, you know, strange things going in the world, but we kind of work on long-term relationships in order to make sure we're building for the long term for our team, our employees, our partners, and our shareholders.
Both brands, I think, have great reputations in the market and market-leading positions, both from a technology into North America through Facilisgroup and also providing products on a global basis to the large brands through Brand Addition. Although we have that $1.6 billion view into the market, that still means there's a lot to go at as well. A really fragmented market. We do believe that both businesses have room for organic and even acquisitive growth looking forward. A technology business, a products business with related services, we have been around. We're very established. We make profits. We generate cash. We've ploughed some of that back into the business, and we've also been giving some of that back to shareholders. We're really able to create value through sustainable profits and cash flows.
In terms of what's been happening in 2025, part of what we have to do through this presentation, which is just on our website and talking to investors, is paint the story of what has happened in the past, but also the vision and lay the breadcrumbs for the future as well and the place in which we're going. Talking about the past, there's no doubt in the last few months, and since we really listed, really, it's been an unusual market, whether it's been COVID or Brexit or tariffs. It's been quite hard to sort of plow through. Equally, we sort of have to deal with that market and what we're doing in. I do think our performance, both at Brand Addition and Facilisgroup, has been pretty robust in not a really unhelpful, but equally not a really helpful market in a pretty kind of tepid market situation.
What we've been doing to proactively manage our businesses in that is recognize that if we can grow Facilisgroup as a technology, a market network, and a community business, that really has a special opportunity beyond the valuation of the group right now. We put more investment into trying to grow that business. There are some early signs, encouraging signs that that's coming through very well. Brand Addition, quite hard in terms of those really large corporates, being careful in what they spend, but a really robust performance through bringing new clients through as well as holding on to the existing ones and again being cash generative. On the right-hand side, you'll see both at Brand Addition and Facilisgroup, we have great retention levels. That's a point of growth. That comes from those NPS scores that really come through and real highlights for us at Facilisgroup.
I've spent a lot of time over there in the last two years. I've learned a huge amount. I've been supported by some great people. We're really kind of building something special there that I'm really proud of. I say that because I feel it myself, but it's also what I'm hearing from the team, what I'm hearing from our partners and our suppliers too. I really hope we're on the cusp of something interesting there. At Brand Addition, client retention rating is really strong. We keep doing that. The business, in the face of difficult circumstances, managing its gross margins and managing its costs really well. We have a very profitable, cash-generative business in what isn't easy times. I do believe we've got a great platform to keep moving forward. Claire's going to run you through some numbers, I think.
Okay.
Thank you. Summarizing here, the KPIs, that's kind of set out the story of the first half. Revenue, you know, what we think has been a really robust performance in what is a difficult market. What we're doing while we're navigating through that is controlling the things that we can control and working really hard on our gross margins. They move forward in the first half. That was on the back of a significant improvement that came through last year as well. Our EBITDA is showing that we have invested a little bit into our Facilisgroup business. As we get through the presentation, you'll see that is starting to show some positive signs of growth. We'll give you a bit more detail on that as we move through. Also, alongside that, we have improved our operating cash conversion. Cash is moving forward.
Year to date, we've returned £11.7 million to shareholders. We know we're focusing on growing our top line, controlling what we can control, but keeping that great level of cash generation going as well. Before we get into a little bit more detail, this is just helping you to try and set out the two different business models that sit within our group. Over on the left-hand side is the revenue coming into the group. You can see there's a big difference between Brand Addition, the products business, that's about 85% of our revenue, and Facilisgroup, where we're getting those SaaS tech subscriptions, which is the balance, the 15%. A much smaller share. As we move through the P&L and over to the right-hand side, what that translates into is pretty much a 50-50 split between Facilisgroup and Brand Addition in terms of their contribution to group EBITDA.
P&L, I think I've used the word robust in terms of revenue. Slightly down. That kind of is coming through in Brand Addition and really in the behavior of our existing customers, where some of them are in a pretty difficult time. That translates into the level of spend with those. It's not across the board. Some businesses are ahead, some are down. We've held on to all of those customers. They've got great retention stats there. What is helping us as we move through a difficult market is the new business wins and the successful implementation of those that are offsetting some of that pressure that we're feeling. I've touched on it a couple of times now already. We control what we can. Margins are in a really good place, and they've been moving forward through the half year.
We have invested into Facilisgroup, and that's starting to come through in terms of organic growth. Outside of that, we have really disciplined cost management that means we're kind of holding on to the great EBITDA margins that both of these businesses generate. Balance sheet. When you kind of look at the group balance sheet, really think Brand Addition, so the products business, Facilisgroup, SaaS, really the working capital light. It has very little working capital that's on the balance sheet. What you see there is Brand Addition working under contract with some of the largest brands in the world. We've got really high-quality assets that turn really efficiently to cash. Drawing your attention there again to the £11.7 million that we've returned to shareholders this year through our cash conversion.
Cash flow, I feel like those of you who've been on this call a couple of times, I'm a bit of a stuck record, but it's really nice to say it's really clean and straightforward. Underneath EBITDA, we've got some investment in working capital. That's a really well-trodden path in terms of the outflow for the first half. That's been the cycle for the 20 years that I've been in this business, and we see that coming back as we move through the second half. CapEx has come down in the half year, which was something we committed to at the beginning of the year, and that is starting to come through. The rest of it is pretty vanilla, but you can see those incremental returns through the dividends that we've paid out and the purchase of our own shares.
I'm not enjoying that.
Yeah?
Sorry, I'm just taking a look at that.
Huh?
It's just not quite clicking.
Yeah, so what do we do with that cash? This is our considerations around capital allocation. Back in March, we said that we were investing some of our cash to accelerate organic growth, specifically in Facilisgroup. Chris is going to talk you through what we've done there and how that's coming through. We are seeing some success there. I think there's a question for us around, do we continue to do that or do we increase that level of investment if we think that's going to drive further the top line dividends? We've consistently increased that since the point at which we announced a dividend back in 2023. Capital return, we've been through a share buyback program and then a tender offer that we've just completed in August. That takes us to what else do our cash conversion is increasing.
We've got two highly cash-generative businesses, and that provides us with some options around what else we can do. Is there anything else that we can look at that can help support that organic growth story?
Thanks, Claire. We've talked about the group there. Now we'll go into each of the divisions, Facilisgroup and Brand Addition. I'll talk through Facilisgroup and then Claire, Brand Addition. We'll take you home and answer any questions that we can. In terms of Facilisgroup, it's a really amazing business, I think, in the promotional product sector, really specializing in that. What we deliver into the market are three things. At the heart is some technology that helps medium-sized promotional products distributors and some larger ones as well bring efficiencies and growth to their own organization and visibility of it as well. A piece of technology very much supporting the promotional product sector.
What we build around that is a market network that helps those promotional products and businesses engage in a very high level with some of the best suppliers in the industry and then bring those suppliers and those partners and distributors together in a community that helps each other to grow, supports each other from trying to, you know, training salespeople, training their and their teams to really, you know, win as a distributor, win as a supplier, and then win as Facilisgroup. The unique combination of those things, and we really, we're working hard on how we project ourselves because we are different to, we're not just technology, we're technology plus. How do we really communicate that to the degree that the benefits that we can offer people? Coming up with that brace is some super product marketing people that we have in Facilisgroup is that 360-degree FOMO platform.
That's what we're providing, which helps our businesses and the suppliers that we work with to grow with the best and bring the best together for the benefit of all. It's a really special organization. In terms of some really nice stats on here, and I think if I concentrate on the ones at the bottom, we're talking about our customer or partner numbers, and they're those businesses, 248 as of the end of last week. They average around about six, just over $6 million in terms of sales or GMV that go through. That's translating across to the right-hand side. What we want to try and do for the benefit of our suppliers, under great terms for our partners and our distributors, is bring the suppliers, the best suppliers in the industry, and our partners, the best partners we believe, together and working together for the benefit of everybody.
When we get this really working well, our preferred suppliers win, our partners win, and Facilisgroup grows as well. That translates to financials on the top. I'll go from right to left. There are some strong EBITDA margins, and we've signaled that around about of that 44%, around about 20 is going to capital and continuing to evolve our technology platform. The underlying retention rate is excellent. We've really worked hard at ensuring the first part of growth is listening to your existing customer base, understanding them, and actually sort of supporting them. We've been working very hard on that. A super team developing the technology, developing the relationships, have done a great job there.
Where that translates, I suppose, and what we want to do better is that sort of one in the top right-hand corner, really understanding what we're trying to achieve, who we're supporting, what problem we're trying to solve in the market. What we want to do now is really grab some market share and move that revenue forward. If I look at this and look at my own performance, I think the thing that I want to do better at is that top left-hand side, the great work that's going on in the organization and the great solutions that we have. I think my job is to help that top line grow and make sure we do that. If we do on good margins, good cash conversions, we've got a really special business.
In order to drive that growth, we talked about we invested a lot in technology 2023 and 2024 particularly, and that number's come down. Our cash conversion is getting better, but part of that we haven't taken all the way into cash. We've actually reinvested back into operating profit. That has been over a couple of years, over bringing in leadership in terms of technology, reorganizing ourselves in that function, but also bringing now new leadership in terms of attracting new partners into the organization. That is from a sales leader, a sales team, and thinking about it differently from the offering that we're giving to the market. What that's doing is having a direct and tangible effect on what's been happening. At the half year, we've grown our number of partners that we're attracting by 50%. That's continued through into September.
We want that momentum as we are getting better ourselves, really building encouragement from the investment that we've put in. We want that to keep moving forward. A very tangible calculation can be done. The return on investment that we have placed into OpEx is coming out in some forward-looking metrics. That's really important for us. I know there's a huge amount of work going into Facilisgroup over the last couple of years, and I've enjoyed being part of that journey. Now we want to turn that into some momentum looking forward in revenue growth. We put three points of focus for us in terms of the beginning of the year: engaging technology and leading the market and how we're getting on in those things. The most important thing, I think, is how we're delivering for our existing customer base. If we're doing that, it will attract more.
I see that from the improvement in the NPS score, but I also hear that and feel that from the feedback from our teams and the feedback I hear directly from our customers. Taking nothing for granted, but very pleased that we see that moving in the right direction, we keep moving forward. Our team, our partners, are giving us feedback in terms of where the technology is going. New Head of Product joined us, Matthew Cromar, 18 months ago, doing a great job in putting a seasonal release program together and actually communicating really well on an external basis, the roadmaps that we have. Underneath there, working with a great team that's moving that forward for the benefit of our partners. We get it right for them, we get it right for people like them and grow market share. I've spent some time in that business a lot.
I've enjoyed that. I feel as though there's a great leadership team there now that is supported by an organization and pushing those 85, 90 people all in the same direction. I think there's something very powerful there. Through the technology, the team, and the market networking community, I think there's a really special business. My job now is to work with that team, move revenue forward. I think this can change the valuation of what our business has. Claire's going to talk through Brand Addition.
Oh, sorry. Yeah.
Okay, yeah, so Brand Addition is in, so we're all in the promotional products market, but Brand Addition's very specifically taken up the space of working with huge global organizations on an international basis. What it does, it sells product to those businesses that enables them to make a meaningful connection with all of their stakeholders, be that employees, customers, suppliers. How does it do that? It does that through not only providing, you know, amazing creative product that creates that emotional connection, but it also enables those large organizations to, you know, stand behind the messages that they have around ESG and sustainability. It supports that. It does that in an efficient way through technology-enabled solutions. It does that internationally through both international client management and also international logistics. These are some of the metrics that sit around Brand Addition.
You know, we've touched on revenue and, you know, what we believe is a robust performance. I'll give you a little bit more detail around that as we move through the slides. You know, it's got an amazing roster of clients, all, you know, international businesses that everybody on this call would have heard of. It's had those relationships for a very long time. We're not only able to demonstrate that we've got great retention around those clients, but we've also been kind of growing our market share through accelerating our new client acquisition. It might be a kind of a challenging environment that we're working in now, but we are holding on to every single one of those customers and looking after them for the long term and then growing that market share by adding new logos onto there.
We've got a great split by client sector and a great split by geography or destination. That's a kind of fairly standard split, and it's been the same over a number of years. You know, Brand Addition's got a really nice balance to its business model. This is telling the story of the first half. Our overall, if you look at like June 2024 compared to June 2025 compared to June 2024, then sales are down by a couple of million. Bridging that and hopefully helping you understand a little bit of the nuance below that is that, you know, we've got some of our existing customers down. I've said, you know, like kind of we've had great client retention in there. I haven't lost any businesses, but in that movement, there are some customers that are down, some that are up.
There's not any real pattern that we can share with you in terms of how those customers are behaving. It is very much business specific. What we see in our businesses that we're working with, if they're having a difficult time, then their spend with us reflects that. What we are able to do is offset some of that through the new client wins that we've converted, and we have seen an acceleration in the number of those. They've been implemented in the first half, and we're expecting those to grow as we move through the next 12-18 months. The question that we always get on Brand Addition is how does the half-year performance translate into the full year, and trying to share with you here how we see that panning out.
We're bridging from the 50 that we had at June to the 82 that we had at the beginning of this week. That's the kind of, so 82 is the invoices raised or orders received in respect of 2025. What we're signaling is that we expect our revenue for the full year to be broadly in line with where we were last year, which would mean that we've got $25 million to find between now and the end of the year. How do we see that panning out? That number is a pretty consistent number with what we received last year. We need a little bit more this year. It's exactly in line with what we had the year before.
Looking at the order patterns, order intake patterns of our existing customers and what we see happening on new business, the combination of those leads us to the conclusion, sitting here today, that we'll get to a number that's broadly in line with where we were last year. What's been our focus, our three points of focus for this year, and how are we performing against that? Retention. Brand Addition and the whole business works on long-term relationships, invested, well invested, and making sure that we're not doing something just for today. We're doing something for the long term. The excellent client retention that Brand Addition has is a testament to that, and that retention has continued. Winning new on top of that is obviously improving our market share. What we are saying is, and what we are experiencing as well, is an improving level of new contract wins.
That's kind of, we're ticking off, we believe, points one and two on there. Back to what I said right at the beginning, in an uncertain environment where we are working really hard on revenues, controlling what we can control, doing the right thing with our margins, and controlling our costs, so that we can have a really robust performance, not only at revenue, but like EBITDA is what we've been focused on.
Thanks, Claire. Taking home, we're going to talk a little bit about ESG as well. ESG seems to become a little less fashionable in the last sort of 12 or 18 months, but we're not trying to follow fashion. We're trying to do what we think is right. We've always put under the banner of ESG, there's a lot, it's about treating your team right, your suppliers right, doing the right thing for the community and the environment. I don't think they need, you know, they're all good things to be doing anytime, and they happen to come under a banner of ESG. In our own tone of voice, we're going about it. We listen to our team, our investors, our suppliers, partners, and customers, and from there, triangulate what we think are the most important things.
We put those together under four cornerstones and then produce an annual ESG report that's on our website. It's done properly. It's done with depth and substance. It's not just there to tick a box. We will continue to do what we believe and put in the right amount of work into what comes with the ESG banner because we believe it's the right way to run a business and for the long term and those long-term relationships that we talk about. The easiest thing to do, go onto our website, pebblegroup.com, and you'll be able to see the depth of thought and work we put into there. We haven't invented done that on the side of running the business. That is part of what we do in order to manage our business, and we'll continue to do that.
Taking this really kind of home, and then we'll answer some questions, is, you know, how do we sort of see the outlook? We'll stand behind our half-year results for this year. It doesn't mean it's perfect, and it doesn't mean, you know, kind of things are, you know, kind of things couldn't be better. We definitely believe on Facilisgroup, we've got some encouraging signs, and we kind of want to now prove that not only in the forward indicators, but actually in the actual results that come through. That's really important for us. Then keep Brand Addition moving in terms of existing relationships and clients going forward. We really do want to take advantage of the great people and services that we provide, and can we attract more businesses into it? That's really where we finish.
We'll get our heads down for the year-end and then beyond there, really trying to gain that market share. You know, two businesses we're really proud of, and we hope they can continue to evolve and get better and grow. That's everything. Thanks very much for listening, and happy to take questions.
Yeah, great. Thank you very much indeed, Chris and Claire. All very good. I'll now open up to questions from the audience. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the Q&A button at the base of your screen and type in a question for me to ask to the management team. We've had a few questions pre-submitted. I'll kick off with this one. First of all, how have your thoughts developed recently on capital allocation?
Yeah, I think our, the slide that we share is similar or is the same as the one that we shared back in March. The decision, the shift in March was that we would invest into accelerating organic growth at Facilisgroup, which we've done, and hopefully kind of got across the message that we are starting to see some results from that investment. I referenced we will continue to think about that and the level of investment. We are getting some amazing returns on the investment that we've made. That begs the question, do we increase that and accelerate that investment? I think that's a question that we need to consider as a board and debate. We have committed to making a progressive dividend payment, and we haven't changed on that one.
Over the last 18 months, we've been returning cash through the share buyback and then more lately the tender offer. I think we're at the end of that now and there isn't any plans to immediately do anything there. We'll let our cash build back up. Very deliberately on that slide, in point four, we did make reference to other options that we've got available to us. Our first and our absolute focus is on organic growth. We believe there's a great opportunity to grow organically for both of our businesses. We would never say never to any kind of M&A if the right opportunity came along and we felt that that was a good fit that would help us move the businesses forward.
Okay, that's great. Thank you. Next question is, on this is relating to Facilisgroup, do you now have all the team in place that you need?
I think we've got a great leadership team in place and some really good people. I do believe there is a great team there that can take this business forward. Yes. Does that mean we finish in recruitment in terms of continuing to add the right level of quality and understanding into the business? I think that will continue. We've got a super leadership of five people who are supported by, again, a kind of operational leadership team and then supported by people underneath there as well. I do think, and again, I see it with my own eyes, whether we're at an event or we're in the offices or we're on a Teams call, that there's a group of people moving in the same direction and for the greater good of the business and our partners and our suppliers.
I do believe there is a high-quality team in there now that can take this business back to growth because I believe it's well managed, it's well looked after. The real trick in breaking the valuation cycle will be revenue growth. I think we've got a super platform from which to do that from and the right team.
Okay, thank you. Actually, that leads on to the next question about revenue. This question is, both Facilisgroup and Brand Addition have shown flat revenue and slight pressure on margins. How would you see revenue growth potential in the next few years for both businesses?
Yeah, so taking each of us on the Brand Addition side, I think Claire explained very good retention. Some of those businesses are spending a bit less in the shorter term, but they're some of the best-known organizations in the world and keeping those relationships, they come through over time. It is an uncomplicated strategy on Brand Addition, if not a complicated thing to do. Retain those amazing businesses over the long term. They might go up and down slightly individually, but as a cohort, they will move forward. Add to those new logos, which do have a sustainable high level of volume on a year-on-year basis, and that will lead to growth. If you stretch out our track record at Brand Addition, we do have a growth rate around about 5% on steady margins and steady profit margins, gross margins and profit margins.
I do think over the medium term, that business does grow in that profile and will continue to do that. It could be augmented with acquisition at some point. In terms of Facilisgroup, that business has more than doubled since we listed and since we bought the business, or since we bought the business, certainly in 2018, and the beginning of 2019, wasn't it? End of 2018. That business has more than doubled. It has proved growth. I think I got things wrong a couple of years ago and got much more closely involved in terms of going back to our core and looking at our existing customer relationships and making sure they were as solid as they should be. I now think we've made the changes and got the team to ensure that platform is extremely strong. By platform, I mean the wider business, not just the technology.
I think we now are in a position to go and grab some market share and be really proud of who we are and go after that sort of more aggressively. I acknowledge fully that I suppose our valuation reflects the flat sales line. I think if we're able to prove some revenue growth on good profitability and good cash conversion, I do think there's two great businesses in here which have exciting futures for their customers, for their teams, and for investors.
Okay, thank you. Next question is on the Brand Addition side. Have you still got a good pipeline for further new contract wins?
We invested 18 months ago into a lady called Harriet Greenwood, who joined us in terms of really rethinking our marketing and our pipeline strategy. I test them hard on this, and I put them under some pressure in terms of how that's coming in. I do think new processes and use of technology are helping that pipeline get better. It's a great question in terms of if we get through the pipeline and we get to a tender process, we show a client list to a prospect and people will be drawn into that organization. The big thing for us on Brand Addition is making sure we're on those global tenders or those European or U.S. tenders. If we can get on there with these large organizations, we've got a very good track record of converting them. The pipeline is growing.
We've had better conversion of that pipeline in the last six months of 2023, first six months of 2024, first six months of 2025. It is an important thing to help us get through headwinds with existing customers. Adding to the logos with the right size and repeatability of their spend is a very important thing for us. It is growing, and a big part of our success going forward will be making sure that pipeline is as full as possible.
Okay, thank you. This one's on Facilisgroup. Given the level of data you must see across your customer base, are you looking to use AI or other technologies to analyze trends and help your partners?
Yeah, so I think there's a, you know, $1.5 billion of sales we see on an annual basis. If you try and even kind of move around from that, how many proposals must go into those $1.5 billion of invoice sales? How many orders, what zip code they've been delivered to, what brand they have on, from which salesperson in which region, and from which supplier, it's an incredible amount of data. Take that back 10 years, and that is amazing information that even now we do use to our advantage, to the advantage of our suppliers and our partners. We have a great project going on called Project Looking Glass, which we've employed data AI specialists to come and help us take that from raw data that's all locked away and take it through.
I'm learning all the time, the number of stages and pieces of software that you have to take that through to come out with something reportable and valuable. There's probably four stages we have to go through. That project is ongoing. I'm really excited about what that tells us about the industry, how that can help our preferred suppliers, and how that can help our partners. It took me two years to recognize that we need to do this, but we're absolutely right in the middle of it. I'm very much hopeful for, as we get through 2026, we're able to use that data to really support our partners, our suppliers, and ourselves in growing all of our businesses.
Okay, that's great. Look forward to hearing about that next year then. Next question, what kind of acquisition, you've touched on acquisition opportunities. The question is, what kind of acquisition, what kind of acquisition opportunities might there be for either of the businesses? I think asking for a bit of detail, really.
Yeah, and on Brand Addition, we have grown that business successfully via acquisition. Our footprint in the U.S. was via an acquisition in 2015, I want to say. That has been a very successful piece of work, again, more than doubled in size since we acquired that. If you think about Brand Addition, we will stick to what we do really well, which is look after the corporates on a global basis who want complex services around their promotional products. At the beginning, we showed the chart of the $50 billion industry and $25 billion in North America. If you look at Brand Addition, if you did the pie chart for Brand Addition, it isn't North America 50%, the rest of the world 50%. We just have around about 25% of our sales in North America.
Is there potential with this amazing rest of the world footprint to do a little bit more in North America? That, I think, is something interesting. Although we won't be announcing anything imminently, it's an option. Around Facilisgroup, we're absolutely invested in what we do well, but also there are things we can plug into our own systems and things from that deliver great practice that we could never build into our own. We're integrating those. Is there any businesses like that that we can add value to our existing partners by buying something that plugs into our core system, Syncore, as well? That's an opportunity for us. We are definitely, we've returned a lot of money to shareholders. I think we're probably finishing what we're doing in 2025. Cash will build as we get to the year-end and that capital allocation piece.
I think we have no debts, very cash generative. If we choose, there are options on inorganic growth, but I want to do that on the back of real proof points of organic growth.
Okay, that's great. Thank you. We've got a question. You were just talking about the U.S. market opportunity. We've got a question on tariffs. We're seeing reports of tariff-related uncertainty easing. What are your clients saying? Has there been any shift in sentiment?
Whether it's been COVID or Brexit or exchange rates, supply chain, inflation, there's a lot going on in the world. We get asked a lot of that. How does it affect you? I think the best thing to always do is go back to thinking about marketers are the ones that ultimately spend the dollars that make this business work and our industry work. How are marketers at corporates? Do they have a budget and are they confident spending it? That's how, whether it's tariffs or COVID or anything, think of the answer as what's that question. I think tariff was something very, very large and big in people's minds six months ago. There's been a stop-start nature to it. It definitely has taken a back seat. Suppliers in our industry have done an amazing job.
They often are the ones that buy in direct out of the countries that have been affected by tariffs. They've invested into inventory. They've thought creatively about where else they can build, make, and decorate product. Through their hard work, the partner or distributor being more nimble and being able to pass some of the cost on to the end user, I do think that's really smoothed out in a way that operationally we've been able to work. Although tariffs was a big thing six months ago, people were worried. It's tariffs and the global economy. What does the global economy do as opposed to tariffs in itself that will affect demand in our industry?
Understood. Thank you. That sort of leads on to the next question. What, in your view, are the key risks to meeting full-year guidance?
This goes back to, I think you can talk about it.
Yeah, so I think the unknown for us is that $25 million on Brand Addition sales that we, you know, I kind of talked through on that slide. What we're trying to say there is what we need to do is something that we have done before, but we've obviously got to, we need to receive those orders and get them invoiced. That expectation is built on us understanding what our existing clients are doing right now and what their behavior patterns have been over the last few months, and then what our expectation is of our new clients. That is, you know, that's our unanswered question, if you like. Our view today is taken on our, you know, our understanding and the history and the 20 years history we've got of understanding how these patterns play out. That's the challenge.
What we're also trying to say in sharing that slide is, you know, we are, we're not going to miss that number by a huge amount. We're not going to be $5 million under or $5 million over. We will be there and thereabouts. You know, we're in a public environment and we know that our obligation is to hit that number. We, you know, we wouldn't be saying that we felt that we could if we didn't. That's our expectation, and we're very much managing to that. Again, I'm like a broken record, but controlling what we can, get the most out of our margins, control our costs, and work really hard at moving that sales line forward.
Okay, thank you. We've just got a couple of questions left. As a reminder to people, if you would like to ask a question, please use the screen and type in a question for me to ask on your behalf. Last two or three questions. First of all, there's sort of two that go together on Facilisgroup. First part is, how can you build on the partner wins in Facilisgroup? Do you expect that momentum to continue into the second half? I think it's probably related. You talked about investment into partner growth at Facilisgroup. Could you describe what that cash and capital is going into? Any idea of a sensible maximum quantum or level of that investment?
Yeah, and so that investment, I think it's $400,000. We're, you know, $400,000 greater in OpEx this year in 2025, half a year, than it was in 2024. I think that'll probably be more than, so if we've got $400,000, we're probably talking into $1 million, slightly $1 million plus will be the full year run rate of that. That's what we've done. That's gone pretty much into sales in terms of people, quality of leadership, and the quality of people. I really hope paying out more in terms of success, in terms of we win more, in terms of new partners, and therefore we kind of pay the sales team more, which will be absolutely fantastic for us to do. It's gone into people, better quality, and we mentioned, so JC Capote has joined us, our Chief Revenue Officer. He's done an amazing job.
He's kind of building a team now and really helped us get our product marketing messages right and organize a sales team in a very professional and thoughtful way that we, you know, expect a pipeline to be much stronger going forward. It's been into people and we're getting a really good return on that $1 million at the moment. I think I won't hesitate to keep going on that and invest more if we believe we can get, you know, there's a phrase of lifetime value to cost of acquisition of our customers. That ratio, I think, is very powerful for us today. I think it's, you know, that ratio pops out. With that information, what it says to us, put more in and grow further. We're putting the investment in, and then we'll put the pressure on the team in order to deliver that.
By the team, I definitely mean the sales team, but that goes on to our team in product management, in partner success, and, you know, in terms of engineering and pushing our technology forward as well. Our business is geared to go into growth mode from here, and the sales team are a big part of that, and that's why we're investing into it.
Okay, thank you. I think this is quite possibly the last question. It relates to Brand Addition. Can we expect to see further improvement in margins at Brand Addition in the second half?
I think the Brand Addition margin has improved. The guys have done an amazing job at moving that forward over the last couple of years. There was a step change last year when we moved up to 35%. I think where we are now is probably the right number for everybody to think about. It would be wrong of me to say that that will keep moving forward. I think it's a sensible place, and I would expect it to stay around about that number.
Stable. Great. Thank you very much. Okay, I think that brings us to the end. There are no further questions. I just want to end there. I'll hand back to Christopher Lee for any final closing remarks.
Thank you very much for spending time and listening to us today. I think we're in a sensible position, but more than that, there are two great businesses here that, you know, my job, Claire's job, and that of the team is now to take Facilisgroup and Brand Addition into growth. If I do that, I think there is a wonderful business to be part of and to invest in. This business isn't about me or it's about Claire. It's about a much bigger team. Whether it's putting the materials together that we share with you, or it's getting over the line for the year-end at Brand Addition, or it's putting growth into Facilisgroup, there's an amazing team behind us that's doing all this. I definitely don't say thank you well enough. I tend to kind of concentrate on the next thing.
It's a big thanks to everybody, Brand Addition, Facilisgroup, and The Pebble Group plc for giving us the opportunity to share the messages. I hope we do that team justice. Thank you very much for listening.
It's a great way to end. Thank you very much indeed for your time. Thanks to management, and thank you all for attending. This is the end of the webinar.