Thanks, Gareth. Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Like I say, it's The Pebble Group 2025 full year results that we're gonna walk you through today. We're gonna go through the same sort of rhythm of what we do. We'll do a little bit on the market, some highlights. Claire will take you through the numbers, and then I'll kind of do Facilisgroup. Claire does Brand Addition, and happy to take any questions at the end. Claire and I have been part of the business a long time, and definitely emotionally invested and you know, kind of through that period, but also financially well invested as well, and you know, definitely believe aligned with shareholders.
In terms of the business that we're actually part of or the industry we're part of, go back to there. It's the promotional product sector that our business is operating, and that is all businesses, all sizes, and all sectors are using merchandise to support their brand. They're engaging with their employees, their customers or potential customers and suppliers. They're really proud of who they are and want to express that in either what they're wearing or kind of what they're using in terms of writing instruments and pads or kind of what the drinkware they're using. All around, as promotional prod ucts exist and that creates a really large market.
Globally, we estimate it at around about $50 billion, and that's $25 billion of that is in North America where a lot of the business that we see is as well. The Pebble Group lens into the promotional product sector is about through $1.7 billion, which of that U.S. market is around about 6%. Really an important size of spend that we're seeing and controlling through our technology in the U.S. and Canadian markets. That $1.7 billion comes from our two businesses. The Pebble Group is our holding business, our holding company, and the ownership business that's listed. The real action and all the fun happens at our two operational businesses, Facilisgroup and Brand Addition.
Facilisgroup sees $1.6 billion of the U.S. industry of that $25 billion of annual revenues through the technology that we provide to some of the really quality and growing distributors in the North American market. Brand Addition is selling product to some of the biggest and best-known companies in the world on a global basis and quality product to them on a consistent global basis to some of the best-known brands and is a growing and really cash generative organization as well.
In terms of sort of what we think are some really good, our cornerstones of investment, growth to us starts with looking after our existing relationships, whether it be, our clients at Brand Addition, our partners and our suppliers at Facilisgroup, we're really interested in long-term relationships rather than one-off. We put a huge amount of focus on existing client relationships to make sure they're long-term for the good of the partner and the client and the good of our business as well. Both of our businesses, Facilisgroup and Brand Addition, you know, we're very biased obviously, but we think they're market leading in what they do. Important to us that long-term relationship is about having a good reputation and we're people that businesses trust to work with in the long term.
Far from perfect, but absolutely it's important to us what our business reputation is and making sure those long-term relationships are nurtured. It's a $50 billion business on an annual basis in promotional products. The size of our businesses means there is opportunity to scale and very much understood, this industry is a fragmented one. What we do is try to grow and move forward. We have profitable and cash generative organizations, and that allows us to return value to shareholders, and we'll go through what we've actually done over the last couple of years and we're looking to do in the future in terms of delivering value to shareholders as well.
In terms of the highlights of the business, I'll start on the right and work from right to left. Brand Addition, selling product under contracts from the largest organization in the world. Great NPS scores, which reflect the long-term relationship. We've grown the number of new businesses that we've contracted with in the last 12 months and that retention rate is very, very strong. Whether it's been through Brexit, through COVID, through inflation rates, interest rates, through tariffs, Brand Addition has stood really tall in all of those headwinds and produced very solid results, great retention and cash generation over a long period of time. At Facilisgroup, we've really kind of focused on our stakeholder relationships over the last 2 years.
With our partners, we've moved our NPS score from 35 up to 50, a really good sign of where we believe those relationships are, again, leading to to long-term commitment from both the partner and ourselves. We have taken a lot of time in trying to grow the number of partners that we're actually doing, as well as retaining, actually growing the numbers that we're doing, and have almost doubled that number in 2025 versus 2024. Again, partner retention is very strong. We've been on a two-year project to improve our technology, our team, our relationships, and now we do believe that that is done. We believe we're now ready to return to growth and really excited about what that might deliver. Those businesses being successful, generating cash, what does it mean for our group?
That we are very cash generative, we're debt free, and we're able to return value to shareholders in what is actually a very difficult market. We've still been able to give significant and valuable returns to our shareholders. That's kind of the highlights. Claire will go through the numbers now, and then we'll dive into each of the businesses.
Thank you. Sharing on this slide the KPIs of our business and really the key points of focus for the year that's just passed. This will come out as we move through the slides, but our, you know, our themes are it's a really difficult macro. Our revenue's been stable in that environment, and that's something that we're very proud of. With that backdrop, we've really focused on the things that we can control. Can we improve our gross margins? We signaled this time last year that we were looking to return to growth in Facilisgroup and investing behind that, and we'll give you some more feedback and update on how that's gone through the year.
We also said that we would improve our free cash flow conversion during the year, which we've done, and I'm very pleased to have moved that from 68% in 2024 to 91% in 2025, and that's allowed us to make a significant return to our shareholders in the form of a buyback and a tender offer and a dividend. The two businesses in our group have very different business models. Over on the left-hand side of the screen, we've got it's showing the split of revenue. We've got Brand Addition, the products business is the lion's share of revenue in our group, and then Facilisgroup is a much smaller proportion of group activity at the revenue level.
It's a SaaS business, and they're SaaS revenues that generate really healthy margins. As you move across to the right of the screen, you can see the split of EBITDA between Brand Addition and Facilisgroup is much more equal. The P&L, you know, revenue I've referenced right at the beginning. As you know, we've got stable revenues in a difficult environment, and that revenue number is principally driven by Brand Addition. What we did experience in the year was a bit of softening in our existing clients, but the success that the teams had there in converting new opportunities meant that we were able to hold our revenue at a consistent level with the previous year, controlling what we can.
Brand Addition, we saw an improvement in our gross profit margin, and that was the kind of fourth year in a row that we've done that. Team have done a brilliant job there, generating profit margins of 37% versus the 30% back in 2022. We invested for growth at Facilisgroup, specifically in our sales and marketing efforts to drive that new partner acquisition, and we've had great success with that in the year and announced on Tuesday that we were gonna continue that investment. That's led to, you know, our closing EBITDA being like slightly behind last year, but on the back of some really exciting metrics as we move forward into 2026. Balance sheet.
You know, there's a really strong balance sheet and it starts supporting our organic growth and enabling us to make the capital returns that we have done over the year. When you look at the Pebble balance sheet, think really, oh, it's all about Brand Addition. The working capital is backed by large corporates whom we contracted with, and you know, they're blue chips. Our working capital numbers will move with sales volumes, but they're really high-quality assets that turn to cash. Which leads me nicely on, really kind of nice straightforward cash flow.
I've already referenced the fact that we've increased our cash flow conversion, and that's come through from the normalization of CapEx in Facilisgroup as we focused on bringing our CapEx investment down and really returning the business to growth through some OpEx investment. Chris will take you through that in a couple of slides. You know, you can see the significant increase in the returns to shareholders that we made over 2025. What does all that mean in terms of capital allocation? You know, highly cash generative businesses that gives us choices around capital allocation, and our number one choice is in investing in accelerating organic growth at Facilisgroup.
Our experience over the year is that we're becoming increasingly confident in the LTV to CAC number that's coming out of that investment and the returns that we're getting from that investment. We're gonna invest behind that and really push the organic growth in Facilisgroup. We announced on Tuesday that we're gonna maintain our dividend at a quantum similar to that, well, exactly the same as that we paid in 2025. We also announced a share buyback of GBP 5 million that started on Tuesday and we're, you know, in the process of completing.
Thanks, Claire.
Okay.
We're going to dive into Facilisgroup now. Facilisgroup's business is based on technology, but we start this with people. Here's an emPOWER, we call it, initiative is run by women across the promotional product sector, and really sponsored and started at Facilisgroup. What this shows, and this was one of our events in New Orleans, and what this shows is that the depth and quality of Facilisgroup's relationships and the community that it creates is a bond far beyond technology. The technology provides a growing and an ambitious distributor with technology in which to sort of run its organization. The scale of that technology allows us to create a buying group or market network on top.
The relationships that all provides are some of the closest and best relationships in the industry, and I'm really proud that Facilisgroup sponsors such a thing as emPOWER. Again, talking about that, we provide technology, we provide 360-degree best practice processes for that technology to be used to its best advantage. The scale creates the market network, and around that, the amazing relationships where we help train our partners' salespeople, we help celebrate their successes, and we help educate their salespeople and educate their principals and their owners in kind of networking with each other as well.
Technology, supply chain, buying group, and community makes it a really powerful business, but it's the heart of our partners' businesses, not just a piece of technology. This is some of the statistics that come out of there. Again, concentrate on the bottom. If we can get partner numbers moving in the right direction, and we return to growth on that in 2025, in turn, those partner numbers create a growing level of GMV, and that means sort of our, you know, kind of our scale is moving forward. Then from that, our preferred supplier spend can grow with some of those great supplier relationships, and we all benefit from that as well.
Our partner suppliers and Facilisgroup will benefit from those metrics moving on the bottom of there. The challenge that we've had over the last couple of years and been doing a bit of refocusing is taking those top to left-hand charts and saying we make nice returns, and that's been very good, but we haven't grown over the last couple of years. In 2025, we felt in a position to change that, which is really now gonna be, we're gonna benefit from that in 2026 and 2027. Definitely the challenge is nice business, kind of some lovely metrics, but not growing. Over the last couple of years, we've really worked hard at the relationships with our different stakeholders.
Making sure our partners are listened to, are on side, and we're providing them with great technology. Again, exactly the same with our suppliers and building a great team. Those three things are in place, so now we move towards delivering returns now to our shareholders and moving back to growth. I feel as though we've done all the steps in order to get to that place right now. In 2025, you can see there the performance. We took a chunk out of profitability in order to grow the revenue. That chunk out of profitability, we think, has been really well invested by looking at a lifetime value of the new customers that we've won versus what we've actually spent on the new business, and we'll go into that right now.
Lifetime value to cost of customer or cost of partner acquisition is a relationship that's really important when you're thinking about how are you getting the most out of your investment and what it's returning to you. Facilisgroup has an extremely strong lifetime value, and that's because of these five attributes on the left-hand side. We have this wonderful two income model in terms of we receive fees from our partners for the technology, and then we receive a fee for the activity between our partners and our preferred suppliers in terms of creating that buying group and supporting wins for our suppliers, wins for our partners, and wins for Facilisgroup itself. It's a very powerful two-sided income model. Our partners grow with us.
We help support their businesses in training their salespeople, in giving them the good technology, and linking them with each other to support their growth. Some really nice statistics are there that our partners grow ahead of the industry average. High retention rates are obviously very important in terms of lifetime value. As we're growing, we're finding we're actually building the technology to future-proof the businesses of our existing partners and those that are growing. In doing that, actually, it's allowing us to attract larger partners into the organization as well. What we're finding is the average partner joining us through the second half of 2025 and the first weeks in 2026 is actually bigger than the average partners we were attracting in the past.
Of course, we've got strong gross profit margins. The mix of those five things really pull out a really strong LTV. In terms of customer acquisition cost, very clearly we know the incremental costs that we've been spending. It's been on people. Good leadership has made a big difference to us in our business generally, in our technology over the last two years, and in our new business acquisition over the last 12 months. We're finding we are hiring and getting leaders of a better quality, hiring people of a better quality on top of better communicated messaging. We're really making some real headway into that and getting a repeatability that we haven't had before in terms of bringing new customers in on a regular basis.
That's a little bit of this evidence. The first half of the chart on the left is saying this is how our partner numbers changed in 2024 and comparing that with 2025. You can see the gray bar is attrition and either businesses getting acquired and therefore leaving our community or some choosing to actually take an alternative. You can see that has been fairly stable, whereas the actual growth in the number of partners in the green has moved up by 88% in number, and actually the annual recurring revenue of those 30 has grown slightly in 2025, and we're finding that is growing again in the first few weeks of 2026. What does that mean?
We can kind of do the math and the cost of partner or customer acquisition at that 1 million is quite easily identifiable. There's some great formulas and debate about how you actually kind of do the lifetime value, but the inputs going into that are what we showed a couple of pages ago. That 7:1 ratio says to us, what we've spent is really gonna come back to us as good investment, and it says spend some more in there, and that's what we're doing because we believe sacrificing a little bit of that high margin for some revenue growth makes our business much more interesting to be part of, whether you're a supplier, you're a partner, or one of the team.
In terms of what we're doing going forward, our growth starts, and when we walk across the threshold every day, we think about our existing partner community, our existing suppliers, and our team. That's where our growth starts. Our technology has moved forward enormously over the last couple of years, and congratulations to the team that have done that and the leadership that has done that. Then our revenue is moving in the same way. The team has worked incredibly hard over the last couple of years in moving our organization forward generally with our partners and our suppliers, and now it's time to give a little back into the investor, and I'm looking forward to being here in 6 months and 12 months and showing those kind of income graphs going forward.
Cool. Right. Do some Brand Addition. Do you want to skip on to the next one? When you think about Brand Addition, selling promotional products to large corporates or international organizations, and every single one of Brand Addition's customers you would be familiar with, and doing that on a global basis. Again, we're setting out here some of the services that wrap around that. Brand Addition stands tall on its client retention levels, and something that we're really proud of. Our customers look to us to provide a high. You know, not only a really cool product that engages with their audience, but to do that in a way that helps them engage and address their own ESG commitments.
They look to us to help them understand, you know, not only what the product's made of, but whose hands it's made in and where it's made from. When you think of Brand Addition, like I say, think huge organizations who want a really cool product that engages their customers, but also, you know, reflects their own brand and their commitment to ESG. You know, like the metrics of Brand Addition, again, something we're really proud of. You know, our revenue has been stable over the last few years, and you can look at that in two ways, but it's been a really difficult macro environment. We've managed to hold on to those customers, continue with those great retention rates.
That's meant that in that difficult environment, that we've been able to stand tall. I've, I think I've said it three times, but so by moving that gross profit margin, it's been, you know, a great achievement that the team have delivered. Because we've controlled our costs below gross margin, then that improvement has delivered, has dropped through to EBITDA in 2025. Below there, the pie charts are showing you the nice diversification of revenue by destination and client sector that helps give us, you know, a nice spread of business in Brand Addition. This chart is kind of putting a little bit of meat on the bones of what I've been saying.
You know, if there's a bit of pressure on our existing customers, what the team has done really well is to supplement that or to offset that pressure with new business wins. We've kind of had a, you know, a little bit of a down on existing customers, so not by number, but in the volume that they're spending with us. But the impact of an increase in number of new client wins means that we've been able to withstand that pressure. We've moved our gross margins on, and that's really helped our EBITDA.
Like I've just said, controlling our costs has meant that we've been able to move our EBITDA returns forward in what's been a really difficult environment and something that we're really proud of. This is a little bit more detail on the, you know, the momentum that we've been experiencing new client acquisition. You know, the number of new client wins in 2025 was well ahead of those in 2024. What our initial view of that is that the quantum of revenue that we expect those new client wins to deliver is pretty consistent with what we've had in prior years. You know, in Brand Addition it takes 12-18 months for us to get a full view of that.
The winning of an increasing number is only good news for us. Behind that there's you know, a really nice pipeline. You know, our focus on continuing that momentum remains. Our three points of focus for 2026 is, you know, as Chris said about Facilisgroup, and it's absolutely the same with Brand Addition, our growth begins with retention. Holding on to those long-term relationships and making sure that we're working with our customers to give them what they need is exactly what we'll focus on. Then we'll supplement that with continuing the momentum that we've got in new client wins, and we'll do that in a really disciplined financial way.
We'll aim internally for 5% organic revenue growth, holding onto those margin improvements that we've made over the last few years and letting that feed through to our EBITDA margins.
Thank you, Claire. All right, we're kind of on the way home now. This is the ESG section, but actually kind of these are things that we're doing 'cause we believe in running a business a certain way for the right, for our environment, for our suppliers, for our partners, and for our team. Things that we think are the right things to be done can happen to become under the the banner of ESG rather than we think ESG and what shall we do. We're doing things not because they're fashionable or we kind of somebody's telling them we should be doing, we're doing it 'cause we think it's the right thing to do for our own stakeholders.
I think next week, alongside our annual report, we'll be issuing, I think, our fourth or fifth ESG report, which is a great document, which kind of goes into some detail about a lot of the great initiatives that are going on around the group. You know, we're very proud. We do them for the right reasons, and they come under the banner of ESG rather than the other way around. This is saying kind of the cornerstones that we have there is around our people, our environment, communities that we work in, and our own people, of course. Really important stuff, and it's just about running the business the right way and happens to kind of go under a title of ESG.
as we finish giving you the sort of messages around the key message around our organization for 2026, we've had a sensible start both in Brand Addition and Facilisgroup. What we wish to do is to prove out all the work that's gone on over the last couple of years. A wonderful team, a leadership team, kind of, sort of taking that from the front. These LTV to CAC ratios are really encouraging us to invest for growth. Sacrificing a little bit of that really good margin to return to a level of exciting growth, I think is exactly the right thing to do. We're getting a lot of support for doing that.
In terms of Brand Addition, making sure, again, Claire said, and I think I should exactly say the same, in terms of the gross margin that business has done and kind of whatever's been thrown at it's been absolutely super in terms of performance and cash generation. Again, we'll put a nice little bit of growth into there. You know, we have a wonderful cash generative business. We continue to give capital back, GBP 3 million dividend, five million buybacks going on top of the 12 million that was returned last year. Those things are happening, debt-free, cash generative allow us to do that. We're in a sensible spot. Getting Facilisgroup back to growth and continuing to demonstrate the strength of Brand Addition is what's ahead of us.
You know, we're looking forward to, you know, a successful 2026 on the continued hard work of the team in 2025. I think that takes us to everything. With an appendix with a little bit of kind of further information, some financial guidance, the segmentals of the business and a balance sheet breakdown. Everybody can look at that at their leisure. We'd be pleased to take any questions that people have.
That's great. Thank you very much indeed. If you have a question, please click on the Q&A button at the base of the screen and then type in a question for me to ask. We have had a couple of questions pre-submitted, and a number have already come through. First question is, which e-commerce platforms are fully integrated into Syncore?
Yeah. Integration is a big part of what is going on right now at Facilisgroup in terms of in order to support our businesses that are growing and getting more complex, having integrations from whether it's e-commerce, accounting, or CRM, they're the kind of big things that need to happen. We do have, and again, I think, I probably won't talk about the brands, but one of our has been a preferred supplier into the e-commerce over a lot of time. That is part of in our integration right now. Those we'll continue to do. I think we have a decision to make. Do we go with one in particular and really go deep into one particular e-commerce platform?
I think I'd rather be a bit more agnostic than that because each of our partners have quite a very different needs. There is so many different platforms that are available out there. What I'd like to do is allow our partners the opportunity to choose what e-commerce platform they want and then integrate from there rather than just choose one to go very deep with.
Great. Thank you. Next question is a bit broader. How do you feel that AI might impact on your markets, either in the near or the longer term?
It's you know we were sat here with investors 12 months ago and tariffs was a really kind of you know the new point. I think over that period people have got used to what tariffs has done and worked around that. AI has kind of taken its place as the big thing and the big question to answer. In terms of our end markets I think people still will want promotional products to be part of their marketing mix. I think even more so in a world of AI and digital marketing a physical product in the hand is great. I think our end markets remain very strong. It's about using AI to help our customers sell to their customers.
It's about using AI and that amazing data that we've got and using AI to say, "Can we either do our coding more swiftly? Are there any end processes that we can do more efficiently?" We've got some very bright people, beginning to use AI to a great and greater degree every day. We're also taking some external support to help us, you know, guide us along the way. We'll use it in a responsible manner, an excited manner and, I say really good thing it's not affecting our end markets. We come back into there and how can we use it to support our customers' customers and our own efficiencies as well.
Okay. Thank you. A question about the total addressable market is. The question is, since there's a similar sized total addressable market in Europe, why has Facilisgroup not expanded outside North America?
Yeah. I think we've definitely spent the last two years in getting right what we are doing at the moment. I think we've kind of, you know, the team have done an amazing job in doing that. It's one market in North America. Well, one plus, you know, there's the U.S. and then Canada and, but really one market that we're working in overall. That's one set of suppliers, that's one language, one currency. I do, plus, and importantly, I don't forget, Canada on top of the U.S.
That creates a scale and a volume that we have a very small market share of and where is the best return, where's the LTV to our CAC in there, and it is much better spent in North America right now. If I think about Europe, then the market itself is the same size, but each of the individual countries will have a slightly different supplier base, which fragments that part of our business model. The position we're in is looking after our existing customers right now and in North America, and there is market share to be gained there at a much better LTV to CAC than we could do in Europe right now.
Great. Thank you. A couple of questions on Facilisgroup, which are a bit more financial. First of all, what are the trends in consolidation within the target market that might limit the addressable market over time? Are there any signs of stress in that market, for example, increasing bad debts or lengthening like for like debtor days? Finally, for clarity, are new contracts on comparable gross margins to those shown in the presentation, or are you having to fund new business with short-term subsidies?
Yeah. Okay. Good questions. Long ones. Acquisition-wise, acquisition does happen. In fact, I'll go to that slide if I can. We do say. Oops, excuse me. In those gray bars there's a little kind of analysis of how they split between businesses that have been acquired, businesses that we've actually asked to leave, and businesses that have chosen something else. What you can see in there is that number's, you know, 19 to 16. I expect that kind of average to probably continue. But if that average continues on a growing green bar and businesses that we're actually attracting into Facilisgroup, then obviously the numbers grow.
We celebrate when a partner is acquired because they probably put a lifetime of effort into growing their organization at their own risk and have built something that has value then to sell on. I think that's it. It's we lose a customer or we lose a partner, but actually they've kind of, you know, congratulations to them for actually, you know, building something of value that has they can pass on and so we say well done to that. I do think we'll never be 100% in those, you know, those gray ones will never disappear and so that will naturally happen on an ongoing basis, and I don't think. If I looked at that over the last four years, I think that's the number that's, you know, continues.
I don't think there's gonna be a dramatic increase or decrease in that in the next few years.
Mm-hmm.
In terms of debtor days, part of the, you know, 2 or 3, maybe 4 of the churn is of businesses that have struggled and then haven't been paying Facilisgroup, and then obviously you use a payment plan, you're in touch with them. Eventually, you know, we have to say, "Well, if it's not right for you can't pay," we exit, and outside of that, we get paid monthly.
Monthly.
Upfront-
Yeah.
that is absolutely fine. The final point was on the gross margins. We have a single price list that is given to our new business team, which is exactly the same that it is with our existing partners, and that is what they use. There might be very occasionally things done around there, but there is one price list that everybody comes on. Everybody gets the software to sort of run their business, the services around that, and it's on a price list which all of our customers understand.
Okay. That's great. Thank you. One slightly more technical question. With the sunsetting of Commercio orders, how do you intend to compete downmarket against commonsku without, it says GL, I think it might mean general ledger capabilities. How do you intend to compete upmarket against NetSuite and other ERPs?
Yeah, I think the market obviously has other offerings in there, and I think we're aware of the capabilities and the fragility of other competitors in there, but we're concentrating on doing what's right for us and our partners. Our, you know, our pricing list goes from starts at GBP 2 million, and our biggest customer is around about GBP 70 million. That's sort of our GBP 2 million-GBP 20 million is a sweet spot, but certainly we're kinda growing with the businesses that are outside of there. We are concentrating on ourselves. I think we've got a unique and wonderful business model that is about technology, the supply chain buying group and the community, and that's unique in our industry.
I think if we get those things right, I think we will be at a great place in the industry. I think there's room for lots of businesses, but I think we'll be one of the leading ones in there and that's kind of the way I'm, you know, pushing forward, is getting what's right for our partners, our suppliers and our business.
Okay, thank you. One perhaps on the, again, on the financial side, if revenues grow as hoped, what are the implications for working capital intensity and cash conversion?
Yeah. When we talked about revenue growth and investing for revenue growth today, we've been talking, you know, at that accelerated level about Facilisgroup. Facilisgroup is a very working capital light model, so there is, you know, very little working capital in there, and I wouldn't expect that to change our dynamic. You know, we've moved our cash flow conversion forward to the kind of just over 90%, and that's where we expect it to stay. And that is a contribution of the really good, you know, like really strong cash generative characteristics of Brand Addition, and they've been consistent throughout. And then Facilisgroup, that, you know, our ability to move that forward last year was because we normalized our level of investment in CapEx, and again, that normalized level we expect to continue.
Okay, thank you. There actually is a question on tariffs. I know you just mentioned it, Chris, but last year tariffs was a huge topic. I'm interested to know how you navigated through those, and is there any ongoing impact?
Yeah.
Yeah, go for it, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh.
Tariffs at it's kind of most simplified macro level really affecting businesses in the U.S. buying out of Asia. From a, you know, Brand Addition, the products business, you know, probably around about 25% of our Brand Addition business is in the U.S., and very little of what we buy there is direct. That really on a, you know, on that level, not. It didn't affect us hugely. Where it did affect us or where it affects the industry is the suppliers in the U.S. who are buying out of Asia and then servicing the local buying that U.S. distributors are doing.
I think, you know, obviously they had huge amounts of disruption into their businesses and, you know, I think were amazing in how they responded to that, how they supported us and, how you know, making decisions around stock investment and kind of where to spend their money when they didn't really know how tariffs would play out. I think there was some disruption this time last year, and you could see a little bit of that in the preferred supplier spend in Facilisgroup. You know, I think its overall impact has not been significant.
Now, that's not to say that the teams and the guys in terms of navigating that haven't worked really hard because they have, but the impact on our business was kind of not significant and, you know, kind of let's see how that plays out this year, but I think the same principles apply.
Great. Thank you. Just to let everyone know, we're down to our last question, so if you would like to ask a question, please click on the Q&A button at the base of the screen. Otherwise, I'll just ask this last one. It's going back to the LTV and CAC slide and the conversation around that. Question is, since you spent $1 million of incremental CAC during 2025 and the LTV is $7 million, why wouldn't you allocate a lot more to this activity? And where do you believe the point of diminishing returns is given the competitive landscape?
Yeah, I think absolutely that's what it does say, and we are. I want to do this in a way that we continue to build evidence and confidence. I don't want to just throw tens of, you know, well, GBP millions at it. I want to kinda go, "We've done GBP 1 million, let's do 2, let's do 3, let's do 4," and make sure we kinda continually can prove a repeatability of that. I do think 7 : 1 says absolutely spend more, and we are, but we're doing that in a controlled and disciplined manner. We won't hesitate to continue to invest if those metrics continue to come through.
I think you know the well-publicized number of 3 : 1. People say anything above that is strong. Let's see where that takes us over the next 6 months, the next 12 months and 18. My expectation is we continue to invest behind that over that period and do more and more each time as we continue to gain in confidence. I think anything above 3 would say keep going.
That's great. That's a great note on which to end. There are no further questions at this time, so I'll hand back to you, Chris, for any final closing remarks.
Thank you. Yeah, I think we've made some great progress in 2025 and really excited about what can happen in 2026 and 2027. That's, you know, not down to the kinda two of us sitting here, that's down to some amazing people all around the organization. This always gives me a public forum to say thanks to everybody at The Pebble Group and the team there at Brand Addition and the team at Facilisgroup. You know, I'm very proud to be part of that organization in total and the individual businesses as well. Thank you for those guys, and as I say, we're looking forward to continuing to run the businesses thoughtfully for the long term and looking forward to kind of bringing some revenue growth in 2026 and 2027.
Thank you very much, and we're easy to find if there's any further questions.
That's great. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Claire. This is the end of the webinar.