Good afternoon and Welcome to the Property Franchise Group Final Results Investor Presentation. Throughout the recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time by the Q&A tab situated in the right corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received in the meeting itself. However, the company can review the questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to CEO Gareth Samples. Good afternoon to you, sir.
Good afternoon. Thank you. Good afternoon everybody, and welcome to our final results of 2024. In what was a really transformational year for the group, with significantly enhanced scale, and, you know, most pleasing the ability to pay a 29% increase on our full-year dividend. Some of the things we're gonna take you through today is a look at the agenda. We're gonna look at the highlights for the year. Ben Dodds, our new CFO, will take you through a financial review of the year. We're gonna look at our strategy, moving forward over 2025 and 2026, the outlook and how 2025 started, and then give you the ability to answer, ask any questions that we'll endeavor to answer. Without further ado, into our key highlights slide. And, and already touched on this, a transformational year, completing two sizable acquisitions.
You know, the Belvoir Group, our largest competitor, and the Guild and Fine & Country some two months later, has really transformed the group from, you know, a GBP 100 million market cap business to close on a GBP 300 million market cap business. 2024 was, was pretty busy, for, for us all. In terms of the financial highlights, GBP 67.3 million revenue, adjusted EBITDA increasing to GBP 24.1 million. As I've already touched on, a 29% increase in full-year dividend to 18p. I think the main sort of positive of the, of the, of the group is its recurring income. Delighted to say that with those acquisitions, we're still over 50% recurring income, 52%, and, and highly cash generative, as a group, GBP 14.7 million cash generated from operations in 2024, and that will increase in 2025.
We're now the U.K.'s largest property franchise business and one of the largest property groups in the U.K. We look after 153,000 properties on behalf of landlords. We've got a huge financial services business, run by Michelle Brook, as a result of the acquisition of Belvoir last year, that facilitated lending of GBP 4 billion worth of mortgages. We've got our highest ever sales pipeline of GBP 33.4 million at the end of last year. I guess what we, what have we been working on, you know, the integration of the businesses, which was no mean feat, that will continue through 2025.
It's been about leveraging the scale, understanding what opportunities exist within the enlarged group, and putting in plans to make sure that we can execute on those scale opportunities, along with working on what synergies we can take out of the group through cost savings. To look at the three businesses, and look at how they came together. You know, if I look at TPFG in 2023, we have total revenue of GBP 27.3 million, adjusted profit before tax of GBP 11.2 million, and a market cap of about GBP 112 million. Compare that to the Belvoir Group, so GBP 34.2 million in turnover, a little bit less on profit, GBP 11 million on adjusted profit before tax, and a market cap of GBP 107 million. And then GPEA, so GBP 13 million in total revenue, GBP 3 million in adjusted profit before tax.
We paid GBP 15 million in May of last year, plus GBP 5 million in deferred consideration that will be paid in May of this year. The total purchase price is GBP 20 million. It gives you some idea about the scale of the business. We are still predominantly a franchise business, which is really important. 60% of our revenue comes from franchising. 29% comes from financial services, and 11% of our revenue comes from licensing. That will change slightly in 2025 because that is only nine months of Belvoir's numbers or 10 months of Belvoir's numbers and seven months of Fine & Country and the Guild of Property Professionals' numbers. That gives you an idea of how we will report going forward in three distinct divisions: franchising, financial services, and licensing.
Operational highlights touched on some of these already, but 153,000 properties under management, up from 78,000 at the end of 2023. Increase in the sales pipeline from GBP 23.1 million to GBP 33.4 million, stimulated in some part by the stamp duty holiday that ended at the end of last month. Financial services division that delivered 23,000 mortgages in 2024 after the acquisition of Brook Financial Services via the Belvoir deal. A licensing division that now includes 1,043 licensees. Add that to the 900 or so territories that we have with our franchisees, and we've got 1,950 businesses operating within the group. We've got an enhanced board. Some of the Belvoir board came across, some of the TPFG board were retained.
In the second six months of last year, we put together a sort of best-in-class senior leadership team that will drive the business on a daily basis in terms of the growth initiatives and the organic growth that we see as opportunities over the next two or three years. We've also invested over the last six months a lot of time and effort and some money in understanding how AI automation, machine learning, and digital marketing tools can help the group really unlock the significant value that's held within the 14 million data records that we now hold as a group. Working on that, that's really exciting. It's moving at pace and offers significant opportunity for the group to drive its revenues forward in the future. They're the operational highlights.
I'm now delighted to welcome Ben Dodds, our new CFO, who's gonna take you through the financial review for 2024. Ben, over to you.
Perfect. Thanks, Gareth. Just starting out with the kind of key financial highlights that I really wanted to take away from the presentation today. Gareth's already talked about revenue, but GBP 67.3 million is what the group is reporting for the year, a 147% increase year over year, 52% of that being recurring. Now that's dropped very slightly versus 2023 as a result of the financial services business that we've acquired through Belvoir, which has lower levels of recurring revenue, but still really, really strong. Adjusted PBT GBP 22.3 million, which was an almost 100% increase again year over year. Fantastic results, really happy with that. All of that led to, I suppose, a position in terms of the dividend that was being proposed, is being proposed of 18p, which is a 29% increase year over year.
Looking more at the balance sheet and cash, we ended the year at a net debt position of GBP 9.1 million. That is a movement versus last year, which was net cash, but very much driven by the fact that we took out loans in order to be able to support the acquisitions of Belvoir and principally Guild of Property Professionals within the year. We also looked to try and pay down as much of that debt as we possibly could, leaving the net debt position you see there, and ultimately a leverage of 0.4 times, which is obviously extremely healthy. From a cash from operations perspective, we generated GBP 14.7 million on a net basis. Again, an increase year over year of 63%. From a cash conversion perspective, again, really positive at 145%, again improving versus the prior year.
Just to break down the revenue and the profitability by division, as Gareth kind of alluded to at the start, really trying to give going forward that kind of divisional split in terms of measure of performance. You can see that, certainly on the revenue side, franchising continues to be a strong driver of our total revenue, making up 61% of that GBP 40 million. Then we have financial services at 28%, and then licensing as well. You can see on the right-hand side, actually, the adjusted operating profit by division again is very heavily weighted towards franchising. We then have the financial services and licensing.
I think actually we'll see that weighting probably shift a little bit more, healthily towards a bit better balance once we get into full-year results of both the Belvoir acquisition and GPA in the year, which obviously have the financial services and the licensing profitability that sits within there. Just to deep dive a little bit into the individual divisions and probably franchising, probably the most well-known to us here, obviously to our investors, and principally that business model being franchisees offering lettings, sales, and financial services to their clients with a core focus on lettings. Ultimately, the TPFG financial benefits of that being we earn management service fees, which are directly linked to those individual franchisees' business. You can see on the right-hand side, 2023 compared to 2024, what that franchise revenue kind of looked like in terms of split.
Lettings remaining a very strong element of that revenue with GBP 19 million in 2024, sales making up GBP 9 million of that revenue. You can see the increase year over year is not quite to the same proportion as lettings. That is indicative of the fact that the Belvoir business was not as strong from a sales perspective as TPFG was historically, therefore not adding almost pound for pound as the lettings business has. We will talk a little bit more about that and the opportunity that brings us later on. Then we have the owned offices, which increased from five to seven. That is really positive. We will talk more about the priorities as we go through this, and Gareth will touch on it later on.
Again, some of the key things from a franchising perspective that we've talked about include continuing the need to integrate Belvoir franchising, looking at that opportunity from a sales perspective, and looking at some of the mitigation actions we've put in place already for the Renters' Rights Bill. That's the key focus really for this division. Financial services. Again, same approach, just trying to provide a little bit of clarity on what that business model actually is. We have a network of about 300 financial advisors who, under the networks of Mortgage Advice Bureau and Primis, are able to sell mortgage and protection products to end consumers. That's split between business partners and employed advisors.
That is a really key distinction because the business model between the two is very slightly different in the respect that an employed advisor, as you can probably imagine, is generating commission off of the back of their own work. We see that benefit come through to us in full. When it comes to business partners, they are probably more akin to a franchisee in the respect that actually they are operating, are often single individuals or potentially small businesses who are utilizing our status as an authorized representative of, say, Mortgage Advice Bureau or Primis, and also accessing the products that are available to be able to sell in terms of mortgage and protection products made by, or available by, Mortgage Advice Bureau. Ultimately, they are generating their leads and selling those products, but we are getting a cut as that kind of filters through.
In effect, a percentage of the value of income that's coming through. You can see the split from a revenue perspective is broadly kind of comparable. GBP 10 million from business partners in 2024 and GBP 9 million from employed advisors in 2024. We expect that broadly to remain consistent as we go forward. Again, very briefly touching on priorities going forward. Principally, certainly from my perspective, it's about driving that productivity per advisor. We can continue to look to recruit, but looking at that productivity, how we improve that at all stages of the process will just help to again drive overall profitability for this division. Just finally, licensing. Obviously, very much a new division for us in 2024 with the acquisition of GPA.
Actually, a really important perhaps to explain why we felt it appropriate to separate it out as a separate division. That comes down to, I suppose, the economic drivers for growth and what drives this business. On the licensing model, it's effectively a fixed license over a period of time, so fixed monthly license. What drives that business is very much pricing and volume, which is actually quite, or is different to the franchising model where, yes, volume is a driver, but actually it's the performance of that franchisee itself which ultimately drives the revenue that we receive.
Actually, the strategic initiatives for the licensing division versus the franchising division need to be slightly different in order to make sure that we are generating the best out of those divisions and why we therefore kind of kept it separate in order to give that kind of transparency. What, I suppose, is within the licensing division—as we have talked previously, we have Fine & Country, that kind of premium brand operating within the U.K. and internationally. Then you have the Guild of Property Professionals, which is the membership organization of circa 800 independent estate agents, which again gives us kind of access that we have never had before into that independent estate agency market. Ultimately, the model is the receiving of regular recurring license fee income.
You see that split on the right-hand side again, broadly kind of, proportion between the, between the two, Fine & Country making up about GBP 4 million of revenue with the Guild making up about GBP 3 million of that, GBP 7 million in total. We will see those numbers increase in the year because this GBP 7 million is only on the basis of seven months rather than a full 12 months. Just to pivot almost the, the P&L a little bit. We've talked about the divisional, performance certainly from a revenue, perspective. What I thought it was really important to be able to give a bit of clarity on was to look at it from an acquisitions perspective.
What this table is trying to demonstrate is what the original TPFG business has achieved in terms of revenue, gross profit, and adjusted operating profit, and then what the Belvoir and GPA acquisitions have added onto that within 2024. You can see kind of the breakdown of, say, the overall GBP 67 million of revenue we've had in the year and the adjusted operating profit as we show there.
What I think is a really important message that this slide is trying to demonstrate is that despite all of the impact and distraction of completing those two acquisitions within the year, the underlying TPFG business, when you compare it to 2023, has grown on all of those metrics, whether you're looking at revenue, gross profit, or adjusted operating profit to the value of, you know, 14%, which we think is, you know, fantastic, kind of, growth and improvement given, as I say, the level of distraction in the year. Just moving on to cash. Obviously a simplified cash flow statement on the left-hand side, just walk years from the cash that we started the year with, the net cash that we had from, that we generated from operations at GBP 14.7 million.
The cash that exited the business from acquisitions, which was to the value of GBP 16 million. You'll remember that actually, GPA was an acquisition at a total value at GBP 20 million. Five of that is actually deferred consideration, and we'll see that coming out in 2025. Hence why it's less than GBP 20 million. We did draw down bank loans within the year of GBP 20 million. You can see there that, as I mentioned earlier on, it was really key for us to try and look to see what level of bank loans we could repay within the year with the cash generation that we had. That value being GBP 9.3 million in the year, paid GBP 9 million of dividends, and also paid GBP 3.4 million out in respect of the employee benefit trust loan that we should see reversed back in 2025.
The graphs on the right-hand side, I suppose, just demonstrating over time the cash generative nature of the business, both in absolute terms in terms of the net cash generated from operations and that level of growth since 2016, but also actually on a free cash flow per share basis, again, it improving year over year since 2016, which I think is a fantastic story. Just moving to capital allocation and, I suppose just talking through the strategy of the business and how 2024 is applied to that. Obviously financial resilience being key, continuing to invest in organic growth really being, I suppose, second to that, continuing to make sure that the business is paying a progressive dividend has absolutely always been key to the board's strategy going forward and obviously supporting M&A activity with any surplus capital being returned.
Now, 2024, I suppose, absolutely kind of emulated that strategy. We paid whilst we took out debt in order to be able to, support some of the M&A activity. We looked to pay that down as, quickly as we possibly could. We've kept leverage at, still at a very low rate at 0.4 times. We've continued to invest, in the, organic growth of the business, and, that being in things such as the digital marketing and, AI programs that Gareth will touch on again, later on. We've continued to try and progress the dividend, level, not just in absolute terms, it up to GBP 0.18, but also in terms of the payout ratio, increasing to 57%. Obviously we did the acquisitions of both Belvoir and GPA in the year. Very much, I suppose, in line with the strategy as, previously kind of discussed.
Probably just the last one from me to finish on, just again trying to, I suppose, demonstrate the growth over the 10-year period and the resilience of the business. The chart on the right-hand side really kind of sets out both dividend earnings per share and the adjusted profit before tax growth over the last 10 years. Almost without exception, and only in fact on the dividend in 2019 as a result of COVID, every single one of those metrics has increased year over year, which, as I said, demonstrates the resilience of the business, the growth of the business. Actually, if you think about what's happened over that time period, both from a macroeconomic perspective in terms of COVID, in terms of Brexit, but also at an industry level.
The Tenant fee ban that happened in 2019, which there was some concern around, this business has continued to grow throughout all of those concerns, throughout all of those challenges. We will do so kind of going forward. Probably the final number just to leave you with is the, as the bottom right, three-year cash conversion. We had a look at the level of cash that was being generated by TPFG, as was the Belvoir business and GPA in the years 2021 through to 2023. That amounted to GBP 64 million worth of cash being generated from operations. That number will have only increased in 2024 and obviously through into 2025 as well.
I think, probably, gives an idea of the fantastic opportunities that we have available to us going forward in terms of either supporting further acquisition activity, continuing to support the progressive dividend policy that has been put into place historically and this year as well. Potentially, obviously, depending on the values there, also gives us opportunity to be able to return more to shareholders in other means as well. Something I think is fantastic, really exciting for us in terms of looking forward. Probably with that, I will hand back to Gareth. Great.
Thanks, Ben. We're now gonna talk about market update and strategy. We've gone to the next slide, please, Ben. Market in 2025 started really robustly, but looking back on 2024 from a sales perspective, we always talk about a normal market being 1.1 million transactions.
You'll remember those of you that were with us in 2023, but that fell short in 2023. Came in at about GBP 1.05 million. 2024 feels like a mid GBP 1.1 million, maybe a few more, and 2025 seems like it's gonna be better than GBP 1.1 million. House prices are forecast to rise by about 2.5% in 2025. We think transactions will be greater than GBP 1.1 million, that normal market in 2025. Certainly the first three months of 2025 have been pretty active, partly stimulated by the stamp duty holiday. Front end activity in January, February, and March, ahead of our expectation. If the sales market is good, it normally means the financial services market is good on a transactional basis. We've seen really good start to the year in financial services.
Lending's forecast to increase by 11% in 2025. That's a real tick in the box for us. Also, in 2026, it's predicted to move forward to GBP 320 billion in terms of market lending, so about another 20% lift. You know, sales and financial service markets look really good. Lettings, which is a big part of what we do, we talked about last year that the rents inflation beginning to slow down. We predicted that rent inflation would be around 3-4% moving forward. It's slightly better than that in 2025 or certainly the first quarter, and finished 2024 at about 8% up. There's still a mismatch in terms of supply and demand, and that's not gonna go away anytime soon.
number of homes in the private rented sector remains stable at present. We are seeing pressure with the Renters' Rights Bill that I'm gonna talk about in a little bit of detail now. What is the Renters' Rights Bill? It's the end of fixed term tenancies. It removes no fault evictions and brings in hefty fines for non-compliant landlords. It's expected to be implemented in autumn 2025. It will affect this year. It is affecting this year. What's the result of that? We're already seeing some landlords saying, "I've had enough. I don't wanna be a landlord anymore. I'm gonna sell my property." That's one of the negatives of the Renters' Rights Bill. One of the positives and something we've been working on really, really hard is 50% of the private rented sector self-manage. Okay?
They look after their own properties. We've been as a group for the last four months getting out to the sort of regions, and holding landlord evenings where we're inviting private landlords to come and understand the implications of the Renters' Rights Bill. What's been really interesting is, one, their lack of knowledge. They had no idea these things were coming in, in May, and their sort of horror about having to manage their own properties going forward to the point where at the end of every one of these evenings, we've got landlords coming to us saying, "Can you just look after my property for me?" because, you know, they don't want to expose themselves to high fines. The value of a letting agent for paying 10% of the rent is significantly enhanced with the increased regulation.
That's going really well. We need to speed up or we can't get around and do, you know, see everybody at an evening. We're gonna run a webinar series, with, again, the intent of, you know, disturbing the landlords to having a conversation about coming across and allowing one of our brands to manage the properties on their behalf. I go back to the, yes, there are people leaving the sector. I gave an example last year. I'm gonna give it again this year. We had our Cheltenham franchisee have 600 properties under management. In 2024, he had 24 landlords indicate they wanted to sell their property and they wanted to get out of renting property. Of those 24 properties, the franchisee was able to sell 21 of those properties to existing landlords and retain those instructions.
Three of those instructions went to first-time buyers or the secondhand market. Okay? We have educated all of our franchisees that that is the way they need to handle any landlord looking to exit the market: try and sell it to one of your existing landlords first. That is having great success. Okay? As I say, Renters' Rights Bill we see as an opportunity, but there are also some threats there and landlords are leaving the space. We will continue to work on those two initiatives to drive the best result possible. We come to our growth strategy. Ben talked about that 14% growth in TPFG for 2024. I was delighted with that. We had, you know, a lot of distractions going on. To be able to demonstrate the growth strategy's robustness in delivering that 14% growth was really pleasing to see.
We're gonna stick with the growth strategy that's served us really, really well over the last sort of four years. That sits in six distinct sort of buckets. Lettings being at the top of that because it's our biggest income stream, our biggest driver, our most valuable income stream. We are supporting our franchisees in, you know, their ambitions to acquire local portfolios and grow their market share of their local lettings market. We've agreed a financing deal with Barclays on behalf of our franchisees that will hopefully accelerate the number of acquisitions we can do in 2025 and beyond. The group over the last three years has delivered about 4,000 units a year. I think with the new finance package in place for franchisees, we can get that to 6,000, maybe 8,000 in time.
We've also launched a new innovative rent guarantee product at a price they couldn't buy anywhere else. That sort of money, and that gives them significant opportunity to upsell to landlords and make a margin on the cost of that policy. That will drive profitability into our franchisees. We've talked every single year for the last three about us being underperforming in the sales arena. This is still an opportunity, albeit we are seeing a good increase in market share across the old TPFG brands. We wanted to, you know, put all of that into our Belvoir Group. We believe we can drive the Belvoir sales results similar to what we've done in TPFG. Financial services is a massive opportunity. We now have a database of 14 million contacts. We only do 5% of our mortgages through our franchise network.
We do nothing from our licensing network. Huge opportunity. It's not gonna be easy, but to be able to get hold of that data, communicate with that data, drive leads back into our financial services business is a key aim during 2025. Recruitment, always refreshing the new franchisees coming in and taking a business, is an important part of a franchisor's role. I'm delighted. We've done 18 resales already in 2025, which is the best start to a year we've ever had. Along with Nick Neill's business, Ewe Move, recruiting personal agents into the Ewe Move brand, that's the other important recruitment angle that we've got. Also refreshing and renewing the value proposition for the Guild membership to make that easier to sell to members going forward. Recruitment's the fourth element of our growth strategy.
Acquisitions, I did say after May last year, I'd never done another one, but probably forgotten the pain already. There are, you know, acquisition targets, you know, there's two in the franchise space that we don't own, and that's Wentworth Estate Agents and LSL Property Services franchising, neither for sale at the moment. Would we be interested? Absolutely. We'd have a look. They're both good businesses, so they'd fit our business really, really well. Belvoir had their really successful financial services buy and build strategy, and we're gonna continue with that, supporting Michelle to acquire decent sized financial services businesses. The criteria for those is there must be at least 20 financial consultants working within the business, and they've got to be profitable. I think we'll do at least one of those this year and maybe two. I think that would be it on franchisee acquisitions at the moment.
You know, the clear bit is from Ben's slides, we're gonna have loads of cash. We generate loads of cash quite quickly. That debt will be paid down really quickly, and, you know, the cash reserves will grow. We either continue with that M and A strategy or we return to shareholders. Yeah, we will always look at acquisition opportunities. The final part from an acquisitions perspective is looking at complimentary businesses. Now we've got a network of 2,000 estate agency businesses. They all buy products from a variety of different companies. If we could find a profitable business that offered services that our members wanted, it would be worthwhile us looking at that business, acquiring it, and then rolling that out across 2,000 offices.
We will look at that as the sort of story develops. The final growth strategy, and I've touched on this already, is AI, you know, digital marketing tools, automation, machine learning, and AI. A number of you will have, you know, looked at the sort of speed in which AI seems to be coming into our everyday lives, and that's no different for us. We've spent the last nine months working with some AI specialists looking at some specific areas we believe it can add significant value. We've just launched the first of three trials that will take place between now and September. Some of it's automation. To give you some idea about one of the projects, all of our lettings franchisees manage a number of properties. My Reading franchisee manages nearly 2,000 properties.
To manage 2,000 properties, he needs a number of property managers. They work really hard every single day working on the sort of dissatisfaction of tenants who are ringing in with their complaints. Most of those complaints are quite predictable. It's, I've lost my keys, my door is not working, I've got a dripping tap, my shower's stopped working, somebody smashed a window. They're predictable. Through AI and automation, we believe we can make a number of efficiencies to that sort of property manager base, that we will be able to pass the benefits of that onto the franchisee. That's one of the projects we're working on. Another one of the projects is financial services appointments via WhatsApp.
We get a number of leads that go unfulfilled every single day, that we can now use WhatsApp live chat to communicate with a customer in those early stages to understand, you know, how urgent is their request, how quick do they wanna take a mortgage out, and sort of qualify a big number down to a more manageable number before it then goes to a human. One of the, you know, great, great bits of the AI is, you know, delivering better quality leads to the people that cost you a lot of money. If we can give each financial consultant more leads but of a better quality, we'll be able to ramp their individual productivity and profitability. That technology is really, really close. We're really excited about AI.
We're really excited about automating and driving savings for both us and our franchisees. We're also really excited about the lead generation that these tools can give us. Really excited. That gives you a little bit of color to our growth strategy moving forward. In terms of outlook, 2025 has been good so far. You know, we're happy. Quarter one trading is in line with management expectations. We've got a high level of recurring revenue, which supports a very resilient business model. We're focused on completing the integration. There's still work to do. You know, still need to drive some synergies out. We still need to integrate the business. We've made huge strides in what feels like a really short space of time, but it, you know, we're coming up to the one-year anniversary. Still lots of work to do in that.
The level of cash generation is really exciting and provides opportunities going forward. I think we're really well positioned to take advantage of market conditions in 2025 and beyond. I think the market for us in 2025, 2026, 2027 is gonna be really, really positive. I think, you know, the work we've put into our growth initiatives, the investment we've made into our growth initiatives, and the team of people we've assembled in the last 12 months give us the bandwidth to really take opportunity and turn that into increased revenue and increased profitability. We're really bullish about future, and really excited. With that comes the end of the presentation. Thanks for listening. We'll now hand over for questions and answers. Thank you.
Perfect. That's great, Gareth. Thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions. You can do so just by using the Q&A tab that's situated on the top right-hand corner of your screen. We have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation, and I'll start the Q&A session off with the first one, which reads as follows. What is the difference between franchising and licensing?
I'll say, so, franchise, very similar. Franchising, percentage of turnover and a five-year contract. Licensing, a fixed monthly payment for a range of products and services on a 12-month contract. Both recurring income streams, one's on a one-year contract, albeit with a 94% retention rate, and one's on a five-year renewable contract.
Perfect. That's great. Thank you, Gareth. The next question here, I know you touched on AI in the presentation, but the question reads as follows. Can you give a little color on the opportunities you're excited about through data analysis and AI?
Yes. Go back nine, ten months when it's sort of quite embryonic and looking at voice. We heard a pretty awful American accent doing digital fulfillment. It wasn't very good. The latency was poor. What it told you is the art of the possible, I suppose. We stuck with it. Three weeks later, we had another demo, and it was a slightly better accent and slightly less latency. Three weeks later, we had a restaurant call where someone was trying to book a table with a robot, and it was, again, all right, a bit awkward. In the last three months, it's accelerated at pace.
You know, the technology nine months ago was interesting, but we wouldn't have used it. The technology today on voice, we're starting a trial. We started a trial last Monday. That's how much it's developed, and it'll get better and better and better. I think what I've noticed through that period, initially I was really excited about voice being the answer to everything and me having a digital twin and being able to spend time in Spain and nobody noticed sort of thing. That didn't happen. You then looked at automation on WhatsApp. What's really interesting is customers potentially will complain about a robot talking to them, whereas if you are communicating via WhatsApp, even though it's a robot, they probably won't. It's understanding what can be fulfilled via text and WhatsApp.
You know, there's a lot of studies being done about how people like to be communicated with. I, I'm still quite an old sort of, I like the phone, but everybody who's sort of younger than me doesn't like the phone. They like, you know, text and WhatsApp. Fulfilling it in the right way, I think, is really important. WhatsApp, take property management. I am a Russian or a Ukrainian or a Chinese person in one of the properties. I want to communicate in my own language. I can do that. It's translated in the middle, goes to the property manager in English, they answer in English, goes back, gets translated in Chinese. The customer satisfaction piece goes up exponentially.
I think, you know, utilizing the tools, some of which are already there in the way we currently do the job, will actually enhance the way we do the job, but also increase the number of people we can deal with and therefore increase the number of leads we can generate and pass back to our franchisees who can have more quality, meaningful conversations that will drive income as opposed to trying to sift through a sort of needling a haystack piece. To get the technology to do the sifting, present really good quality conversations to the people you pay a lot of money to, who then convert that into commission from letting sales, financial services, insurance sales. That, that's the vision.
You know, we will be spending an awful lot of time on this over the next six to nine months and believe it can absolutely transform our business because we've got 14 million data records. Scale has provided that opportunity. You know, if I'm a single business, I'm not sure I'm gonna get as excited as I get about AI because I've only got one office and it's work. But as a franchise group with 14 million data records, it's hugely exciting.
That's great. Thank you, Gareth. Really interesting. Another question here. Is the withdrawal of stamp duty relief and the present market turbulence likely to create a downturn in the property market?
Normally after a stamp duty holiday, there'd be a little bit of a lapse. What was really interesting, January, February, March, front end business. The number of properties coming to market, the number of sales being agreed, was much higher than we expected because they were never gonna meet the stamp duty deadline. The front end activity is very, very good. Clearly the stamp duty holiday built our pipeline towards the back end of last year and we've seen a big sort of, you know, big number exchange out in quarter one. Actually, front end activity in Q1 is really good. That suggests quarter two is gonna be really good as well.
That's great. Another question that kind of follows on from that. Property prices are allegedly far too high in this country and the Labour government allegedly wants to engineer house price declines to encourage social and labor mobility. If they succeed in building 300,000 homes, would that impact your lettings and sales business?
Okay. Good question. I don't think they will be able to build 300,000 homes anytime soon. I don't think there's the electricians, the plasterers, the plumbers, which is why they're gonna go down an apprentice route. You get to 2029, and you know, you're still at 150,000, which has been the sort of norm over the last 10 years. Last year was actually the worst year, I think, for a long time. If we build 300,000 houses, once we got past that excess demand piece, which might be another five years, if that was to happen, would that have an impact on prices? Probably. I don't think we can get 300,000 houses built. There's still far too much demand for the supply that's there currently.
So, you know, I don't know how far you wanna look out, but you know, it's at least 10 years old, I thought. I don't know if you'd agree with that.
Yeah. No, I would. I think the other point is obviously if there are more houses being built, there's more houses to be sold. You know, there are also opportunities that come about from that within our businesses that we can capitalize on as well. It may have a bit of an impact in terms of inflation in regards to house prices or even rental prices. But history would tell us it's very unlikely to go backwards. Actually, if that creates more transaction flow, that should be beneficial to us rather than negative.
You know, take away the business aspect, there's a moral piece to this. You know, the number of homelessness, it's awful. You know, I've got kids, they've got kids. You know, I would love a solution to be found that made the current situation and the current lack of supply better than it is. It's gonna take a lot of hard work and, you know, a lot of thought. Unfortunately, you know, politicians do, you know, they work in those five-year terms and I think that's restrictive when you're trying to solve a long-term problem that's been here forever. It's similar to the NHS, isn't it? It undoubtedly is getting worse. As a father and a grandfather, I want a, yeah, I want a better world for them to grow up in.
Thank you very much. Another question here. Has the FCA started their study of the protection market and how could this affect the Mortgage Advice Bureau slash Primis advisors?
Yes, they have started. Obviously with us being one of the largest appointed representatives in the U.K. in terms of this space, we also look to engage with the FCA on it, which we have done. We've already done some kind of initial meetings. I think really important for us to be able to demonstrate how our practices work, how they inter, I suppose, interlink with Mortgage Advice Bureau in terms of what they're setting down as the directly authorized party, and being able to share that clarity with the FCA. They went very well.
Actually, I think just to provide you a bit of color in terms of, let's say, the, you know, the exposure or the risk if, you know, the absolute worst were to happen and the FCA were to say, no, you absolutely can't sell protection products in that way. Selling protection amounts to about a third of our total revenue and about a third of our profitability. At an adjusted operating profit level, that's about GBP 1 million out of the GBP 22-23 million of adjusted operating profit that we talked about earlier on. As a proportion and I suppose risk to us as TPFG, it's really quite small. Obviously, that would be on the basis that it is removed completely.
The view I think from us internally based on the feedback we've had from the FCA, you know, informally and through conversations that we've had with Mortgage Advice Bureau and Mortgage Advice Bureau's own kind of view on this is the practices that we, that we follow are, in line, are, are appropriate. We don't incentivize our advisors in any way to go to one product or the other. It's very much consistent no matter what is being sold. I think all of these things hold us in good stead as part of the review and we'll just have to see what the FCA obviously comes out with as we progress the engagement with them.
That's great. Thanks very much, Ben. The next question here. Can you talk a little bit about the competitive landscape regarding letting book acquisitions? Lomond and LRG appear to be very active. Is this impacting multiples?
They've been about for the last three years, to be fair. Does it have they impacted multiples? Yeah, definitely. Do they buy where we buy, and they don't. You know, our sweet spot is small lettings books, local lettings operators with, you know, 50-200 properties to sell. Lomond are buying, and Leaders, to be fair, much bigger businesses like KFH in town. Yeah, much bigger businesses are going to Lomond and Leaders. It's affecting prices a little bit, but you know, there's still more than enough smaller opportunities for us to consider. I think we've done six or seven acquisitions this year, and ahead of last year. Yeah, it's not a space we play in.
Thank you very much. Another question. You mentioned the retention rate for the one-year licensing deals. What's the retention rate for the five-year franchising agreements?
Like 100% because within a franchise agreement, they would give their business back to us, which no one's gonna do. The people leave by selling their business, which is the resale part of our business. They decide they come, you know, they get to an age where they don't wanna do it anymore. There's three scenarios that happen. They bring family into the business, which we're not a big fan of, doesn't normally work. They incentivize management, which works quite well, through giving them some equity. Or they look to sell their business to a brand new franchisee, which we prefer, because studies show us that a new franchisee grows that business by about 30% in year one.
Partly because they're motivated, partly because they embrace all the new initiatives and partly because they've got debt to service 'cause they've paid money for the asset. No, they don't give it up. They sell it and they go into their happy retirement and we bring a new franchisee in.
Thank you. From a risk perspective, do all franchisees and licensees carry professional indemnity insurance? And if so, is it by choice or are they compelled to do so under the terms of the agreements?
All of them do have to carry professional indemnity insurance, and it is compelled under our agreements. We obviously, as much as we possibly can, actually look to see if we can create group-wide deals which support the cost of that and make sure it's as low as possible, which actually we've just recently completed an exercise on. Yes, they all have professional indemnity insurance.
I mean, that's great. Potentially time just for one more question. As you're probably aware, there are ongoing issues in respect of commissions related to car loans. Is there any risk of similar issues in the mortgage finance initiatives?
I think this ultimately is perhaps what they are reviewing as part of the protection study. I think it's quite different though. The car loans issue was as a result of commissions not being very clear in terms of what commissions were being paid out in that loan. Now it's different in the respect of the, the way that mortgages and protection has to be sold. There is very clear kind of statements set out in terms of the commissions and who those commissions are effectively payable to, what's available. And so it's quite different because actually there is full transparency, which there was not in the car finance issue.
Gareth, Ben, thank you very much for answering those questions from investors. Of course, the company can review the questions submitted today and we will publish responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors prior to their feedback, Gareth, could I just ask you for a few closing comments?
Absolutely. 2024 has been a, you know, unbelievable year for the group. As always, I'm really thankful for everybody that's joined today, taken an interest in the group. We're really excited about what the future offers and we look forward to updating you in September about how 2025's panning out. Thank you very much for your interest and your time today.
That's great, Gareth. Ben, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session? As you know, you will be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team of The Property Franchise Group, we'd like to thank you for attending today. Thank you for attending today and good afternoon to you.