Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Appen Limited Investor Briefing. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There'll be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Ryan Kolln. Go ahead.
Thank you, Melanie. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining the call. Today, I'm joined by Appen's CFO, Justin Miles. Today, we're announcing a 50 million AUD fully underwritten institutional placement, as well as a share purchase plan targeting 5 million AUD. Our customer environment continues to show signs of improvement, particularly in generative AI-related projects. While we will only pursue profitable opportunities, delivering new projects typically requires an upfront investment in working capital, as crowd costs are incurred in advance of customer receipts. We are well capitalized, with $30 million of cash as at 30 September 2024. The additional capital from the raise will provide further liquidity to support working capital requirements, therefore enabling greater flexibility to pursue generative AI-related opportunities. Eligible existing shareholders will have the opportunity to participate via a non-underwritten share purchase plan.
This is expected to raise a further AUD 5 million. As part of this announcement, we are pleased to provide a trading update for the quarter ending September 2024. We've had a good quarter, and the positive momentum observed in the first half of FY 2024 has continued. For Q3, the group delivered 34.6% revenue growth on pcp, excluding Google. Importantly, following the successful implementation of cost initiatives, we have returned to underlying EBITDA and cash EBITDA positivity. We have generated an underlying cash EBITDA profit for two consecutive months in August and September. Profitability remains a key focus for Appen, and we remain committed to maintaining cash EBITDA profitability going forward. Further details of the results will be included in our quarterly activity report and Appendix 4C, scheduled for release on or around the thirty-first of October. That concludes the presentation.
I will now hand back to Melanie for questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Josh Kannourakis with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Good day, Ryan and Justin. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah, we've got you, Josh.
Great, thanks. Just a few questions. First question, just around those working capital requirements. Like, can you maybe give us a bit of more context of what you're seeing in the pipeline? Obviously, you've got some cash already, so, you know, talk us through what you're seeing in your pipeline and maybe how the working cap structure works with some of these Gen AI projects and how it's maybe different from some of the more traditional Appen projects out there.
Yeah, sure, so some of the projects that we've kind of delivered so far, they can be quite short and intense to the Generative AI-related work, and you know, when you look at the month-on-month revenue, you see that in May and June as an example, when there was a spike there, so what we can see is very, very high revenue volumes over a very concentrated amount of time. Now, because we need to pay the Crowd, like I mentioned, ahead of the customer receipts, if we were to see a few of those large projects back up, that could really put some pressure on our working capital, so the dynamic around short and intense projects, our customers are very competitive and demanding, so these can be, you know, on quite short notice.
You know, we felt that it was prudent to make sure that we had sufficient working capital to support the nature of these growth opportunities that we're seeing.
Just on that, so are you seeing larger projects when they are coming through on these bursts than what you have been historically? And maybe just to give us a bit of context, I know you didn't split out the Gen AI percentage, but maybe directionally, you can give us some a bit more detail of more recently, how that sort of mixes has happened in terms of either by segment or by Gen AI.
Yeah. So we'll like we said, we didn't break it out, but it's, it's more the nature of the type of projects that we're looking at. So, again, it's quite experimental. There's a lot going on with our customers. They're moving very, very quickly, and we just wanna make sure that, you know, we're prepared to support our customers across, you know, the full spectrum of work they wanna be doing. Some of the work that we're seeing is, you know, steady state and ongoing, month-on-month. Some of the work we're doing is very short and very sharp and small. Some of the work that we're doing is very short and sharp and larger, like I called out in kind of, May, June. So it is a full spectrum of different types of work.
And again, we just wanna make sure that we're prepared to support our customers across all the different types of projects.
Got it. And a couple more quick ones. So seasonality, like, obviously, if we go back and you've provided the chart in the release today, just around that, even ex Google, obviously, there was reasonable kick-up in seasonality, both into December last year. Do you still think in terms of those trends that are sort of present that drove that seasonality, do you think that's still, you know, likely to be the case? And maybe just- ... Why not, sort of thing?
Yeah, so, look, we have seen Q4 seasonality for many years in the business now, which is largely driven by the holiday market in the US and increased advertising spend. The other factor that swings this year is it's the US election cycle, which we have benefited from previously, but it's really dependent on the posture that some of our customers are going to take with respect to misinformation around the election cycle. So, look, we don't have any guarantees that there's going to be seasonality, but if you know look at the trend that we've seen for many years with Amazon, we do see an uptick in Q4. So, there's no reason why I think that would be any different for this year.
Got it. And then the final one, you sort of half answered it there, Ryan, but just on the election cycle, I think historically that has been-
Mm-hmm
... you know, a reasonable contributor. Just, can you maybe just give a little bit more in terms of last cycle, what you saw, what types of work, you know, how significant it was to the business?
Yeah. So the work that we've typically done around the election cycles is to help identify misinformation that's being spread through search and social media. The extent of that work really depends, like I said, on the posture that our customers want to take at a given time, and that can change. So, you know, it's to be determined whether that will be a growth driver for Q4.
Great. Thanks, guys. I'll give someone else a go. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Josh.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. We'll now pause a moment to allow for any final questioners to register. Thank you. Your next question comes from Conor O'Prey with Canaccord. Please go ahead.
Morning, gents. Just a quick question on the cost base. So the numbers you presented there for July over September, so I guess Q3, are they indicative of the sort of run rate cost base, with all of the work that you've done on that going, are we now seeing the full effect of that, in that sort of Q3 set of figures there?
You know, I'll let Justin handle that one, Conor.
Hi, Conor. It's... Look, it's in the ballpark. There is a few factors. So there's not gonna be a lot of additional investment in our OpEx going forward. We think where we will need to invest is, as we get more projects and revenue grows, our project delivery may need some additional investment. The size of that is still to be determined, but it definitely won't be in the same ratio as any new project or revenue growth. So that's one factor going forward. The other one is kind of STI as well. So, you know, we've got certain financial targets which we may or may not be hitting this year, so there's a little bit of swing factor there as well.
They're probably the two components that might not be fully captured in that number, but I think it's thereabouts.
Thanks.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, and that concludes our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.