Hugh Robertson and Jodie Bedoya and our Company Secretary, Adam Gallagher. I also welcome David Patterson from PwC, the company's auditor who joins us online, and Glenn Rogers from Computershare who is coordinating our registration and poll voting today. Profiles and directors and the executive team are available on the company's website. Voting and Questions Shareholders and proxy holders will have the ability to ask questions and make comments during the meeting. As we work through the formal items of the business during the meeting, the shareholders and proxy holders will be able to ask questions and provide comments. As we consider each item of business, we will endeavor to respond to as many questions as possible as the results of each resolution will be decided by poll. I will not be declaring the results of the resolution during the meetings.
The meeting, I should say, when we finalise and lodge the results of the meeting with the ASX later on today. This is a meeting of shareholders, Credit Clear Limited. And as such, only shareholders or the duly appointed proxies or corporate representatives are entitled to make comments, ask questions, or vote on any items of business during the meeting. When I invite questions or comments, please direct all your questions or comments to me as the Chair. Voting at today's meeting will be conducted by a poll for each resolution, and I now appoint Glenn from Computershare as the Returning Officer for the poll and declare the poll open. Please note the name in which you're registered today will be the only name in which you will be entitled to vote.
If you have previously lodged your votes by proxy, you do not need to vote today unless you wish to change your votes. The notice of the meeting was lodged with the ASX on 13th October and dispatched to all shareholders and will be taken as read. The individual resolutions and the associated results of the proxy voting will be displayed on the screen as we work through the business of the meeting. Before we move to the business of meeting, I'll read my Chair's address which was released to the ASX prior to.
The commencement of the meeting.
FY2025 was a year of growth underpinned by our proprietary technology platform and expanding client relationships across Australia. We delivered record revenue of AUD 46.9 million, a 12% increase on the prior year driven by higher volumes in our core debt recovery services, enhanced client retention, and successful scaling of our digital capabilities. This performance marked a significant step forward in profitability with underlying EBITDA reaching AUD 7.4 million, a 76% increase on FY2024. As Chairman, I'm immensely proud of the resilience, innovation, and execution demonstrated by our team throughout FY2025, a year that solidified our position as a leader in the debt recovery and financial technology sector. Over the last few years we've built a business with strong foundations, one that is well positioned to capitalize on growing opportunities in the domestic collections market.
As I stand here today as a fellow shareholder, I'm pleased to share my excitement about the future of our business. I'm personally committed to the next phase of growth, having subscribed for AUD 8 million in the October 2025 capital raise subject to shareholder approval. We will continue to grow Credit Clear into a market leader, a business with the ongoing ability to convert revenue into bottom line gains, turning strategic vision into tangible results. We've made meaningful investments in our technology infrastructure, enhancing data analytics and automation to position us for even greater scalability. These efforts have delivered financial benefits and also strengthened our competitive moat in a market increasingly demanding agile tech enabled solutions.
Domestic demand for collections across our client base continues to grow and we've built a business with foundations that provide the best of human interactions with AI-enhanced solutions which is primed to capitalize on these industry tailwinds. As we look towards FY2026, early indicators are encouraging. In October we announced the landmark acquisition of ARC Europe for approximately AUD 10.9 million. ARC expands our total addressable market and marks our entry into the U.K. where ARC's established debt collection operations complement our technology expertise. We see a clear compounding of value ahead and believe there is an opportunity to overlay Credit Clear's sophisticated automation and data analytics onto traditional collection workflows, creating a service that exceeds what either approach can deliver on its own. The U.K. insurance market is significantly greater than Australia's.
We believe the opportunity in the U.K. is immense, specifically given the capacity within the U.K. insurance sector where there is an opportunity to develop long term contractual relationships. ARC is expected to contribute earnings accretion in its first year of ownership while unlocking cross selling opportunities and operational synergies. We have a proven model and ARC provides us with established foothold and platform to roll out their digital solutions across a traditional book to drive efficiencies. This acquisition is not just additive, it is transformative, diversifying our revenue streams, positioning Credit Clear as a truly international player. Our recent AUD 20.75 million capital raise has bolstered our balance sheet with a cash position of AUD 25.7 million as at 31st of October 2025.
This injection of capital provides us with the flexibility to pursue both organic initiatives such as further platform enhancements and market penetration in Australia as well as driving growth within our existing customer base by capturing a greater share of wallets, especially in the insurance and utilities space where we see a multi-year organic runway. Domestically, we see ongoing opportunity within the sectors we service, which are under-digitized and hungry for faster, cheaper, friendlier debt collection outcomes. Additionally, we will add to this organic growth opportunity that align with our M& A pipeline. We remain disciplined in our approach towards inorganic opportunities and detect significant opportunities within the industry.
Our historical integrations have highlighted that we have the opportunity to combine strong organic momentum with bolt ons that materially steepen our growth trajectory, especially if we can target strong traditional collection businesses and overlay our AI driven solution to deliver outsized efficiencies that lead to revenue growth and margin expansion. Expansion as we navigate FY2026 and beyond, Credit Clear is better positioned than ever to capitalize on the structural tailwinds within the debt management sector, rising digital adoption, regulatory evolution and the need for efficient recovery solutions. Credit Clear is a very good business today and the opportunity to grow it is grow it significantly here and abroad is unmistakable. I'm confident that we can deliver significant value uplift to shareholders in FY2026. I'd like to extend my gratitude to our dedicated team whose unwavering commitment to strength has strengthened our business. Thank you once again for your continued support.
I look forward to updating you on.
The progress in the coming months. Thank you for bearing with me.
I will now turn to the business of the meeting. Sorry, I may have bumped something.
Sorry. [audio distortion]
There we go. Okay, thank you everyone. The first item of formal business is to receive the company's annual report for the year ended 30 June 2025. The financial report and the reports of directors and the auditors are now laid before the meeting. There'll be no vote on this item and it is a discussion item only. As introduced earlier, PwC audit partner David Patterson is available online to take questions relevant to the conduct of the audit and the preparation of the content of the independent auditor's report. Are there any questions or comments on the annual report or the conduct of the audit? We will proceed to the resolution set out in the notice of meeting as the resolutions were set out in the notice of meeting that is taken as read and each resolution will be displayed on the screen unless asked otherwise.
I will simply announce the title of each resolution as we work through them. Resolution 1 Adoption of Remuneration Report. Are there any questions or comments on the resolution?
No. I now put the motion. Please record. Your votes if you haven't already. The next resolution I'll stand aside for Michael as it involves me so I'll hand to Michael.
Thank you, Paul. The next resolution is the re election. Of Paul Wyer as a director. Are there any questions? I'll now put the motion. Please record your votes.
Okay. Resolution three, approval to grant share rights to CEO and Managing Director Andrew Smith. Are there any questions or comments on the resolution? I now put the motion. Please record your votes if you haven't already. Okay. Resolution 4 approval to issue an additional 10% of the issued capital of the company over the 12 month period issuance to listing rule 7.18. Are there any questions or comments on the resolution? Yes.
Is that due to further prospective?[audio distortion]
I think we've used. Adam will help me out here, but. We've used a significant amount of our capital and we're refreshing it for essentially if there are some acquisition opportunities obviously. That can be utilized. Adam, another answer.
So it's just a question provision. [audio distortion]
Okay, I now put the motion. Please record your votes if you haven't already. Righto. That concludes the formal business of the meeting. I thank all shareholders and their representatives for their attendance and declare the meeting close at 11:16 A.M. Please hand your voting cards to Glenn so he can complete the poll as advised earlier. The results of the poll will be lodged with the ASX later today. I will now hand over to Andrew for his presentation.
Welcome those online and those in the room. Credit Clear transforming the debt collection industry. I get asked quite a lot of the time, you know, are we a tech business? Are we a sophisticated debt collection company that uses technology? I think that what best describes us is we're an organization that we're helping our clients in the community bridge the gap between today, which is a digitally enabled collection space, to a transformative environment where technology is the primary way that businesses and their clients use to resolve overdue debts. We are the conduit that are taking our clients on that journey and their customers. I think that that's always something I like to clarify with clients, shareholders, and certainly anyone who's interested. It's part of what our core value is in finding a better way to resolve debt.
We'll jump into the presentation. Firstly, as Paul mentioned, very exciting announcement. Of the U.K. acquisition. We've been looking at this business for almost two years. I know that a number of shareholders have been briefed on it. We've spoken about it in a number of presentations. That was certainly the combination of a. Lot of good due diligence.
Fundamentally we need to be ready as a business to be able to broaden our horizons outside of the Australian market. Now, the Australian market's one that we've still got a lot of runway on. We've now established ourselves as a really tier one provider of debt resolution through our software technology platform, through our services platform delivered through Armour, and also our legal platform in Oakridge Legal. What this allows us to do is we've got a strong foundation in Australia with great relationship with clients, strong credibility in terms of performance and service as well as customer engagement. That's meant that we can now look a little bit broader into new markets.
I think one of the new markets that represents, you know, a really strong similarity to Australia, both strong in terms of regulations and both strong in terms of consumer behavior, those two very important components, because it means that the cost of deploying technology in that market is not going to be too high. It also means that the success of the technology and our strategy is going to be more likely to succeed. Now, whilst nothing is guaranteed to succeed, the reality is that a lot of the behaviors, payment patterns, technology adoptions, you know, competitive landscape is very, very similar to the U.K. to Australia. Whilst, you know, people think going to the U.S. could be a much bigger prize, the reality is, I think it is. It is still a substantially bigger market than Australia.
I heard between 4x-10x as big as Australia from a total addressable market. Even if it's just four times, the reality is that we can leverage really strong customer relationships in Australia, like Origin Energy's ownership of Octopus Energy. We just have to have three times as many customers as Origin Energy, Vodafone we do work with in Australia, and lots and lots of other clients that we can leverage to really, I think, turbocharge our launch into the U.K. market. Just a bit about the business. It's been around for, you know, 24, 25 years. You know, I've got to know the largest owner of that business really, really well. He spent a couple of weeks out in Australia getting to know our business, getting to understand what we're about.
Eddie, our Head of Sales, and myself are heading over to the U.K. on Saturday to spend 10 days meeting with their staff, a number of their key clients, to establish relationships, I think, to set some standards around what we are wanting to achieve in that market and hopefully generate some goodwill and some excitement around the future of bringing what was a transformational technology to what was my business in Armour Group and do the same in that market. We are not reinventing a new strategy, we are just deploying it in a new market which I think is going to be very successful and I am very, very proud of the team. Just work really hard to get this done.
FY 2025 was certainly a very, very strong year from our perspective in growing the business and FY 2026 has continued to, I think, make us happy and we're certainly not content, but it's been a good result. It's something that we want to continue to grow. Whilst, you know, we made the mistake last year of annualizing our Q1 result, we don't want to make that mistake again this year. What we want to do is continue that momentum into Q2 and Q3 and at that point will be the point to really re-establish what our new revenue and EBITDA target will be. Hopefully incorporating ARC Europe's numbers, which we will complete once we get FCA approval, underlying EBITDA guidance of $9 million-$10 million, revenue guidance of $50 million-$52 million. We expect to continue performance across the Q2 quarter which we're well and truly into.
Once we've completed the FCA approval process with our year, we will be including those numbers both from the revenue and EBITDA into the annual group forecast. Paul mentioned AUD 25.7 million. I'm sure there are a few questions that are coming through about that later in the call, so I'll leave my answer to that. This is once again a question I get asked a lot: what's the conditions like in Australia for your business? It's a little bit of a moving target. There's obviously a big inflation which jumped quite quickly. Unemployment started moving up slightly, but overall we're seeing very large volumes of debt being held on balance sheets of our major clients. I always use the ATO as a great example of businesses that allow their.
Balance sheet to get bigger and bigger. In terms of accounts receivable from, you know, AUD 25 million pre-Covid to AUD 50 billion, now seeing about AUD 105 billion. So there's lots and lots of organizations that did nothing or did very little. Over this period of time.
It has left the whole, you know, business community and also the consumers with very large, you know, debt balances at a household level. Why I say that is it has meant that we have really favorable trading conditions when it comes to, you know, the amount of workers out there and there have been a lot of debt buyers that, you know, have effectively dropped out of the market. There has been a lot of consolidation within the contingent collection space and that has meant that we have, I think, fewer competitors and more work in front of us. The sales growth has been very, very strong. We have almost picked up all the major names within the insurance markets. A couple still to go. We have made our way forward into the banking finance space.
We're sitting leading in terms of our performance in the major bank that we're working with. That's created some really good opportunities with other major banks. We're still yet to penetrate federal government. I don't know. People saw the article. No. Federal government spent AUD 42 million, one of our competitors, in assistance of recovery. It just shows how big your. Opportunity it is to move into that federal government space.
We've got adoption of the digital engagement strategy each year. We're seeing the percentage of people that are resolving debts digitally only grow much faster than the rate of growth of the business. Given us, we've got a strong cash position, it gives us some really good flexibility to execute on our future strategies. You know, once again, we'll talk about whether that's through acquisitions, what sort of acquisitions they could be, but fundamentally they need to be accretive, they need to be strategically aligned to the type of business we are, and they certainly need to be complementary to the services that we offer currently, sure. There's been a few questions come in, so I'll do my best to answer them. Yeah, we've got one in the room.
Thank you. Yeah. What do you think ARC's motivation was to sell?
Yeah, there's a few others trying to acquire them and I think the preference for us was that they saw our technology as superior. Proven technology within the market. They, I suppose, like myself, when I, when we were acquired by Credit Clear at Armour, saw the need to adopt new technology as a way to evolve with the industry rather than stick with the old fashioned way. Those are two really key things that I know that Dewey, who was the, you know, 80% shareholder, told me. I think fundamentally from a cultural perspective, we were very aligned. My first business in Australia was called ARC Collections and their slogan was almost the same as my slogan back then.
We wanted to resolve debts in. A more positive way to the traditional. View of debt collection. I constantly get told that I've got a baseball bat with me when I introduce myself and I tell people I'm on the debt collection. I think the team's been trying to change that perception for a long time and that really resonated with Dewey and his team. I think culturally we were trying to deliver a service in a better way, not just in terms of collecting more, but collecting in a more compliant way, a way that's more engaging with consumers. I think culturally we'll be able to come together and there's going to be no friction.
Also, Andrew, the ability to stay invested and take stock.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, it's definitely, you know, funny enough, you know, he agreed to take substantially more stock than what we gave him in the end because we thought it was probably a little bit too cheap when we were doing the deal. He's in for 25% in terms of proceeds of this sale and his earn out is 100% stock. He's very excited in terms of what this could do for him in the future, based on the stock value going up as opposed to just when it's feeding proceeds. Yep. Thank you for the question.
Andrew, with the U.K. business, can you comment if there is any seasonality over there or is it fair to assume 50/50 split, first half, second half?
It'd be fair to assume that we're buying a growing business and they are, you know, coming off the back of a record month and they've got record, what we call referrals. The amount of leading indicators that we're looking at would indicate that they should have a better year next year than they do this year. That's certainly not how we value them. We're valuing based on what their FY2025 numbers were and from a budget perspective, we're just going to budget for what we expect to deliver based on last year.
Sticking with ARC, does ARC Europe do work in mainland Europe or only the U.K.? We have another question in relation to European investment. Does the company expect to attract further investment from European institutional or individual investors into Credit Clear?
First question, they exclusively do work within the United Kingdom. They don't work in Europe, although one of their major clients is based in Europe and we're meeting with that client whilst we're over there. The opportunity to expand into those markets is certainly there. Once again, we might want to make sure we bed down this acquisition. We do a great job for their existing clients and they're comfortable with our new ownership and then we'll start to look at opportunities outside of that market.
Does the company plan to offer a full suite of services, digital collections, transitional collections, and legal recovery in Europe in the future?
It's not in the short term plan. ARC Europe is a business that's almost exclusively business to consumer, which means that it's very much aligned to the digital adoption of the credit technology. Typically, clients don't take legal action against consumers. It's not as common as taking legal action against business to business providers like in Australia, where it could be a code tire or a steel provider or a concrete provider. It's not going to be a short term strategy for sure. Depending on clients that you have in Australia, operations in the U.K. as a high demand will certainly facilitate retaining that revenue investment component. It's an interesting question.
I think we're always open to different investors if they could bring not just capital to the table but other types of benefits. It's not something that I'm familiar with. I'm sure there are people on our board that are very familiar with this. I'll certainly rely upon those when it comes to those opportunities.
Thank you. According to the FY2025 annual report, collections revenue from New Zealand declined compared with the prior year. Does the company still intend to improve or expand their business in New Zealand or is this a region currently? Is this region currently lower strategic priority?
We did look at one or two businesses in New Zealand to acquire, and that was a priority at the time. Given the size of that market versus the efforts and also the value that was being offered by, you know, other people buying those businesses, it just took fibersoft New Zealand from an organic perspective. Most of our New Zealand revenue came from one particular partner and this is just a change in volume of work that's been referred by that partner. It's got a change in strategy or focus. We certainly wouldn't rule out New Zealand coming back into focus as an organic expansion opportunity for a home. Organic expansion, if there was a business that the thought was worthwhile in.
Just turning to the capital raising, would the board consider undertaking any future capital raisings via rights issue instead of replacement to allow all existing shareholders the opportunity to participate equally?
Yeah, yeah. Look, I certainly wouldn't rule it out when we originally did the acquisition of share purchase plan. I think we have a little bit more time to get organized to do that and given, you know, such high demands and we have completed quite quickly, you know, doing a share purchase plan and going through that process of, you know, taking the time just for.
Better, I think also subject to market. Conditions at the time, I think. Different m arkets.
Yeah.
Right. Sticking with the capital raise, the recent capital raise had acquisitions factored in.
Yeah.
Can you add some flavor as to what sort of debt collection companies you're looking for? Are they, for example, software companies or?
There is certainly a pipeline of acquisitions that we are looking at that does incorporate traditional businesses, it incorporates software businesses, it actually incorporates businesses in, you know, adjacencies to what we do that are very aligned to different types of customers and service. We are just assessing those businesses on their own merits. If there are 70, you know, not just in terms of their value, doing due diligence and, you know, it is good to have the ability to execute those deals now without having to necessarily go through a capital raise. If you look at what we have done in the past, we bought technology businesses, we bought traditional businesses, we put them together and made them into a, you know, a stronger unit. I think that is still our strategy moving forward and that is what you will see from us.
Great. We've just had a couple of questions come in on ARC. So James from CAC has asked, with ARC Europe's acquisition closing at the end of December, can you provide more detail on the integration plan, particularly how CCR's AI-enabled digital collections will be deployed across ARC's client base and then what specific targets or KPIs are being used to measure margin accretion or operational efficiency based on the acquisition?
It's a good question, James. Let's just start with what the plan is. The first plan is to allow them to continue to run it with new owners and phase two will be building the technology for that market. Whilst I said build, it's really just deploying it on a Microsoft Azure platform in that market so we can deal with the data sovereignty rules and then building a front end module that deals with what's called a GDPR regulation, which means we need to identify who's engaging with that technology. There's going to be some work associated with rolling out the technology in that market and then integrating it within the ARC Europe day-to-day workflows. The good part about ARC Europe is they're a technology-enabled business already.
They build their own platform, they've got two developers and a Chief Information Officer that works for them or Chief Technology Officer. They've got a mindset of digital adoption. I think that we should see quick adoption of that technology once we've deployed it in that market. The strategy is like in Australia, that's Trojan horse that technology through the ARC services into ARC clients, and it won't be too long before they want to use that technology themselves within their own environment. That's copy phase three.
Could you provide some more color on the expected contribution from cross sell and upsell initiatives with existing Australian enterprise clients, or are there any particular sectors or client segments where you see the most near term opportunity?
Is that from James as well?
Yes.
I'm a salesperson and I get very excited about all the clients that we've got to sell to, not just with relationships in Australia, but who we've met over the last couple of years in a few trips that we've been over there. At the same time I know I've got Paul look at me right now and he goes under the promise. I’ll try to balance it somewhere in the middle and I'll say, you know, Andy and I are going over there for 10 days. It feels like we could have gone over there 20 days filled every day with meetings, with opportunities. You know, we've had calls, we've had emails from people who have expanded businesses over there, people with clients in Australia wanting to meet with us and wanting to sort of understand what our plan is.
I think that, you know, there's a huge opportunity in the U.K., not just with existing clients, but new clients that we, you know, working with some industries, especially insurance. You know, we've got such a deep, you know, relationship with our insurance clients in Australia and we've got a great technology solution all the way through to a legal solution for those clients. Given some of the relationships that we have, certainly at a board level with the insurance industry, I think it's unknown, let alone untapped. We're certainly excited about it.
Right. Paul did touch on it. Does the U.K. have any differences in laws that may slow down the rollout of the CCR technology? What is the timing of the rollout technology?
Now I can't remember what GDPR means. Okay. It's called GDPR if you want to Google it. That's the piece of legislation that was introduced a few years ago which we would need to incorporate into the credit technology. It's already incorporated within the ARC processes, so we've just got to adopt that and apply it to our technology. That's not a huge amount of work. Right. Given the fact that most traditional businesses were able to. Apart from that, regulations are very, very similar to Australia. Maybe some changes around statute of limitations, around how long you're able to sue people for, how many times you're able to contact them. We just put all those control very, very easily.
One final question. Over one year ago a partnership was formed with Guidewire Software. Has this been beneficial for both parties? Has they haven't heard anything since the initial announcement?
Yeah, that integration has only just been completed and then we've only gone live or going live on the Guidewire Marketplace imminently. Guidewire had a Las Vegas, what do you call it, seminar exhibition only two weeks ago. If we'd been integrated and been live on the marketplace, we might have been out there to promote that integration because we're the only collection software tool that they've integrated with. Despite the fact we already do work with most of the insurance companies in Australia, as those insurance companies move from the current platform they're on to the cloud, we'll be immediately able to sort of switch on the credit based software to fund that technology. It almost future proofs our insurance market and it also provides a very nice entry into one of our biggest targets within Australia that don't use us.
Now I'd say that is that, you know, it provides really nice openings for insurance clients that are using the Guidewire, the cloud version. I got that wrong.
The end of the questions.
Thanks everyone for joining. Listening in, hope that I answered the finance questions okay and I did not over promise anything, but I tend to get excited, so thank you very much.