Thank you and good morning, and thank you for joining us for the briefing of Data#3's FY 2025 financial results. I'm joined by Cherie O'Riordan, our CFO, who will cover our financial highlights a little later in the presentation. For those of you not familiar with us, Data#3 is an ASX 200 listed IT services and solutions provider in Australia and the Pacific Islands. Our vision is to harness the power of people and technology for a better future. We have 48 years of experience in evolving our solutions to enable our customers' success, and we partner with world-leading technology vendors. We are delivering the digital future for our customers through our solutions, which you'll hear more about throughout the presentation. In terms of the agenda, we'll first review the FY 2025 highlights and key operational updates. Cherie will provide a more detailed overview of our financial performance.
I'll cover IT sector trends and round out with our strategy and outlook before closing with Q&A. Let's begin with the financial highlights. Gross sales was a record $3 billion for FY 2025, up 9% on FY 2024, driven by growth across all business units, particularly managed services, maintenance services, and software solutions. Gross profit increased by over 77% on the previous corresponding period to almost $290 million, with an average gross margin of 9.6% for the full year, slightly down on the prior year due to the sales mix and strong contribution by the lower margin software business. Profit before tax of $69.1 million was up 11.4% and reflects our improved operating leverage. Earnings before interest and tax was up 12%.
We delivered earnings per share growth of over 11%, and we're pleased to announce a healthy final dividend of $0.15 per share, providing a total of $0.281 per share, which is an increase of over 10% for the full year and represents a total payout ratio of 90.3%. Overall, we're very pleased with the FY 2025 financial result, a record for the company. We successfully navigated through ongoing global economic uncertainty, federal and state elections, and vendor program changes. Our business model held strong, and we remained agile in adapting to these changes and challenges. I'll now touch on a few of our operational highlights for FY 2025. Moving on to slide six and the FY 2025 overview. Our company growth continues to build, as evidenced by the increase in gross sales, which exceeds the calendar year 2025 Australian IT market growth rate of 8.7%.
Our recurring business has grown to 69% from 67% in the prior year, boosted by growth in managed services, maintenance services, and software solutions. This also reflects the ongoing shift for our customers to multi-year subscription and as-a-service offerings. As we enabled success for our customers during FY 2025, our customer satisfaction rating also increased. With security still our customers' number one priority, we increased our investments in security solutions during FY 2025. We officially launched our Brisbane-based security operations centre this time last year, and many customers have now chosen Data#3 to monitor and manage their IT environments. We also recently launched three new Microsoft-managed security services with a focus on managed detection and response, data loss prevention, and managing customers' Microsoft Sentinel environments. It is also pleasing that we've been successful in five major sectors, including federal, state, local government, commercial, and enterprise.
In recent years, we've been able to talk about our 30% growth in security solutions. We now have another 30% growth solution, device as a service. The device as a service solution includes all stages of a solution lifecycle, from planning to purchasing and deployment through to management, end of life, and refresh. Most are three-year contracts, which contribute to our recurring revenue, plus the contracts have high renewal rates. Another benefit of our device as a service solution is that it supports our sustainability initiatives. Data#3 is a five-star and award-winning HP Amplify partner, winning the HP Amplify Impact Partner of the Year for ANZ in FY 2025. This, combined with our new solar system implemented on our warehouse and integration centre, are practical examples of our sustainability initiatives. In FY 2025, Data#3 has been busy integrating AI into our business.
Slide 10 shows just some of the areas where we have leveraged AI internally, while at the same time helping over 100 customers navigate the pitfalls and benefits of AI through dedicated workshops. We will talk more about this in our strategy section. All of these solutions aren't possible without our world-leading vendor partners. We close the year in leading positions with our major partners Microsoft, HP, and Cisco. In addition, we will rank the top partner with other major software vendors such as Adobe, Veeam, and Mimecast. Each year, we receive national and international recognition from our global partners, and we are delighted to have received several awards again this year, highlighting that where we invest, we succeed. I'll now pass to Cherie O'Riordan to provide you with more detail on our FY 2025 financial performance.
Thanks, Brad, and good morning, everyone. It's my pleasure to now take you through our FY 2025 financial results. The first slide shows the consistency in our ability to deliver growth in gross sales and net profit over several years, as we successfully deliver on our strategic priorities, strengthen our competitive advantages, and adapt to new technologies and vendor programs with speed and agility. We're delighted to report that gross sales for FY 2025 were over $3 billion for the first time, representing growth of 9%. This growth was delivered in a landscape of challenging macroeconomic conditions and federal and state election cycles, which caused some uncertainty and delayed decision-making by customers. Our PVC of over $69 million was up 11.4% on the prior year and was supported by relatively stable gross margins and improved operating leverage, which I'll provide further detail on later in the presentation.
A final dividend of $0.15 per share was declared by the board, which equates to a full-year dividend of $0.281 per share and a payout ratio for FY 2025 of 90.3%. Before moving on to the financial results by line of business, I'd like to inform you that during the year, the group undertook a review of its accounting policy relating to the group segment reporting. It was determined that the group is comprised of three operating segments: software solutions, infrastructure solutions, and services, as this better aligns with internal reporting structures and how management reviews operations, in addition to providing enhanced transparency of disclosures. These three operating segments or lines of business will supersede the previous terminology of reporting product, that is, software and infrastructure combined, and services.
You'll also note a new profit metric reported for each segment, being management profit, which is effectively net profit before tax and corporate allocations. It should be noted, however, that Data#3 remains a highly integrated business with a large volume of cross-line of business sales and costs. Therefore, while it has been disaggregated to the greatest extent possible, some financial information presented by segment may be blended in nature. Moving on now to the results by line of business or operating segment. This next slide provides an overview of the FY 2025 gross sales generated by each of our services business units, as well as the services gross profit, gross margin, and management profit. Services gross sales of almost $400 million were up 6.7% on FY 2024, and driven by a strong performance by our maintenance and managed services business units of 8.6% and 25% respectively.
As communicated with the half-year results, managed services continues to onboard new contracts and customers, and we've had some success with expansion in the mining sector during FY 2025. Maintenance services had a stronger first half due to the lumpiness of some larger deals, particularly with enterprise agreements. Our consulting, project services, and people solutions business units were impacted by economic uncertainty and the Queensland state election this financial year, as customers delayed infrastructure and transformation projects, and we saw a temporary slowdown in public sector demand for contingent labor. On balance, our services business performed well, with gross profit growth of 7.4% and an improved gross margin to 36.6%, with the growth in the higher margin business units. Management profit increased 10.5% to $32.2 million, which was pleasing considering the aforementioned headwinds faced by some areas of this business during the year.
We also continue to make system and people investments in services to deliver future growth. Moving on now to our infrastructure solutions FY 2025 financial result. After finishing the first half down almost 13% on PCP, we are delighted to report that the business finished over 4% up for the full year. The second half saw a ramp-up in end-user compute sales, fueled by Windows 11 related upgrades and device refresh cycles. We're also seeing solid sales activity in data center and networking. With renewed focus on improving deal margins, infrastructure gross profit grew 10% on FY 2024 to over $71 million, and gross margin improved from 11.8% to 12.5% during FY 2025. Most pleasing was that management profit of $17.5 million was up 27% on the prior year, as we improved operating leverage through the automation of ordering and invoicing processes and following a restructure of this business in the first half.
The next slide provides an overview of our software solutions results for FY 2025. Gross sales hit $2 billion for the first time, and we're up almost 11% on the prior year. Sales were boosted by demand for security software products, cloud subscriptions, and Adobe products, predominantly in the public and education sectors. Software gross profit of $72.6 million was up 4.3% on FY 2024, and average gross margin decreased slightly from 3.8% in FY 2024 to 3.6% this financial year. This was driven by some larger, more competitive deals done at lower margins across a range of vendors during the year. Management profit for the software business increased almost 8% in FY 2025 to over $38 million, with improved operating leverage through automation, process improvements, and cost management.
Slide 18 presents a summarized view of our FY 2025 statement of comprehensive income, noting that statutory revenue includes adjustments made under the revenue accounting standard to present our software licensing and vendor-delivered maintenance support sales on a net revenue basis. There has been no change to accounting policy this year other than to segment reporting, as mentioned earlier. Operating expenses increased just over 6% on PCP, driven by wage inflation of around 6% after stripping out $1.1 million in one-off redundancy costs, increased investments in IT projects such as a cloud solutions provider platform and a new payroll system, and higher software licensing costs related to new platforms and cloud consumption. Interest income earned was approximately $10.2 million, up over $500,000 on the prior year.
We are currently forecasting interest income of about $7.5 million for FY 2026, assuming an average cash position similar to FY 2025 and a few interest rate reductions throughout the year. The next slide shows our summarized consolidated balance sheet as at 30 June 2025. Key callouts include the usual inflated cash, trade receivables, and trade payables balances at 30 June each year, resulting from the May-June sales peak and which subsequently reduced in Q1 of the next financial year as debtors are receded and vendors are paid for the products sold. Net cash flows from operating activities were an inflow of $126.3 million in FY 2025 compared to an outflow of $86.2 million for FY 2024. This is due to a larger number of May-June sales being invoiced and paid pre-30 June in FY 2025 compared to the PCP.
Investing activities in the current year included some IT project costs capitalized as software assets, including those for the cloud solution provider platform. The last callout on the cash flow on our working capital is that our average daily cash balance increased from around $246 million in FY 2024 to about $267 million in FY 2025. The final slide in this FY 2025 financial overview supports our internal focus in recent years on steadily improving our internal cost ratio, a key internal measure of operating leverage. In FY 2025, our internal cost ratio reduced to 79.7%, down from 80.6% in the prior year. The reduction was driven by a restructuring of our infrastructure solutions business in the first half, in addition to various automation and AI-related initiatives, system improvements, and effective cost management across the business.
Thank you again for your time this morning, and I'll now pass back to Brad to cover IT sector trends and strategy and outlook.
Thank you, Cherie. Let's take a few minutes to review technology industry trends plus our strategy and outlook. In calendar year 2025, Gartner expects Australian IT industry spending to increase 8.7% to approximately $147 billion. Sales growth generated from software is expected to grow at 13.4% to nearly $46 billion, while devices are expected to grow by 9.1%, which is substantially up on the lower-than-expected growth of 5.9% that was experienced last year. The projections that both software and devices are up for 2025 are good news for Data#3 as they are core offerings. IT services growth is forecast to be steady at 7.2%. In the last 12 months, our services growth exceeded this rate, and we expect to do so the same in FY 2026. Communication services is lower at 3.2%. However, this is a large sector, including a lot of telecommunications equipment.
We expect to see more positive growth in this sector in the areas in which we engage, such as networking. Data centre is expected to grow by a healthy 11.3%. While much of this gain will be seen in the hyperscalers such as Microsoft, as they continue to build generative AI processing capability, it means additional capacity from our vendors to sell into customers as part of our integrated solutions. We also expect customers to continue to invest in their own data centre capability and provide additional processing power. Let's explore a summary of our strategy before reviewing the outlook. Our strategic priorities drive our strategy. This includes our solutions, developing solutions and services that deliver customer success. Customer experience, differentiating Data#3 through the experience we deliver to our customers. Operational excellence, connecting and simplifying Data#3 to deliver an agile and efficient business.
People and community, connecting Data#3 with its people and the communities in which we operate. Our customer experience combines customer segmentation and digital experience that ensures customers receive access to the right resources at the right time. This is a unified experience for customers to gain secure digital access to the Data#3 solutions capability. Customers want more digital engagement combined with in-person engagement, and that is what we're delivering in FY 2026. Our solution sets and lifecycle services capability are where we will continue to focus and invest in FY 2026. It is our ability to integrate these solutions through the solutions lifecycle that is one of our competitive advantages. With AI pervasive across all our solutions, it provides significant opportunity for FY 2026. Let's look at an AI customer case study.
Our team worked with Penrith City Council on a Microsoft Copilot readiness assessment to drive real business value for the customer, working with the customer to help them understand the risks associated with AI, including data governance and security, understanding the importance of change management, and most importantly, understanding the use cases where Copilot could be deployed to increase efficiency and help council employees to deliver exceptional services to the community. Data#3 is another example of an AI case study. We are an extensive AI user ourselves, helping us to gain operational efficiency and increase sales. We have use cases across finance, HR, IT, cybersecurity, sales, and customer experience. Through our use of AI, we gain benefit from the use of the technology, plus gain valuable experience to apply this knowledge to our customers. While Microsoft has decreased channel incentives for enterprise agreements, we're now well into our transformation journey.
Microsoft is rewarding partners for focusing on the cloud solution provider program, Copilot, security, and Azure migrations. We're having success in all of these areas. We also had success with our other key partners, and our plan is to still mitigate the downside in enterprise agreements during FY 2026. We expect headwinds for software in the first half of FY 2026, with recovery to a similar position to the previous corresponding period for the full financial year. We expect continued growth from infrastructure solutions during the FY across devices, the network, and multi-cloud. We expect growth in managed services and project services based on additional services capability and offerings. While we plan for growth in people and consulting, it's not without its challenges as the public sector continues to outsource, to insource, rather. Consistent with previous practice, we are not providing specific guidance for FY 2026.
In line with previous years, we continue to expect a sales peak in the months of May and June, and our goal remains to continue to deliver sustainable earnings growth for our shareholders. In summary, Data#3's agility, capability, and partnerships position us well for continued success. Thank you, and we'll now open for Q&A.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press *2. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Apoorv Seghal with UBS. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Hey, good morning, Brad and Cherie. A couple of questions from me just related to some recent Microsoft developments. Firstly, Brad, can we talk about this Microsoft ECIF program, which I think came out a month or so ago? My understanding is it's related to Microsoft incentives for FY 2026 for Aussie resellers. What I've heard is that they're pushing Copilot really hard, but it's with a focus on much larger enterprises, like typically with 1,000 plus seats. Can you just talk us through what is this ECIF program? How is it different to the changes Microsoft put through from January 1st? What does that all mean for Data#3 going forward?
Good morning, Apoorv. Thanks for the question. Just to clarify, ECIF is an end customer incentive fund. It's an incentive for the customer, typically larger customers who make a very large investment in Microsoft technologies through their enterprise agreements, typically. It is the enterprise agreements as opposed to cloud solution provider agreements, where they make a large investment in Microsoft technologies and then Microsoft provides an ECIF, an end customer incentive fund, to help the customers to deploy and use technology. The ECIF can be used by Microsoft partners or, in fact, Microsoft themselves to help the customer on that road to piloting or implementing the solutions that they've purchased. ECIF has actually been around for quite some time, for many years.
It probably was caught up in some of the most recent blogs from Nicole Denson, the Microsoft Partner Lead for Worldwide, where she may have mentioned ECIF in relation to a number of other things. It's not new, it's not new for us, but what it does do is it provides essentially revenue opportunity for us because with those ECIF funds that Microsoft are providing, if Data#3 provides the implementation work, for example, or the pilot, we're effectively invoicing Microsoft in that regard for the use of the ECIF funds, and the customer gains the benefit. Does that address the question, Apoorv?
I think so. I mean, net net, if I interpret that correctly, from Data#3's perspective, it's not a net negative by any means into 2026 from that ECIF program.
No. In fact, the more ECIF that Microsoft provides to customers, the better for Data#3 because we're able to essentially treat that as services revenue if we're able to partner with Microsoft and the customer on delivering that.
OK, wasn't there any sort of change in the ECIF this year? I thought maybe they were pushing for bigger customers or more on the Copilot side of things, or is it kind of just what it is normally?
It is what it is normally, although they have been looking at extending it to the cloud solution provider program, but we haven't seen any evidence of that as yet. It is typically linked to the enterprise agreements and those larger customers, particularly in public sector, that are making substantial investments in Microsoft technology.
Gotcha. OK, thanks for clarifying all that stuff. The second development, which I think came out a couple of weeks ago, I was reading that Microsoft announced some pretty mature price increases where they've kind of eliminated discounts on enterprise agreements. Is that right from your perspective? Could that be an incremental positive as well for Data#3, given that at least some of your customers are still on EAs? If there's been a price increase, I presume that might flow through for you guys?
Potentially. It depends, again, on the nature of the enterprise agreement. You'll remember that commercial enterprise customers, Microsoft invoice those customers directly, and we receive a rebate. That's why there's been a lot of discussion around the rebates, because when Microsoft reduced the rebates on the commercial enterprise agreements, that's the only leverage that we have, really, outside of providing services. In the public sector, for example, we still have a buy and sell scenario. What Microsoft has announced is the removal of the levels, the levels A, B, C, and D, which set the different pricing levels. We'd expect customers to now move into a negotiating phase with Microsoft. Rather than just getting their respective level, they'll need to negotiate with Microsoft. If they're not successful with that, then they will be at a higher price level than they may have previously been.
The opportunity for Data#3 is that in the public sector, for example, it would have been providing a margin on a higher priced item. Because Microsoft invoice directly in the public sector, in the commercial sector, it doesn't really make a massive difference. However, it really takes the price advantage away to a large degree, unless the customer does negotiate an agreement with Microsoft around the difference between EA and CSP. You might find that it provides a better market for Data#3 to help our customers to migrate from enterprise agreements to cloud solution provider agreements, where there is better value for Data#3. Plus, we have, as you know, a very extensive licensing business with our licensing consultants.
We'd expect that with this complexity that Microsoft have introduced, that will provide opportunity for our licensing consultants to work closely with the customers to determine how they can have those negotiations with Microsoft.
Understood. Just one final question, please, Brad. If I just put it all together from a gross profit perspective, then. At the group level, you've done 5% gross profit growth in the second half of 2025. You did 10% in the first half. I'm guessing that slowdown is a bit largely related to the Microsoft transition impacts that started on January 1. That's mid-single-digit level. You've done the second half. Is that probably more or less fair for first half 2026, as another six months of that impact comes through before you're expecting for a bit of a rebound, probably second half 2026? Is that kind of the framework for us to be thinking about it?
I think you said it would be similar to like high single-digit. It depends. I might just break it down. The last couple of slides of the deck was around those three areas in terms of software, infrastructure, and services. From a software perspective, we actually expect software to have some headwinds in the first half. Software could actually go backwards in the first half. We plan to recover over the full financial year to be at a similar level to the previous corresponding period for the previous financial year. You'll know that because the incentives decrease started from January 1, and we've already dealt with half of that from January through to June. All our customers that have anniversaries and renewals from July through to December, we're still managing that.
That is quite a large revenue component for us, and that's why we expect a decrease from a software perspective. From an infrastructure and services perspective, it's business as usual. In fact, there's great momentum with both infrastructure and services. We expect growth from both of those businesses in the first half and second half. To summarize, I guess the software business will decrease the growth % for us in the first half more so and to a lesser extent for the full year.
Thanks for your time, guys.
Thank you, Apoorv.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Edward Woodgate with Jarden. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi, Tim. Thanks for taking the question and well done on the result today. Can you hear me OK?
Yep, we can hear you, Cherie. Thank you.
Great. Thank you. I just wanted to talk initially about the consulting revenue. I saw that was down slightly, but I understand that was mostly due to the impact of the state election. If you were to look at the rest of the country, is there any sort of trends that you could talk to in relation to business aspects ex-Queensland?
Yeah, mainly in Canberra. Queensland's by far the biggest territory for business aspect and our consulting business. Canberra is the second, and they're the two that have the biggest public sector influences. Last year, in particular, we saw disruption with that, with Queensland and federal government, with a lot of insourcing activity. We do expect that to continue. I guess our opportunity is to expand our customer base where we can. Obviously, it's easier in Queensland than it is in federal government. We do still have opportunity, particularly around outcome-based initiatives as opposed to just putting consultants in at a daily or weekly rate, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that makes sense. It was pleasing to see product revenue was stronger than our forecast and Cherie's had as well. It's been interesting to understand the dynamics there. Did you benefit partly from a deferral revenue in the first half? Was there any underlying improvement in demand trends for hardware? Have there been any deals that have been deferred into 2026 for services or product?
The very first word that you said was really hard to hear. Was it revenue for infrastructure? Is that what you said, or?
Oh, yeah, sorry. Yes, infrastructure and hardware.
Right, right. In the first half in particular, it was affected by the various elections, but also there was still—it seems like so long ago now—the first half of last year, we still had relatively higher interest rates, and customer sentiment wasn't where it needed to be. We had lower overall growth. In fact, we had declined from an infrastructure perspective in the first half last year. Into the second half, we saw a rebound with that. As interest rates started to ease, customer sentiment improved, and we had a much better second half for our infrastructure business. We're expecting that we'll continue momentum with the infrastructure business into the first half of FY 2026 and beyond.
OK, great. That sounds promising. Just quickly, apologies if you mentioned it. I might have missed it. Is there any sort of guidance you can provide on interest revenue for the first half of the full year? Would you mind calling out what the average cash balance was for FY 2025?
Yeah, sure. I advised that the forecast for increased income for FY 2026 was around $7.5 million. That's usually weighted to the first half. Average cash, I did follow as well, let's jump into that. We had about $267 million in FY 2025, and I've assumed that carries over into FY 2026, just with the potential changing profile of the software revenue. If we successfully convert some EAs to CSP, the top line may come off slightly. I've just assumed average daily cash is consistent with this year for next year.
Just to clarify that, the conversion of those, does that have a negative impact on cash?
It might just flatten our cash position for at least the next 12 months, just while we work through the Microsoft transition and the changing sales mix.
If you were to convert more than expected or less than expected, I guess it has a dampening impact. If conversions are stronger, then that's good for your business, but your interest revenue will be lower. If conversions are weaker, it'll be offset by higher interest revenue. Is that the right way of thinking about it?
Yeah, potentially. It's still to be seen, but I can give an update with the half-year results if it's wildly different to expectation.
OK. Thank you. That's all from me.
Thanks, Ed.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Chenny Wang with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just first one more broadly on customer sentiment, budgets, and decision making. I think it's been pretty well known over the past 18 to 24 months that it's been a bit of a tougher backdrop. I'm just kind of interested in how you're seeing that backdrop today and also maybe how that differs across customer segments, so across your small, mid, and large customers. Thank you.
Yes, thanks. Thanks, Chenny. Thanks for the question. The customer decision making that we've referred to over recent times has been as a result of two factors. One is the IT environments and governance and all of that becoming just more complex. The number of decision makers within a customer has increased substantially. Whereas a few years ago, it used to be two, three, four people would be able to make the decision and move forward, we're now seeing 10, 11, 12 people involved in the decision-making process for our customers. That by its very nature delays the decision making and makes it more drawn out. That won't go away. That looks like that will continue.
As far as customer sentiment is concerned, though, in terms of actually moving forward with projects and having that compelling reason to get everybody on the same page and move forward with their purchases, that is improving. We've seen that since the start of the calendar year with interest rates easing. We expect that will continue to be good for the market. As far as the different segments are concerned, obviously, we're large in the enterprise and public sector space. In the mid-market, the mid-market seemed to be able to move forward with decisions a little bit quicker than some of the enterprise customers for those reasons. There's less people involved in the decision-making process. That's a good thing. We expect the sentiment to continue to improve in mid-market. In small business, we don't really play in that area.
The retail and SMB, any organizations that really with less than 50 - 100 devices, while we do sell to that market, it's not really a focused area. That won't affect us too much. Does that provide some color to the answer to the question for you?
Yeah, no, that's super helpful. Thanks, Brad. Maybe just a second one. In your opening remarks, you talked about the continued growth in managed services. Could we get an update on that pipeline? I guess over the past few halves, you talked about the momentum across managed services and the pipeline in particular continuing to expand every half. Just how you're seeing the broader managed services market and also any comments on competitive intensity and discounting pricing, any of that would be super helpful as well. Thanks.
OK. I'll just address the first one first, and then we might come back to that second one. As far as the managed services growth, yes, we have done very, very well with our managed services over the last couple of years. We had like 25% growth for that last year. We're continuing to invest in managed services. You can always break out managed services down to two offerings, if you like. Overall, there is that enterprise managed services where we're managing many factors for the customer, from their network to their data center to their devices and really outsourcing a lot of their IT infrastructure. We're investing in more sales and marketing capability there. We already have very good delivery capability, and we'll just scale the delivery capability as we need to.
We also spent some investment on systems and tools over the last couple of years with managed services. We expect that enterprise managed services business to continue to grow. We've also been busy building out finished managed services. This is managed services for specific things. I mentioned around some of the Microsoft-managed security services that we've developed out around managed security. We're also developing out additional packaged managed services across the network. I mentioned the device as a service, which is not just the device, but a wrapper of managed services around it as well. We are going to continue to invest in managed services over the period because we see good growth potential there. The second one, could you just repeat that? I think it was about pricing?
In terms of competitive intensity and the broader landscape there, whether competitors are discounting and how kind of price looks like.
You're not referring to just managed services there? You're referring to?
Sorry, just within managed services.
Oh, I see. Managed services are always very competitive. We're not seeing anything unusual that we haven't seen in the past. For us, it's a matter of getting the right messaging across to the customers. I'll say unique because we are number one with those top vendors that I mentioned before from a product and solutions resale perspective. Where other managed services providers are just providing a managed service, we've also got those vendor relationships as well. For us, it's about articulating our value to the customer and taking value propositions to the customer where we can improve their operations rather than just getting bogged down into a competitive bid for something that the customer has determined that they need to be managed. It's really sales 101 and solutions delivery and focusing on the things that we do well. If we do that, then we should maintain our margins.
Perfect. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Nick Harris with Morgans. Please go ahead.
Thanks, guys. Appreciate the call. I just had two really ones just to understand your kind of OpEx going forward because it looks like it came back in the second half of 2025 versus the first half, as you've obviously adjusted your cost base, given what's been going on with the incentives. I'm just curious to understand, as we think about the year ahead, is that kind of the right base to run off, or might you be putting additional investment into the SMC side of things? I'm just trying to get a kind of directional feel because it's been a bit lumpy over the last two halves. The second one was maybe a question for Cherie O'Riordan, which was just around the software assets. I saw there was a bit over $1 million of payment for software assets in cash flow.
Is that a customer thing, or is Data#3 doing something with that investment? If it is Data#3 specific, could you elaborate if possible? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, Nick. I can deal with the second question first. Most of what you see as in the software asset capitalization for FY 2025 related to the build of the cloud solution provider platform to service the CSP customers going forward. That was an internal investment. We had a third party help us with that, as well as internal staff time, some of which was capitalized. In terms of the OpEx outlook for FY 2026, I'd expect increases in staff costs to moderate around the 5% - 6% mark for next year, which will predominantly be wage inflation. I don't expect huge increases to headcount numbers for FY 2026. As always, any increases would be predominantly in billable headcount and/or services staff to deliver work one. Otherwise, general OpEx, I think overall, including staff costs, we had an increase of about 9% this year.
I'd probably expect maybe slightly less than that, but probably similar levels. We're going to maintain the software staff base and potentially redirect staff into those higher growth areas. If any sort of actions are required after that initial 12-month transition period, then we'll reassess.
Thank you.
Thanks, Tim.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ross Barrows with Wilsons Advisory. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks, Brad. Thanks, Cherie. Just one question. A couple of you answered already. Maybe just some more color around the incremental government insourcing or internalization that I think you referred to earlier. Could you just elaborate on that a little bit and maybe approach the answer from two angles? One is just kind of around any segmental observations you can make, but also whether there's any impact from AI solutions that they're using being more efficient and just having any impact on Data#3 at the margin. Thanks.
Thanks, Ross. Yeah, the government insourcing is no change to last year. We actually saw this last year. You also see it more so in, I guess it depends on the customer. Queensland government, with the change of government, there's always a move to move from contractors to insourcing to try and save some costs and provide benefit to the public sector until they realize that they don't have the skills or the budgets to be able to execute on their requirements. They have to go back and start using contractors again. It's a bit of a cyclical story. We've seen that in Canberra as well. Where we do then have success, of course, is still around the outcome-based projects, as I mentioned earlier.
The reason for mentioning that is it does impact our people solutions and our BA consulting business the most, as opposed to managed services and professional services or project services. We're still planning for growth for both people solutions and BA, but we're just calling out that it certainly does make it hard when governments continue to try and insource rather than working with local partners. On the second one around AI, the comments really had nothing to do with AI. I think the government is like a lot of organizations are certainly trialing AI around different use cases. We haven't seen anything affect where Data#3 is working, at least in the customers in terms of reducing headcounts or even cutting contractors because of the use of AI.
I guess a lot of what we do is the higher value services as well, as opposed to where we're not really providing, I don't know, even data entry staff or any of those sorts of lower-level tasks. We're providing more IT consultants. We wouldn't expect that to affect us too much, at least in the short term.
That's great. Thanks. Maybe just a follow-up on AI, if I can. Obviously, you've had some exposure to that, getting the early access that you did, and you have called out how you're using it today and you've got benefits. It tends to be more qualitative in the commentary that you've made. Are you able to make any quantitative comments around the savings you've made or improvements of saving 10% - 20% of time in certain tasks? Maybe put some numbers around it if possible.
Overall, the numbers are reflected in our operational efficiencies. It's reflected both in terms of costs, but also better service levels. You also saw that our customer satisfaction increased as well during the year. In terms of providing individual dollar amounts per individual use cases, we won't be sharing that necessarily to the market. We actually do work both internally on our business cases around the ROI and with our customers, ensuring that there's appropriate ROI, which could be financial or it could be a better outcome. You don't have really a level of detail that you're probably looking for there, Ross.
All right. That's great. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Apoorv Seghal with UBS. Please go ahead.
Thanks, guys, for taking the follow-ups. I just wanted to follow up on the, Cherie, just the staff cost comment. You're saying probably up 5% - 6% in FY2026. First half versus second half, should the first half of 2026 be maybe closer to a flattish or low single-digit outcome, just given you have the benefits and the redundancies and automation projects that played through in the second half result just gone by? Presuming that it needs to annualize in the first half. I'm just wondering if it's a case of first half staff costs are up like very low single digit and then second half is up kind of high single digit and then you blend out at kind of 5%, 6% the full year?
Yeah, I think that's probably a fair assumption, AP. Sorry, we don't look at our business half on half as much as you guys do. Yes, I think that would be fair given the redundancies that occurred in the first half last year.
OK, got it. I've heard some of these big global services type companies have been shedding staff recently. Is that something you've seen? Is that an opportunity for Data#3 to maybe hire people from some of those competitors? Are there any market share opportunities that have arisen from that as well?
Yes, quite possibly. Yes, we have. We have hired a couple of excellent resources. Thanks, Apoorv. We would see it as a good opportunity for us.
OK. There's one final question, just on Copilot, Brad. How has that product performed for you in the last six months? Some feedback that I've heard is that Copilot in Australia hasn't quite been that successful. What has been your experience and how meaningful is Copilot from an incentives perspective compared to 365 and Azure?
Our use of Copilot has been, as expected, having access to the technology early. We've been able to have our people ramped up and trained and using it very efficiently and effectively. It has provided great benefit for us. The second piece of that was around, what was the second piece again?
Just from an incentives perspective, like GP dollars perspective, you've got Azure, 365, Copilot, and three kind of important Microsoft products. How material actually is Copilot versus those two?
Yeah, I guess the first thing is that there's Copilot for M365, which might be what you're referring to. As you know, there's also Copilot for sales, there's Copilot for developers, there's many different types of Copilot. It is becoming very pervasive. The other piece that sort of gets lost in the marketing from Microsoft is the Azure AI. We are also using Azure AI and Azure Foundry very extensively within Data#3 and with our customers as well. A lot of customers' data is based in Azure. A true AI consultancy, if you like, it's not just looking at where Copilot touches it, but where other tools and systems touch it as well. We're already seeing some good return from the channel incentives around Copilot and the various forms of Copilot, but also with Azure consumption and Azure AI. It's becoming more and more material.
I can't talk to the relativity because I don't have the reports in front of me. I guess the most pervasive software has traditionally been the M365, which was your Office and your Windows. Over the last literally 10 years, Azure revenue has been incredible and the growth has been incredible. There's your two big, I guess, revenue generators and incentive generators. Now the AI is going across Azure and M365. While we can measure the individual incentives, we really look at the clouds, the three clouds that Microsoft have got, including their Dynamics 365 cloud and how AI, whether it's Copilot or Azure AI, is included within those numbers as well. Microsoft has put a lot of investment behind it, and the incentives are very attractive.
OK, thanks, guys. Appreciate the follow-ups as well.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Adam Dellaverde with Taylor Collision. Please go ahead.
Hi, Brad and Cherie. Just a question on the end-user computing. That was a massive hardware number in the second half. Are you able to just sort of expand on what you're seeing there in terms of sort of PC mix, ASP, AI PCs, that kind of thing? Where do you think the channel is at in terms of getting those computers upgraded before the expiry date on Windows 10?
Yeah, hi, Adam. Yes, hi, Adam. Yes, absolutely. As we expected, the devices number, and I mentioned the device as a service offering as well in the presentation, but even just our device numbers were well up in the second half, which was pleasing because the industry in general was a bit disappointed with the number of upgrades that customers were making during calendar year 2024. Because a lot of customers didn't upgrade during 2024 and they've let their run a bit late, we actually still see, even though Windows 10 support will expire in October, that there'll be a number of customers that still haven't upgraded. We still expect a great opportunity in this current half, but also into calendar year 2026.
In terms of what we're seeing in terms of the mix, the number of AI PCs is just naturally improving as more devices become available from our vendors, and the price points are reasonable for those devices as well. We sell into many markets, everything from education with very low-end devices that don't have any real AI embedded into the devices through to the very advanced enterprise systems that have AI chips with them and also AI software installed on them. We are seeing that percentage steadily increase as customers replace their fleets, and that might be on the back of the Windows 10 to Windows 11 refresh, or it could be just general refresh requirements. Certainly, AI PCs, the percentage is increasing as we progress.
OK, thanks. If I'm thinking about the setup then, kind of coming from this period where we were talking about delays or patchiness and also we had Windows 10, what was going to happen with the end of life. Now looking forward, we've got quite a lot of infrastructure happening in Queensland and other sectors, hospitals, schools, and we've got this end-user computing. There's really quite a strong pipeline for that part of the business. Am I reading that right?
That's absolutely correct, Adam. Yeah.
OK. On the software side, I'm just kind of curious. I know we're kind of now lapping in and starting to see what happens on some of these renewals. There's also that whole federal government contract which comes up. There's been a lot of noise around that because people feel like you're getting an edge with Copilot into government. What are you thinking? I'm appreciating we're in a public forum here, but what can you say around contingency planning on that if that does get split up? Also, what are you seeing on the competitive intensity on some of these renewals for customers? I'm thinking the globals are coming in and being quite pointy trying to win work, or at least I'm hearing that. Any comments there?
With the federal government renewal, I can't really talk to that. As far as that's concerned, we'll play the ball that's in front of us. We've been very, very good at showing our value to the federal government. When that does come up, we will be putting our best foot forward again for that in whatever form that is. There's been no indication that that form will change at this point in time. From a competitive perspective, we're seeing that our direct competitors in the software space have their own challenges, particularly in the U.S. and also in the U.K. Those large globals are exposed to a larger degree than Data#3 is. We're focusing on our customers locally, and we're having great success with our local customers because we're a local business headquartered in Brisbane, Australia.
We've been agile and working closely with our customers, unlike some of the globals are able to do. We still feel that we're very well placed competitively.
That's great. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Edward Woodgate with Jarden. Please go ahead.
Hi, Tim. Thanks for taking the follow-up. Just quickly, I just wanted to follow up on the 5% employee cost growth. Is there effectively any capitalization in that? Also, just in relation to the capitalized amount for this year, did you get those staff in place last year? I guess if you haven't capitalized with that, would you otherwise have expected that capitalization?
Yeah, only a small amount of those capitalized costs was internal time. The vast majority of it was third-party consulting, so not a material impact on staff costs. Sorry, you're a little bit crackling there. What was your first question around the 5% - 6%?
Is that assuming further capitalization of staff costs?
No, that's not factored in, no.
OK, great. That sounds good. Thank you.
Thank you.
It looks like we're at time, so we might need to close off the Q&A at this point in time.
Sure. There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Colledge, please go ahead with the closing remarks.
I think we could just close it off. Thank you very much, everybody, for joining us today.
Thanks, all.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.