Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our results presentation. My name is Andrew Hansen. On the call today, we've got Richard English, our CFO. Just a quick couple of housekeeping matters. I'm actually dialing in from overseas, so Richard and I aren't in the same room. If we do experience any technical issues today, we'll just take a short break whilst we bring it back together again. If worse comes to worst here, Richard will take over. As the moderator said, we'll be taking questions at the end. Let's kick off on page five. Just an overview of our business. Certainly, this year was another year of focused transition and disciplined investment for Hansen , something I think you've all become used to expecting, certainly as a listed company with our whole history.
We've certainly made strong progress with our roadmap integration and also launching new innovations, particularly around AI, which we're very, very excited about. As always, we keep on deepening those client partnerships. Our view is always never trying to give a reason for our customers to have to leave us. There have been some macroeconomic pressures across the headwinds, which we all see, but we've stayed very focused, long-term, and sustainable growth organization, as represented in our financials. Certainly, this year shows strength and resilience in our business model, and certainly expanding our clients through delivery, innovation, but above all, just meeting their expectations is what they come to expect from us. We continue to win new business and to keep on expanding our business.
Naturally, the M&A targets, which we pursued this year again with powercloud a year and a half ago, and then CONUTI this year, have been reached. We finished the year very strongly, lifting our, and I think we pointed out in the first half, our second half was going to be stronger, and it was, by lifting our financial year 2025 cash and EBITDA, which is a clear sign of that continuing momentum of our organization as we go forward. Overall, we thought it was once again a great year, and our business is in great strength. Over the page, I think a lot of people know the Hansen story, but I'm sure there'll be a few people new which don't really know us that well at all. Just a bit of a recap. This business actually started back in 1971. It was a family-type business.
I think to this date, we're very true to those values. As we've grown internationally, when you think about it, you know, as a small Melbourne-based organization, to be a business where we're as broad as we are now is a great testament to some very talented people. Hansen's been around for 50 years and ASX since 2000. I think our long-term view is, and we just prioritize sustainable growth and customer success. It's always been the view of Hansen that we're not doing any short-term. It's all about the long-term relationship we have with our business and our customers. I think we've also done over a dozen acquisitions just in the last number of years, and each of those we've expanded our global reach, always maintaining the focus of the business.
In nearly every case it can be tracked, we've actually doubled the profit of each of the businesses we've actually been buying. Our software's always sat at the very heart of the customers we look after. It is mission-critical, highly regulated, and it's just used by customers all around the world. In many cases, we like to be close to that cash register, that being where we're building the products, doing the rating, doing the billing of all the things they're doing for our customers. We end up having a very special relationship. We actually focus on two key markets: the communications and media, and the energy and utilities. We currently support, you know, 600 customers through 80 countries with a team of 1,600 people. Our growth is steady, and as always, I think one of the headwinds is just the cash-generative nature of Hansen.
It's amazing to follow a company like us, and we can buy businesses, pay down debt, provide all our working capital, and also keep on paying dividends, I think is an amazing testament to the hardworking people. Just over the next slide, the financial summary for the year. Clearly, we're very happy with the results for the financial year. Achieved operating revenue of $392 million for the full year, an increase of 11.2%. Certainly, this growth reflects the powercloud acquisition. I know there's probably a number of investors or shareholders which were querying our logic to buy the business, but I think the rapid turnaround of the business, and I think most of you now understand the opportunities which are sitting in that particular marketplace. Underlying EBITDA is up 20.9%, and underlying EBITDA margin of 28.5%.
There was no doubt the second half was a significant recovery on earnings and cash flow with new agreements, etc. I know that Richard will go into a bit more detail. We've certainly carefully managed and maintained our expense around R&D and continue to deliver what we consider innovative products and services for our customers and maintain the cash EBITDA margin of 23.8%. Once again, Richard will dive into that cash shortly. Energy and utilities revenue supported by powercloud, new wins grew by 8.3%, and the communications and media revenue year-on-year grew by 15% as we looked at modernizing some of these legacy systems. Our underlying impact of EBITDA at 56.9% has considerably over, reflecting a very strong second half and the profitability and turnaround of the powercloud business. Next slide, just on operational highlights. It has been an exciting year for us with a lot of new logos.
We're not slow on the uptake of AI into our own business and using that innovation to provide a strong outcome. We've continued to sign lots of new business. Certainly of note, and ones we did talk about, was the five-year agreement with Virgin Media, which is a Telefónica global business. We signed a very strategic deal in the U.S. with one of the largest renewable energy portfolios with a $16 million deal. We also, in April 2025, announced the continuation of our German thesis, which is growing out that marketplace by buying CONUTI, another business in that marketplace. Some 12 months or so ago, we did realign our business into the two operating verticals for efficiency and also bringing the business in and just understanding that the reason for that, the communications market is a global product set where the energy market is really almost a state-by-state, country-by-country marketplace.
We've been certainly harnessing AI capabilities, and we're seeing a significant boost in the productivity and efficiency across our business, and ultimately that's aiming towards the bottom line. That's the highlights. Now I think it's probably if I could hand over to you, Richard, to discuss probably the financial details in more detail. Richard, please, and welcome.
Thank you, Andrew, and welcome everybody again to our FY25 results. Certainly, we've been looking forward to talking to the market about what has been a very good year for us, and we were pleased to come out to the market on the 14th of July with a profit upgrade. We talked to a revenue number of $391 million -$393 million, and we actually came in with a revenue number of $392.5 million, so at the top end of what we provided to the market last month. Our growth rate was 11.2% year-on-year, and I think the real success story here is our communications vertical. We talk a lot about diversity in our business. Last year, energy was the star, and this year communications is up 15% year-on-year, supported by a transformational win with VMO2 in January for $50 million. A very good top-line year from a growth perspective.
I think what's very important to draw out for everybody on the call is about three years ago we talked to medium-term growth rates of 5% - 7%, and there were quite a few questions back then as to whether or not that was achievable. I'm very pleased to say that our CAGR over the last three years is just on 6%. We are exactly where we said we would be, and that CAGR of 6% over three years excludes the powercloud acquisition. We have delivered on our revenue growth, which is pleasing, and of course that then flows across to our underlying EBITDA. You can see here a substantial change year-on-year. Last year was impacted by the losses of powercloud for the five months that we owned the business, but we backed ourselves.
We have turned that business around, and it was profitable eight to nine months after acquiring the company. You can see here that year-on-year our EBITDA number is up $19 million versus last year, margins returning to the sort of margins that we would expect, and we'll talk a little later to our margins going forward. 28.5% for the group is exactly where we thought we'd be, and we had guided the market only last month to $110 million - $112 million, and we came in right at the top end of that at $111.7 million. Moving down to underlying NPAT-A, you would expect this to be up based on the two metrics I just talked to, but we're up 43% year-over-year.
There is some tax in these numbers, so for the first time we did take up a very modest deferred tax asset in our EMEA region, and our effective tax rate for the year is 20% versus 31% last year. Finally, cash EBITDA, which is for us very much a proxy for profit, and a lot of companies talk to EBITDA. We think cash EBITDA is more relevant for Hansen, and cash EBITDA excludes the capitalization of R&D. Again, we guided to, at the start of the year, we guided to $76 million - $85 million, and we've well and truly outperformed that, coming in at $93.4 million, and margins are 23.8% versus 21.8% last year. All in all, we're very, very pleased with the year. These top-line numbers reflect what has been a strong year for Hansen.
Moving on to slide 10 around our diversity, every year we talk to the same important diversity of Hansen, which is not having all of our eggs in one basket. In fact, we have our eggs across many, many different baskets. We have tier one, tier two customers. We have products across different jurisdictions. We work in different countries, currencies, and of course, we work into mission-critical verticals, being energy and communications. You can see in the top left-hand pie chart that EMEA remains the growth driver of Hansen. It now represents 68% of the business. It's one of the reasons Andrew is based over in London this week. He's working with the team on some pretty important initiatives, and of course, when 70% of your business is based over there, that's appropriate.
You can see our split between communications and energy is somewhat skewed towards energy, and that's off the back of the powercloud acquisition we did recently. We are very comfortable that we have many customers across different jurisdictions that ensure that there is no one customer that could cause us any great level of growth. Bottom left-hand corner, support and application revenue. We look at this revenue as highly repeatable, predictable revenue, very cash generative, some high margin sources of income here. It's also the reason we are so cash generative, and you can see that the EMEA region has grown 22% year-over-year. Finally, onto license revenue, and this is often a topic we have with shareholders, with analysts, and what we can see here is, yes, there has been a modest elevation in license revenue in the year.
It is 12.7% of our total turnover, but if you look at the last three years, it bounces between 9% - 12.7%. Typically, we think it's in the range of 9% - 12%, and I think that in FY26, our license revenue will not be as high as it has been in FY25. Nonetheless, it is a core part of our business. It is aligned with accounting standards, and it's exactly the same accounting standard treatment we have used for the past eight years. Moving on to communications and media, I mentioned before it's been the star of the year, vertical growth of 15% year on year, and you can see that the margins are improving quite significantly.
On the right-hand table, the segment result, or what we would call gross margin, is moving from $73 million to $93.9 million at a 28.6% increase, and importantly, the contribution margin is moving from 49% - 54.8%. We've talked a lot about the tailwinds in the energy sector. I think it's more important as well to talk about the tailwinds in communications. We have a lot of large telecommunications companies that we work with and hope to work with that are looking to monetize 5G, Internet of Things, looking at ways to bundle complex customer billing solutions, and of course, we can help with that.
I think with the VMO2 deal that we announced in February, it's further proof that we do have market-leading products, and I think for those that would like to do some research, we are acknowledged by many of the associations around the world, including TM Forum, for having market-leading communications and media products. Our Hansen Suite is very well known. Communications and media is doing particularly well in FY25, and if you think back to a few years ago when we talked about Telefónica, we were hoping to land more of those types of deals, and we hope to do more in the future. We have a pipeline that remains robust and growing, and we look forward to announcing future opportunities when they come forward. Onto energy and utilities.
What I would like to really draw out here is energy is up on a CAGR basis, excluding powercloud, 6% + over the last three years. Very much in line with our medium-term guidance of 5% - 7%. The energy and utility space is up over 6% CAGR, excluding acquisitions in the last three years. Whereas communications was certainly firing on all cylinders this year, it's been a more modest year for energy, but nonetheless, a three-year period of sustained growth is excellent. You will see on the right-hand side that margins have been impacted in FY25, and that's primarily due to the turnaround of the powercloud business and the restructuring costs incurred in that business, which were approximately $7 million. We also had a further approximately $3 million of restructuring costs in the Hansen core business, which related to realigning our organizational structure with the whiteboard.
Andrew will certainly talk to AI initiatives and some of the efficiencies that we are seeing from that space shortly. All in all, across both verticals, mission-critical, doing particularly well and holding margins. I will say that the tailwinds in communications that I talked to are, of course, still absolutely relevant in energy. I think everybody now globally would talk to this energy transition, the transformation that's underway. We are seeing it. We have customers that are demanding it. We have ultimately end customers like yourselves that are demanding the ability to have solar panels, virtual power plants, the ability to trade. These are all offerings that our large retailers need to have, and our products, of course, can support them on that journey. Onto cash generation and conversion, and you know I talk a lot to cash EBITDA, but ultimately, it's all about the cash generation.
At the first half, you would have noted that our cash generation was slightly lower than historical years, but I'm very pleased to say that in the second half, that recovered. More importantly, as of today on this call, we are now in a net cash positive position. We now have more cash than debt. Our leverage or our balance sheet is very, very strong, and we expect to make some pretty significant debt repayments in the next 90 days. We have a dividend going out to our loyal shareholders in September of about $9.5 million. For us, it's great news that we're net cash positive, and that's despite in the year investing a further $13.4 million into two acquisitions, being the Dial AI application in Canada and the CONUTI acquisition in Germany.
Very, very good to see that our cash flow has recovered, and you can rest assured that at today's date, we're in a particularly strong position. Moving on to capital allocation, it's very dear to our heart. We have been for a long time founder-led. We spend the money like it's our own. We treat the cash that shareholders have as very, very sacred to us, and with great responsibility, we take care of that capital. You can see the rapid debt reduction paid down over time. With a strong balance sheet, we now have opportunities for some significant M&A. We have the firepower of a balance sheet, but we also have some very supportive banks that continue to support us on the journey. Andrew will touch on M&A shortly, but you can understand we are ready and raring to go with further acquisitions.
One statistic that I always like to talk to, and I think it reminds all of us, including our own team internally, is just the cash-generative nature of Hansen. In the last five or six years, we've now returned nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to our banks or shareholders. This certainly points to the robustness of the business and what we can deliver. On slide 15, R&D, you'll note here for the first time we have disclosed all of our R&D investment. Typically in the past, we've talked to what's been capitalized. Capitalized R&D has over the journey bounced between 3.5 - 5 historically. What we've done here is disclose that the total amount for the whole year is $34.5 million or just under 9% of revenue.
I think it's important that everybody's aware that we are heavily investing in our products across all different regions to ensure that they can support our consumer customers and across telco and energy to make sure that we can meet their demand. There will be a few questions on this, but we were pleased to share that the business is investing substantial amounts of capital into R&D. I think with the abilities with AI now quickly being adopted by not only us, but others as well, we'll ensure that we get some products to market more quickly and efficiently going forward as well. I just want to talk briefly about sustainability.
You know we're not an ASX top 50 company who's been on this journey for a while, but we certainly started back in about 2022, and we established a roadmap, and we've committed to that roadmap and continued to raise the bar over the last four years. I think for a company of our size, we punch above our weight. We have now been recognized four years running as carbon neutral. In advance of rolling out ASRS, the reporting standard, we've just completed our client's climate scenario analysis. I think, especially in Europe where this is considered imperative to be able to compete and win new customers, we certainly offer a roadmap that aligns with our customers' needs. It's also nice to be acknowledged.
On the right-hand side, you can see there EcoVadis, a global body, has awarded us the committed badge, and MSCI has upgraded us to a AA status. We're clearly doing all the right things. There is a substantial sustainability report published today in our annual report, and we also have a data book with some more information provided on our website. All credit goes to our sustainability team for building out what is a pretty robust roadmap. Every year as the bar raises across the world, we continue to raise our bar as well. We feel like we're in a good position from a sustainability standpoint. I think that's an update on financials. There'll be no doubt a few questions and many meetings over the next few days, but again, we're thrilled with the results. Andrew, back to you to talk about M&A and AI.
Richard, thank you, mate. Thanks for the details. I'm sure it was informative for everyone. Just touching on M&A, which we talk about, there's no doubt that Hansen both organically and inorganically has grown as a business. We think we've been very successful in all the deals we've actually done. We haven't had a failed one. Every deal we've done has actually delivered above or beyond even our expectations of what we've done. It's certainly helped us expand and go into overseas markets culturally where just by rolling and knocking on those doors, we would not have been able to enter without an acquisition. I think our balance sheet, as Richard, you went into some details there, has certainly positioned us going forward. I think it's just of note, since 2008, you know, we've achieved a 14.5% operating revenue CAGR and a 14.7% EBITDA CAGR on what we've been doing.
We have a very careful approach to M&A, and our playbook is not only to integrate those businesses, but we do spend money like it's our own. I think it's probably unique, and it probably comes back to the origins of a family business starting back in 1971. We only do deals because they make sense. It's given us a new lens now, AI. We adopted internally our AI-first approach in our company, and we're actually using that same thing with helping us do analysis of organizations, but also where we think some of the efficiencies could take things. We would like to think we're probably ahead of a large pack of people in the way we're thinking about how AI is being used in our business, and we're using that same lens as we think through the M&A when we're looking at acquisitions at the moment now.
Just talking to the German market expansion, we certainly turned around powercloud and probably once again exceeded our expectations about how quick our team were able to do it. It's a cash-generating business. We've got a new management team in place now with German executives going there, and certainly there's more further opportunities in the German market for Hansen where we start to look at some of our talent centers around the world. We continue to invest in the product which we've actually got there, which we now call powercloud, which is now a Hansen business and now launched as Hansen in Germany. One of the most significant things is that certainly there's a lot of competition in that marketplace, but there's a very, very significant major release which had to go into the marketplace this year, and we're very proud.
We're one of the only few people which delivered on time and on budget to the German marketplace, and that means beating the big tier one people. Very, very proud of the team of people which have adopted some of Hansen's methodologies, etc., to deliver that. We've moved forward into the acquiring of the CONUTI business. I think as you've heard me outline before, it's a very immature market in Germany, and CONUTI is like playing at our gameplay as we're looking to further expand. There's over 1,000 retailers in the German marketplace which all have to adopt to smart leaders and a smart grid by 2030. The CONUTI acquisition, some other things we've planned, is all about owning more of the IP and the end-to-end internal solutions we want to do into that marketplace, and also now starting to cross-sell.
We've also got some of our products in Scandinavia, like in trade, etc., going into that marketplace. Our focus now just turns into a Hansen business. It's an integrated business. We're now on building out the product set and winning new clients in what will be this rapid change in the German marketplace. The pipeline, the region, so we're very confident about a continued expansion into what is the third-largest economy in the world. A little bit further on that M&A strategy, look, we follow close to 250 targets which are sitting out there, and we think we're still probably best placed in some of those to actually optimize those businesses by the way which we approach these things.
The energy and utilities marketplace, we're always looking for those high-growth markets, but also where it continues to expand out our own application within the marketplace, a bit like the CONUTI in the German marketplace. Communications and media, that's certainly moving down more to the global standards of TM Forum, and we're a key partner of TM Forum, which is the international standards for all telecommunications companies around the world, and also looking for opportunities where we can plug into our existing product stack, which is so interesting. We've talked lots about a third vertical. Please don't think we're not thinking about those third verticals where we're going to go to. We do a lot of analysis. We've never wanted to do a Robinson Crusoe deal with one particular acquisition without us seeing where we could actually globally expand it.
There's certainly some marketplaces which we think, and certainly insurance is one which has got our attention at the moment, and we don't want to give too much details at the moment, but it's certainly aligned to our strengths and certainly potential for integration the way we think about things. There's other markets around financial services, healthcare, and education, which we've had a team of people doing their work at the moment. We're always naturally enough looking for mission-critical software, and we want IP ownership. Like everyone, we are trying to find that predictable recurring revenues, but also where we can leverage or transfer our technology, etc. Of course, those tier one and tier two customers where we think we provide that right level of management to what they're looking for as well. Our partnership credentials also work well.
We'll keep on pushing down this M&A strategy, but we'll remain very, very disciplined as we search out those right sort of applications, those opportunities for us to expand our business. There's lots of talk about AI in the marketplace, everyone. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors around AI. Everyone's promising AI. It's a massive marketplace. Our approach, we launched last year internally our AI first, and so it is actually very core to our technology and roadmap. We're certainly looking, the main thing is just driving automation and also analytics and how you can make smarter decisions quicker. We are putting AI across all of it, as Richard pointed. One of the reasons I'm over here now is part of our AI-first strategy at the moment. Where the best opportunities for us, which we're dealing with our customers, is just automating repetitive tasks and optimizing workforce.
You'll understand in our industry, there's a very large diverse set of data with an enormous amount of complexity, and they've got the same issues there with security, safety, and cyber. From our point of view, where we're trying to help those customers is certainly lower those costs. We're finding internally we're able to drive some of those. Our outlook for that is the deep interaction of AI for us is there to reduce costs, but it also allows us to certainly enhance our R&D productivity. We're doing more for less, and that's certainly been seen by our customers with taking on their upgrades. We also see opportunities for Hansen, which is predictive analytics. Some of the quicker to market, we've talked in the past about our investment in Dial AI, which is just around call centers, which is probably one of the more basic tasks which are doing it.
A number of customers around the world now which are doing it. You'll all be in the next year or two, you won't even realize that you'll be dealing with AI when you're actually talking to an agent which is handling your questions on the phone. It's rather amazing. Certainly, service quality and customer engagement. One of the things which AI also helps is the speed to that service quality for people and that accuracy of what we're doing. We see this as a fantastic opportunity for Hansen. We're not threatened by AI at all. We're a great enabler of it and providing those benefits. It's the advantage for Hansen that we deal with such broad data sets and data lakes for our customers and pushing it very much to what we want to be in our industry as that subject matter expert and that valued purpose.
That's why we're still making sales at the moment now. Certainly, our customers are embracing our view on AI and how we're helping their businesses go forward. We're excited about it, guys. As far as the outlook's concerned, look, we're very optimistic of our growth prospects moving forward for the medium term. I think we go past the last number of years and continue to look at our growth rate of that 5% - 7% over the medium term. Certainly, looking to our target of the 30% EBITDA, we've had a good year this year improving. We continue to see opportunities to improve across the business at the moment now. There's no doubt the opportunities in all our marketplaces, as Richard touched on, are actually growing for the opportunities.
Smart grid rollouts, meta data, the addressable markets, there's all aspects of our business at the moment now as just seeing opportunities for growth across the board. I think you put on top of that, which is our view on M&A, which will probably speed up to a little degree now as far as we find those opportunities and where we do take it through the lens of AI, not only reviewing the companies but where we can actually help these companies achieve it. We're undertaking our future as a very strong cash-generated business. I think companies of our size and our turnover, as Richard pointed out, to $250 million, a quarter of a billion dollars, is a testament to a business since its origins has just been a very profitable focus. Cash-generated business is amazing.
I can, on that point, wish to thank all of the extended team of Hansen for achieving what I think is a phenomenal growth and the fantastic opportunities we see the way going forward. I will now put back to it. If there's any Q&A questions, we'll take the opportunity for Richard and I to do our best to try and answer them. Any questions, please.
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 are on a speaker phone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. The first question today comes from Gary Sherriff from RBC. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Andrew and Richard. Three questions. One just on your FY26 outlook, another one on powercloud, and final one just on costs. If I look at, I just want to clarify for that FY26 outlook. I certainly understand around your license revenue that won't repeat. I just wanted to make sure that I'm looking at this correctly. If you had about $15 million of upfront revenue or license revenue in the second half that won't recur, I understand that. Just clarifying, that'll be partially offset by the remaining, what, $7 million- $8 million you get a year from the remainder of that contract. From a net point of view, the FY26 starting point is what, about $7 million- $8 million lower than at the end of FY25. I just want to make sure that that makes sense or if I'm missing anything.
Gary, yes, you're right on those mats. Of course, there are other license fees that will cycle through in FY26 as well. We just wanted to highlight that it was certainly a higher year in FY25, and we can talk more about the guidance shortly. If that's the starting point that you're referring to, yeah, it's a $5 million or $6 million, $7 million difference.
Next one, powercloud revenue. How should we think about incremental growth for powercloud in and of itself for 2026 from a revenue perspective?
I think we've been pretty consistent in the last 12 months. We've certainly talked to getting our arms wrapped around our existing customer base. Andrew talked about the significant regulatory changes that have just been completed and completed successfully. We're talking to FY27 as sort of where the rubber hits the road in terms of growth. We are seeing opportunities. We have a pipeline, which is fantastic, but it's got a long tail. This smart meter rollout in Germany is only just starting. The investment thesis for getting into Germany remains front and center, and I suspect, Gary, you'll start to see some proper growth in FY27 and beyond.
Understood. Last question just on cost improvements into 2026. You did a really good job in 2025. How should we think about continued cost efficiencies into 2026, and should we be factoring in any more one-off costs in 2026?
I think in terms of efficiencies, of course, we've managed this this year particularly well. We have made some restructuring changes recently. You would have seen the $11 million of cost that's gone through the books for some organizational changes. That, of course, flows through into FY26 and beyond. We do expect with adopting more of the AI applications that we are currently using that over time, like many companies, we will find some further efficiencies in the business.
No problem. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Annabelle Lee with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Morning, Andrew, Richard. Thanks for taking questions. I've just got two, please. First, just to follow up on Gary's question on license revenue. Are there any larger renewals coming up over the next 12 -1 8 months that we should be thinking about? The second one is just on the pipeline, if you were able to give us some more color on potentially, you know, the size, vertical, maybe geography mix into 2026, or any comments that would be helpful. Thank you.
Annabelle, I'll talk to the license fees, and then Andrew can talk to the pipeline. Every year we have license fees rolling through. It's just part of our business. You would have seen on that chart that I talked you through, historically between 9% and 12%. It'll be again in that range for FY26. It's not like license fees disappear. We are bound by accounting standards. There'll be a substantial amount of revenue that's recognized from license fees. Andrew, perhaps you can talk to the pipeline across all three jurisdictions.
I think, Annabelle, it's a good question about pipeline. Look, we've always got a healthy pipeline. You'd understand it does take some of our transactions a number of years. We spend a lot of time with customers sometimes where it's a proof of concept which is running. The best way I could talk about our pipeline is that we're actually investing even more in this next year or two in actually marketing and sales. That'd be what we see as the opportunities which lie ahead. I think we see our pipeline as healthy as it has ever been in the past. I think probably my best way of answering, we're actually investing more in that sales and marketing function inside our business. I don't think there's any massive step change. I think it's business as usual. We'll continue to close deals over this next 12 months and going forward.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Josh Kannourakis with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi guys, thanks very much for taking my questions. First one, just clarifying on guidance. Obviously, you sort of talked to at the update in July that you'd still had some project timing issues and some of that will sort of shift into 2026. I guess what people are trying to focus on today is just the bridge from 2025 to 2026, looking at, you know, obviously netting off some of the license fees, but also looking at some of the step-ups in your recurring revenue as well as some of those deferred contracts. Is there anything you can do to help us bridge it out into next year a little bit more around revenue and just, I guess, your confidence around the still being able to get to or get close to the sort of 5%+ growth range?
Yeah, Josh, no worries at all. We spoke at length with our board recently. You'll see more and more companies that are moving towards a medium-term outlook, and we feel like we've delivered on multiple years of 5 %- 7% growth, and there's no reason to think that that won't continue. We moved away from doing this 12-month lock-in guidance, which is in some ways problematic to talk to every six months and even more frequently than that. We feel like we've got the rungs on the board to support the 5 %- 7% growth. We certainly feel as confident about the margin. Margins are not going backwards at all. In fact, margins will continue to move forwards from FY25, so that's again positive. Of course, November is our AGM.
We typically provide an update to the market in November and again in February. There is plenty of time to talk to what we will for FY26, but I can reassure everybody we've got license fees rolling through like we do every year. We've won some substantial deals that are now being implemented that we announced recently. Business is growing, margins are increasing, and it's a positive outlook for us.
Got it. I guess the takeaway there, and I'm trying not to put words in your mouth there, Rich, but just in terms of still expecting, you know, EBITDA growth into this year from a respective obviously some revenue, but also in terms of the margin enhancement still coming through as a result of those operational efficiencies and other leverage that you're getting in the business.
Yeah, Josh, you don't need to put words in my mouth. I'm happy to speak to it. We absolutely are expecting our EBITDA to continue growing and remain even more cash generative. Certainly not going backwards in any way, shape, or form. I'm not sure what conclusions people have drawn from the outlook, but we're very positive. Andrew, you can hear it in his voice over there in the U.K. He's very excited about where it's headed, and so am I. Onwards and upwards, Josh.
I just wanted to be a bit blunt there because I think the market's clearly, you know, looking at it, looking at the license fees maybe being a bit better and saying that, you know, maybe it's going to be harder to grow. That's very helpful to clarify that. Thank you. Second question, just with regard to M&A, can you give us a little bit more context around, you know, Andrew, you mentioned the pipeline is as good as it's been, and it's accelerating, and you're obviously spending a lot of time offshore with the team. What are you seeing out there in terms of the different categories in terms of some of the PE-owned entities, some of the founder-owned entities, just in light of some of the broader uncertainty in the market? Is that helping your position?
Maybe just a little bit more detail on how you guys are thinking about that in terms of the current pipeline right now.
Josh, yeah, mate, thanks for the question. There's no doubt from an M&A point of view, Hansen's always been very disciplined about what price we're paying. What I can say is the targets or the businesses we think Hansen should naturally own, they're not transacting. Deals aren't going through at the moment. I think there's some sort of false expectation of valuations, you know, leading up to towards COVID where some ridiculous valuations were being done. They're just not happening anymore. If people want to transact at the moment, they have to meet the market and wear the market. We've just remained as disciplined as we possibly can. We do want to buy things earnings equitative. I know a whole bunch of banks can stand behind us and say we can afford to pay 50% more for a business because of the efficiencies and what we bring.
We've always viewed the efficiencies and the transformational program we put companies through should be to the benefit of our shareholders and not to the benefit of the vendor. In simple terms, we're staying where we are on pricing. We say, well, the market's priced us. If that's what the market thinks, there's no business out there which has been around as long enough and has made nearly as much money as us going forward. We think we should always be buying it at a valuation, at least no more than what we're actually valued ourselves. In simple terms, they're not transacting. If they want to transact, they have to accept the money we're offering.
Okay, thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Rich. Appreciate your time, guys.
Thanks, Josh.
The next question comes from Lafatani Sotiriou with MST Financial. Please go ahead.
Good morning and appreciate the opportunity to ask some questions. May I kick off with the one-off costs, both for powercloud and there's also roughly $4 million or $5 million of other one-off costs excluded. I think it's around, yeah, $12 million all up. Could you give us an idea of what the expectations would be for FY26? Can we expect, you know, $6 million, $10 million, $12 million in one-off costs, or do you think that it's possible we could arrive at a zero?
Yes, all of those costs relate to, as you said, genuine restructuring costs. We have taken out substantial amounts of headcount from the powercloud business, and we also made some redundancies or restructuring costs in the Hansen core business. It's very, very unlikely that there'll be anything like that in FY26. It was an unusual year with the turnaround of powercloud. We did say we would be investing money in turning that business around. We had actually invested less than we disclosed to get the business back to profitability. In the Hansen core business, there was about $4.5 million of genuine redundancy costs that have been booked in June and audited by RSM.
Got it. We can expect some one-off costs, but not to the same extent as what we've just seen. Can I move on to churn within the core business and also powercloud? Is it still just only a handful of clients you lose every year in the core business? For powercloud, can you give us an update on the client book, how many, what percentage or idea of how many clients have left since acquisition, and have any others indicated that they are leaving?
I'll talk the churn in Hansen first. I mean, you're quite right. We have churn like all companies do. It's particularly low. Our bigger customers have been around for 10, 15, 20 years and continue to be around. Every year, you lose a few customers and you hopefully put on more, which is what we're doing. We're growing the business on the top line. Obviously, price plus new logo wins is supporting the existing Hansen business. On the powercloud side, there's been a couple of customers that have left the German market unrelated to powercloud. As of now, the customers that we acquired are pretty much the same as what's on the register now. Your question around who's intending to leave, I don't know of anyone who's intending to leave, but we certainly don't talk to any one specific customer out of 600 on the books.
Got it. Just with the guidance, just another follow-up. If we were to exclude the license revenue, and exclude the acquisitions being made, is the rest of the business guidance for 6% in FY26 revenue growth, or is that still not yet certain?
I'm just trying to get my head around you excluding license fees because we don't look at it that way. As you know, we had them every single year. I'm just trying to understand your logic for why you're unwinding the license fees. Maybe you could elaborate on that?
You've guided to license fees being down. I'm just trying to understand, we've got some guidance for license fees. What's the guidance for the rest of the business revenue, is another way of putting it. Is it to your medium-term target of 6%, or how should we think about it?
I mean, we don't talk to individual streams, but the business, and as I said before, we're very confident in the medium-term growth of 5% - 7%. We don't want to get hung up talking every few months to shareholders about the next 12 months. We look at it in totality. We don't try and break it down into services, support and maintenance, and license fees, but we're confident in the medium term.
Sure. Can I just be specific? You have in the past continually provided clear guidance on the group level, and we just don't have it this year. We're left to guess. You've told us that one line is going down 10% majority of the revenue, the rest around, you know, close to 90% of the revenue. Is it going to be up as per your medium-term guidance, or should we expect that to be softer?
If it was softer, that would mean the business is going backwards, which it's certainly not. We're growing next year, even with some license fees rolling off from FY25. Like I said, we can give you an update at the AGM, but we're more than confident the business is growing in FY26, and certainly the margins are improving. That's the intention for the next 12 months.
Okay, but it just may not be to your medium-term target in FY26, it sounds like. Anyway, we'll move on. Just one final question. CONUTI, I know it's only you've called out as an immaterial acquisition, but can you give us an idea on roughly the revenue cost base that's coming across, and is it loss-making?
We didn't disclose all those metrics. It's certainly not loss-making. It's a nice bolt-on application to our powercloud business and brings across some customers that are a natural fit for the powercloud business. It's very small. There's a small complement of staff that have come across and some applications. It's not even worthy of mentioning turnover or cost because it is immaterial to the group, but it is very important from an offering standpoint in the powercloud German market.
No worries. Thank you.
The next question comes from Jules Cooper with Shaw and Partners Limited. Please go ahead.
Thanks, guys, for taking my question. Richard, you have talked to clear confidence in margins improving into the year ahead. I just wondered, given your understanding of renewals, the composition of revenue, contribution from acquisitions, and all the different moving parts we have in the business, should we take that medium-term margin target and think about that as being relevant for FY26, or are there particular things we should just be aware of and make adjustments for when we're setting our expectations?
Yeah, look, there's no fundamental change at all to the business other than we continue to maintain costs very, very high, and we expect some further efficiencies over the journey. I'm not sure how clear we can be on this, but we are confident in the top line continuing to grow. You know, medium-term, 30% margin, we're just about there anyway, everyone. You know, we reported 28.5% for the year, and we expect that to continue to improve. It doesn't require a huge leap of faith to get from 28.5% - 30% margin, that's for sure.
No, it's very clear. If I could, just one more, just on capitalized costs, thank you very much for providing that disclosure on total R&D spending. That's excellent. Should we expect that sort of typical 5% of revenue to be equivalent to be capitalized moving forward into next year?
I think if you look at the journey, it has varied, and I think, you know, two or three years ago it was up to nearly 7%. We did some significant investment in one of our market-leading products. It does depend on product. It does depend on what's happening with certain regulatory change in different jurisdictions as well. What we wanted to do to highlight in today's announcement was, you know, the capitalized amount is purely an accounting standard. We're recognizing between, say, 4% and 5% capitalized on the balance sheet. Of course, we then expect substantial amounts more than that through the P&L. There will be opportunities in the coming months and years to get more done for less. There's no doubt with AI, we're looking and leveraging our offshore development centers even more.
The man-hours have been increasing over the years, and the costs that have been capitalized have been somewhat stable or declining. We wanted to draw out today that $35 million is not a small, insignificant investment. It's substantial for the Hansen Group, and it's the reason why we're winning some customers.
All right. That sort of 5% that historically has gone to the balance sheet, is there any reason why it would be widely different to that in the year ahead, given work that you know that you're going to be doing?
No, not at all. That's historically where we've been.
Awesome. Thank you very much. Great result.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Evan Karatzas with UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks. Firstly, thank you for confirming that the business will grow in, or earnings will grow in 2026. That's super helpful, I guess, from a high-level point of view. I'm going to try and pick apart the 2026 expectations a little bit more. It feels like a base case right now is we should expect around 9% of 2026 revenues will be licenses, right, at the low end of that typical range. Is that, I don't know, a fair assumption right now?
Evan, we're not going to give the number because, to be honest, it can change throughout the year based on the way that our customers renew. Sometimes they'd like to negotiate a different sort of contract where there might be less license fee or more license fee revenue upfront. Secondly, we have a pipeline whereby, you know, we land some customers. It may well be a SaaS type arrangement over five years, or there may be some level of a term license that's capitalized upfront. It's actually dangerous for us to guide to license fees because they can bounce around a bit. I think your assumption that it will be 9% or above is probably a fair one.
Okay, thanks. You just touched on the, I guess, the RFP pipeline for the licenses business, especially relating to some of the bigger telco deals. I mean, I think you'd previously spoken that there was, like, you know, multiple VMO2 type size deals out there. You know, how are you sort of thinking about those? How are you factoring those into your thinking for 2026? Are those types of deals still active, or, I guess, vendors being selected there?
Andrew, do you want to chime in just before you hit the hay?
No, look, it's a good question. Certainly, there's opportunities. There's a lot of focus today on license fees, which surprises me a little bit, because it's just a function of our business. I think historically, Richard, we did some numbers about ongoing about 9% - 12% of license fees. When you do a deal with an organization, license fees is only, sometimes we don't even do a license fee. We just call it SaaS. I suppose when you own what you do, whether we want to call it implementation, whether we want to call it license support, maintenance, it's just a number to us to negotiate an outcome. We are certainly not losing some of these big deals sitting out there. The deals are sitting out there. We're doing proof of concept. I don't want to drill into too much detail.
We don't want our competitors to know what we actually do. Some of these transactions do take a number of years to get there. In our industry, both of them still require a lot of change and innovation. We've talked about the German marketplace or new data suites which are being rolled out in different countries around the world. The communication market is looking for more simplicity and more adoption of TM Forum. The same drivers for demand are there today as what they've been over the last 20 years. They're not disappearing. Certainly, there's more talk about AI, and our customers are now looking to take upgrades because of the AI enablement we're actually putting forward. There is no change to our view on the pipeline of Hansen at the moment, and there's no demonstrable change that we see on the horizon.
Okay, thanks. Just one more if I can quickly slip it in. With the slips sort of application revenue, I think you've spoken about in the past. I can't remember the exact quantum of that, but can you just maybe speak to now if all of those have, I guess, commenced and will contribute in 1H26, just how that shape of some of those delayed or slipped application revenues are looking as well?
Yeah, I mean, it was a very small amount that we talked about that slipped into FY26, and it's now underway. A lot of it kicked off in Q3, Q4 of 2025. It's all happening. There are a lot of municipalities in America ticking along very nicely and some retailers in Europe. That's all unfolding exactly like we said. I just wanted to clarify, Evan, because there's been a few questions come through in a similar sort of theme that the business is growing, right? We're very positive about the outlook here. What we wanted to do is ensure that we didn't get tied into just talking about 220 business days as opposed to talking about the next three to five years, which is the way that we look about our business. It's the way that we certainly prepare our five-year view as well. The business is growing next year.
The margins will be improving next year based on the budget that was just signed off. I can't reiterate more than what Andrew already has that we're both very optimistic.
Yeah, no, that's perfectly clear. Appreciate it. I'll pass it on.
The next question comes from Sinclair Currie with Moelis . Please go ahead.
Good day, can you hear me, guys?
Yes, go for it.
Great, thanks. Just a quick question on Germany. I think one of the major competitors there , SAP, has been putting their customers through a bit of a replatforming, if that's the right term. I was just interested if that sort of started to show up any opportunities for yourselves or if you could provide any feedback on that.
Maybe I'll address it. Look, there's no doubt that SAP, you're right, is relooking to that. We see it as opportunities. They've announced some of the parts of the vertical which we compete against that they are looking to swap people's technology and move forward. We do see that as a definite opportunity. You'd understand I don't wish to run that running commentary on what's happening, but there's no doubt this is a competitive market out there at the moment now, and there's a different value proposition.
SAP and some of the larger people, the Oracles and the IBMs, they like enterprise solutions and want to do an end-to-end. We've always had a philosophy this is a best-of-breeds, and that what we do is actually quite specific to the marketplace. The people which are buying off Hansen are probably looking more for that best-of-breeds type solution rather than full enterprise. Now, it's only a view that that thesis plays out, and I think AI's targeted adoption is probably greater. I think probably more opportunities for Hansen than actually threats.
Great, thanks a lot for that. Just a quick follow-up if I may. The second round of restructuring costs you talk in the second half, I was just interested if you could provide any insight, and apologies if I missed this, as to how much of that cost reduction you would have already seen in 2H25 versus what's still to come in 2026. Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does. I mean, there's some sensitivities around staff, especially because we work in many parts of Europe, but that restructuring took place in June. None of the cost saving that you referred to then impacted FY25. It all rolled into FY26.
Brilliant. Okay, thanks for that. Appreciate your help.
There are no further phone questions at this time. Are there any questions from the webcast?
There's no questions on the webcast.
I'll now hand the call back to Mr. Hansen for any closing remarks.
I'd like to thank everyone for participating today and really appreciate the questions. I think some of that clarity will provide the answers. We remain very optimistic of our business going forward. We've just had it come off the back of a great year. I've got to call out to the broad team at Hansen, but we remain very, very optimistic and very excited about the future of our business. We look forward to moving forward and certainly those shareholders and investors who've shown up, we look forward to looking after you as best we possibly can. I thank you all for joining the call, and I look forward to talking to you all again soon. Thank you very much.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.