I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Andrew Hansen, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today on the FY 2026 financial year. It's Andrew Hansen here. I've got Richard English, our CFO, along with me, and also Peter Beamsley in the background, Head of Investor Relations. If we have any difficulties today, we will take a short break and we'll recommence then. But the last number of years, it's all worked perfectly, so I hope it all works well today. Just a little bit on Hansen before we kick off. We have software in some 80 countries around the world. More interesting, 80 million end customers energy we serve and 360 million in the communication sector.
I think we've spoken many times about it, but for those new to it, we're actually involved in everything from the customer acquisition, the building of a product they sell them, the billing, the rating, and the collection of the money. We've done this as the Hansen's life of what we've actually done. Very critical to all of our customers because we're the lifeblood of their business and very proud of what we've done to date. And certainly now with AI, and we've spoken a lot about AI, but I'm very excited to talk more about AI today and what it's actually meaning to our organization whilst we go through those changes. It'd probably be best we thought we'd touch on the leadership changes, since that's going to be new to everyone, including a lot of people inside Hansen.
First and foremost, succession planning is a big part of the Hansen business and always is a big part of the business. In the last couple of years, when we're looking to my own succession, how it actually runs inside the organization. That aligned with not only finding a Chief Executive Officer, but also dealing with David Trude, who's our retiring Chair of the Board. Firstly, probably getting in this slightly wrong order. I'd like to thank David Trude, who'll be retiring at the AGM for 15+ years of service. I know as public companies, we have this view of governance. You've got to change your board and chairs over on a regular basis.
The fact that people like Hansen, our ongoing success and the money we keep on making all the time has come from the leadership, the governance, the advice, the camaraderie we have with the board. David has been an absolute champion of mine. I really enjoy having a chair in a non-exec position who we've been able to put in front of customers, deal with acquisitions and help our business go overseas. We'll talk more about David at the AGM, but we thank all of his leadership leading up to it. The view was that would actually move me to executive chair, an operational role inside the business. What we've actually spent over the last couple of years is not only trying to see what do we actually want in a CEO, what were the changes we wanted in the business, and have spent considerable time interviewing people.
I'm very proud to announce Stuart MacDonald. A number of you on the call will be aware of Stu's role in Technology One. The role he actually led not only from probably under originally Adrian's guidance of what he actually did to the organization. As we know, Stuart was across everything from the development of the software, delivering sales, marketing and end-to-end, and we couldn't have found It was a very high benchmark when we actually interviewed. Part of the process we went through when looking was: what does Hansen looking for? Our business has grown over the years on a very low spend in sales and marketing. We're talking about probably 1% of revenue, which is a fraction of what any other company spends. We've always relied strongly on our reputation, our know-how, and our customer loyalty into the business case.
One of the things we want to do is actually in bringing a new lens to the organization from the outside is actually growing out that sale. We can only imagine because, once upon a time, low single digits, we were happy with that, but we're not happy with that anymore. One of the things in talking to Stuart and back to all the candidates is what could Hansen be with a true focus on global ambition, and expanding our business through sales and marketing. I think as I move to executive chair, so I'm still involved inside the business, but I will be more on the strategic side and the M&A side, and Stuart will come in and be running the operations of the business. Stuart's now, he doesn't join until November, but a truly welcomed individual coming to the organization.
I'm extremely excited by what Stuart will bring to the mix inside the business. We know between myself and Stuart, the business is in very good hands. Welcome, Stuart, and thank you, David, for your time. Three of the financial highlights of the business, a relatively flat year, but I suppose most people would understand, geez, there's been some real turmoil going on at the moment now. Everything from technology turmoil to wars, conflict, some countries' administration, which we won't go into. We're focused very much on our business, on what we've always done in underlying profitability and generating cash out the business. Also moving as we're going to be moving, I'll talk a little bit more about that when I talk about AI. Certainly moving our sale as important revenues up, whilst controlling costs inside the business.
Underlying EBITDA up by 7%, and Cash EBITDA AUD 106 million. But the operational cash flow, AUD 110 million coming out of a business our size is, I am not sure how many companies can actually survive that. Just not making profit, but for cash, which comes out of it in the year. Certainly EBITDA, at 31%, demonstrating the discipline on our cost management has probably been all those things, I think, which Hansen has always done, as everyone has been listening to this call for many years, of what we do as an organization. There is no doubt the strength in our business is our business model has been proven once again to be successful. Even when there is turmoil in both industry, economics and also technology that we stay on board. I just want to touch a little bit on AI.
I know this time last year, AI was still relatively new. I know that someone talked about how many times I mentioned AI, but probably not listening to what we are saying. But I think the important thing is the exploring the opportunity of AI. AI is new. It is something which we couldn't even envisage three years ago and how quickly it has actually gone. So, we continue to really explore the AI tools. We have looked at a lot of tools to go out there, the technologies. Then we started to have what was, AI enablement teams, so we could actually have people teach the teachers, so to begin. Also, commercialization, because it does introduce a lot of ideas of how we will price this new technology into our business. Then we have to start by building the capability.
Therefore, as an AI culture, a lot of training with people, a lot of proof of concepts, et cetera, which started to happen. The deployment across the AI, across the whole organization. Then it was the modernization of our own products. So this is the first time we could actually say, "Well, what does it make to our own products?" Remembering we have a large degree of customization by customer and by countries as we go around the world. Then we did develop a thing called NOVA RAG. In simple terms, what Hansen has is some 50 years of knowledge base built into technology and know-how. NOVA RAG allows you to actually capture that whole journey. So rather than going to 10 people or 20 people of how things operate or how industries work, NOVA RAG goes into each of those products and deeply goes in and understands how it actually works.
All of a sudden, for the first time, that whole IP of what we have actually got has able to be crystallized, customized, and brought together. Then you move on that. So now you have done that. So now we now know we can actually go looking for that data, which our customers' data and our data. Because our customers do not always own all the data. Some of the data is from other disparate systems, which we bring together. Then we started to look at what was some of the productivity gains, and certainly some of our increased margin has come from some of the productivity. Certainly, our staff being more productive in the use of technology has come on board. We have then started to test this even further out with some embedded data-driven improvements inside our business, which has been coming.
But then we are able to for the first time turn this into the next five years. What does the next five years look like? How we commercialize AI, how we leverage this knowledge bank, which has never been able to be done before. Drive efficiency and lead it. So turning that 50 years of intellectual property into a scalable asset can actually take subject matter knowledge and look now to commercialize it going forward. So what does it actually mean for us? I know there has been many questions from our shareholders, our customers, et cetera. We have always had multiple products. We have had products which deal with certain jurisdictions. We have had customization from products, et cetera. But now with NOVA RAG, what we can actually do, we for the first time ever will be able to now unify those applications.
We are able to innovate by embedding AI into all of our products. So you can now start to see we will now be able to have less products, and we will be able to now start to upgrade our customers with AI functionality and technology while still doing what we are doing at the moment. The benefits are endless. If you think of R&D, we can now run R&D from less product. Our bang for buck is so much further. We can now take the same knowledge when we have actually acquired business in the past. The idea of integrating their technology with our technology is something which has been difficult and costly. Those same is not cost prohibitive in our business anymore. Our ability to scale into new markets is much, much quicker now.
And you put that on top of Stuart joining the company with a clear mandate and a presentation to myself and the board of how we are going to be now building out a true sales opportunity organization and taking what we have done with the existing teams and accelerating it. We see the whole strategic side of AI being the multiple change to our business, going forward. So guys, I am extremely excited, not only with what we are doing with AI, the health of our industry, how we are using the technology and the changes we make. I am extremely optimistic about our future. We probably should drill into some of the details. Rich, if I could get you to look at the financial mechanics, please.
Yeah, sure, Andrew. And thank you everybody for joining. I can see there has been a bit of a reaction in the market, so we can spend a bit of time this morning walking through that. And of course, welcome to Stuart joining the business on the November 19th. I think a lot in the industry will know what Stuart has done at Technology One, so we are equally as excited that he is now part of Hansen and driving the next stage of growth after Andrew moves to executive chair. Now for those who have listened to a few of these calls, I do like to talk through some of the key themes. And I think what is really important, first up, let us just talk through some of the key strengths of FY 2026, and then I can address some of the questions that will be inevitably coming for FY 2027.
This has been a very strong year. The revenue has been largely flat year-on-year. There are some headwinds which I will talk through. But the idea that we have generated AUD 120 million of EBITDA, increasing our margins from 28.5% - 31%, I think is a real achievement considering what is going on out there in the market. More importantly, and this might get lost in some of the numbers, we have taken out AUD 20 million of cost in the year. That is no small feat. That is a lot of effort. That is the proven work from AI efficiencies, AI enablement, and other initiatives that we talked about 12 months ago. So removing AUD 20 million or 7% of our operating cost base in one year is quite significant.
Off the back of that, we have generated our most successful year of cash generation in history, AUD 110 million of operating cash flow, up 52% year-on-year. So that is the backdrop. We are starting FY 2027 off a very strong balance sheet position. We are going to be net cash positive in the next 90 days. Rolling into FY 2027, I think what needs to be clearly outlined here is the focus on the business from transitioning from license and some services revenue to a consumption-based revenue model. When you look through the financials, the presentation, you will see our underlying recurring revenue growing substantially year-on-year, and it is continuing to grow substantially next year.
But the reality is that, as we transition away from these license fees that we are not particularly fond of, and I know that the market is not particularly fond of, inevitably there will be a transition, and FY 2027 is that transition year as we roll off some of these license fees. To give you an indication right now, the license fees in FY 2025 are AUD 50 million. In FY 2026, they are AUD 35 million. We are expecting a similar level of decline in FY 2027 for license revenue to be approximately 5% of group turnover. So that is material change in the revenue mix for the FY 2027 year. The second thing we are doing is investing a substantial amount of money in AI that we are not capitalizing. So, we talk to margins in our outlook of 26%+.
What that includes is the AUD 8 million -AUD 10 million of AI enablement, staff, vendor spend, token spend, et cetera, that we are not capitalizing. We are being conservative on that approach. We are also investing another AUD 6 million - AUD 8 million in sales and marketing. So, between those three initiatives, the AI enablement functionality investment, the sales and marketing investment, and the transition to recurring revenue, I think that might partially explain why there is some concern around FY 2027. We are very optimistic about FY 2028, and Andrew, of course, will talk to the outlook shortly as we go through the presentation. Moving on to slide 11. Just let me walk you through some of the highlights, and then we can talk more about FY 2027. Operating revenue. We had some headwinds in the year. So we had approximately AUD 5 million of FX headwinds in FY 2026. There will be more headwind in FY 2027.
Most of the currencies are running against us. The USD, euro, sterling, the CAD are not working in our favor. However, we do have a natural hedge in place that most of you are aware of with our cost base also in those same jurisdictions. I mentioned before the license revenue lower by EUR 15 million year on year as well. VM O2 was announced in February 2025. All in all, AUD 387 million off the back of AUD 20 million of headwinds from license and FX, we think is explainable. Then moving across to underlying EBITDA. There are two things here. At the start of FY 2026, we flagged that we thought we would get our margins back to 30%. We were at 28.5% for FY 2025. We are actually excited that we have come in at 31%. The second half of the year has come in at 32.7%.
We have had a particularly strong second half of the year. The cost-out initiatives that I referred to before, the AUD 20 million, have made a significant difference to the business. Headcount has now reduced to 1,450 staff. We are not going to talk a lot about headcount on this call, but we see long-term opportunities for productivity gains throughout Hansen, and that is not dissimilar to a lot of what tech companies are talking about out there in the market. Cash EBITDA, naturally, that flows down from underlying EBITDA as well. Margin increasing from 23.8% - 27.5%. I think considering the cautious demand out there in the market, juggling FX headwinds, et cetera, we have just delivered AUD 106.2 million of EBITDA, of which AUD 110 million has dropped to operating cash flow.
I think off the back of a bit of noise around what is in the future, I think this has been a particularly strong year. Underlying NPATA growth of 15.9%. Obviously, that flows through the P&L. We also paid our fair share of taxes. The effective tax rate was 24% versus 19.7% last year. I think next year, just to guide, it will be 25%-26% for the ETR for FY 2027. Move to slide 14. We talk a lot about diversity. Diversity has helped us this year. We have got some mixed pockets out there, some in growth, some in stability mode. But we now have both verticals, largely 50/50. Comms is 48%, energy is 52%. EMEA continues to be our growth engine, 73% of our revenue in EMEA and substantial amount of opportunities, not only with existing customers, but with M&A opportunities as well that Andrew will talk to shortly.
I just wanted to draw your attention to the second table there, which is the real story for FY 2026, and it will be the same story for FY 2027. This is recurring revenue. This is better quality revenue. We have grown the business 14% CAGR since FY 2022. We are also guiding to a 6%-8% growth rate next year, which gets us to AUD 245 million-AUD 250 million of recurring revenue next year. This is the revenue that is profitable, sticky, recurring in nature. It is locked in for the foreseeable future. If you look at our contracted revenue in the annual report, you will see it has jumped dramatically from AUD 250 million -AUD 325 million. There is, despite some noise in the numbers in FY 2027, this is where the real story lies. That then leads nicely into license revenue. You can see the way it has bounced around.
We spent a lot of time with analysts, shareholders, talking about license fees. We are, as best we can within our accounting standards and rev rec policy, migrating towards recurring consumption-based revenue streams. I did say before 9.1% for FY 2026, I think it might be around the 4%-6%. I am not going to bank it, but that is the sort of percentage for license fees in FY 2027. That explains a large part of the margin impact for the FY 2027 guidance. Moving to slide 15, communications and media. There are a couple of really good stories here. The first one is around Digitalk. Andrew will talk about the acquisition. We have now owned the business for just on eight months. It is going ahead of plan. It is a smaller business, but it is growing well. It is extremely profitable. That has obviously contributed six months' worth of information here.
We have also taken about AUD 8 million of cost from the business, and you can see the margin increasing from 53.8% - 57.6%. For those on the journey, you will remember Telefónica five years ago. We signed a large deal in FY 2021. Everybody was hoping that there would be a renewal, and we were really pleased to announce recently that we did renew for a further term. We are a strong partner of Telefónica. We only represent Telefónica in Germany. They are a global outfit, but we are entrenched in that business and it is a fantastic partnership that we announced again in FY 2026. There are a strong number of opportunities in the pipeline. We talk a lot for the size of these opportunities. Nothing has changed dramatically. Obviously, there is some cautious demand all around the world in all markets, but we feel particularly strong about communications and media.
Slide 16, energy and utilities. A slightly different story here. We have got some large implementations that finished in FY 2026. You will see the application services revenue reducing in the FY 2026 year. The underlying support and maintenance revenue is the key. Aside from some reduction in Germany, the business is very resilient. We have taken out AUD 10 million of cost from the business and protected our margin. You can see the underlying margin of 35.8% going to 34.9%, so largely protected on a reduced revenue. Andrew and I do not ever talk a lot to one product or one specific country, but it is worthwhile touching on Germany just for a moment. It is fair to say that the smart meter rollout in Germany is well behind schedule. One of the reasons we bought the business was the acceleration of the smart meters rolling out across Germany. They are well behind.
They have pushed out their estimated completion to 2032. That has obviously had a drag on opportunities for us to pick up customers from legacy software suppliers. There has been some customer rationalization. There has been some customers actually exiting the market, and there has been some modest customer churn as well. For a business that is turning over circa AUD 400 million, this is a very small component of Hansen, but it is worthwhile pointing out that it has been a drag on the business in FY 2026, in particular this vertical. But it is a long game, and this is the 10-year window we have for opportunity in Germany. It is not about the last two years. We feel, in time, that this will obviously be a very good acquisition. But in the short term, it has been a drag on our overall numbers. Slide 17, cash generation.
There's been some feedback on the last couple of years. When does Hansen return into the strong cash that it's known for? This is the year. We generated AUD 110 million of cash flow, 52% up on last year. We will be net cash positive in the next 60 days. I'll talk about capital management in a moment, but we are in a very strong position from a cash generation standpoint. We paid back AUD 9 million to our shareholders. We paid back AUD 64 million to the banks. Combining AUD 84 million back to shareholders and the banks in the last 12 months, which is particularly strong. Of course, we bought Digitalk for AUD 67 million. Overall, a very strong cash generation year. If I was to talk to next year, I think it'll be around the 70%-80% conversion rate.
Slightly down on this year, but off the back of a very strong year, I think that's understandable. Finally, slide 18. I just want to spend a bit of time on capital management and the way that the board and management talk about this. It's fair to say this has now become a monthly topic. When we're in a position where we will be net cash positive in 60 days, there is a view in the market that there are other opportunities and other ways to spend our money as opposed to M&A. I think the first one for us is always M&A. We have a long track record of generating substantial shareholder value from M&A over the journey. We have a lot of opportunities coming up off the back of the European summer.
We feel that we are well placed on some of those opportunities. Some of them may not progress, but the point is we have a strong balance sheet and we think M&A is priority number one. However, we have talked about a special dividend. We don't think that's in the best interest of shareholders to return a partially franked special dividend. We have talked at length around a buyback. At share price, at wherever it's trading, it can certainly be attractive and accretive to look at a share buyback. All I can say is that it's now become a focal point each month. We're not committing to anything today, but the board and management are actively looking at the best way to deploy our capital to make sure it's generating a return for our shareholders. We will keep you posted over the coming months.
We have an AGM fast approaching. In between now and then, we'll continue to consider both the M&A and the buyback as well. Finally, we paid out a AUD 0.05 dividend, partially franked to 80%, as I've said. We head into FY 2027 in a very strong position from a balance sheet standpoint. I think the underlying revenue base, we talk a lot about revenue mix. The underlying revenue base is very, very strong. With the cost efficiencies that we've already identified and further efficiencies to identify, I think we're certainly treating FY 2027 as a transition year. With Stuart also on board, we're excited about FY 2028. Andrew, I've just done a bit of a whip around the financials. Back to you on M&A.
Richard, thanks for that, mate, and well done on presenting the financials and managing your team during the year to certainly generate the cash which we have been. Guys, it is always probably worthwhile touching on M&A. We have got a couple of slides on M&A. Hansen's history has been increasing their profitability. We have done that for a long time, a long track record of doing it. We have always had very clear focus on what we are actually looking for around IP, where the margins are, et cetera, and we have loved it. I think we have been extremely disciplined. I think the last 12 months, I know a lot of my time has been probably more focused on what we think is the excitement, opening up the market with AI and what we are doing, how quick we will be able to make sales, how quick we can enter markets.
It is very, very exciting. Part of my new role, in discussions with the board and also with Stuart on roles, is with Stuart now operating the business, but myself give more time on M&A, going back to the M&A time and partnering with Stuart to bring those. For us, also, using an AI lens to some of the businesses we would be looking to buy is how we can actually bring that to market. Something we have never done before and how we leverage some of the intellectual property they have in their history with NOVA RAG coming in over the top. I think our pipeline has never been bigger in M&A. It does come to question at the moment valuations of businesses. Everyone is a bit confused with valuation of all businesses at the moment now. The heady days from a number of years ago when silly valuations were doing it.
Hansen's is probably one of the strongest companies out there. We make strong cash. We have ability to fund. Our balance sheet is unbelievable. We will not lead what we actually do. I know the boys have worked very hard to build out. I know once Stuart comes on board, I will be able to devote a lot of my time into what we think is a very interesting opportunity. Changing to the recap on that, Richard, you stole some of my thunder on Digitalk. Great acquisition, great bunch of people come on board, strong revenue, ahead of our expectations. It is straight from the Hansen playbook, which has been fantastic. We can talk about Dial AI, which is one of the first AI enablement for call centers, et cetera, which we have a shareholding in and have put into our product.
The sales we are now making on the back of that now, that has gone very, very well for the company as well, and certainly expanding the pipeline and also the growth of that business. powercloud certainly is below expectations. A number of reasons why. Whilst Hansen's have operated in Germany for such a long period of time, buying a big established business there with dealing with some bureaucracy in Germany, their transition is slower than what they originally published and the migration, the market contraction, customer churn has not played out probably the way which we would have liked. The third largest economy in the world, 1,000 retailers, meters everywhere, and it all needs to be upgraded to new meter technology. Our outlook is the smart meter rollout is still going to drive a lot of demand. There are lots of regulatory changes. It is the medium term.
As I said, it's a bit of a mixed bag there. We wouldn't change our way on powercloud. It's great to see Digitalk talk and deliver on everything they said, which has been fantastic for us. Dial AI and powercloud, just a little bit below our expectations, which probably moves it all to outlook. Guys, I've probably never been more excited in my 30-odd years of running Hansen. For the first time of seeing how we can. We've always been subject matter and doing a great job. We've always made sales because people know who we are. To unlock what we're doing with technology now into the future, we will spend this next 12 months. The next three years when we look to converge our products into and upgrading our customers, we have a very, very clear path of the journey we're going.
I think we talked about Stuart coming on board to drive those sales, and Stuart has bought into not only what we're doing, but his own experience from Technology One of what's taking place. We do notice a change of pricing. I know many companies are talking about it now. The days of charging by seat or by meter or by event has changed. It's going to be consumption-based, and we're in the forefront of that. Some of the work we're doing, which we don't talk on these calls and won't because some of our lighthouse customers which we're now working with some of these new technologies with them and partnering with them is exciting times. So I think our outlook is fantastic. Our outlook is great. The fundamentals of Hansen about generating cash and profitable growth is not going to change.
We're just excited by the future with technology, by Stuart, and by our industry as it moves forward. Next year, yes, we'll be investing a lot. As we've said, we've decided not to capitalize a lot of the investment we're doing in bringing the products together, but still making a very healthy return and cash inside the organization. So, the future looks great for Hansen. I thank you all for listening in. I thank you all for the journey. We look forward to taking any questions if there's any questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Josh Kannourakis with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, Andrew and Richard. Can you hear me okay?
Yep.
Yep.
Perfect. How are you, mate?
Yeah, good, mate. First question, just on the transition away from the license fee. Obviously you mentioned that that's happening. Just wanted to clear up, is that partially customer driven as well, or are signing new contracts, you're insisting on the recurring basis. And maybe you mentioned the sort of trajectory that it drops down again. Is that expected to come down to a much more nominal amount in say 2028, 2029, et cetera?
Yeah, Josh, good question. I think that Richard's answered a little bit. Number one, we've got contracts going another 10 years on the old format. But the traditional days of licensing has been changing. We've been seeing that in the marketplace. The problem is it's a new market, mate. You've got the cost of tokens, you've got the cost of housing. We've already started to move to consumption base. So where's the driver coming from? We're probably leading those conversations at the moment now, consumption-based. We see the value in being able to use what we've called our Cortex, which sits over top of all our products, which interrogates the data and brings information back up into the hands of our customers and the way which we're actually pricing. We know it is, from our point of view, going to move to consumption base.
I think we're on the forefront of actually doing it, trying to work out the pricing exactly. I think what Richard was trying to highlight before, the traditional days of licensing is not the way people wish to see it. I think our customers also like the idea of consumption because they can monetize consumption. They can look at their own cost of running their own business and see this is the cost, how they pass it on to their customers as well. But it's a bit of a journey, Josh, at the moment now, and I'd probably at this stage, because competitors listen to this, probably hold back a little bit of what I can say is some of our competitive edge we have over people at the moment now going forward.
Okay, that's great. Just on the leadership changes, obviously well done on your tenure. I know Stu well, he's a great operator, so that's an excellent hire for the business. But I imagine him coming in as well, I'm just trying to link, you mentioned on the call that he's obviously talked a little bit about his strategy in coming on board. The investment in AI and investment in sales and this transition, how much of that was in train before the leadership changes versus maybe partially influenced by that as well?
Well, remember Stuart hasn't started yet. He doesn't start till November.
Of course.
Therefore, to be honest, this is already happening now. But in all fairness, there was a bit of DD on both sides. The conversation, I have had many, many conversations with Stuart over the journey at the moment with many, many candidates. And I think the board had a very clear focus along with myself of what we wanted from inside the organization. Hansen is a predictable sort of business. I think when we started to feel what we could unlock in the industry and with AI and how we best take advantage, Josh, it was why I think that Stuart, some of his experience, which you would know from Stuart, what he has done at Technology One, you can understand the great alignment of the conversations between Stuart and myself and what we were doing and where we were going.
The fact having a new lens over the top, I think we are well on the journey at the moment, and thank God we are on the journey, and we have been on it now for a couple of years. But I think that Stuart and I will work very closely together. I think we talk about being a partnership inside our business. Him looking after day-to-day, me on the strategy side and the M&A is just going to harmonize the business going forward. Back to your words, a great acquisition. He has had a brief introduction to the executives, but we cannot wait until November when we will give him the keys to the car.
Okay. I will let some others ask some questions. Thanks, Andrew.
Sure.
Thanks.
Thanks a lot. Take care.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Sinclair Currie with MA Moelis Australia . Please go ahead.
Hi, good day. Hope you can hear me okay. Thanks for taking my question. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Cool. Thanks. I was just interested maybe drilling a bit more into the license impact, specifically to Telefónica. I think you renewed that in late May or June. Can I just confirm that would've been an impact for license fee revenue for FY 2026 or, was it something which would've fallen into FY 2027?
Oh, no, Sinclair, it's definitely not an FY 2027. It's an FY 2026 impact.
Yep.
It's nowhere near as material as the license fee in FY 2021, which if you remember, was about AUD 21 million. It's significantly lower than that.
Yep.
It's part of the reason, they were also looking to shift towards this recurring model that I'm talking about that we are now actively pursuing.
Okay. That makes sense. The reduction for FY 2027, that comes to negotiations that you might have had during the year, you're going to be preferencing or you feel as though your customers have sort of combined, we're going to be preferencing a different engagement model?
Well, look, Sinclair, it's been happening for the last two years, that there's more and more conversations around putting less on the balance sheet from our customer standpoint and more towards sort of an operating expense.
Yeah.
The word SaaS has been used a lot and now it is considered a bit of a dirty word. It might be back in fashion, but we actually have always preferred recurring revenue. In some cases we just have not had the opportunity to take it.
I think the point is that the way the business that we have always done, if you go historically, it has always been recurring revenues, et cetera. But I think the accounting standards, Richard, did change. Also, the way people want to give us money. But it is not the way which we would like to do. I think it is going to go back more now to that recurring revenue model.
The thing is, Sinclair, I do not want to open up a can of worms, but if you try and unwind the license fees that we have been doing and sort of smooth them out over time, the business that is particularly strong year in FY 2026 and FY 2027 is not materially different other than the investment we are making in AI and sales and marketing.
So, I know it is going to get lost in the wash. These licenses have been around for a long time. AUD 50 million in FY 2025 is a big number.
Yeah.
Last year, 35, sort of historically where we have been. I am just saying that is not going to be the case going forward. I think that should be viewed as a positive.
Yeah.
Obviously, it's not viewed as a positive for FY 2027, but long term, that's where we're going.
No, that makes sense. In terms of FX, you highlight, I think it was about a AUD 5 million FX impact, and most of that presumably was in the latter quarter of the year, I think. If I look into FY 2027, I think you've already said it's going to be higher than AUD 5 million, but if I was to guess and say AUD 10 million, would that be a silly number? I apologize if I'm just pulling numbers out of the air and expecting you to answer them.
It actually started in January, February. It wasn't just the U.S. dollar that impacted us. It's the GBP, CAD, euro, et cetera. That's when it kicked off. Look, I'm not going to try and predict it, but I don't think AUD 10 million. AUD 10 million sounds like quite a lot, to be honest.
Yeah, okay.
But it's going to be an impact for sure. We can manage a fair bit on the cost base. But even in that scenario, you're still carrying a lot of cost in these jurisdictions as well that can offset it, but not to the full extent.
Okay. No, that's great. Finally, sorry, last question I promise just on Germany. I think from what I can understand, and you've highlighted those sort of deferrals, you've always spoken of 2027 as a year where the rubber hits the road in terms of smart metering. Does it sound like there's almost a halfway solution the regulators have come up with, which means that sort of uplift is off the table for a number of years now? Is it 12 months, six months as well?
Yeah. I think what's happening, I think they've given their retailers a bit of a free kick and moved down the road a touch. They've also reduced the bar to get over to achieve the smart meter rollout percentages. If you look at it now, they're running at about 20% rollout of the meters that they are now considering as mandatory. That's a long way away from getting to 100%, which they've now kicked down the road to 2032. I think what you'll see, this is what has happened in other countries, is it's a slow start now, but it will start to accelerate pretty quickly from sort of 2028, 2029 onwards. That's by the way, that's about two years behind where we thought we would be. I think if you read about Germany, it's going through some challenging times economically.
Pushing this onto all the retailers and ultimately the end consumers is challenging.
Yeah. I think 1,000 retailers over there, and this is such a change to their business model. There has been a lot of pushback, a lot of politics behind the scenes, which we have got no control over. It is unusual. Normally, the regulator sets the agenda and they get to follow. But in this particular case, pushback. Look, it is still going to be there. Germany still wants to be able to share power with the rest of Europe and all, and they need smart meters to actually start to do it. There is a lot behind this. We are just a bit disappointed, but that is outside of our control. The end goal is exactly the same. I think it is a slower burn, but the acceleration will actually be kicking off.
Brilliant. Thanks. That is my questions. Really appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Michael Trott with MST Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi, Andrew and Richard. Can you guys hear me?
Yeah.
Yeah, perfectly.
Great. Thanks, guys. I just wanted to start off with the churn in Germany. Are you guys able to give an exact percentage or what's actually been the trend going on here? Just because we've been kind of seeing something going on in EMEA and that part of Germany for quite some time. Just wanting to understand whether it's been more of a sudden drop recently or whether it's been, I guess, something that is going on from a competitive standpoint with some of the peers that have been entering the space there.
Yeah, look, we wouldn't probably want to over disclose it. It's not probably those numbers you're thinking, but it's the uptake which has been slower. From a churn point of view, it's a bit like mainland Europe. There's been some consolidation where some people have been coming together in businesses over there, which is probably not good for us. But we always knew in Germany, there's not going to be 1,000 retailers in 15 years' time. It has to consolidate because it's not a very efficient way. It's no different to in Australia, like in the state here, Victoria, the electricity used to be sold by local councils. Consolidation did have to come on board. But it's not probably to that level.
It's probably our ability that our own customers, some of the works they would do with us to move forward haven't materialized because they don't need it yet, because it's slowed down, and some of the new customer wins is probably the issue more for us about Germany.
Okay. In terms of churn, it's more of an uptake story rather than them, say, leaving Hansen and going to a competitor.
Correct.
Okay. I guess then moving on to the declines in revenues in E.U. revenue in Americas and APAC. Just wanting to understand what this consists of, just because you don't split it out from a license and support maintenance and application aspect for each of the geographic regions. If you can just talk to, I guess, what's driving those declines year on year.
Yeah. Two of them, there's some license revenue in FY 2025 that's not going to be replicated in FY 2026 and beyond. That was a one-off settlement there with some existing customers. So that's the main driver in the Americas.
Which part, that's the Americas?
In Asia Pac, the implementation that we have talked about, and some of them have been particularly sizable, are now finished. So those now roll onto a lucrative recurring revenue stream, being support and maintenance.
Yeah. Cool. Well, that's clarified those things. I guess next on to this NOVA RAG technology that you guys have been building out. It looks very promising from what I can see. Just wanting to understand, have you benchmarked it against, say, some of your competitors to see how it kind of stacks up against theirs? Could you, I guess, describe what this technology is from a RAG capability in terms of- Is it like just your standard RAG, which has been around for the past four or five years, or is it moving towards more like the agentic capability that some of your AI native peers have been moving towards?
We'll be doing a disservice in actually answering that question. Technology basically is a religious debate. Nearly every new technology which comes into Hansen, we have an innovation group of people. We actually benchmark all products out there. We can go with any product which we wish for. The technology chosen by our people normally has been benchmarked against its peers, et cetera, to get to where we want. We have a very clear focus of what we're wanting from those newer technologies from NOVA RAG, and one was to reach into all of our products and all of our history to bring it forward.
As I said, I couldn't specifically answer the benefits of one technology over another, other than it goes through a benchmark process to actually get the best outcome, because we know what do we want from it, and it was very clear at the start what we're trying to achieve. And we chose what we feel is a technology stack which proved itself, the value proposition, the end game plan is what we went with.
Cool. Then finally, just wanting to understand, I guess, the change in approach to capitalizing the development costs. So, I guess moving AI now and not actually doing capitalized development on the AI aspect of it, what was the driver behind that shift in strategy or the change?
Yeah, I mean, there's a combination. So, we are capitalizing substantial amounts of the investment, right? Without boring people on the call with accounting standards, the technology is moving so fast, we need to make sure that we're not capitalizing too much, right? So, if anything, we're taking a far more conservative approach to expensing it through the P&Ls as opposed to capitalizing like other companies. And it's an underlying technology as opposed to the end customer technology. So, the end customer, we can actually do the consumption-based pricing over the life of contract. But underlying technology is probably also one of our views, isn't it, Richard?
Yeah, I mean, a lot of the work we are doing is on AI enablement as well. Not necessarily customer-facing, but also internally facing, and that drives other benefits. I would not feel comfortable capitalizing that on the balance sheet.
Is also that a large contributor to, I guess, the softer FY 2027 EBITDA guidance?
Yeah, correct. Up front on the call, I am not sure if you picked up on that. I said we are investing AUD 8 million-AUD 10 million in AI, and nearly all of that will not be capitalized. Right?
Okay.
There is a far bigger amount that has been allocated to product AI. But in terms of AI enablement and the like, it is a substantial amount of investment that we will get a return on, not particularly in FY 2027, but you will see that into FY 2027 and 2028.
Okay, cool. Thanks, guys.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Your next question is from Josh Kannourakis with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Just a quick follow-up from the prior question. Can you give us any context just in FY 2027 around how we should look at the capitalized development costs versus 2026?
Yeah, I mean, I think it is going to go up a touch, Josh. Not materially, but I think we are running at about 3.5%, 4% capitalized. It will go to probably 5%, 5.5%, depending on where the work is done. The actual spends, the AUD 27 million that has gone through the books in FY 2026, it will not be significantly different to that. It is more a matter of where it is actually capitalized. And I think probably 5.5% is fair.
Okay. Got it. But the investment in the AI and that, so that is sort of incremental above that.
That is over and above.
Yeah.
Go to the traditional.
Yeah, over and above the traditional. Yep. I just wanted to clarify that. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Josh.
Thank you. There are no further phone questions at this time. I will now hand back for any online questions.
I do not think we have any online questions. At this point, I would like to thank everyone for listening in. I hope you join me in welcoming the changes to our business, not only just from a technology point, but also from a leadership point of view. We remain very enthusiastic about the future of our business. I know it is a busy day, everyone, so thank you for your time and listening in. Goodbye.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.