Shanine, if you want to start. Right, welcome everybody to the IMG Quarterly Cash sort of Q&A session. We thought today what we'll do is we'll just, I'll make a couple of comments just on the quarter, and Jason's going to run through just a sort of a, I guess, a summary of the cash flows and a couple of the notable points, and then we can throw to Q&A. We'll rattle through fairly quickly and happy to have questions. Questions at the end, if you just raise your hand in the way that the format works here with Teams, or I think you can type them, and Shanine will moderate at the end and we'll work our way through the questions. Thanks, Shanine. Just kicking off, we're very happy with this quarterly result.
Effectively, it follows what we said we were looking to do on the back of that first quarter. It was really a settling quarter for us. So the first quarter, right at the start of that first quarter of FY25, we put in place a number of changes. In particular, it was Project Funnelweb, which was the merging of Adeva effectively and the ADT back-office call center into one business and effectively relaunching it as Signature Security. And so that quarter was a miss, as we've disclosed, but this quarter was really about settling the business and settling Project Funnelweb and settling into a group. It was also settling in the ACG and AAG acquisitions. And then at the back end of this quarter, the introduction of DVL into the group.
Really, the focus has been on getting the systems and the structures in place, improving the business, in particular around the customer experience. And so I'd call out the implementation or part implementation. We're still working in New Zealand with Salesforce.com, which will help us with the way we go about interacting with our customers. Looking forward, the second half really now becomes about growth. And so again, I'll let Jason go through the numbers, but we're focused on growth. We're happy with the commercial pipeline, which is a key driver for the business at this time, continues to build. It's on track, and we'll talk more about that at the half-year result.
And of course, the provisional launch of the guarding services, which we announced late last year, but the full launch and ramp-up of those services as we go through this half with some really, really positive indications of the success of the service, but also, I think, the commercializable success that we're expecting to have. So Jason, I'll hand over to you to go through the results. Thanks.
Thanks, Dennison. So you saw in the 4C, we had reasonably positive operating cash flow for the half. If we look through some of the non-recurring items, very strong cash flow for the half of AUD 6.5 million. Some of those one-offs come from taxes paid by ACG and NZ as they settle into the consolidated tax group for prior year. We had some working capital impacts from inventory investment and from the acquisitions themselves, which we cover off in the next slide. So all of the non-recurring costs in the half, we made our final payments to JCI under the TSA. As I said, we paid some tax through ACG and NZ while we work through their joining the consolidated tax group, but it was based on the FY24 year business acquisition refinancing costs.
Obviously, we made some acquisitions settled on the start of the half, and we acquired DVL through the half, which has been a very positive addition to the business, as well as the cost for the refinancing, that refinancing package, which is well on track. Then Project Funnelweb, we talked about at the end of Q1, which was the alignment of the ADT and Signature businesses to gain any synergies from their operating systems, and obviously, we had impact from acquisitions, which is the working capital drag that we experienced from the positive EBITDA contribution, but the negative working capital used from their operating cash flow. Both came in with positive EBITDA, which has been great. ACG and DVL have traded on their working capital. AAG came in with high AP and AR balances from prior year, but no cash.
The AP and AR balances settled through the first couple of months, but with no real cash benefit for the group. So that breaks out the non-recurring costs at 6.6, which is what we've added back into the operating cash flow. So you see a lot of reshaping the business for the first half, getting ready for growth in the back half. Just wanted to talk quickly on CapEx, Shanine. So CapEx is in line with our expectations given the 4G project in New Zealand and medical systems in general. That's it.
Great. So I'll just go back. Shanine, if you don't mind just going back to the second slide with the full run-through. I'm just cognizant that people actually haven't had very long to look through this. So just calling out a couple of highlights. Yeah. So firstly, if you strip out the one-offs that Jason's mentioned, the half cash flow of 7.9, but what probably more importantly, the step up in the second quarter, which is what was, I guess, the feature of the first quarter, was the poor cash and the normalizations, seeing that come through now in the second quarter, and we expect to continue on now. And the extent of non-recurrings and one-offs now very much diminish into the scale of our business. I'd make the point we've announced that we're maintaining our adjusted EBITDA guidance of above AUD 38 million, which is good.
The big features, though, for me, are revenue quarter on quarter up 3% pre-acquisition effect of DVL at 7% if you include DVL. So that underlying EBITDA for the quarter of 9.24 pre-acquisitions, that puts us on track. So you can see the stepping up that we're seeing to get us to our guidance. And of course, as you take that through into Q3 and Q4, what it's implying is a very good pickup in EBITDA going into the FY26 year. So essentially an acceleration of the business, if you put it that way. With the impact of acquisitions, we're close to run rate AUD 40 million off this quarter. Now, I would hasten to add the DVL, that really impressive first month, is not a repeatable month-on-month number.
We're still anticipating about a AUD 2 million EBITDA positive impact from DVL, which was around the numbers we had anticipated when we acquired the business. I'd say it is trading to the upside of that, but it's not going to run rate at the 500K number for the first month's contribution that it made. And then these non-recurring expenses, and probably just to flesh out a little what Jason said about the acquisitions. So the effect, Jason mentioned the negative effect on working capital. Of course, that's offset by the cash that was left in the businesses when we bought them. So when you buy a business, you get the cash to reflect that effect that you are buying a business with considerable payables at that moment. And what happens, though, is you don't get that cash in your cash flow line to offset the negative in the short term.
It goes into your investing cash flow line. So what you'll note is in the cash flow from investing line, actual acquisition costs are less than the stated numbers. That's the cash offset effectively for the working capital drag that we inherited. And so what it means is it does depress your appearance of operating cash in the first periods of acquisitions if you're buying businesses with payables outstanding from prior years. So I guess the point being that normalizes. And so the key focus for us is EBITDA because that is the earnings power of those businesses, which is what continues into the future, and we're very, very happy with that. So that's the single biggest non-recurrent item in this. We'll let it persist only if we make acquisitions. So that is fine.
And then otherwise, I think the 6.55 normalized number is a sort of healthy base for us to work off. We look forward to continuing to move that. General working capital is broadly in line if you strip out the inventory build effects, which Jason noted on the slide on the non-recurrings. We have invested through this half in CyberSense stock and the video guarding technology that we're looking to rapidly deploy and have started to rapidly deploy, including a significant investment in stock Intellius product, which is the Essence, effectively the Essence product in anticipation of the full 3G conversion project in New Zealand. So I think that's a pretty good parking point there and rattling through it all today. So I'll probably throw to questions, but I'll just reiterate, this is where we wanted to be.
It's probably a little bit ahead of where we wanted to be, actually, or where we thought we'd be. And we feel in a really good spot. Probably the last thing which will be a question is the debt refinance is fully on track. We've sort of tried to keep the market abreast as we've gone through it. We noted last in December that we're down to one. We picked our party effectively. We had a very, very exciting romance with a number of the senior banks in Australia. It was really heartening to see the turnout to that. We've now selected one of the big four banks. We're very close to documentation. It has been credit approved, and we would be expecting to announce that package and also to announce the redeeming of the current debt facility probably in days, if not a week or two.
And so that's an announcement and something we're really looking forward to talking about, but fully on track. So I'll pause there. Shanine, if you'd like to assemble any questions if people have them. I appreciate that this is the first time we've run this forum, so we'll do our best to take them as they come.
I've got two questions, Dennison, in the Q&A, so I'll read out the first one. Can you please provide more detail on how you intend to use the January crime captures as to inform A, potential customers, and B, the public in general?
Sorry, can you restate it? I missed the point.
Can you please provide more detail on how you intend to use the January crime captures as to inform potential customers and public in general?
Yeah, yeah. No, no. Excellent question. So, turning to the future, and obviously, we would like to talk a lot more about this at the half year as we'll sort of look a bit more forward into the future as it's probably cash. Yeah, we've had, I mean, inside the business, I'd hasten to say it's starting to feel pretty electric. I'm in the New Zealand office today, and all the conversations around the video guarding technology, which we've introduced. And this has been a journey for IMG in particular, even pre-ADT of a couple of years now with first investment in Patriot and then finding the full solution range to be able to offer a fully surveilled video guarding product, which can provide police response. The results have astounded me, to be honest.
I thought we might. We were really looking forward to the first time we actually had a capture. So, burglary, where we actually saw the people and actually got a police response and caught someone. We've actually had five already this year. So from the start of January, it's just lit up. And that would be over 10 criminals effectively that we've caught in the act that have been met with police response and subsequently being charged. And so I'd hasten to say it's probably the first time in this monitoring industry that that's actually probably ever happened. If it has happened before, off a signal alarm, it's been happenstance and luck probably rather than actually the service itself. So unbelievably significant change in the way the industry works and what we're intending to do.
The value proposition is outstanding for customers because you're effectively cutting out the guarding patrol piece that we have to do right now off a signal alarm to verify an event before the police will respond, so that's labor, that's time, and that's far more of dollar value to the customer than actually the monitoring piece itself, so really exciting, and how do we intend to use it? Look, we are all focused, and it really speaks to that first quarter a little bit too, and also what we're doing in the background here. We are very focused on trying to get our house in order and get our capacity set and our processes set so that we can mass accelerate what we think will be significant demand for this service.
At the moment, we are not intending to, you won't see us on Channel 9 talking about changing crime stats for a while, frankly, because I think we'd be flooded, and I don't think we can handle the demand that it would generate. What we are doing is we have won a couple of fairly significant customers, probably not significant enough at the overall group level yet to move the numbers in a way you'd really note, but they are significant deals, sort of AUD 1 million deal for one, for instance. We're really looking at beating it down. It's all about quality processes, making sure we can do it.
We sent a team to the States in December to go up and really learn hard off what we think is best practice and bring it back to Australasia, to all of our rooms, to make sure that we are really, really, really rigid and understanding of what we need to do to make sure this works every time and at scale. In the first instance, we're expecting to launch this to our current customer base at the end of this month, and we're going to do it in a batch fashion, again, because we think that the demand will be fairly substantial. And to put this in place is labor. So we do have to send technicians out. There is a job to be done. In some cases, it's a complete piece of work. In some cases, it's using our technology and working in with what they have.
And so we need to understand more as we go into this next period about what it's going to take to be able to grow rapidly. And of course, technicians are a key part of that, which is why we've been trying to bulk up our technical base. So I think we'll grow into advertising this and marketing it as we go and as we need. But as I say, we will step through it cautiously. In the first instance, the actual first goal has been internal communication and getting the team. We're nearly 600 people across the business now, really understanding what we're doing. I have to say, for an industry with a lot of people in this business that have been in the industry for a long time, it is a substantial change in attitude and excitement.
I'd probably say it's the first time people have been genuinely excited about what we're doing and can do for society in living memory of this industry. So it's going to be a very good time, I think, to be at IMG and to be in this industry. Sorry, Shanine, it's a long answer, but next one, please.
Yep. So the next one is it's with a comment, Dennison. We've got investors that are primarily interested in NPAT, EPS, and DPS. So with that, can you give an estimate when we'll be able to present statutory figures, which also contains the relevant sales figures? Could it be FY26?
Sorry, that contained the relevant what was the last word?
Statutory figures?
We'll produce statutory accounts for the half-year result and the full-year result. I mean, this is just a quarterly 4C cash flow just per the requirement we have. We've got three more quarters where we have to present just based on the way that reporting works, having been a company that didn't use to make cash. In terms of profit itself, if that's sort of more to the heart of the question, we have a big depreciation and amortization line related to the historic customer base that we've acquired. Effectively, we have to write it off over five years, regardless of the fact that, A, the intangible value of our brand will persist for a long time, and B, the customers themselves will, on average, stick around for much longer than five years, and so that is a headwind against which we run and will run for some time.
Obviously, one day it will abate and probably disappear a bit, but we don't have a forecast exactly when that will see us at a statutory impact level be profitable. We haven't done that work. At an impact level, though, if you remove the impact of that, I would argue, incorrect statement of the way the value in this business flows, we should expect to be quite profitable this year. I think the point I would make is we had an FY in New Zealand in that we had to pay tax because we are profitable. And we had, as Jay said, it related to the FY24, and we inherited the business and had to get it ordered and a whole lot of stuff. So we're now in the process of working with our tax working group, but we are a fundamentally profitable business. It's just that accounting standard.
And so, half-year result, you'll get statutory accounts. Obviously, we had audited accounts last year, and we'll have fully audited accounts for the half-year as per normal for a listed company. Thanks, Shanine.
Is that question? Q2 run rate, EBITDA, already above AUD 38 million guidance per DVL. Is that seasonal, or can we expect that to continue before further organic growth?
Look, we would hope to build on our underlying EBITDA from here. To do that, I guess in our budget and model is around growth now. And so, yeah, I think that's a pretty good level. There's no real seasonality per se in our EBITDA. I mean, you do get a little bit of variation, say, December, January with Christmas holidays, shorter working periods. So some of the service work and what have you can be just days worked are a little bit less. But otherwise, it's actually a pretty stable business. I think 65-ish% of our revenue is locked in through monitoring anyway. So it's a recurring monthly month. It's like being a fund manager type of thing. And then the rest of it is service and store work, which we are looking to grow.
So we think that's a pretty good base to move forward. And I guess, as I said, to hit that, also to hit that actual guidance level of greater than 38, not just the run rate level, it implies that we'll be run rating higher than 38 and potentially a fair bit higher than 38 as we move further into the third and fourth quarter. So we expect this to be a good base and to keep moving it up.
Dennison? Got a quick question for you. We've got a list of questions now, Dennison. Sorry.
Sure. Go.
Can you quickly run through the AUD six million non-recurring cash flow impact?
Yep.
Just bring that slide back up, Shanine, please. The next slide.
Yep.
Just step through that, Jay, sorry, Kim.
Yep. So these are the non-recurring costs. So you can see the JCI, and I'll answer your question, Nicholas, which is the next question that relates to the same data set. So the TSA essentially has come to an end. There's a small amount of IT-related JCI costs that we have paid through the half. And I think we make two more payments in February, but it's a like-for-like cost of what it would cost us to run an IT department. So we don't see it as a non-recurring. But these are the legacy items of the finance support, broader IT support, other support. But that's now finished. So that is a genuine one-off that we won't see in the back half. Tax paid by ACG and NZ. That we are working. So the ACG cash was for the FY24 period, was part of the settlement, was set aside.
But obviously, there's a cash outflow. The NZ team, we're working through some transfer pricing models to make sure that the New Zealand business can sort of be shielded by the Australian tax shield. We're working through that currently, and we'll have that finalized in time for the FY25 submission. So general business acquisition and refinancing costs. So obviously, these are one-off in themselves. But obviously, if we buy more businesses, we will have those one-off costs in the back half. But certainly, those costs were one-off in the first half. Project Funnelweb, which is what we talked about, was the move of the ADT team into the Signature team and the synergies that we created by reducing the resource cost around the service and delivery teams in both businesses. So that just on AUD 500,000, primarily redundancies, was a genuine one-off.
Dennison's spoken about the impact from acquisitions as a one-off, as those businesses are now living in their own cash and EBITDA work from trading rather than from settlement. So that's the 6.6 non-recurring costs that we've put back into the operating cash flow for half one. And I think that answers the next two questions. The EBITDA contribution, I've got the questions up on the screen, Shanine. Is that all right? The next question, Dennison, is just about the EBITDA contribution from the WA project that we've called out for December and March. So what we're sort of commenting there is that DVL's December performance was well above expectation. And when we looked into that result, we could see that there was a large progress payment made for works that will continue through to March. So what we'll see so two things.
One, it doesn't really affect our guidance because it's a DVL-based contract. Now, guidance was exclusive of DVL. But what we would expect to see DVL trade in Q3 closer to that 2 million EBITDA run rate that we bought the business on. EBITDA guidance. Yep.
Yeah. I'll just make a comment too just on DVL since it's so the project is firmly set to finish in March. It's actually the rail station project in WA, and it has to get up and running in time for the WA election. So we're doing the security part for that. DVL, though, has worked out for probably two years. So it's not going to create a big come-off effect or anything like that. There's plenty of work. In fact, we've just hired four technicians, I believe, in the last week to go into that business. When we bought that business, and I guess to sidestep and not to get too deep into these things, but we've been trying to buy these quality businesses of recent times to extend our capacity and range.
I suppose the challenge we've actually been having is that we're buying them that are already overtrading. So the first step, I turn up and say, "Hey, we've got this great strategy to get these national commercial enterprise contracts," which we are getting and having discussions on. They say, "Well, that's awesome and really exciting. But by the way, do you mind trying to find us a few more techs first?" Because we've already got enough work ourselves. So just to foreshadow anybody sort of worrying that that means DVL's about to sort of has had a spike in come-off, that's not how we said it. It's just that that particular payment process on that particular project caused a spike in EBITDA for December that will sort of flatten out as we go through the rest of the year. Sorry, Jason.
No, no problem. That's probably more reassuring for the listeners. Nicholas, your question around the back half guidance, yes. So we're adjusted EBITDA of 16.9 for the first half. So yes, the implied EBITDA is close to the 21. That has always been our forecast view. We have a really strong pipeline in the commercial businesses that will deliver that result as well as the growth in the video guarding product and not forgetting the residential growth strategy as well with CyberSense. Next question is probably going to have to be we probably have to take that one offline or circle back. We may be able to cover it in the half year. So the question, Dennison, was there any additional positive one-off revenue effects in Q2 from the transition to 4G? If so, how much were they?
The short answer arguably would be yes because we definitely had that in the ADT AU business when they went through the 4G transition. But I would have to take that offline. This was from an anonymous user question. So I'm happy for them to email me directly, and I'm happy to go through that.
Yeah. I think it'd be fair to say, though, because I understand the tone, I guess, of the question as well is that it's not. I wouldn't call it material, though. I think the materiality of it has completely come out of the business, and we're really in tail and drag. The only effect in 3G discussion we will have as we now move forward is actually the New Zealand business, and it is primarily around that medical business where they, as we say, we bought the inventory. We've gone heavy on inventory to be prepped for it as that rolls through. But of materiality, it is, I would argue, it's probably ceased, but we can try and get the exact sort of numbers out. But yeah, I don't see it as a feature of the business in that second quarter.
It wasn't a major discussion point for us, and it didn't have the effect. The real impact of it was that first quarter because it was also really came about because of the signature creation and the move into a cash accounting world and out of the capitalization where we also canceled those ADT contracts which were capitalizable, which is a historic legacy thing, so we completely pushed out of the business the ability essentially to justify capitalization so that we could see it, and then, of course, we had that impact in Q1, right? Oh, well, there it is. And then we're able to now we've flushed it out, remedied it, and you can best see that in the CapEx line and how the CapEx line has come right down, and we're dealing in a real-world sort of proper cash flow business now. Sorry. Thanks.
All right. So then the next question from Richard is regarding the video surveillance product. Can we expect an uptick in costs related to the rollout over the short term, and will this impact margins before we start to see incremental benefits? Short answer is no, we won't have any uptick in costs. In reality, our control rooms can already deal with video verification and video monitoring. That was sort of a key part of prior year investment in technology. The video surveillance product itself, or the video guarding product itself, is sold to customers and then has an ongoing recurring revenue that is all profitable from day one. So there should be no impact. There should be no cost related to that other than the investment cost in the inventory that we covered earlier. The next question is.
Well, and I think Jay said it'd be the only potential impact. If we get really fast, I think we'll get fast demand. So therefore, you'd say fast uptake. So therefore, inventory may need to grow still ahead. At the moment, we're well stocked, and we're now looking to make sure we just stay on top of it. But I guess you could anticipate that could be some more investment in inventory in front. That being said, I think the real bottleneck is the installation bit, which could slow you down. That's where we're really focused. But we sell it installed for the same sort of margin we sell all of our commercial work. So that's sort of like a run-of-business thing. So we're pricing profitably to get it put in place, and then we get a recurring margin, and that is kind of business as usual.
We don't have a sort of backroom expectation of costs running ahead of this now. But as I say, inventory is probably where you might see. At this stage, though, we're comfortable.
Paul has asked if we could explain the impact from acquisitions. I'll let you go through that one, Dennison, if that's.
Yeah. Okay. So look, just going back to it again. And it's interesting this because myself have been looking at these cash flow statements for a long time, and I probably hadn't fully anticipated the way they impact your cash flow statements in a business. So when you buy a business, you put a cash price down, right? And then there's working capital. So you make a working capital adjustment when you buy a business because they could have, for instance, not paid a bill for the last year. So you say, "Right, well, we think your business is worth AUD 5, but guys, you haven't paid AUD 5 of bills for the last year.
We need you to leave AUD 5 in the bank so that when we go to pay those bills, there's actually cash to pay them. So you get your price for the business, but you have to leave behind whatever cash we think should be in the business to basically have it as a going concern on day one and stay as a going concern. The way that impacts your financial statements, though, is that you take that business over on day one and your cash flow from operations, suddenly you take the business over and you're like, "Right, I've got to pay all these bills." And so while you're generating income and the business is going on and sort of on a standalone basis, everything's good, you're getting hit with payables that you have to pay.
Of course, the good news is you've got the cash in the bank, and we have. We've done well in our budgeting, including you'll note the ADT transaction where we had a very large adjustment for working capital there. And so we pay it out of the cash that we were left behind. Now, the problem is in the operating cash flow line, it shows you as having negative cash flow in that business, which while true is not actually reflective of the business you are doing at that time, it's reflective of things from the past that had to be made whole. The adjustment, though, with the cash that's left behind doesn't go into your operating cash flow line. It goes into your investing cash flow line.
So it basically makes it look like you paid less for this business, but it also makes it look like the business isn't generating out any cash, neither of which is true. So again, it's an accounting standard thing. In this case, because particularly ACG was a big business relative to our size and profitability and cash flow, it's had a quite big impact. So our EBITDA generated in this half from those businesses and the cash we received, which were both positive, didn't match because of the catch-up effectively in working capital, which we had provided for in the transactions themselves. So that washes through. That's not a long-term problem. That's just a problem that comes sort of post-transaction as you roll the businesses forward. And that's why we call it out as a one-off, and it's by far the biggest impact.
Outside of that, just to go back to the non-recurrings again, yes, we do have non-recurrings, but in the scheme of a business of our size, they're starting to become relatively small, and we expect that to continue. As Jason pointed out, though, when we're buying businesses and doing M&A and refinancing, you are going to have an element of non-recurring costs always, and it will be up to you whether you think that's non-recurring or not. But we would argue if you're a buyer of this business, certainly if you're a corporate buyer of this business, you wouldn't treat them as recurring.
Thank you, Dennison. So we have a question about the acquisition prospects that we had raised money for.
Yep. I'll answer that too, so absolutely on track. Again, still seeing more opportunity, not less, being approached with more acquisitions. I think the comment I made historically is what's really pleasing is the quality, so if you go back two or three years ago, we were scratching and having to try to figure out deals, and we bought a business out of receivership, and we're now really looking at quality people who want to be quality partners with strategic interest. The reason for doing the raise the way that we did it is so that we're in control of the timing, and we don't have to sort of come back and essentially become raisers, and we do not need to, and we have no anticipation of raising money again outside of a really significant, probably company transformational deal.
And so we're absolutely on track and proceeding and at the process of really just nailing down what our next steps are. There is no shortage of opportunity. What we are really, really keen on, though, or sorry, I'm focused on, is I don't want this business to overacquire. So we need to do it at the rhythm and pace that makes sense. They're very accretive. They add capacity, but they also need to unlock us and continue to improve the organic piece. We want and are an organic, strong, high-quality business, and that's what our focus is, and they have to fit into. So we'll have, I'm sure, more to talk about in this regard at the half-year result.
Thanks, Dennison. We've got a next question from Sam. Can you please provide an update on status or run rate of the new sales in the residential sector as the focus has moved from 3G to 4G conversion, right?
Yep. So we had essentially that's being run effectively out of Signature's operations now. So we consolidated the in-house sales team, as you'd call it, or call center sales team, effectively run out of the Signature business, including the ADT sort of residential business. What we've seen there is an increase in conversion. So leads have been relatively consistent or fairly consistent. What we've seen is an increase in conversion rate in new sales from 8% up to 33% as we've now been able to really focus on new sales. That's around about, call it 200 new lines a month. At the moment, that still sits probably around about or just under sort of gross churn, which we expect and see will come off now anyway for a period post-3G, or that's my expectation.
What we're looking to do is continue. We're on a growth journey now in those new connections. And so there was a lot of change in that sales team around that July period when we did the Project Funnelweb. They are settling in. They're lifting their conversion rate, and now we're actually in the process of accelerating them. And so we're actually really happy with that team and how they're going. And we expect to see those rates lift pretty significantly, really, or at least back to historic levels is probably what I'd say for ADT over the course of the rest of this financial year, which will have us where we need to be for our budget.
Thanks, Dennison. That was the last of the question in Q&A. So I'll open up the room. If anybody else has questions, please raise your hand. Oh, we've just had one more. Sorry, one more popped up.
One second.
That's okay. So growth from first half into second half looks significant. Can you talk to some of the drivers of this growth?
Yep. So look, it's less significant, obviously, than the first quarter to second quarter. And so it's a sort of continual uptick. It's still a little bit in the, I guess, the settling. So a little bit in just getting our processes and things right. And then it's really, as I say, in this workbook that has grown and the pipeline that had grown and been growing into the second half, I suppose, to point to I don't know if you'd call it evidence, but I'd remind everyone that we took the ADT commercial business from AUD 2 million of recurring revenue, and we took it over to AUD 12 million effectively in the first 11 months. And so it's really a lot of it is a largely continuation of that journey.
That team has really been doing well, picking up and extending existing customers into new work and also growing new customers as well. There are a number of notable kind of events in that, and we will talk more about that in a more detailed fashion in the second and when we do the first half result. But there's no hero-type contracts per se that we're expecting to impact. I think we can get there with just a broad range of what we're seeing now. So we'll give a bunch more detail as we get in. But I think that to us sitting here right now, there's still work to be done. I don't want to diminish the effort for that team in terms of what they're doing, but they are in good shape.
I think what we're really focused on, or I'm really focused on and excited about, is actually in the digital video guarding space. We've had two wins there through Signature with the full Signature guarding technology, one of which was a million-dollar deal, for instance, which are a really strong lead indicator. And this is actually before evidence of the success of the service too, I'd point out. So this is just based on the hypothesis of what we can sell rather than the reality of what we're actually delivering. And that project, for instance, is to an entity that has subsequently disclosed AUD 30 million of work potentially ahead of it. So it's a million-dollar deal with a potential forward order book for them of AUD 30 million, and there's really no one else doing this. So if they want to do it this way, you'd think we're a pretty good shot.
So we're not too worried about the demand outlook. I mean, potentially timing is always something, I guess, to worry about, but I think the step-ups we're looking at don't feel unachievable at all in the context of what's in front of us. So it's ahead of us and ahead of us to deliver.
Thanks, Dennison. We've got one more question from Paul here. So there's a little bit of confusion about the impact from acquisition. So from what Paul understands is we've paid AUD 7 million for the business in the investing cash flow. We see AUD 5.5 million. The impact is AUD 3.6 million. So his comment is, wouldn't it be real purchase price AUD 5.5 million plus 3.6 equals 9.1?
So we've called out the half-year effect, not the quarterly effect. So if you do that analysis for the full year sorry, for the half-year, that's the number we're pointing to in terms of that impact. We've put it into the quarterly numbers to get the readjustment right for that reporting. But when we're talking about the 3.6, that's the half-year. So if you do it and that's actually three transactions conglomerated to get it. So you need the EBITDA and the cash flow of the three to do it. I think the concept is pretty straightforward, right? As long as people understand the concept, the actual math is easy to prove up.
Thanks, Dennison. We've got another question from David Burrell. Any reason not to think that the second half EBITDA run rate is able to be analyzed?
Not as far as we're concerned or as far as I'm concerned. I think that's just the nature of the business that we're in. We're compounding add customers growth. We don't tend to lose, certainly in the commercial enterprise area. It's pretty much a compounding add customers, improve what you do business. So no, not worried about that. I mean, I think the big question really is, and we don't know the answer to this, is our ability to accelerate and scalably accelerate and not get a massive pipeline that is going to take a long time to deliver that we can't actually deliver. I think that's the unknown question here that I guess we're going to try and answer. And it's a good question to have, but I think that's the question for us over the next six months, year, and probably 18 months now.
Thanks, Dennison. Paul's actually continued to his first question. So what was the total purchase price then?
Look, it's in the cash statement there. I mean, have you got that in front of you, Jase?
Yeah. So for the half, the acquisition price was AUD 17.1 or 17.2 million net of cash acquired. So the total purchase price pre-cash was AUD 21 million for the three acquisitions. It's the same. The AUD 5.55 million paid for DVL is net of the DVL cash. The total investment in acquisitions in the half was AUD 21 million before cash.
Thank you, Jason. That was the last of the questions, Dennison.
Yeah. And look, Paul, if you want to keep digging into that, just give us an email. Give us a call. Happy to dig into that. But as I say, there's actually not a massive amount of mystery to it. You just need to understand it and get the numbers. It's a fairly straightforward calculation in my experience of it. So yep. No, look, that's fine if there's no more questions. So I guess just to go back and reiterate, we're actually really happy with this result. So the step-up first quarter to second quarter is to a more normalized result. I'd make the point, even though we've focused, as we should do, just on these non-recurring items, just to make them clear.
I'd also make the point that even inside of those, what we haven't pulled out is the fact we have also invested in inventory in anticipation of growth and things. So we actually think it's now starting to be quite a high-quality result as well, which is nice. Understand that there's work to do into the second half. In any scenario, that will definitely have us tracking on a run rate level into a good FY26, but we're now really focused on unlocking and delivering and accelerating. And so I think the point about the marketing of the results is spot on. It's an incredibly exciting thing. I'll probably include some of the pictures and videos. I have to check on privacy of some of the events that we've now been party to and what's actually going on.
I think as this leaks out into the world, what we can actually do. I'd make the comment I think we're on par now with the best globally in terms of offering these sort of services. I'd even argue we're at the maybe going to move towards the top end, actually. I think as people really start to understand that, this has got a really nifty feel. I'd say we are most happy with the fact that we're also doing some good work, and the team's actually making the difference and has the potential to make quite a difference to society and security for people, both in their houses and their businesses. It's a great time to be in this business, a great time to be doing this, and it's all ahead of us, and we look forward to it.
So nice to get this quarter out of the way and look forward to sort of chatting through where we're at with more depth at the half-year result.
Thank you, Dennison. Thank you, Jason.
Great. Thanks very much, everyone. Cheers.
Thank you, everybody.