I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Marc Washbourne, Co-Founder and CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning everyone. Appreciate you taking the time to join our H1 FY 2024 results briefing. I'm Marc Washbourne, Co-founder and CEO of ReadyTech, and I'm joined here today by Nimesh Shah, ReadyTech's CFO. In today's results call, we are pleased to provide you with highlights from across our results as well as an update on the progress made against our growth plan and strategy. Moving to Slide 2, as an introduction, ReadyTech is a vertical SaaS growth company providing next-generation, mission-critical software crafted to closely meet customer needs across human-led sectors. We span across three segments, all of which are undergoing digital transformation, Education and Work Pathways, Workforce Solutions, and Government and Justice. On Slide 3, our key operational and financial highlights. In the first half of FY 2024, we delivered revenue of AUD 54.7 million, which is an increase of 14.2% on the prior corresponding period.
We're pleased to report that recurring revenue grew 17.1%. The subscription revenue represents, for the half, 86.3% of total revenue. Over the period, we signed another 16 enterprise contracts representing AUD 7 million in annualized revenue. Average revenue per new customer was over AUD 123,000, increasing a further 29% from FY 2023. This increase is a result of our deliberate strategy to target larger, high-value enterprise customers. These high-value customer wins, coupled with strong operating leverage, resulted in underlying EBITDA of AUD 17.4 million and a margin of 31.8%. In the period, we also saw strong operating cash flow conversion of 113%. Slide four gives you a flavor of the high quality of the enterprise contracts we acquired in the first half of FY 2024.
These included our largest Workforce Solutions customer to date in Seeka in our target Stand Up Economy, local government ERP wins with Yorke Peninsula Council and Shire of Dardanup, as well as major cloud upgrades for Melbourne Polytechnic TAFE and Chisholm TAFE in the education segment. Through these results, we have continued to prove our ability to displace incumbent enterprise players with our next-generation cloud technology and attract new clients with our open ecosystem platform approach. Our track record and breakthrough wins across the verticals have opened new and large opportunities, and our reputation is building with our high-conviction pipeline currently exceeding AUD 30 million. Despite this progress, we have seen the timing of a number of high-conviction opportunities shift into FY 2025, though I remain confident in the overall health of the pipeline and in our ability to sustain our pipeline conversion rates.
As you can see on Slide 5, our growth trajectory is clear, and we have grown our recurring subscription revenue at a three-year CAGR of 35%, reflective of the success of our enterprise strategy and our ability to win high-value subscription contracts. Moving to Slide 6, I will now hand over to our CFO, Nimesh Shah, who will take you through our financial performance in more detail. Thanks, Nimesh.
Thanks, Marc, and good morning, everyone. Shifting to Slide 7, the first half of FY 2024 was another solid half for ReadyTech in terms of revenue growth and margin delivery. Total revenue increased 14.2% to AUD 54.7 million, driven by new high-value customer wins and the successful upsell of products and modules to our existing customer base. Net revenue retention of 103% reflects a high level of customer stickiness and of our success in upsell. Subscription revenue represents 86.3% of total revenue, up from 81.6% a year earlier. This is a highly predictable revenue stream for us given the recurring nature of sales and continued high customer retention rate. For the 6-month period, average revenue per new customer increased 29% to over AUD 123,000 per annum. As Marc mentioned earlier, this is a result of successful execution of our enterprise strategy and of approach to targeting high-value contracts.
Underlying EBITDA, which excludes the impact of LTIP and non-recurring cost, was AUD 17.4 million, delivering a margin of 31.8%. Underlying cash EBITDA margin grew also and improved to 14.3% in the half. Moving to balance sheet and cash flow on Slide 8, ReadyTech remains conservatively geared with strong cash flow generation supporting our growth ambitions. At 31st December 2023, the company had AUD 21.9 million cash available for use, including AUD 14.9 million cash and equivalents and AUD 7 million headroom in the AUD 50 million debt facility. Net debt was AUD 29.4 million and net leverage ratio at 0.7 times as at 31st December, both metrics well within our internal targets. Continued subscription revenue growth and prepayments for annual subscription fees, delivering an operating cash of AUD 18.7 million, representing very strong conversion of 113% of EBITDA.
Turning to Slide 9, which gives you an overview of the strong performance across all our three segments, with each delivering double-digit revenue growth and continued strong margins. Education Work Pathways delivered a 12.4% revenue growth driven by new customer wins, cloud upgrade of TAFE customers in the last quarter, and upsell of modules such as our learning management system. EBITDA margin for the segment was in line with prior year at 43.2%. Workforce Solutions was also driven by new contract wins and successful upgrades, with revenue growing at 11.1% on last year, which includes the key parts of software growing at 15.4%. And finally, Government Justice increased 18.3% on a PCP basis, driven by customer wins and continued cloud upgrade of IT Vision customers. Segment EBITDA grew 16.7% to AUD 5.6 million. I will now hand back to Marc.
Thanks, Nimesh. In the next few slides, I'll take you through some further detail behind our strategy, ReadyTech's growth drivers, and finally to our outlook. Turning to Slide 11, as expressed here, we have carefully selected large addressable Vertical SaaS markets that are both aligned to our core principles and enjoy long-term industry tailwinds. The growth opportunities are centered around three key areas: transition to cloud and the shift away from legacy competitor systems, responding to complex regulatory and compliance requirements, as well as the need for significant uplift to the student, employee, and citizen experience enabled by digital transformation. Slide 12 outlines the major opportunity of our enterprise strategy that's available to us. Importantly, the opportunity represents not just the addressable market but what we believe to be our serviceable market, totaling over AUD 970 million in aggregate and underpinning our continued long-term growth across multiple verticals.
Slide 13 presents the key pillars of our strategy on which we are executing in a clear and disciplined way. Our number one strategy is to acquire large enterprise customers across all segments. The journey to enterprise is opening large new markets and opportunity for major contracts. Secondly, the power of the install-based strategy that's bringing value across our customer ecosystems and supporting transition to cloud and subscription, well demonstrated in the half by the 2 TAFE upgrades. Next, a growth driver is continued investment in purposeful R&D and innovation. We target perfect product fit and maintaining strong customer retention. Lastly, strategic and disciplined M&A, our proven playbook to acquire customers' complementary capabilities or to enter new markets delivers on growth as well as synergism. Slide 14 outlines the why of our enterprise strategy.
ReadyTech continues to be well-positioned to attract large enterprises with sizable technology budgets, also leading to long-term expansion opportunities and high customer lifetime value. With digital transformation and the cloud adoption still in its early stages across our markets, we have a very large opportunity for displacement of legacy competitor systems as well as strong competitive advantages with our advanced enterprise and open ecosystem product set. In addition to this, ReadyTech is well-positioned to deliver improved margins through scalable and configurable platforms and our vertical SaaS revenue model. Shifting to Slide 15, here we provide a snapshot of the strong progress in our enterprise strategy over the last 18 months. These customers provide not only the validation that the enterprise strategy is paying off, they also provide the case studies and the reference customers for the pipeline opportunities.
As said, despite a number of high-conviction opportunities shifting into FY 2025, we remain confident that enterprise prospects will continue to select ReadyTech as the provider to take them through the much-needed transition to cloud. Moving on to Slide 16, what makes our offering so compelling? Why is ReadyTech well-positioned to win in enterprise markets? Well, firstly, our open ecosystem provides our customers a highly flexible and agile core system of record. It gives them choice and ability to phase large transformations. Next, it's our ability to elevate the user experience and deliver better outcomes not only for our customers but also the end user in the student, employee, and citizen. We walk the walk when it comes to customer culture. We see this as a competitive advantage, striving to be a true and trusted partner to our customers. In this area, we are building a strong reputation.
Last but not least, we are determined to capitalize on the AI revolution and lead in areas of innovation as the challenger brand across our verticals. On that, I jump to Slide 20, which delves into this innovation in more detail, focusing on the major opportunity for AI. As AI continues to revolutionize the broader tech industry, our team is focused on leveraging this capability to add value for our customers and to improve how we run our company day to day. ReadyTech has a major advantage in having direct access to large, high-quality data sets. It is this combined with our domain expertise and our culture of innovation that positions us well to add significant value in this space. Indeed, we anticipate ReadyTech's first Copilot to be available in market in H2, FY 2024, augmenting the customer experience, delivering productivity gains and an improved user experience.
Sentiment from customers so far has been very positive. We'll now turn to Slide 22, where we provide an update on our outlook. ReadyTech is well-positioned for continued revenue growth and margin improvement. On our FY 2024 outlook, we expect revenue growth in the low double digits, reflecting a shift in timing of a number of high-conviction enterprise deals into FY 2025. Underlying EBITDA margin to be in the range of 34%-35%, excluding the impact of LTIP. Labor capitalization as a percentage of revenue projected to reduce to 14%-15% from 15.8% in FY 2023. We also provide an updated medium-term target for FY 2027. The depth and timing of the sales opportunity pipeline underpins organic revenue growth target of over AUD 170 million. EBITDA margins increasing to high 30% and labor capitalization to normalize in the range of 12%-13% of revenue.
Finally, on Slide 23, let me wrap up by covering some of the key takeouts from today's presentation. We have ongoing traction in the enterprise space, with organizations continuing to make the shift from legacy systems to cloud-based platforms. We have delivered a significant number of enterprise contracts over the past 18 months, and we have a sizable and high-conviction new business pipeline of AUD 30 million. Though some opportunities have shifted into FY 2025, our conviction on the enterprise opportunity and the strategy remains solid. We have demonstrated our ability to deliver continued profitable growth at strong margins, and we expect our margins to improve further given the success of our enterprise strategy through strong operating leverage and the high level of recurring revenue. We're capitalizing on the AI revolution in creating new AI-led customer experiences.
As I mentioned earlier, we maintain an active M&A pipeline, and our strategy is focused on acquiring M&A for strategic customers, new capability, and entry to new and adjacent verticals. Together with the Board and our executive leadership team, I am as excited as ever about the future of ReadyTech and remain highly confident about delivering on our growth agenda. Many thanks, and I will pause now for any questions. Thanks.
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 a question. Your first question comes from Mitchell Sonogan at Macquarie.
Good morning, Marc and Nimesh. Good morning, Marc and Nimesh. Thanks for taking the questions. Can you hear me there?
Yes. Hi, Mitch.
Yeah. Thanks, guys. Just quickly, I guess just in terms of talking about some of the shift in timing of the high-conviction enterprise deals, do you mind just giving a little bit more color on which segments they might have been in? And I guess just in terms of confidence of when they would be occurring and, yeah, some of the reasons? Thanks.
Yeah, thanks, Mitch. So, also noting the shift in some of the enterprise opportunities into FY 2025, I think what we've seen is some extended deal cycles for roughly 4-5 key opportunities. They've been weighted towards the education segment as well as Government and Justice. Some of these opportunities previously forecast to close in the half. They've really had a shift of close dates. I think what's driven that, in our view, is that it's really been driven by partly the macro environment, one that is more cost-conscious, as well as by funding decisions. I think really important to note here, Mitch, that no major deals in the current pipeline were lost. We remain high conviction on many of these opportunities.
I think what we do know is that a new solution is required, and these high-conviction opportunities are committed to upgrading their technology, much of which is legacy in nature or end-of-life. Though deal timing may have shifted, we certainly remain confident that our conversion rates will be maintained.
Yeah. Thanks, Marc. Government and education are known to be the other fastest-moving sectors, so I understand some of that. I guess just following on with the AUD 170 million target now for organic growth that's in FY 2027, so I guess just pushed out slightly, is that, again, probably is that taking a slightly more conservative view on timing of some of the completions? Do you mind just running through the details behind that?
Yeah. No, you're absolutely right, Mitch, just because, again, due to that timing that we spoke about, the number of those pipeline opportunities that have shifted from FY 2024 to FY 2025, part of the impact there is that the growth profile has been extended into FY 2027. We thought that it was the most appropriate to update that based on these extended opportunity life cycles. So certainly expecting and what we're seeing through the pipeline and also what we anticipate an increase in NRR over the next two to three years through cloud upgrades within our own customer set that we certainly return to that mid-teens revenue growth and targeting now AUD 170 million of organic revenue by FY 2027.
Okay. Thank you. And just the final one from me. Just on the new customer wins, value was or the average value of AUD 123,000. That was up 29% on FY 2023, so it's a pretty solid result. Do you mind just giving a little bit of, yeah, a little bit of color there about how you're seeing that across the segments? And I guess just, yeah, ties into the overall momentum you have in those bigger new customer wins. Thanks, guys.
I might let Nimesh take that one.
Yeah, yeah, Mitch. We are seeing, going back to the enterprise strategy, this average revenue per new customer, new contract, we had AUD 93,000 12 months ago. We're creeping up every half. And what we're seeing here is moving into higher-value customers. So in this half, for the last half, we won those two large upgrades of two large contracts in Victoria, TAFE contracts. They are significantly higher value, and we continue to win councils. And again, they're 3-4 times larger than our average ARPU. And we also in Workforce Solutions, as Marc mentioned earlier, we're one of the largest clients to date in Workforce Solutions in a company called Seeka from New Zealand. So all the value on enterprise and the breadth and depth of going into the high value is driving these ARPU of new clients. Yep.
The next question.
Question.
Next question comes from Cameron Halkett at Wilsons Advisory.
Hi, Marc. Hi, Nimesh. Quick one. Just wondering if we can expand on Mitch's question there around segmental isolation of the contract delays. You cited education there, Marc. I'm just wondering if some of these were perhaps some TAFE contracts you've been talking up for a while or whether perhaps it was more towards colleges in that market.
Yeah. So that's absolutely part of it is part of the TAFE story, Cam. We certainly have a number of TAFE opportunities in the pipeline. I think we feel, to a degree, frustrated in the timing of these, in the shift of timing. Partly, as I said, it's been through some funding decisions, but also I think it's one of quite complex procurement processes when it comes to TAFE. I think what we do know and why confidence remains high, in fact, in many ways, is higher than ever, is that many of these TAFEs are on end-of-life technology and technology that is anticipated will be unsupported in the future. And the visibility that we have of those opportunities is strong that conviction remains high.
I think one other thing that's worth adding there is that I think very positive is that the two TAFEs that came from the Avaxa acquisition, Melbourne Polytechnic, and Chisholm TAFE have both taken the decision to upgrade to our flagship product, which is JR Plus. They're now in transition to that cloud-based system. I think that should be taken as a very positive signal that they have selected our flagship product.
Yeah. Very good. You mentioned as well, Marc, the contract delays into FY 2025. Is that sort of a conservative estimate just based off the uncertainty and isolating that down? Is that probably a bit more Q1, Q2 when those land in FY 2025, or again, it's a little bit up in the air?
Yes. A little up in the air, I would say. I think that certainly we've seen probably roughly a sort of six-month shift across some opportunities. But as I say, due to the nature of some of these life cycles and for the reasons that they've been extended, some of those could run a little longer. But I think overall, we've got a really good handle on this pipeline, active discussions, and good visibility of procurement processes.
It's worth noting, Cam, our growth pipeline, our high-commission growth pipeline, is maintained. It's nudged up slightly higher. So we've got opportunities across a number of enterprise contracts, not only TAFE. So you have hedged. It's just about timing in some of these cases and going through the deal slope.
Yeah. Good point. Last one. Just Nimesh, looking at sort of the EBITDA margin guidance, I think it implies quite a big second-half skew there on margin. So is there the reason there that just looks like first-half OpEx has been front-loaded without the associated revenue, and then therefore that smoothens out or balances back out in the second half ?
Yeah. Look, typically, ReadyTech, if you look at the last three fiscal years, second half has always been higher. Last year was an AUD 7 million increment between second half and first half . And that revenue in the second half is typically very high margin. So the line of sight we have from a margin point of view will be well within that target we've given. Also, on the expenses side, it's a 15% growth on a PCP basis. On a sequential compared to the last half, it's only a 3% growth. And so we have very good visibility, and we expect revenue to be ahead of cost for the full year.
While the other key point here is our labor CapEx as a percentage of revenue is moderating, as we have said to the market beforehand, so very comfortable around that 14%-15% of revenue for the full year.
Yeah. Nimesh had just touched on that, but there on labor cap, Nimesh, quickly. Can you just expand, given that range as a percentage of revenue was retained for the full year versus the prior guidance, are you spending a little bit less in dollar terms, or you'd just probably wind up higher on that range than you would have if that revenue had come through?
Yeah. Look, AUD 8.8 million for the half is AUD 17.6 million for the full year. It's about a 5% growth from last year, Cam, a 5%-6%. And that's mainly to give you salary increase for the existing staff. You're not spending any more. And we are actually being more efficient in our spend. So that comes out at around that AUD 17.6 million on absolute terms.
Okay. All right. Thanks, guys. I'll hop back in the queue.
Thanks, Cam.
The next question comes from Wei Sim at Jefferies.
Hi, Marc.
Yeah. Go ahead.
Hi, Marc. Hi, Nimesh.
Hi, Wei.
Hi. My first question is just in regards to the changes in government policy and on over-student net student migration and stuff like that. Has any of this impacted, perhaps, on the sentiment of the education center and the conversations that we're having?
I really don't think so. Predominantly, the markets that we are involved in education are highly domestic-focused. So yeah, understand the question, but I think very limited impact.
Okay. Got it. And then just in terms of the profile of, I guess, the enterprise customers, what kind of NRR are we seeing from them? Are you able to kind of give us a bit more of a split now that we have started to cycle a bit more on the enterprise side and whether we might see potentially higher NRR from them versus our, I guess, longer-dated customers? Thanks.
Yeah. No, it's a good question. So across the portfolio, we've got 103%, and that is a step up from prior years. As Marc mentioned, in ITV, we are targeting north of 106%. And to your point, Wei, we see on the enterprise NRR to be much higher. So for example, when we move for the ITV cloud upgrades from on-prem to cloud, we're seeing 4 times average on the subscriptions as we move to the cloud. Some of the deals Marc mentioned in terms of the Avaxa acquisition platforms, the recurring revenue is up to 1.5-2 times increase. So we will see disproportionately more increase on the NRR driven by enterprise clients.
Yeah.
Okay. Great. Maybe just the last question from me is just on the AI side. It sounds like a great opportunity. Be keen to hear, given that we're talking about second half 2024 launch for the first Copilot, what kind of the revenue model might look like or how we think about the monetization of this. Thanks.
Yeah. Look, I think certainly with the release of the first Copilot, which is in our Work Pathways product, we have certainly other Copilots that are also either in design phases. I think the vision here is that across all our product sets, all the key users over time will be augmented with Copilots. I think that it's too early for us at this stage to be clear specifically about the revenue opportunity, but we certainly expect over time to see that customers will see the value in this and certainly pay for the opportunity to have augmented users.
Understood. Perfect. Thank you, Marc. Thanks, Nimesh.
Thanks, Wei.
The next question comes from Jules Cooper, Shaw & Partners Limited.
Hello, Jules.
Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. How are you going? Thanks for taking the question. Look, Marc, AUD 7 million of sort of new business being closed in the half is pretty strong in our view. I guess to the extent you feel comfortable, there's a couple of sort of opportunities there in the major wins, the RMIT University pilot. You've got a couple of councils in there as well. I just wondered if you could sort of talk to some of the challenges these customers were trying to solve and why you think ReadyTech were selected or engaged on pilots.
Yeah. No. Thanks, Jules. I think the really encouraging aspect of the closes is that they're well-distributed across our different segments. You have, Nimesh mentioned, an organization there like Seeka, which is in the standup economy. That's really a key vertical for us. They're looking to solve through the transition to cloud and an all-in-one platform. This is really all about the fidelity of data and improved governance around areas of payroll and workforce management. In terms of the two ERP wins, these are sort of right in our wheelhouse. These are local governments that are going through, again, the cloud transition, looking to get all of the great benefits that come with a cloud-based system, also to move to a more citizen-centric approach by having self-service for citizens and so forth. That was the key drivers there.
In terms of RMIT, this is a pilot of a product called Ready Skills, which is used by a number of education providers and TAFEs. It's the ability to, in a much more streamlined way, support areas of skills assessment. We find this particular product is one that's very good to establish relationships with large education providers and also open the door, so to speak, for our wider products there, including student management systems.
Okay. All right. Great. Great color. Thank you.
Thanks, Jules.
Thank you, Jules. Thank you, Jules.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. The next question comes from Cameron Halkett at Wilson's Advisory. Please go ahead.
Just one more on M&A . Obviously, there's a bit of detail there in the deck, but I suppose just a bit of the high level. What you're looking at at the moment, is there an appetite for the full vertical, or is there kind of enough to manage at the moment, and it's a bit more capability you might be looking at?
Yeah. I think we're more focused on customers and complementary capability at this stage than sort of fourth pillar. Certainly, I think that we have the capacity to acquire and integrate for customers and for capability. And we think we've built a very strong playbook around this. We integrate in a very effective way. And we think we've become very good at extracting synergies from those types of acquisitions. So that's the focus. And yeah, absolutely have an active M&A pipeline. As always, stay very disciplined. These opportunities have to be on strategy, and they have to be high quality.
Okay. Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Washbourne for closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone. Thanks for the great questions. Thanks for joining. We really look forward to seeing many of you and sharing more on our results on our upcoming roadshow. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.