Ladies and gentlemen, welcome everyone, and thank you for joining Xref's Investor Update Conference Call. At the conclusion of the presentation, you will have the opportunity to ask questions by pressing zero followed by one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the call over to your speaker, Mr. Lee-Martin Seymour, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us. We've got some good numbers on the call today. Hopefully I can get through the update pretty quickly. We can move to Q&A. Hopefully, if you've given your name as part of the call, you can ask a question, and we can run through that. Hope everybody is well. Thank you for the people that are joining that normally join us. Hopefully, your houses are watertight and your drains are clear, ready for the next few days. Despite the weather, we have got some remarkable news to share this morning. You'll notice that yesterday we put out our quarterly business update. Hopefully the new look was met in a good way.
You'll see that we have changed our format. We have added a little bit of a glimmer of our new branding that's coming within our new platform this year. You'll notice we're just gonna start to use a little bit more of forest green, so hopefully that's a color that you enjoy. We've broken up our update into the first page summary, our operational update, any news that we'd like to share, and then we've chosen to add an in-focus piece. Every quarter you'll find from us that we'll share a focus article about part of our business, and then everything else in the appendix. Quite a nice piece of information that we've shared. It always corresponds with the Four Cs.
If you've been following the story, you might guess that in the future there might be an opportunity for our four Cs to fall away, having been profitable now for 4 quarters. Despite that, we will still continue as a company to come out with our quarterly update because we genuinely enjoy it. I think you probably gather that from reading our update over the last 6 years of being listed, but particularly yesterday. Now, let's talk about Q3 for a second. The majority of our revenue comes from the ANZ region. Every year, the festive season and the Australia Day period tends to impact us. If you mix in with that, COVID, floods in Australia, political events overseas, we have definitely had our work cut out for us.
However, that being said, Q3 has been a tremendous result on all fronts. Our sales were at AUD 5 million, up 26% year-on-year. Revenue, AUD 4.2 million, up 40% year-on-year. Collections at AUD 5 million, up 42%. Expenses up 22% to AUD 4.2 million, based on a very low quarter last year. Let's just have a check on those year-to-date figures. Our sales currently are 67% up year-on-year, and our revenue is 60% up year-on-year. We, together with those figures, remain profitable. We are experiencing a fantastic year. I think everybody can be excited about how we're gonna finish it. Each time during the year, we surpass our internal board budgets, we reset our goals, and we strike again.
It is truly a pivotal moment in our history, and it's being led by our own outbound marketing, our point of difference on the global stage, and the sheer demand that we're seeing from our sector for our type of service. Coming out of Christmas, the recruitment sector returned faster than we'd ever seen before. If you saw the last quarterly, we actually put a graph in there to show how fast the sector was returning after Christmas. That gives an indication of how well the sector is gonna perform for the remainder of this financial year. Our revenue, i.e., our Xrefs used or references taken, grew by 40% year-over-year.
What was quite nice was 34% of our revenue came from clients that consume our service within their own applicant tracking system, and in itself it grew 68%. Our channel revenue grew 68% year-on-year and remains a focal part of our growth in business. Having sold AUD 10 million worth of services within the first half and AUD 5 million as a sales figure in Q3, it was no surprise that our collections were up by 42%, up at AUD 5 million. In fact, March was a record month for collections for Xref, so a tremendous result. As a result, our cash balance has moved up to AUD 10.9 million, and our cash at bank is 74% larger than it was this time last year.
A cracking result. Being a marketing-led business, it was again great to see our lead flow grow by 98% in the quarter to a total of 1,800 leads for Q3. The quality of those leads just keeps on getting better. The speed in which we can convert those leads into sales and the rate in which we do that keeps getting better and better. As you know, our retention at Xref is high. The clients that use us love using the Xref platform and we tend to retain our clients very well. It was good to see the client cohorts. Every quarter, we tend to show you the client cohort.
This quarter, it was nice that 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 contributed so much into the quarter. In fact, the cohort of clients that joined us in 2018 spent 60% more this quarter than they did a year ago. The cohort of clients that joined us in 2019 spent 30% more. When we get to the cohort of the 2020 clients, they spent 8% more. You can certainly spot a trend, and it is a very exciting prospect in our business that we could still grow substantially without taking one more client onto our platform.
Our cohort analysis is very important for us because it not only demonstrates our ability to retain a client, but it also demonstrates our ability to continuously grow that client's use of our platform. It really does echo into our strategy around our new platform development this year and being able to provide back to our 15,000 active users today the ability to do more with the platform that they know and love. Our brand new clients for Q1 2022, so FY 2022, contributed 20% of sales in Q3. That's suggesting that their previous purchases made in the last 9 months have not lasted as long as they had originally thought because they're using more.
Adoption is growing faster and top ups are happening more frequently and becoming larger every time. Really nice to see 20% of revenue being contributed by clients that we'd already won in this year. On to some news and some updates. If you are a long-term holder or follower of Xref, you'll know that in 2019, pre-pandemic, we launched Xref Light. Xref Light was the same platform as an enterprise client will use. But you are able to, and anybody on the call today is able to, create an account on Xref Light, self-serve your way into that account. You'll get your first reference for free, and you'll get to know the power of the platform.
Some of those clients that join Xref Light become enterprise clients because they're using that product to understand our value and then getting hold of us to perform a bigger sale. That product has created 1,700 leads to date. In Q3, we received AUD 20,000 worth of credit card payments, but that doesn't on the grand scale sound a lot. However, when you boil it down to the fact that in Xref Light, you're spending AUD 300 at a time, you can see how that product has garnered 60 more clients in the quarter. However, previous Xref Light customers spent another AUD 200,000 in the quarter. Over the last 12 months, Xref Light customers have spent AUD 550,000 with us.
You can absolutely see the growth of that and that product and the value that that has in our business. That is absolutely why our new platform is 100% self-serve and SaaS-based, because we can absolutely see the value of that in the market. In terms of Template Builder, we launched Template Builder in 2019. It's a free tool for people to use to see the value of our technology, but without having to buy anything. We used our own data, in fact, 100,000 questions that had been answered over 17 million times within our platform. We analyzed those questions. We built a library of the best-performing reference questions on the planet. We translated them into 15 languages, and we built a tool available to anybody.
If you google Xref Template Builder today, you can give it a go. You absolutely have to give your email address if you want to edit that template. We garnered 450 leads from this product in Q3, from 16 different countries, and 38% of those leads were actually coming from the U.S. The U.S. tends to be a market that prioritizes self-serve, doesn't necessarily want to speak to a salesperson, wants to create their own adventure. Template Builder, again, is something that is being built within the new platform holistically, and another huge lesson around the value of self-serve. Onwards to the building of our own product. We are rebuilding our new platform, which again, 100% self-serve, SaaS-based subscription.
Together with the new platform, we are presenting all of our own checks, i.e. our ID checks, our future graduate verification check, and the vendor checks from our trusted partners into what we call our Trust Marketplace. We're busy building marketplace, busy building the new platform. In terms of government verification scheme, we announced it within Q3. We are busy building that at the moment, and getting that right. By the end of financial, we will have an active API for the government verification scheme. Right now, we are positioning our wholesale vendors, how we vend that in a retail perspective out from Xref and who we vend to, in terms of our wholesale partners.
On top of all of that, some great news, some headline news that we were actually voted number 1 reference provider, automated reference provider, globally by G2. G2, if you don't know the business, I would urge you to go and have a look. In the northern hemisphere, if you buy enterprise technology, you absolutely do not buy it without checking that service out on G2. They have a quadrant. We lead that quadrant. We are number 1. We've got some fantastic testimonials over at G2. So I'll get to that when I speak about North America, but some fantastic news from G2 in the quarter. Our In Focus, part of our business update, which we will continue to do.
I won't tell you the topic for next quarter, but let's, for a moment, talk about North America. In terms of the region, it needs to be understood that somewhere like Canada has only just begun to drop restrictions. That is a region that has only just come out of the grips of COVID. In the U.S., they're experiencing huge skill shortages, and the visa barriers to entry are still so high. Very difficult region. In terms of Xref in that region, as I've just quoted, we are rated number one on G2. If you go to Capterra, GetApp, or even Google reviews, you're going to see a similar story. We have huge credibility in the region. We have fantastic integrations with some of the checking partners.
We have integrations with the biggest ATS providers such as iCIMS, SmartRecruiters, Bullhorn, and Oracle within the region. We are multi-language. You know, we carry Spanish and Portuguese and Canadian French. We are multi-region. You can absolutely keep your data in Canada, or you could keep your data in the U.S. if you so wish. We are ISO 27001, and we do provide a 24/7 support. We are so well-placed within North America. It is therefore no wonder that as the market has grown their demand of our service, we have seen North America grow within Q3 197% within the quarter. Within the U.S. alone, that market has grown 270%.
Now, what's really interesting and delightful for us as a business, being marketing-led, it's wonderful to see that 98% of those U.S. sales originated from a lead, a website lead, a channel lead, a lead from G2, a lead from Template Builder or Xref Light. Our marketing outreach is finding 98% of those sales within North America, and it really does support the argument that that technology can depart the shores of Australia and digitally acquire clients in North America. If any technology company were telling you that they need to build offices and put people on the ground, I can tell you for sure that's not the way to go.
In terms of cash expenses and collections and profitability of the region, not including our HQ costs, of course, but we collected seven hundred thousand and our expenditure was three hundred thousand in the region. In fact, 43% of the free cash, the cash surplus that the group created emanated out of the North American region, which is a fantastic result. I'm sure we're eager to share more news with you as that region develops. Certainly in terms of product, it's a focal point within our business right now. What can we see as an outlook moving forward? Anybody that has been following the story understands that Q4, the quarter we just started, is our busiest quarter.
Our focus is product, profit, and growth. In fact, yesterday on a team catch-up, it was understood that today at Xref, if you're working for Xref, then your day must include activities that support one of those three, product, profit or growth. In terms of product, you will see in Q4 further integrations. We're currently building with our partners, First Advantage globally. We're building the integration of Xref into First Advantage, which is a very exciting project. We are currently building our graduate verification scheme. You will see further ATS channel integration being built within the quarter, and as well as our own platform updates as we aggressively release our new features and products.
In terms of profit, more of the same. We absolutely will be bringing the year in into a profitable position and maintaining that position. In terms of our growth, we will continue to have our cake and eat it. The opportunities are very high, and the way that we are acquiring clients, converting clients, and the value of those clients first invoices are all growing. We can certainly look forward to further growth. You will also see a new investor presentation. We haven't put one out since last May. You will see this May a brand new investor presentation. It will speak about our product makeup, it will speak about regions and cohorts, and it will get us all ready for what is going to play out in FY 2023.
Certainly a very pivotal time in our history. Opportunities are very high. I think our head count has moved from 60 to 70 people, despite our head count moving forward very much decoupled from our growth. So we will see our OpEx move slightly forward, our COGS move forward with our sales figure. Obviously, cost of sales are in there, but certainly decoupled from our overall sales figure. That wraps up our update to you this morning. 23 minutes, not bad. I normally do it in around the same time. I'd like to open up the floor to questions.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to queue for a question, please press 0 followed by 1 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. That is 0 followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. Thank you. Your first question is from the line of Claude Walker from A Rich Life. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Oh, hey there. Thanks for taking my question. You had a fairly extended period of fairly low OpEx growth, and then with these new highs, are we to take that as a signal that the low OpEx growth is over now and you're gonna start speeding up that expenditure on employees? Also as a follow-up question, where were the extra 10 employees allocated? Like, what kind of part of the business?
I would absolutely suggest that OpEx is not about to grow. I think we were very early in our move from survive to thrive. In fact, I was at an ASX dinner a couple of weeks ago, and most of the companies around the table were still in survival mode. As you move from survive to thrive, you have to replenish the head count that you were surviving without, but that you absolutely need to thrive. Our largest head count number in late FY 2019 was only 98. I do not think we'll be reaching any of those levels. In fact, our 10 headcount does actually include a new member to our board. It includes some sales in areas that we're investing in, like North America.
It includes some development head count because we're in one of the largest development periods of our history. Despite the fact that our head count has gone up over the last 12 months to 10, it is pretty insignificant in terms of the overall growth of the business. I wouldn't be planning any major OpEx changes. In fact, all we really see, I believe that OpEx would remain relatively flat and that our COGS, our cost of sales would incrementally grow as our sales grow. However, with further discounts in terms of the checking space, you can probably see that our cost of sales will diminish with scale. Does that answer your question?
That gives me a good answer. Thank you very much.
Okay. No problem.
Thank you. Your next question is from the line of Stella Wong, a private investor. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Hi. Good morning, Lee. How are you?
I'm disappointed that you weren't the first question, Stella, because you normally are.
I made a point not to be the first one. That's a good one because I've got a follow-on from Claude, which is on the
Yes.
Headcount into various parts of the business. I noticed your capitalized development expenses is actually down while you actually answered that you are in your biggest development and new product launch phase. Is most of the development expenses expensed and going forward, we shouldn't expect much higher capitalized expenses?
What you're seeing is the only capitalized expense that we are involved in is for the new platform. What you're seeing is a project sprint. If you can remember, we launched the exit product in November. We're not due to launch the next phase of that product until July, August. What you see before the release of a product is huge amount of testing and coding on getting that product launched. It's like launching a rocket. Most of the work happens in the last five minutes. Ultimately, we have gone back into coding and what you'll probably see is more expense CapEx coming out in the Q1 next year as we get ready to launch other products.
Certainly they diminished when you go back into coding. Anytime around a large launch is when you'll see most of the CapEx. CapEx is only occurring for that one platform, nothing else. No integrations, no other development around the business, only that platform because we'd like to put brackets around what it's cost the business to produce our brand-new platform.
That clarifies it. Second one is not a question, just a small request. Now that you have another presentation coming out, could you put in the cohort sales percentage in there in some form? Because it's a great line of information on how much of the 2019 cohort is growing its expenditure and how much 2018 is. Because you did that for previous two quarter reports, and that new information is actually not in this one, so it'd be good to keep that consistent.
The cohort percentages weren't in there, but the graph was. That was absolutely something that we're very proud of. In fact, Stella, you're not being honest because you were the one that drew that graph three years ago, and we put it into the presentation and from then on. It's your fault that it's in there. Thanks for that. It will absolutely feature. It will absolutely feature in the new release in May. Yes.
Great. The last one is a question, and it's more for clarification. Now, in the half year report, you've got a new reporting line, which is revenue, but including the RapidID gross sales in the revenue. Now, in this quarterly, the revenue is referring to, Xref alone revenue and RapidID net revenue again. It's a little bit hard to process. Just wondering going forward.
Okay.
Am I right in understanding it this way or did I mess it up?
I think what we must understand is when Xref acquired the RapidID business, what we bought was a product, a code base to allow Xref to add ID services within the platform. We absolutely did not want to buy a subsidiary to grow externally. What you're seeing over since 2019 through the pandemic, we've grown that business very well. What you're going to see is that RapidID name will be productized. That ID capability that we have will become part of our marketplace. The Xref marketplace will be checks that we own and checks that we vend from external vendors.
The way that we will report that is we will report the revenue coming into marketplace divided by checks that we don't own and checks that we do own. The checks that we own are ID checks and future graduate verification checks. The checks that we don't own get vended to us by other partners. Although we take a kick on them, they're low margin but high turnover. We need the shareholders to see that we have a marketplace and that RapidID isn't a reportable subsidiary. It is a reportable product within the marketplace. You're going to see less and less of the word RapidID, and you're gonna see more marketplace. When you see the revenue line owned checks, that's the RapidID or the ID check is within that. Does that make sense?
If you reread the report now, you'll see that within Trust Marketplace there's the ID checks. But
I see.
The business name is Xref.
I see. In the report, when you talked about marketplace net revenue t hat's mainly RapidID net revenue and other vendor
It is. .
Right.
Right now it is the majority of that net revenue because that's revenue after our cost of producing those checks. We pay the DVS to provide an ID check. The majority of that net revenue is at the moment revenue coming from ID checks. In the future, the way that will grow is via more ID checks, additional GVS checks, and then other marketplace revenue from other vendors or other checks that we're getting from outside.
You won't have.
We just-
Out of the AUD 5 million gross sales, you don't have a figure for RapidID, do you, for gross sales? Or do you have it?
Out of AUD 5 million, there is just under AUD 700,000 of RapidID ID sales. If you take away the COGS, you're left with about AUD 300,000 net revenue.
Great. Thanks. That's all I need to ask. Thank you very much.
Okay. My pleasure. Thanks, Bella.
Thank you. Your next question is from the line of Mark Wenzel from The Hopkins Group. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Good morning, Lee. How are you?
Thank you. Again,
Good, thanks. Just another great result. You're continuing to deliver on what you've promised. Previously, you sort of mentioned that North America was more sort of healthcare and essential services type businesses. Today was fairly a bit more bullish, I guess, on the opportunity in the North American market. Do you just wanna talk a little bit about you know, whether it is still just in that sort of healthcare and essential service type of industries or sort of expanding out further and perhaps, you know, whether your the potential is bigger or improving faster than you thought it was?
Sure. Here's a public health warning. We've all seen Australian and New Zealand technology companies go to the U.S., and it is the graveyard of overseas tech. You have to be careful. Don't think you need to go, and it's paved with gold. You have to really pick your battles. In terms of recruitment, you're not talking about one country. You're talking about 52 different recruitment laws and ways to work. Really for us, we like to go in under safe harbor. We like to be picked up from the channels, Bullhorn, SmartRecruiters, Oracle, because if you love your Bullhorn platform and you see that Xref is available, then the credibility will glow on. We like to acquire clients through the channel.
The region is really wedded to self-serve. If you notice in Australia, the U.K., Norway, we can call our salespeople account executives. In the U.S., before somebody answers your phone call, you have to be called a VP of this or, you know, some kind of global warrior to be able to get your phone call answered by somebody in the U.S. because they like to self-serve. They like to look on Google, find us, test some of our technology, source our ratings, trial the platform, and it's not until they've done all of that that they engage with a salesperson to configure their platform the way that they would like it.
You absolutely have to be marketing-led and 100% self-serve, and we are moving towards that at a rate of knots, and we're seeing the benefit of that now. In terms of the sectors, the trust sector in the U.S. is key because we've just had so much success within aged care, healthcare, education, not-for-profit and government. In terms of geography, we really like that sort of Texas, New York State and up to Chicago.
There's sort of a triangle of success. Really as a focus for us, if we looked at that geography, Middle America, riding on the coattails of our trusted partners, going in marketing first, and making sure that we offer a self-serve option for our new clients, I think we can be very excited about the growth prospects in North America. Be aware, coming back to that public health warning, it's about what you don't do and what you're not prepared to do. Filling offices around America with people and spending $ millions on search optimization is not where we're going to go. There is a better way.
We're starting to see that way work, and I think, for shareholders involved, an efficient growth of the North American region is a very viable and exciting prospect.
Fantastic. I just had a question about the platform with existing clients about exit interviews and progress. I was just sort of keen for a bit more detail about the feedback to you on how that's working and how that's working for them.
Sorry, can you say that again? You dropped out there.
I'm driving at the moment.
I think we may have lost him.
Hello?
Hello, Mr. Wenzel. You're still connected, sir?
Okay.
We've got you, Mark.
Got me back. Sorry. You know, so I was just keen for a bit of feedback on how the clients are seeing the platform for the, you know, existing employees and the exit interviews and how, you know, if it's working for them and then what sort of value they see in that.
I think it's a good time on that question to suggest that when we launch it to only new clients, or we're gonna launch it to existing clients. If we do, what clients are we gonna launch it to? Because when we build a piece of technology, whether it be Template Builder or Xref Light, or the new Xref Engage platform, it tends to be a platform that doesn't exist. That's what's great and exciting about Xref. We don't copy anybody else's tech. We build things that the industry is asking for that don't exist on the planet. When we built Xref Engage tool, there's nothing like it on the planet.
We have to choose some of the large clients that trust us to take that to market and use it. We then garner some feedback, we tweak a few bits, and then we go out to the whole community, and provide that platform. Right now it's performing really quite nicely. The delightful thing is that it has been used, and we are garnering data from people that left their roles years ago that still have something to say and still have something to put on the table, and are also flagging that they would like to come back to the business. There is a huge return on investment.
I think, once we couple our references and our Pulse Surveys platform together, our clients will absolutely enjoy hiring a candidate, pulse checking them as an employee, exit checking them on the way out and having and building what they've never had, which is corporate memory across their skill sets that are coming in and through their business every day. I suppose right now, much like Xref Lite and Template Builder, you know, we're learning some lessons in that platform. We've got key global clients that are using it and are giving us feedback. By the time we launch the full platform, early 2023, it will be a very exciting time to go out to our new customers and the wider audience.
We have 15,000 active users using us at any one time. We have a big audience to switch on when we're ready, but we don't rush things. You got that, Mark?
Fantastic. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Look great. . Doing everything you say you're doing, so , keep it up.
All right. Safe driving.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question is from the line of Luke Winchester from Merewether Capital. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Hey, Luke. Hope you're doing well, mate.
Yes. Good. Thank you. Thanks, Luke.
That's good. I didn't realize Stella was the driving force behind the cohort analysis, so I'll also extend my thanks. It's a very valuable piece of information and look forward to that in the new preso. Couple of questions from me. Just the first one, a bit of context would be appreciated, and it's probably not a one-size-fits-all answer, but just the interplay between sales and revenue. I guess the main question is, what's the average length between somebody purchasing a credit and that credit being used? I know it might be difficult because you probably get lump, you know, lump purchases of credit and then used over time. But some context would just help me better understand that interplay.
The answer is if you signed up for the platform today and bought 1,000 credits, you're not gonna get those loaded on until you pay for them. We collect the cash, and then we recognize the revenue as they're used. If you have a look at H1, we sold AUD 10 million worth of credits, and now we're seeing a recognized revenue figure of AUD 4.2 million for this quarter. What you're seeing is that there is a very tight gap between the two. Now, we've always had a measure in our business called Mind the Gap. It's not because I'm from London, it's because we measure the gap between our sales line and our revenue line.
If our sales line was shooting off into the distance and our usage line was falling away, it's an indicator that our clients are buying something that they're inevitably not using. If you saw our usage line grow and surpassed our sales line, it's telling us that our sales team aren't big enough and we're not looking after the future of new business, despite the fact that our clients are enjoying their experience. The trick is that we like a gap, but we like it to be tight and at no point widening or crossing over. Seasonality sometimes means that those lines spread apart a little bit.
Somewhere like Q4 you tend to find that's the tightest part of the year where sales are high and revenue is high because usage is high. However, let's move that on 12 months and see that our new platform is moving into a subscription traditional SaaS platform where we recognize revenue despite somebody's hiring trend. This is a really nice move of our business because during COVID, yes, we grew in the essential client sector, but we reduced revenue within our non-essential sector. People like companies like Qantas and Crown Resorts and retail companies reduced our revenue. Tabling a strategic moonshot, you know, how can we decouple our revenue recognition away from a customer's hiring trend? Well, we can do that by moving subscriptions. Hang on a minute.
What we need to do is offer more services and a wider platform across the hire-to-retire journey so that we can offer that platform access for the life of your relationship with that person or that talent. Producing a subscription tier means that our revenue recognition will become far more seasonal, and we can also recognize that revenue an awful lot faster and in a more consistent way. It's an exciting prospect that we will soon enough be reporting an ARR figure, a growth ARR, not just from new clients joining us as a subscription client, but us transferring thousands of current clients across from a prepaid to a subscription method.
Now the good thing with that is that it will not only provide a step change in how fast and the cadence of our revenue recognition, but it will also provide us the opportunity to go back to our current audience that love everything that we do, provide more product and a bigger platform and be able to grow that revenue from that 2018 cohort again, you know, by 15%-25%, by reselling a further platform to them. I think moving. You know, right now our revenue is tied to the trend of recruitment. As we move to subscription, we can decouple that. We can on top of that produce some step changes in revenue growth which is pretty much what you are going to see through FY 2023.
Cool. Okay. A lot to take in there. I think the pivot to the-
Not quite finished.
To the SaaS model. No. It's good. I think the pivot to the SaaS model, I think as long as it's, you know, explained clearly 'cause a lot of businesses obviously make that transition, it can get a bit messy in the reported numbers. But I think as long as it's explained clearly in the presentations and your reports, you know, it will be well understood by people. Second one from me, just about the fourth quarter. You made a comment before about through three quarters, you know, sales are up 60-odd% which is correct obviously. But you know, there's a lumpiness I suppose quarter to quarter with those numbers. I mean, first quarter was 120-something%, second was 70% and this quarter was 26%.
Further muddying the projection through the fourth quarter is you disclosed lead flow for the first time to about 98%. I'm not sure how much visibility you have going, you know, over the next couple of months. You know, how are we thinking about the fourth quarter growth given it is your largest, you know, is it more in line with the third quarter growth, that year to date growth or lead flow growth? There's a lot of different numbers to sort of take in. Hello? Have you got me?
I've got you. I got cut off for some reason. Can we blame Telstra and the floods?
Did you hear my question though?
No. Could you say it again, please? Oh, okay. I'll go again. I'm not sure whether everyone else did, but you can just listen to me again, just talking about the fourth quarter growth. You know, you commented that year-to-date is up about 60%, which is true, but there's obviously the lumpiness quarter-to-quarter. First quarter was 120, second was 70, third was 26. You described lead flow in this report for the first time; it was up 98%. Trying to feel that projection of where the fourth quarter lands, I know maybe visibility is not perfect, but do you think it comes in more in line with that third quarter result, the year-to-date result, the lead flow result?
Just a bit of context, I suppose, to how we're thinking about fourth quarter growth. , sure. Look, there's a trend. The trend has happened over the last six years, and the trend is that Q4 tends to be somewhere between the Q3 and H1 result, and closer to what the H1 result was. Now, look, we make a rod for our own backs because, you know, we performed a AUD 10 million sales record in H1 this year. Q4 last year was AUD 6.1 million. I think we certainly wanna eclipse that. I think you're gonna see a growth figure on top of that. Every year before Q4, we know it's our biggest quarter. We, because of that, we're excited, but also very nervous.
We can see right now in the pipeline that I think, you know, not unlike any other quarter, it's going to be a good one. I think you can use some trend analysis to see that Q4 could stack up quite nicely against H1, but you.
Are you there, mate?
Okay.
Okay, Mr. Lee-Martin Seymour's line has just disconnected. Please wait while we join him.
It's James here, CFO. I thought I'd quickly jump in, if everyone can hear me.
M ate. That's it.
J ust following what Lee was saying. We are primed to have fairly strong Q4. You know, I'm looking at figures right in front of me at the moment, and you know, last year, we did Q4 at just over AUD 5 million in sales. You know, given as what Lee said, Q4 tends to be either you know, equal what we did in H1 or somewhere between H1's figures, which I think we did just under AUD 8 million. You know, it tends to always follow that. If we did AUD 8 million and you know, if we're looking there at what, 30, 40-odd% growth, which is, as you say, closer to our Q3 growth. Of course it's a higher base. You know, we'd be looking there.
In saying that, you know, I can't sort of tell what the targets are. The targets are higher than what they were last year for the same period. Obviously, there's always a growth metric built in, so we're expecting it to be quite strong. We're seeing a lot of clients top up earlier. To your point about, you know, how, you know, clients using, how quick do they use? It does tend to be within the 12 months and certainly as the Great Resignation continues. That's great for us because people are moving jobs, people are having to rehire, you know, positions that have been lost.
We're picking it up on both sides of where the people are going to, as well as the people that have left and they've got to refill. It's certainly seeing a lot of clients bring forward their purchases. Rather than top up at 12 months, they might be topping up at 10 months. Our team now goes out and looks very clearly at you know, who's due to run out you know, in July and August, and work their butts off to bring them into Q4. It is gonna be good numbers. We've already started our new week in with some good results. It's definitely in the right direction. Hello, Lee.
Do you guys offer bulk discounts to clients? Like, you know, buying a certain amount of credits or pulling forward, you know, trying to pull forward payments at all? , absolutely. I think without a doubt at scale and depending on what level of platform they take from us, you know, I think what you've seen from when we listed at 35-dollar average for an Xref credit, you know, we're now selling between AUD 50 and AUD 75 a credit. So whilst other checks in the market, like criminal checks have absolutely just plummeted within the space, you can see the value of reference checks has actually increased.
Our price, it was a couple of presentations ago that we showed that our price had moved 60% since list. That just shows that there's far more value on it now. Just to go back to your other question, of course, you know, you've spoken about the Q1 growth rate. Bearing in mind that Q1 growth rate for this financial year is compared to the 2020 Q1 growth rate. . Right there, we were in the middle of lockdowns. Our business had just come out of a 4-day working week for 12 weeks. You know, the globe was in absolute hysteria. Obviously our growth rate has to be sort of what are we comparing it to?
I think at this level, this sort of 25%-40% growth rate is a very healthy space for us to be. I think, you know, you sort of gotta. You've gotta take the pandemic into account when you're looking at that history.
O f course. I think you're cycling a large fourth quarter, which is, you know, that's sort of the other part of the question, you know, when we're talking about what the growth could be. No, brilliant. All right, guys. No, that answers all my questions. I really appreciate it.
No worries. Fantastic. Thank you. Apologies for getting cut off. I'm not sure what's happening there, but.
No, no worries at all. All good.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We do have a follow-up question from the line of Claude Walker of A Rich Life. Please go ahead.
Hi, Lee. I just had a follow-up question on the product vision for Xref becoming more of a platform that does, you know, more in the hire-to-fire journey. You were saying that I think you actually meant that it will make revenue less seasonal. I'm also just wondering if that could conflict at all with the channel partners. You're saying how, you know, a lot of people like to use Xref as part of some other kind of bigger platform. If you turn into more of a platform rather than just a little function that you do focus on, could that start being viewed as competition for those bigger platforms? Or, you know, how does that fit together? In particular, is there any risk that you kind of damage those relationships?
Okay, this is a great question. Thanks for asking it. Let's just think for a moment about what we're really good at. Xref is fantastic at garnering data today that did not exist anywhere in the EC yesterday. If I did a police check on you, that data has existed in the government datasets for years. I'm only going and getting. However, with Xref, we're a survey business. We go out and garner feedback and public opinion on individuals so quickly because of the way that we build our technology. Why would we not rebuild our survey capability in reference checking and allow our clients to use that in internal pulse checks and exit surveys?
Now that the industry has grasped the value of candidate surveys within references, and I'll put that into perspective, people used to call references reference checks because all we used to do is check whether that candidate had references. What we do as a business is we've turned reference checks into reference surveys. Opinion that we can use to grow insight around whether we should hire this person or not. What Xref is a survey platform. Everything else in the market is checks, and we bring those checks in via the marketplace. We're a survey platform bringing checks in via marketplace.
What we have learned over the last five years is integrating our service into applicant tracking systems has been a fantastic strategic move with 34% of our usage coming from there and still remains a very high growth rate of 68%. However, let's just think for a moment about the size of ATSs compared to HRISs, human resources systems and payroll systems. If you look at our integrations with ATSs, they only handle the recruitment part of that business. Which when you compare it to the HR system that they use within their business every day and their payroll system, these systems are behemoth. Because we are very confident on how we integrate, our applicant tracking system integrations then are our test bed.
If we get the opportunity to integrate pulse checks into HR systems and integrate exit checks into exit surveys into payroll systems, then that's the goal. Because when you're talking about the integration of the Xref service into ADP in North America, that is a fundamental shift in our business. There are two payroll systems, Kronos and ADP, that pay most of America. If we conducted the exit surveys out the back of a payroll termination, we could then pass back the information to those companies. Realistically, what we're talking about is we are the world's best reference survey tool. We are extending that into pulse and exits.
Part of that journey will include us exploring if we can integrate with much bigger platforms on the planet within HR and payroll. Does that make sense?
I guess so. I guess it wouldn't be fair to think about your vision where it's like you're gonna be the surveying platform, you know, survey and checking platform that you're gonna try and build out your competitive advantage by having the most integrations with the biggest other people. I guess, you know, that means that you can stand above a newcomer who might not have those integrations yet, so get a bit of a head start like that.
I love it when shareholders sell it to themselves. Yes. Perfect. You grasped it. That's very exciting space.
All right, cool. Thanks for clarifying.
Thanks.
No, I should mention, I'm not a shareholder at this exact moment. I do follow the story.
Okay.
with great interest.
Very good. Thank you.
Thank you. Our last question is from the line of Lachlan Rogers from SeventyTwo Capital. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Hi, guys. Just looking at the sales graph you have, it looks like the North American growth in terms of dollar amount is exceeding the APAC region, even despite its low base. Do you see this continuing or is this just a particularly weak growth quarter for the APAC region?
Would you say that again? In terms of North American sales numbers?
Just looking at the graph, the dollar amount has grown by a greater amount than the APAC region. Do you see that continuing?
I think any new. You know, we still class it as a new region.
We were in Canada. We've got a good base in Canada. We still class the U.S. as a new region. I think the percentage growth rate is gonna grow. You know, the growth rate will be faster, but the overall cash sales will be lower. I'm struggling to see what figures you need because ultimately the ANZ sales are, you know, in the AUD millions and North American sales were, you know, $600 for the quarter.
I'm just looking at in terms of growth. I don't know the exact figures. I'm just going off the graph, but it looks like APAC-
Oh, that's all right.
maybe $300k or something, where North America has increased by that AUD 600k, you said.
It's a small graph on there. Email me directly and we can talk about the interim figures offline.
Okay. Sure. Thanks.
Thank you. There are no further questions, Mr. Lee-Martin Seymour. Please continue. Thank you.
Okay. Well, I took 23 minutes, and you guys took the rest of the hour. I really do appreciate it. I think we get so much value out of the questions. There was a time when we would do this and get no questions. I relish the time spent with you guys. There were some really good, poignant questions. I'm in the middle of building our new presentation, so that was very valuable for me. I do appreciate it. I'm sorry the call dropped out, but thanks for spending the time with us. If you've got any other follow-up questions or if you missed part of the call, just circle back to me. My details are on that release. Have a great day and try and stay dry. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our teleconference for today. You may all disconnect. Thank you.