Good afternoon.
For those of you who have not met me, I'm Steve Newton, founder and CEO, co-founded it with Graham. Nick is our CFO, and Em is our Investor Relations lead. You'll hear from all four of us in this presentation. Let's start off with where we are as a business and how we feel about it. I was reflecting over the weekend on the 17 years that we've been building this company, and I actually can't believe we're. I almost feel like we've been founded for this moment. If I think back to the dot- com time, there was this whole story about the high street was dead. Technology was going to change the way business operated, and there'd be so many different people being out of business.
Yeah, retail suffered, but it's had to adjust itself and use different channels and different levers. People are saying this about AI to consultancies, and to be honest, it creates a massive opportunity for us. Just like the digital revolution is still ongoing. We're still helping clients to use the internet technologies to be able to access their client bases and increase their revenue. AI is going to be that 30-year gift for us, too. This is 30 years on, and we're still helping clients on dot -com stuff. AI is that next gift for consulting. The one thing I would say, if you look at why I founded this firm with Graham, having spent some time in IBM, Accenture, KPMG, I found those businesses lacked accountability, were very bureaucratic, and relied heavily on large pyramids. In businesses like those, the power came from managing lots of people.
I was very frustrated with that and actually thought that value add should be where the power comes. Finally, AI has turned up on our doorstep and actually gives us a level playing field. Because those huge pyramids don't matter anymore. Our firm has been built to be able to leverage technology, and as a pyramid, no such thing as a pyramid, just a tube, right? We want to give high-value services to our clients. What AI does for us, it means we aren't disadvantaged because of the lack of massive pyramids that the big firms have. In actual fact, it levels our playing field massively.
If you think about the things that I've spoken about in this business before, the reason Elixirr outperforms and has delivered such a wonderful set of results is because our quality of our service is simply better than the big brands. It has to be better because the brand power doesn't exist for us. It's growing, but it doesn't exist in the same way as it exists for the big brands. We actually have to deliver day-to-day on the ground better, and that is true for the companies we buy as much as it is for the company we are today. We all have this ethos of building fantastic quality. The other thing that is a weakness in our business potentially is market access compared to the big brands. Our acquisition strategy has been a proven tool to address that.
We've done GBP 18 million of revenue through selling to each other's clients since we initiated our acquisition strategy. It's just working fantastically well. Those two things are key. You add in the fact that AI has just eradicated the weakness of not having a huge pyramid, and we literally are built for this moment. It's really exciting. I couldn't be more enthusiastic about where we are. Em is going to spend a lot of time talking to you about how we're using AI, both with our clients, thank you, and internally. But here's some of the headline things that I just want to pull out. All of these points are covered in-depth in the rest of the presentation, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about them. The results, Nick's going to go through in a lot of detail.
Just the important thing on the results that I'd like to point out from my perspective is all three of those metrics are super important because you can't deliver on all three of those if we're not keeping our quality, we're not containing our costs, and we're not growing aggressively. What I'm super proud of is that all those things are happening, and the team have done an absolutely fantastic job of keeping all of those levers in balance. We've done that ever since we listed on the markets. Clients are everything to us. We don't exist without our clients. To grow from 27 clients last year, 27 gold clients last year to 34 this year is just testament again to the team's ability to expand and impress our clients so much so that they want to buy more and more from us.
That's just fantastic news. Just talking, and of course, the relationship thing, Graham's going to touch on a little bit later. If you talk about the global reach and the strategic acquisitions, Graham will again go through these. Just my perspective on this is every company we've bought so far, the CEO of that company or founder of that company is still with us, even after all the earnings have happened. What does that tell you? It tells you that they believed on the tin when they signed up to join us that this was a platform that could really help them scale their business and that would give them opportunities to produce a better performance for their clients. They're professionals, and they'd only stay if that was true.
To me, the really important point is the stickiness of those senior leaders when they come and join us because they see this model as a perfect model and a platform for them. Em's going to spend a lot of time talking to you about our AI engine. It's just a massive market, and you can see here the amount of projects we're doing is simply fantastic, and it's growing all the time. Every client is starting to talk to us about this. Obviously, all of you know about our Main Market listing. This is an important step for us because we want to obviously increase our liquidity, and we have this ambition of being a FTSE 250 company, and as soon as possible. It's almost inevitable that's going to happen in the next 12 to 18 months.
That's a very exciting journey for us, too. The entrepreneurial ownership of the company's supercritical platform, Plank Cornerstone, whichever word you like to use, that underpins the character with which our people turn up every day. Owners care more than people who rent things. Our employees are all owners, and this is a key characteristic. Not all, obviously. Actually, they all are, because they all have options. What I love about this is that 84% of them actually buy into the company, which is a massive testament.
If they walk in this building every day, they are critical, intelligent people, and they're not going to stand here and go, "Wow. I'm going to put my own personal income on the line to invest in a company that I don't believe has got a stellar future." That's a huge testament to the delivery of the team. In the six years now we've been a listed company, we've heard a number of things from investors repeatedly, which we've been slowly trying to help people understand why these concerns are not real concerns.
On the face of it, they look like concerns. If you look at what underpins this business and how it's been built, almost every single one of them is actually a strength to us. I've spoken about AI already. The one thing I haven't mentioned, and I won't steal Em here, because she's going to go into this in a lot of detail, but this is a massively growing market. Estimates are that it's a GBP 13.8 billion consulting market today, and it's going to go to GBP 73.1 billion in 2033. That's 27% CAGR in and of itself in one service line, if you like. We're so well positioned for this. Our acquisitions of iOLAP, the data and analytics, and Responsum that Graham led have been truly transformative for us in that regard. We are so well positioned. It's unbelievably good. People.
The people walk in and out the door every day, and what happens if they don't turn up tomorrow? I don't actually know a business that's not a people business. Even technology businesses rely on people. It's an interesting observation. The thing that we've built here is a real stickiness around ownership. You look at how this is performing in the market. My partners are increasing their revenue. You can see again this year. I think when we listed it was around GBP 2.5, Nick, GBP 2.7 per partner. It's now GBP 4.4.
Just shows how the combination of giving people ownership alongside giving them more things to offer to their clients of high quality gives you the kind of growth that you need from the performance at the partner level. Acquisitions add execution risk. I think we've proved that through our acquisitions, we're actually growing our business in a very balanced way. I think it's 34% this year on the previous slide. Of that, around 15% of which is organic.
The balance is inorganic, and we're getting that balance right. I think I've always said investors can expect somewhere between 10%-20% organic growth, and that again in inorganic. The combination gives us what we've been delivering since we IPO'd. We've been able to prove integration. You can see the GBP 80 million number I referenced earlier, as well as this year alone, GBP 37 million. That's 25% of our revenue that we would not have got if we didn't have this model. Because we could only sell to those clients because they're part of our group structure now. So it's fantastic. It's really great to see this whole thing coming together, as I said in my introduction. Just a quick touch on the market quality.
Since the main board listing, we've seen 400% growth in daily average value traded and a 71% reduction in bid-ask spreads. The cost of trading is going down for our stock, and of course, the liquidity is improving. As we get bigger, as more people recognize us as a quality stock, that's only going to improve. Dilution, a constant concern from investors. Guess what? I'm still the biggest shareholder. Constant concern from me. I will do anything in my power not to dilute. I only dilute for things that add value to this company. You can see there, we've managed this very carefully. Three times equity value growth since IPO with only 11% dilution. Nick will go into a lot of detail on this. Again, just referencing my employees are buying into this business, hand over fist. Revenues are too project driven. Well, yes, it's true.
Our revenues are project driven. Like any business that is about value, it's the quality of the relationship and the value you deliver every day. You can see that our top 10 clients have been with us eight and a half years. This isn't a trivial statistic. This is because they trust us, they value our opinions, and we've delivered quality for all of that period. As you can see, we make good margins. They respect us enough to pay us what we deserve and allow us to make our margins because we create value for them. Graham will go into a lot more detail on this, so I won't dwell on this. You can see a number of other statistics on there. I think I'd like to now hand over to Nick to give you a bit more detail on the financial performance. Please take it away, Nick.
Thanks, Steve. Good morning, everyone. Just before I present the numbers for FY 2025, just to put this into context, this is our track record in the six years since IPO. I think we are presenting today an excellent set of financial results. Actually, this is an excellent set of financial results in the context really of what we've done every year. If you look at the years since 2020, 38% revenue CAGR, 35% EBITDA CAGR, 30% average EBITDA margin, and very close to that number this year. We've delivered that growth through the same four-pillar growth strategy that we've had since our AIM IPO in 2020. Stretching partners, driving up the revenue per partner, promoting principals into the partner team, and hiring partners from outside the firm, and the acquisition strategy that Steve's already mentioned. Turning now to the numbers for FY 2025.
Revenue almost GBP 150 million, GBP 149.6 million, up 34%. Gross profit up 39%, adjusted EBITDA GBP 44.3 million, up 42%, and our adjusted EBITDA margin of 29.6%. That's up 1.6 percentage points on the previous year. Adjusted profit before tax followed in similar proportions, up 38%. This obviously reflects the impact of interest now that we have our debt facility that we funded the TRC acquisition. Adjusted diluted EPS up 36%, following closely the increase in EBITDA and adjusted profit before tax, just reflecting a slightly higher share count given the shares that we issued for the TRC consideration. We are pleased today in our results to be able to announce our final dividend for FY 2025, which will result in a total dividend for FY 2025 of GBP 0.226 . That's up 27% year-on-year.
It's the financial results that have enabled us to increase the dividend by that amount, and that's without any reduction in dividend cover. Our dividend cover as a proportion of adjusted profit after tax. Adjusted profit after tax covers that dividend 2.8x , a slightly higher dividend cover than the previous year. The business continues to be very cash generative. Free cash flow just higher than GBP 31 million. That's up 11% on the previous year. Not quite as big an increase as the profit metrics, given the very strong working capital performance that we had in the prior year. Turning to revenue in a little bit more detail. This bridge is the bridge we give each year just to explain the different components of our move in revenue. Overall, the increase year- on- year was GBP 111 million to almost GBP 150 million.
Then the first three elements of the chart are our organic elements. We always have some projects and programs of work with clients coming to an end, and that's the GBP -14 million you see on there. That's matched by depth and additional work sold to existing clients we had in the previous year, which is GBP 14.5 million, and new clients almost GBP 17 million there. The net of those three first bars is 15% organic growth, and that organic growth actually also includes the absorption of the weakening of the U.S. dollar during the year. The U.S. dollar weakened about 3% during FY 2025. That had about a -2% impact on group revenue. On a constant currency basis, that organic revenue growth would have been about 17%.
Then added to that organic position, a GBP 21 million contribution for revenue from the full year impact of Hypothesis acquired in late October 2024 and the 3.5 months contribution from TRC that we acquired in September 2025. I mentioned the four-pillar growth strategy. It's the same strategy we've had since IPO, and it's a strategy that is working for us and we've got no intention of changing it. You see there on the right-hand side the impact of stretching partners, giving partners more to sell as we do our acquisitions. Having partners very incentivized through our equity incentive model that they work harder and they deliver. They've delivered more revenue each year per partner. You see in the year, we increased revenue per partner from GBP 4.1 million in 2024 to GBP 4.4 million in 2025, and that's with 34 average client-facing partners in FY 2025.
That's an average number. Obviously, our partner numbers now are higher than that given the full year impact of TRC and additional partners that we've hired in early 2026. We have more than 40 client-facing partners today. We've also promoted principals to the partnership. We promoted three during the year, and we've got two more, both of them in the data and AI space, being promoted this month in April 2026. We hired five new partners, two last year, three in early 2026, providing expertise across a lot of the core service lines that are really in demand at the moment, AI, ERP, financial services. Acquisitions, Graham will talk in more detail of those, but obviously we did the TRC acquisition during the period, and Kvadrant early in 2026. Cash generation.
This continues, as a finance person, to be my favorite part of the financial results of our business. We closed the year with moving into a net debt position of GBP 24 million from a cash position of GBP 7.5 million in FY 2024. Our operating cash flow continues to be strong, GBP 33 million. That translates into GBP 31 million of free cash flow. We spent all of that money and slightly more on acquisitions. The large part of that was the TRC acquisition of the year, which accounted for GBP 29 million cash outflow. We bought EBT share purchases. EBT share purchases total GBP 13.7 million. That's the bulk of that GBP 15 million bar you see in the middle. That number is higher than normal. We had restricted share awards last year, which was a one-off purchase associated with board transition.
Normalizing for that and the GBP 1 million increase in EBT share stocks that we had over the year normalizes that number to about GBP 8 million as a net purchase number in the year. We paid GBP 8 million in cash dividends, and that number will be about GBP 11 million given the dividends we've just announced for FY 2025. We closed the year with GBP 24 million of net debt. We continue to have a lot of leverage. We have GBP 80 million of debt facilities. With an EBITDA number last year of GBP 42 million, that leverage level is only about 0.6x. We're very comfortable with the leverage that we have available to us, and our ability to service that. From a balance sheet perspective, just a couple of key numbers rather than go through the entire slide.
Obviously, the intangible assets went up given the acquisition of TRC in the year. Trade and other receivables also went up, given the increase in size of the business organically and also the addition of TRC. As I said in previous years, we have blue-chip clients. We have no concerns with our recoverability of our trade debtors, and our debtor days were in line with expectations. The vast bulk of those trade debtors for last year would have been collected some time ago now. Contingent consideration. We now have at year-end GBP 42 million of contingent consideration on the balance sheet. We've paid almost all of the earn-outs for acquisitions prior to TRC. There's just GBP 2 million left for previous acquisitions.
There's GBP 40 million on the balance sheet for TRC. About GBP 22 million of that will be paid this year for their top-up, given their strong performance in FY 2025, and the balance is the earn-out to be earned over three years from now. Obviously, there is Kvadrant, about GBP 5 million of contingent consideration that's not in these numbers that will be in the FY 2026 balance sheet. Then loans and borrowings. If you strip out the capitalized office leases from that number, we had GBP 29 million borrowed on our debt facilities at year-end and GBP 24 million of net debt. Now I'll hand over to Em, who's going to start the business review by talking about AI.
Thanks, Nick. FY 2025 was very much a year where we brought our very intentional AI operating model to life, and it's really exciting to share with you how we have done that. Ever since our inception, we have been senior-led, we have been outcomes-focused for our clients, and we have not had a traditional consulting pyramid. That means that we have been able to be dynamic and to really embrace AI into how we work internally, how we deliver consulting work, and how we create AI outcomes for clients. I wanted to start by talking you through our AI-enabled operating model. As Stephen said earlier, our acquisitions of iOLAP and Responsum, bringing data technology and AI capabilities into our firm was not accidental. This was an intentional build towards a future of the technology of tomorrow, which is now the technology of today.
Our AI-enabled operating model is built on that foundation. To start with the data and core technology foundation on which we are built, we have taken all of the data we have in our various core technology systems, and we have created an AI operating model around them. They feed an intentional build of a number of layers of AI enablements that we are using within our organization internally and also in how we deliver work and with clients. That foundational technology layer, it includes a proposals repository and client work that we've been doing for 17 years. Taking all of that data into our knowledge and IP layer, we are able to orchestrate that together and to enable our AI strategy, in a way that has been built using proprietary IP.
Our capabilities from Responsum, from iOLAP in data technology, AI, and large language models has enabled us to create this intentional orchestration layer, which powers the rest of the platform. We have a number of internal AI agents that are running on Elixirr's agent platform. These are things that help us go to market quicker. For example, we can create proposals through these platforms, or also to contract with clients quicker. We can create statements of work for our clients to create contracts. We also have the capability of creating new agents to do new things that we find useful within the organization. On top of the agent platform, we also have a number of external AI solutions and tools. These are the best-of-breed external tools that are out there, which are orchestrated in an enterprise secure way.
We can use things like Gamma, like Lovable, like Codex. First, to create internal documentation. Second, to create those proposals in a compelling way for our clients. Third, to create tools that help us to deliver consulting work. For example, the AI discovery platform, which allows us to synthesize insights during the discovery phases of pieces of work for our clients in a far quicker way that brings increased quality and enables us to bring more human judgment and expertise to the client's puzzle. Now, none of this is layered on top of each other tactically. It is a big system, and that system comes to life by wrapping our people and enabling them around all of these tools and these platforms.
Making sure that our people are well trained, that we have great governance guardrails in place that enable them to really use the full power of these tools in a really safe way. That is the secret sauce, almost, around all of this intelligence, all of this data, and all of this tooling. This system also enables our three-pillar AI strategy. We are growing the business through AI, we are delivering work through AI, and it enables us to create a scalable platform through which we can continue to drive our growth. All of this, as I said at the beginning, has been very intentional. This has been the result of 10+ years of intentional build towards having a best-of-breed AI-enabled operating model. What does this actually mean in practice?
Well, we're already seeing an over 80% decrease in the amount of time it takes for us to create proposals. We've reduced turnaround time from three to five days to just 3-4 hours. That's really important because it means we can get out to our clients quicker with our ideas of how we can support them. We're also seeing a 40% effective capacity increase for teams that are using AI-native workflows, and also a 2x-5 x acceleration in targeted workflows. For example, in that research and analysis phase of client projects. One very personal example from myself was the way that I was able to use this toolkit in order to create a client microsite on a Sunday afternoon.
I had an important meeting coming up with the CEO of a large client, and I wanted to really bring to life how we could help them in a way that was engaging and interactive. Using this tool set, I was empowered to code a very quick microsite, which had a lot of impact in that meeting, and we were able to bring the idea to execution in just under 24 hours.
Why didn't you name yourself?
I don't know. I think it was a secret. I have now. AI is also our fastest growing growth engine in terms of the work that we're doing with clients. We've seen an increase in the amount of AI projects that we are doing with clients, and we've seen that increase by 138% from FY 2024, where we did 29 projects, to FY 2026, where we did 69 projects. That has translated into an increase in AI-related revenue growth by 260% in FY 2025. A couple of examples on this slide to talk to you about, one is with a major European bank where we've unlocked GBP 200 million of benefits to be realized over the next 10 years. We've done that by creating an AI-enabled product development life cycle.
Where it used to take this bank 18 months to bring products to market with their clients, for example, new technology apps for their clients, it's now taking just two to six weeks, and this has also created an 18% cost reduction in their technology spend. Very significant outcomes for this major European bank. The second is a global media and entertainment conglomerate where it used to take them 180+ hours a week to surface insights from their customer base on what media and entertainment products were working the best in their target market. We've now saved that time by creating an AI-enabled insights and product development engine.
This now means that it takes less than 48 hours to take real-time client insight for this media company to interrogate it, to understand it, and to act on it, which has created 40% faster delivery on new entertainment concepts to their clients. You can see that we are working with some of the best of breed logos within their industries in the region of AI. I'll now hand over to Graham, who is going to talk to you about our acquisitions.
Thank you, Em. Hello, everyone. Just to give you a reminder of our acquisition strategy before we dive into the two latest ones. We're looking at companies that can really diversify us, through either industry capability or geography. That all flows through to the GBP 80 million of cross-sell revenue that Steve referenced since IPO, and I'll take you through how that's played out in numbers across those three areas next. We're looking for board-level issues, so companies who excel in helping us to deal with C-level conversations through the capabilities that they bring with them. We also kind of think about this in a programmatic way, so one or two acquisitions a year that can kind of add 10%-20% of enterprise value.
We found from experience now, but from research initially, that that's a better strategy than doing tons of small deals or a humongous deal that could really affect the culture that we're creating. Importantly, they have to be high quality. We're very, I'd say, diligent in our due diligence, if that makes sense, because we don't want to dilute what we have. I'll show you what our clients think of us in a second, because we have just done a recent client survey, but that's incredibly important. TRC Advisory, they joined us in September last year. It's our largest acquisition to date. They came with about $36 million of revenue and $17.5 million of EBITDA. We agreed a deal where we essentially paid 4x multiple of EBITDA upfront, and with performance over three years, so they have profit and revenue targets over three years.
Each year, we want them to grow 25%. If they do that, it becomes a 6.8 multiple. However, if they do achieve that, the effective multiple, once you factor in that growth and where we will be in three years, will be much, much less than that. Happy with the shape of the deal. Really, really happy with the outcome so far. They have a great reputation with their clients. You can see some of them there, particularly strong in industrials and manufacturing, multi-billion-dollar businesses with C-level access at all of them. They have a 90% client retention rate over the last 10 years, so they obviously are doing great work, which we are used to. Their clients typically report that they get a 25x return on investment on their fees, which is fantastic.
What's really nice is they've been with us for, well, six months or so now. We're already working together. You can see in the bottom left just a quick example where we're working together on a performance chemical producer, and we've already identified and are delivering together $15 million of benefits over the next two years. Outside of last year, but in this period, in Q1, we announced Kvadrant, which is a Copenhagen-based strategy firm. They focus on commercial transformation, go-to-market excellence, transaction services. You can see on the left-hand side there for TRC, a similar capability set, but they are different enough that together they are one plus one equals three, and we're seeing that already. Strategically, a really important deal for us as well, albeit smaller than TRC. It gave us that European foothold we've been talking about.
Nordic is a fantastic consulting industry, very culturally aligned to where we are as well, so it's been a seamless transition in that respect. Them and TRC together can help with each other's client set with the people they have because they have a similar kind of strategy and growth skill set, which is working really well. They came with more than GBP 6 million of revenue, over GBP 2 million of EBITDA. The deal we had with them was a 5.4x day one multiple, and over three years, that goes up to 7.5. As I say, if they get their growth targets, the effective multiple is much less than that. They are across multiple industries, and you can see some of the household names they have there.
We're talking to them now about how we expand the services they do so that we can do more of the execution to the strategies that they're coming up with. Been with us two or three months now, it's already working. In the bottom right, we've already got them into one of our most important clients, and we're working with them to deliver the strategy and then the execution of those findings. It's going really well. I think this acquisition strategy is really allowing us to continually diversify, which I'll take you through now. I think we first spoke about this a couple of years ago, and we've updated it just to show a consulting market grows in good times and bad times. It grows 7% per annum on average, and it has done that for the last 15 or 20 years.
What the diversification strategy we have across capability, geography, and industry means is that we can lean into that growth or efficiency, depending on what it is our clients are focusing on. We start at the top of the house, and then, as I've said, and as Em's spoken you through, we then flow through to what does this mean for AI, for data, for tech, and we can really be their long-term trusted partner, really giving that kind of end-to-end service. The top row there, you can see the numbers, obviously, our revenue growth from GBP 30 to nearly GBP 150. First of all, capability, you'll notice that AI has popped up in the last couple of years, and that's our fastest-growing capability.
You can see that consulting has increased, and that's because of the strategy-led consulting we're doing, execution, C-suite advisory, and almost everyone, if not everyone, has an AI aspect to it. Even though it might say consulting, much of it is working out what to do in AI, and then what they do in AI is where we get that AI-specific revenue. I think it's important to know that. I just want to take consulting as an example. You can see they're 87% in FY 2020 and 67% in FY 2025. Yes, the percentage has gone down, but when you multiply that through to the revenue, that's GBP 26 million has gone to GBP 100 million. Yes, we're less reliant on it, but we've still quadrupled it in that time. Likewise, for geography, we've made a concerted effort for the U.S., which is the world's biggest consulting market.
I think five of our last acquisitions have been U.S.-based. We've deliberately focused there. You can see in FY 2020, 33% was U.K. and 22% last year. Again, if you do the math, that's GBP 10 million-GBP 33 million, so we've still more than tripled that revenue from the U.K. Obviously the U.S. now is at 63% following the acquisitions of TRC. Then from an industry point of view, same story. FY 2020, we were 80% FS and insurance. Last year we were 39%, so that's GBP 24 million-GBP 58 million. Again, that's gone up 2.5x . We're less reliant on it. We're far more diversified, and we can roll with ups and downs in different industries, geographies, and capabilities because of the strategy, which we're very happy with and is working well. That diversification also flows through to our client concentration.
Thinking about gold clients, which is GBP 1 million plus of revenue. In FY 2024, that was 27. Last year, that was 34. If I think about GBP 2 million clients, double gold clients, if you like, that's gone from 13 in FY 2024 to 20 last year. We've already got 18 gold clients this year in terms of GBP 1 million pluses of revenue. That is also going very well this year. You can see if you look at kind of on the left, the table, our top 10 clients actually span seven different industries, and they're across all of our key geographies. It kind of plays out the previous page in terms of client specifics, if you like. Again, it's just proving to be a winning strategy.
On the top right graph there, you can see the dotted line was the year of IPO, 80% top 10 client concentration. That was 42% last year. You can see how that's a much more sustainable and healthy tail-off, if you like, into the other 250-odd clients that we've got. If you look at the gold clients, so the 34 that we have, they have an average of six years and three months with us. Obviously, as we buy businesses, they come with clients as well, and some of those clients have been with them, with that business we bought for a while. If you collate all that together with our own original ones, if you like, from a consulting perspective, that's a really healthy and deep relationships we have there. I think one of my favorite stats is that second bullet point there that Steve mentioned before.
The top 10 have an average of 8.5 years with the group, which is brilliant. If you look at the following bullet there, if you look at the gold clients again, not only have we increased them by 26%, but we're averaging 9.5 projects per account, and those projects will span all of the different capabilities. They could be AI, could be data tech, or could be strategy, could be breakthrough projects, could be research. We're getting a really healthy mix, and we've got a big focus on our gold clients this year. In fact, we've taken one of our senior partners, Eric Rich, and we've told him just to focus on helping cross-sell and open out gold accounts so that we get all the capabilities that we do in front of them, and we can piece them together in really nice ways.
That's what's flown through to the growth in our high-value accounts, which I mentioned. What do they think about us? Is probably quite an important question. Pre-IPO, we had an independent client survey. That was something that we've spoken about a couple of times, probably a few years ago, and we thought it was about time that we updated that, so we got the survey done again. You can see the results on the left there in the table. I would say that at IPO, there were three things that our clients told us that we were maybe lagging slightly to our competition. That was technical capability, reputation, and marketing. You can see from the results on the left there, we've really dealt with technical capability through the acquisition strategy. You can see our clients have responded and think we're better than the competition there.
Reputation, I think there's been a mix of things. The acquisitions we've done, the IPO, move to main market, being a leader in AI, all the marketing that we're doing, all of that helps with our reputation, and you can see now that they think that we have a better reputation than some of the biggest names on the planet in the consulting space. Marketing, we're still slightly behind. To be honest, I think I'd probably expect that. They have marketing budgets that are multiples of our revenue. One day we will be there. That'll help us close that gap, but it's certainly a smaller gap than it was. You can see that our clients think that we're differentiated, we're higher quality to competitors. You can see who they think that our competitors are on the right. Again, so some "big names" there globally.
What I like is our clients rate us at 8.3 out of 10 overall. You can see all the individual ratings there across the 12 or 14 different areas we asked them about. Overall, we were 8.3 out of 10, and that compares to an average of 6.7 out of 10 for the names you see there. That collates to 25% better. Some of the things that were repeatable comments made to us, top right. These percentages are the percentages of our clients who referenced this point. 72% referenced the high caliber of talent, and the seniority of the teams. Again, going to that pyramid and what I kind of talk about as school buses of analysts waiting outside to come in the door, that's not us. 67% talk about being collaborative and agile and partnerial.
63% talk about that we're attuned and highly adaptable to client needs. We're not rigid, and we're not saying, "Well, statement of work says no, so sorry." We work with our clients and try and work it out. 61% say that we're value-focused and commercially-minded. I think, we're perceived as being amongst the world's best, albeit 25% better, and I think why is that? Much of that is down to our people and down to our ownership structure, and Nick's going to talk you through that now and how important that is.
Thanks, Graham. Yes, as Graham says, it's down to people, but we are incredibly popular for applicants. You see the stats there on the left-hand side, and we might be a firm now with over 700 people. We had 35,000 applications last year for roles, and that's more than 400 applicants per role. The sort of work, our reputation with people looking to work in this industry and the way we're using AI, the way we have the culture of ownership is proving very attractive to people who want to join us.
That culture of ownership that we talked about with 84% participation from our consulting team in our optional ESPP program, where it's their choice to join, as well as 100% participation in our share option program, which really makes a difference in terms of how our people show up, go the extra mile for their clients and are really thinking, they're thinking truly as owners of the business, not like employees who are showing up just to earn the day's wage. If we come to the next slide, I can talk you through just the financial implications of the dilution, and this is a question we've had over the last few years from shareholders. Obviously, given that we issued, you'll see in the Annual Report, in the results released today, we have about 30 million options issued.
The dilution as a result of the option program that we have is actually a lot less than people expect if they don't work through exactly the mechanics of how this works. We've put together a model that shows effectively all of the employee and partner option and ESPP programs that we have in place today, the current pool of those options and our employee share purchase plan, and the amounts that we would grant to new partners and new employees as we grow the firm. In this illustrative example, we grow the firm at 20%. Granting the options in the way that we do it today as we grow the firm, results in only 19% dilution by 2031, at a time where we effectively triple the equity value of the business from where it is today.
For the current shareholders, that means for current shareholders, the value, if it goes up to GBP 1.1 billion for all shareholders, it goes up to over GBP 900 million for the current shareholders, so excluding the impact of dilution. The reason that dilution is less than you might think if you just look at the headline number of options, there's really three reasons. Our employees and partners have to work very hard to earn their options. For partners, it's hitting revenue targets and profitability targets, so they are truly thinking like owners having to deliver profitability on their portfolio of work that we want to deliver overall, that adds up to what we want to deliver overall for the firm. The performance ratings for the employees have to be in the top two rankings, so you don't earn your options if you're just an average performer.
There is attrition, so employees have to work for four years and partners for five years before they can exercise any of these options. Importantly, our options are all granted at market price. These aren't nil-cost options. The employee or the partner is benefiting from the increase in share price from the time they join the firm, in the same way as our external shareholders are. It's not that they're getting any benefit from having them granted below market price. If you look back on what we've done over the last six years, we've only diluted by 11%. All of that is for acquisition. It's for the eight acquisitions that we've done. None of that is for the employee options. We continue to use cash as our strategy to offset the dilution from partner and employee options. You've seen that in the cash flow last year.
It's our intention to carry on doing that, particularly while the share price is undervalued. For us, we protect dilution very carefully because we're all shareholders, and we'd rather use cash than we would dilute for the purpose of satisfying the options. I think, just to summarize dilution, it's something we very carefully manage. We're very protective of it, and we intend to carry on doing so. Now I'll hand back to Stephen, who's going to close with the outlook.
Thank you, guys. Yeah. Again, reflecting over the weekend, having started this firm with Graham, there were many, many periods I was worried that I wouldn't be able to pay salaries. Actually, I think that feeling was in my stomach for 15 years. It's no longer there, right? The reason is momentum. We have now got to a point where this business is almost becoming an engine of growth in and of itself. It doesn't require an intervention from me or an intervention from Graham to pull a rabbit out the bag because there are now 40+ partners, as Nick mentioned, who are daily pulling rabbits out the bag. There's 750 employees who are all owners who are doing the same thing. The one thing, it's like a flywheel that's just starting to build.
As I think about it now, I'm very positive about the future because it's just, as I said at the start, we've just been built for this moment. I'd like to say by judgment rather than luck, but it's a fantastic opportunity, and we just see this in the first quarter, obviously a record first quarter. What's crazy too is we're not even through April yet, and we've got 18 gold clients already. That means we've already passed the gold status on certain clients, $1 million, GBP 1 million actually, is it?
Yeah.
GBP 1 million. Already at this stage in the year, which is incredible. Then as Em described, we're really embracing the latest technologies and we are geared for this. We are small enough to be able to make sure that the whole firm is steeped in this technology and uses it daily. If any of you understand our competition, most of those are national franchise partnerships. To get an entire brand, I won't mention any of the names, but you know all of them. To get any of those brands to be able to behave in the same way across the world using technology is a nigh on impossible task, whereas we don't have that issue. This is why we're literally positioned so well for this moment, and it's only a public company that can actually do this, really. Strategic diversification, Graham spoke about it at length.
It's what makes us so strong in this position that we're in now. I would be the first person to hold my hand up at our AIM IPO and say, "Yeah, we did have diversification weaknesses." I don't think that's the case anymore. I think that doesn't mean we're becoming complacent. In actual fact, there are many industries we need to get into still, and there are many capabilities we still need to build, and there are many geographies we still need to go after. But that weakness, if you like, or that vulnerability, let's say, is probably a better word, that we had at IPO, I don't think that exists now. This all leads to the confident outlook we have. We have a great post-period trading. Things are looking fantastic.
Yeah, we're just really excited to continue to deliver the types of results that we have since listing six years ago. I just want to close by saying thank you to all of you who are holders. Your support for our business is not unnoticed, and it's deeply valued. For those of you who are not holders, hopefully, through the research you've done on us and the presentation we've given you today, we can convince you to join us on this journey. Thanks to everyone, and I don't know if we do. We have time for questions?
That's great. Thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via Investor Dashboard. As you can see, we have received a number of questions about today's presentation. Can I please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.
Brilliant. Yeah. We will do. Thank you for submitting all of your questions. There are a fair few, so I'm not sure we're going to get through all of them, but we will certainly go through a good eight, nine or 10 if we can in the time. The first question here is, at what point in your growth trajectory does the partnership model become harder to maintain culturally, and what are you doing now to protect the culture that makes the model work as you scale? I think the main part of our culture that is the DNA and sticks everything together is the whole entrepreneurial nature that we all have. Steve and I, as you know, started the business 17 years ago, and every day we've been having that as something that makes us different. All of our people coming in are owners.
We have the equity story. While they're employees, which technically an entrepreneur isn't necessarily. What it does is it gives them that ownership, and it allows us all to grow this business together. Likewise, as we bring in new partners and new acquisitions with their leadership team, we're looking for that same culture within them. And oftentimes with the acquisitions, it kind of comes part and parcel because they are founders themselves. I think the more that we can make sure that's front and center to what we do, then I don't see that disappearing anytime soon.
If I may add to that, Graham, I think I would also say that there's a saying, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Culture isn't something that you can easily change. This is actually when I reflect on my time in Accenture, which was also a company that was a fantastic consulting brand that became public. Unfortunately, their culture was defined prior to their IPO. Their culture wasn't one of entrepreneurship. The ability for them to use the equity story and the ownership story with employees and partners wasn't embedded in culture. As a result, it hasn't actually been able to create that kind of culture because you can't change what the business is culturally.
It sort of organically emerges as a result of people hiring certain kinds of people that look and feel like them, that behave a certain way, that demonstrate certain characteristics, et cetera. The advantage we've had is we've built it from ground zero. We set the culture from the get-go by the way we've always turned up. It’s like the flywheel point I made earlier. There's a flywheel of cultural energy in the firm that is almost impossible to change now. Everyone is DNA'd that way, if you like. I think it's actually one of the real powerful things about doing this the way we've done it.
The real difficulty is it's taken 17 years, but the real advantage to you as potential shareholders in some cases and shareholders in other cases is that it's been established and others to create it are going to have to take 17 years to do it or redefine McKinsey's strategy or culture, or redefine Accenture's culture, and that's almost impossible to do. I think that's a real advantage for us, so it's a good question.
Yep, very good. Another pre-submitted question. You have articulated a three-stage journey, FTSE 250, then Unicorn, then FTSE 100. What are the two or three things that could prevent that journey from completing, and how are you managing against those risks specifically? If I start with this one. FTSE 250, the last time I looked, had an entry point of GBP 505 million market cap, depending on where our share price is. We are in the high GBP 300s or GBP 400s, so
Low GBP 400s.
Sorry. High GBP 300s or low GBP 400s. It doesn't take great math to understand that we're about 25%-30% away from that. If we grow another year like we have been, and by the way, we have been growing at over 30%, actually for the last 15 or 16 years, but particularly since IPO. You saw the numbers that Nick went through earlier. We have no intention of slowing that down from an organic and an inorganic basis. We have a great strategy for both of those.
Our gold clients are increasing. We're adding more capability to what we're doing. Growing that revenue and that EBITDA line is something that we are very focused on doing. We've had 14 earnings upgrades since we IPO'd in 2020. We will just keep doing what we're doing. Hopefully not only will the share price and our multiple keep track, but it should get back to where it is and that'll speed us up even faster.
In actual fact, Graham, if you took our multiple at IPO and applied it to our EBITDA today, we'd already be into the FTSE 250.
Exactly.
It only takes a re-rating or markets to correct, and we're there already. As Graham says, look, we're just going to continue to do our organic growth and our inorganic growth, and that'll get us there eventually anyway, regardless of the rating.
Yeah. We'll just keep going. As I say, unicorn is obviously GBP 1 billion, and I think last time I looked, FTSE 100 was around GBP 3 billion -GBP 3.5 billion. It's always good to have those as targets for us and the team, and that's what we're going to be aiming towards. Maybe I'll read this question out, given it's here. I'll be happy to be emcee. One for you on AI. What is the ambition for the head of AI engineering function? Is Elixirr building proprietary tools that change the revenue model from pure consulting towards something with a technology or recurring component?
Have you just changed Em's title? Head of AI Engineering? She's certainly the AI expert.
No, definitely not that. We do have a fabulous Head of AI Engineering, and together with our AI engineering team and also with our co-heads of AI within the organization, our consulting experts in this space, we're using all of those capabilities internally and externally. Internally we have our three pillar growth strategy. We're using that AI engineering capability to help us grow, to help us deliver, and to help us scale using AI. Examples of the growth work that they're doing, those AI engineers created our proposal generator, which helps us get proposals out to clients within a matter of hours as opposed to a matter of days, which is what it took previously. The AI engineers are also building tooling that help us deliver client work.
These are agents and tools that our consultants can use in the way that they, for example, synthesize client insights at a discovery phase of a piece of client work and play them back to the clients and help us as partners sit with the client and interrogate those insights in a very live way. Our AI engineers are also building delivery tooling. They're also helping us to become more operationally efficient in some internal workflows, and that helps us to scale over time. Externally, those same AI engineers, their capabilities are being used to help our clients solve those sorts of puzzles.
Our clients may well have similar AI strategies in terms of how they grow their business, deliver their work or their products, and scale their own businesses. Those same AI engineers are also facing externally into the market to add that same value to our clients. The ambition for the Head of AI Engineering, all our AI engineers and consultants, is that they can have dual value to us as a firm and also to our clients.
Thank you, Em. This looks like one for you, Nick. Howard Q. is asking, "How do you think about return on invested capital in acquisitions? I assume that many of these acquisitions, TRC and Kvadrant, are highly accretive from an ROIC excluding goodwill basis, but when including goodwill is around circa 20%?
Thanks for that question, Howard. Yes, for the initial consideration, and if I talk about TRC as an example, because that's the largest acquisition we've done, the goodwill is all tax-deductible in the U.S. Effectively, it's on a post-tax basis, the investment cost is only about 75% of the amount you see disclosed in the accounts. If I look at FY 2025 earnings, the return on invested capital is about 19% on a post-tax basis.
The important thing is how we structure these acquisitions. To get the maximum consideration for the target, the sellers of the company have to deliver 25% compound growth, typically in EBITDA numbers. The EBITDA has to double over the three years to get all of the consideration. If that happens, and all of that earn-out is earned, the return on invested capital increases to about 27% in the case of TRC. From our point of view, that's a very good return and one that's accretive to our shareholders.
Thanks, Nick. I'm just conscious we're getting to the top of the hour, so let's probably do two or three more questions. Nick, I'll stay with you. Alan C. is asking, "If one excluded acquisitions, I believe there is a slight first half weighting to the underlying numbers each year. Is that correct? And what causes that to be the case?
Alan, there can be. The reason why it would happen is that December is the lowest revenue month typically because of holidays and, to a lesser extent, August as well. You can see that bump in the first half. If I look over the last four years, we've averaged roughly 50%/50% in H1 and H2 over the four years. It's always typically been within sort of 49%/51% range for the two halves.
Perfect. Howard Q. again is asking, "It's increasingly frustrating from how the market values Elixirr growing at 30% while maintaining margins, M&A accretive to ROIC and future compounding of organic growth, yet we're valued." I like the use of the word we're. "Valued at low double digits FY 2026 P/E multiple with effectively low CapEx requirements and high cash conversion. What do you think investors are really missing in the Elixirr story?" Maybe I'll start with that one. It is frustrating. There's no one more frustrated than this table. I can guarantee you that. Personally, I think investors or the market, I should say, have kind of bundled up Elixirr in the whole AI is going to kill consulting. You've heard, hopefully quite clearly from how we've spoken about it today, there are parts of consulting, yes, that will get killed, and that is the bottom of the pyramid.
I was thinking. The bottom two ends.
The bottom two ends. We still need something there, yeah.
Sure. Yeah. It's the overhang, if you like.
If you think about an Accenture, they're 125-150 employees per partner. We're about 12-15 employees per partner. We do not have that massive pyramid, which at the bottom, AI is disrupting big time. We are using AI as a competitive advantage because it's leveled the playing field, like we said earlier. I think this, actually, we've had investors over the past 24, 48 hours tell us that we have articulated how AI is an advantage for Elixirr. Hopefully, you guys have seen that over the past hour or so. That is the start of the change of the narrative, and we will continue to be beating that drum.
I may add one other thing, Graham. If I may. You're spot on about AI as an opportunity for us. I also think that what the market's not recognizing is truly the point we made earlier about culture. The fact that we are all turning up and we're sitting here in one of our rooms called Founders, and in and out this lift are walking our employees, and all of them own a piece of this business. They all walk and act like it every single day.
If you own something, if you own your house, you care about it more than if you rent your house. It's just a fact. Everyone here has that ownership mentality, and it's that small thing that makes us turn up with our clients in a different way. It's those small things that add the real value because it's that extra, the desire to take the call on a Saturday afternoon when you're watching your son play rugby on the side of the field from your client who needs something urgently. Clients want that, right? It's that extra bit, that mile you go that causes clients to choose us over someone else. You use AI to deliver a proposal faster than anyone else because you've got that tooling built from our AI engineers. That impresses clients.
It's all these little things that cause you to stand out as a consulting firm. You've all had services. I bet you all buy services. It's the person that gives you the premium service that you go back to, and then you trust them, and then you build that relationship. That's how this game works. What investors are missing slightly is that as a powerful economic force within the company that really will drive growth and does constantly drive growth and has done, as you all have seen for the six years we've been a listed company.
Okay, final question, given the time, and just to reemphasize that any questions you've submitted, and thank you for doing that, we will answer outside of this. I think it'll be printed up and somehow released to you guys, so you will get answers. Steve, why don't we finish with you and maybe stay with AI, given that's been spoken about a lot. Can you speak to any areas or types of work where you're admittedly seeing some volume or pricing impediment from AI-related influence?
Yeah.
That's from Hamish A., by the way.
Okay. Again, I think this is a slight misunderstanding as to how consulting businesses and high-value consulting businesses make their margin. I mentioned when I answered around the culture point, our clients buy us because they trust us and if all of a sudden, actually, there's a great example in the presentation that Em gave, where for a European bank, we found an opportunity to save them GBP 200 million. If we had agreed upfront to charge that client 25% of what we found as savings, I can guarantee you now that that client would, in the moment of trying to give us $50 million in that case, I think it was, they would wholeheartedly resist giving us that $50 million because they know it would've only cost us $1 million to deliver $200 million of savings.
The point here is that we cannot fleece our clients because our clients, we want that ongoing relationship with that European bank, and it's more valuable to the firm to do that than to gouge a client for a one-off opportunity. AI is not that one-off opportunity. If we suddenly get an opportunity to produce a 50% EBITDA, our clients would not appreciate that. I believe, because I've been in this industry as long as I have, and you guys can do your research, there isn't another consulting firm that delivers a 30% EBITDA consistently like we do. In actual fact, there was one we discovered, and we bought them. They were TRC. It's very seldom you do that. Why? Because there's an expectation of clients. They don't mind you making good margins like we do, but they expect a certain level of service.
They expect a certain level of trust. They expect a certain level of transparency. These things all, in sum, over time, produce a longevity of relationship and a trust and an understanding that you're a company that is allowed to earn your margins because you deliver high quality, you're trustworthy, you don't try to gouge me, you add value to my business. If you add more value than you cost me, you let me take that value. It's a very important thing to understand is that it's not mechanistic. This thing is, it's a complex web of levers that we pull to deliver on the quality relationships we have and the longevity of the relationships we have, and we can't gouge our clients in getting there. We've got to make fair margins to them and to us.
I think given my experience in this industry, and I think our experience building this business, is that a 30% EBITDA, give or take a few percentage points either side year-on-year, is a very fair expectation we can expect our clients to pay given the quality we deliver. AI is just another way to deliver quality. Please don't think about it as, oh, suddenly you're going to become more efficient and therefore you're going to make more money. That's not how this game works. It's a very different style of business than an operational business or a product business. It's not that kind of thing. It's a relationship business that's built on trust, respect, and adding value. However you deliver it, whether you're doing it with people or with tools, they expect you to add that value. Hopefully that answers the question. Are we closing? Is that done?
We're done.
Yeah, we're a little bit over time, but thanks so much for your attention and for those of you who are holders, I think quite a lot of you on this call are actually holders, so thank you for being supportive of our business and hopefully we keep delivering to you like we have done over the last six years. We will continue to do so. Let's see where we go. We're going to hit that 250 mark. We're going to hit the unicorn mark and hit the 100 mark. Stick with us on this journey, and thanks for the support so far.
That's great. Thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session, as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.