Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the GBG first half results for fiscal year 2026. My name is Sammy, and I'll be coordinating your call today. During the presentation, you can register a question by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two on your telephone keypad to remove yourself from the question queue. I'll now hand over to your host, Dev Dhiman, to begin. CEO to begin. Please go ahead, Dev.
Good morning everyone, and welcome to the GBG results announcement for the first half of fiscal year 2026. We're pleased with the progress that we've delivered in the first half of the year. We're on track to meet our financial plan for FY 2026, and we're confident in the acceleration that we'll see in the top line growth as we enter H2 and beyond. Whilst today is a chance for us to take you through the financial results, it's also a chance for us to remind you of the impact GBG has on the world at large in how we enable safe and rewarding digital lives for genuine people everywhere.
The slide on the screen here speaks to that impact and the scale at which GBG operates, and I'm really proud at the mission that drives every one of Team GBG to show up and give more every day of the week. The statistics on this slide also serve to remind us all that the majority of the GBG business continues to perform strongly. However, we are very clear as to where the acceleration will come from from here. Eighteen months ago, you heard me talk about the need for us to focus on four foundational areas.
I'm really pleased with the progress we've made on each of these, whether that's in the way we've come together as a single global brand to remove complexity, whether that's how we've now recently signed to migrate our entire cloud to AWS to make sure we are globally aligned, whether that's the launch of GBG GO in April driving our innovation agenda, or whether that's the way we've rebalanced and reworked our entire performance frameworks for our people. We feel like a lot of the heavy lifting on these four areas are done, and therefore our attention is now firmly turning towards driving shareholder value, in particular through accelerating the top line. How will we focus on creating shareholder value? We'll focus on four key areas. The first is around protecting and growing our amazing customer base.
The second is about winning more new logos, more customers that need to work with GBG. Thirdly, we will unlock synergies in the GBG operating model. We have made some good progress on being globally aligned and removing complexity, but we think there is even more we can do, not just to drive efficiencies, but also to drive top line growth. Lastly, following a period of really hard work to get our balance sheet into a much stronger position, we will talk about how we will optimize capital allocation. In my section, I am going to focus on how we will drive revenue and unlock synergies. David will come back to talk about how we will optimize capital allocation in his section. The good news is, underneath those key pillars, there are really only three things that matter. The first is how we complete the turnaround of our Americas business.
The second is how we transition to the GBG GO platform. The third is how we evolve our operating model to better serve customers, to innovate more quickly, and to drive efficiencies that we can then redeploy into go-to-market. Let's start with, I'm sure what's on all of your minds, the Americas and where we're at with the turnaround. When I spoke to you six months ago, I talked about how we needed to strengthen the leadership team, execute the turnaround by driving productivity and focusing on metrics, evolve our commercial model away from pay-as-you-go towards subscriptions and commitments, to lead with the GBG brand and to focus our teams on long-term growth and not distract them with short-term headaches. Where are we up to? When it comes to our leadership team, in the first half of this year, we have appointed six new leaders.
It is important to stress those leaders come with deep industry experience. These are not people figuring out how to do this for the first time. Some of the measures that give us confidence that we are on pace for the turnaround, in the first half of this year, we have driven four times more new business than we did in the first half of last year. We are activating that new business more quickly. We are 28% faster in taking a deal from signature to go-live and ultimately when we start to earn revenue. In terms of our commercial model, standout progress with eight renewals in the second quarter signed with a minimum commitment, almost the first time we have done that as a business. More encouragingly, as we look ahead, 74% of our upcoming renewal pipeline contains minimum commitment that is already been socialized with the customer.
In terms of leading with the brand of GBG, you can see on the page a screenshot of the team at Money 20/20, where we showed up as one team. That was not just America's identity. It was also the GBG Loqate business showing up alongside our America's identity colleagues, really turning up as one business, as GBG. Lastly, as we focus on long-term growth, we took the decision this year to sunset a legacy platform, one that was creating significant distraction for the team and one that was never going to get our business to be a stronger underlying one, which is our complete intent as to how we focus on making decisions that drive the America's business forward. Turning now to GBG GO and our transition to a platform business.
At the end of FY 2025 in our results presentation, you saw me demonstrate the benefits of GO for our customers. Today I want to focus on the benefits of GO for GBG. We are confident that GO will increase the pace of our growth through the ability to win new customers. That momentum will build confidence in our teams and accelerate the opportunity to upgrade existing customers, driving cross-sell and up-sell. GO is an adaptive platform. It's built for what's to come. It will meet evolving customer needs and drive advocacy and also improve NRR. From a technology perspective, GO enables us to rapidly innovate, build once, and scale globally, releasing new capability to customers at the flick of a switch.
The outcomes of our focus on GO will be accelerated growth, sustainable differentiation, and a platform that unlocks efficiencies at GBG as we focus on one and not 16. Lastly, let me talk about how we will evolve and transform the GBG operating model. Really, there are three flavors to this initiative. The first is how we move to a functional organizational structure. Again, we've talked about the need for GBG to be simple and to align globally, and this is about taking that and ensuring it's embedded in our DNA. It enables us to ensure that we prioritize the key initiatives because we're now prioritizing across the whole portfolio and not by business unit or segment. Obviously, it reduces cost and duplication, which enables us to reinvest into our key initiatives, largely our go-to-market function.
The second flavor of this initiative is how we innovate at a scale that we've not done before. By investing in a GBG-wide innovation system, we will deliver on the opportunity to combine all of the assets that we have in the GBG shop to create powerful new solutions for our customers. Lastly, this is also about driving improvements in our go-to-market. As a business, the majority of our revenue comes from about 15% of our customers, and we need to focus on those customers differently and treat them as GBG customers, not as identity or location or fraud. We believe our focus in this area is a meaningful revenue accelerator. By increasing singular ownership of our largest accounts, we'll be hardwiring cross-sell into pay plans and the targets that we set to our salespeople, no longer relying on collaboration and lead sharing across teams.
What does all of that mean? It means that we are really clear on the three priorities that will make our boat GO faster. This is already turning into tangible benefits in the first half, with more to come in H2 and beyond. Let's just give some of the key highlights. Driving the Americas turnaround. Year to date, we are on pace. We've got encouraging early proof points. I've spoken about those just now. In the second half, you should expect the Americas business to return to growth by our continued focus on driving go-to-market execution and further improving some of the metrics I've spoken about. GBG GO and our transition to the platform. We launched the platform in April. We've had 18 new customer wins in the first half.
We have also integrated 200 digital identity schemes into the platform, which those 18 customers now have access to. In terms of what is ahead, we have a very strong sales pipeline, which we will execute in the second half. From a capability standpoint, next on the roadmap is our no-code release and also, really excitingly, our AI-driven insights module. Unlocking synergies in the GBG operating model. In the first half, we have signposted a move to a global functional operating model. We have already combined our product and technology teams under single leadership, and we have created and funded the GBG Innovation Lab. In the second half, we will continue the move to a functional model. The next phase is really focused on our go-to-market teams, and we will continue to find efficiencies to reinvest in our key priorities. Lastly, how we will optimize capital allocation.
After a period of really hard work in getting our balance sheet into a much stronger place, GBG is now returning to optionality in how it deploys its free cash flow. In the first half of the year, we executed GBP 35 million in share buybacks, and we completed the first acquisition of this management team with the integration of Data Tools in Australia, a business that we've worked closely with for a number of years and made huge sense strategically and financially. As we look ahead to H2, this morning, we've announced a further GBP 10 million buyback as we continue to deploy our free cash flow to drive growth and shareholder returns. With that, I'm going to pass to David to take us through the financial results.
Thank you, Dev. Hello and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I will now take you through a more detailed review of GBG's financial results for the six-month period to the 30th of September 2025. We are pleased that the results we delivered in the first half of this financial year are in line with the plan that we built for this year and represent the operational progress that we are making towards an accelerating top line. We delivered revenue of GBP 135.5 million, which represents growth of 1.8% in constant currency terms. Setting aside two short-term impacts that were fully anticipated and which I will explain more shortly, constant currency growth on an underlying basis was 4.4%. This illustrates the improving momentum that we have already generated and which underpins our confidence in delivering a similar level of revenue growth in the second half of this year.
Adjusted operating profit, also on a constant currency basis, increased 4.6% to GBP 29.5 million, reflecting our continuing cost control and profit margin control. Cash conversion remained strong at 85.8%, leading to a net debt to EBITDA ratio that remained below one times at GBP 66.6 million. Demonstrating the board's confidence in our plan, we have in FY 2026 already before today committed a total of GBP 46 million in shareholder returns. As Dev has already outlined, we have today announced a further GBP 10 million of share buyback. I can confirm that we are today reiterating our financial outlook for the full year, which is in line with consensus. Let me provide an overview of the income statement here presented on an adjusted basis with the statutory format included as an appendix to this presentation.
The headline is that we have maintained our strong control of margin, while at the same time we have recycled cost savings from our ongoing transformation to a single global platform business into our growth-focused priorities, specifically for our largest segment of identity. On a reported basis, revenue declined by 1% to GBP 135.5 million, but in constant currency terms, increased by 1.8%. Our gross profit margin improved by 40 basis points over the prior year as we continue to focus on pricing as well as disciplined management of our data and cloud hosting costs. Adjusted operating expenses reduced by 1.5%. This too was impacted by FX translation. On a constant currency basis, operating expenses increased by just 1.1%. That led to an adjusted operating profit of GBP 29.5 million, which represents an increase over the prior year of 4.6% in constant currency terms.
As expected, our net finance cost decreased over the prior year as a result of the lower average level of net debt. On tax, our effective adjusted tax rate for the period was 23%, which is a little lower than the 25% that we still expect for the full year due to accounting timing differences. As a result of the combination of the growth in adjusted operating profit, the reducing finance costs and tax charge, adjusted diluted earnings per share increased by 12.6% over the same period last year. As I said in my last presentation of our FY 2025 full year results, we planned to continue with our business transformation initiatives, and the costs associated with a few of the larger discrete items have been recognized as exceptional costs.
These included the costs incurred in the period on our business systems unification and data insights projects, as well as the costs of our move from AIM to the main market. The total cost recognized in the first half was GBP 3.6 million. Across the next two slides, I have more detail and analysis to explain the key dynamics behind our revenue performance. As I have already said, on a reported basis, revenue declined by 1% to GBP 135.5 million, but in constant currency terms, increased by 1.8%. That 1.8% was impacted by two short-term factors that we feel have somewhat masked the progress we have made in building greater momentum. The first of those two factors is the fully expected impact of high project-driven transaction volumes for Santander U.K in the first half of FY 2025.
The second is a decision we have taken to retire one of our legacy technology platforms as part of the Americas turnaround. As you can see from the bridge chart on this slide, without those impacts that both relate to our identity segment, the underlying growth in the period was 4.4%. We feel it is important to share this sign that we have generated improved revenue momentum and also, most importantly, because delivery of our plan for the full year assumes that we will continue to grow at approximately this same rate in H2, when there is no headwind from the Santander volumes and the headwind from the platform retirement is much smaller.
My last comment on this slide is that we continue to enjoy a high proportion of repeatable revenue at 95% of our total, and we have a clear focus, as you have already heard from Dev, on increasing the 54% of that which comprises subscription revenues. We now move to our rolling 12-month metrics and a reminder that these cover our two core segments of identity and location, covering 93% of the total group revenue. Global fraud solutions, our smallest segment, is excluded. It is pleasing to see the strong growth from new logo wins with this increasing to 4.1% for the last 12 months. This was assisted by a couple of larger wins with enterprise customers in the location segment.
We continue to see opportunity for us to maintain a growth rate of 3%-4% from this vector, particularly as we make progress in closing the strong sales pipeline we have for GBG GO. Net revenue retention at the 30th of September was a little lower at 97.8%, but this was impacted by the short-term factors that I have already mentioned and which affected our identity growth rate. Excluding these, the trend for net revenue retention has been holding quite steady at around 100%. We continue to see improvement in net revenue retention as our largest opportunity for driving an overall growth rate improvement. Dev has already outlined a number of initiatives that we are prioritizing to get net revenue retention back sustainably above 100%. Moving on to how each of our reporting segments performed.
Identity, which represents 63% of total group revenue, grew 0.4% in constant currency terms and broadly maintained a consistent contribution margin. We generated strong growth in APAC and EMEA, although, of course, the EMEA growth was impacted by the unusually high Santander U.K. volumes in the prior year. While we had a small decline in revenue in Americas, we have been pleased with how the business is generally much more stabilized and growth retention has improved. The turnaround project has the highest level of focus, and the momentum we carry into H2, together with the improved sales pipeline, gives us confidence that this important component of our business will return to growth in the second half of the year. Dev has already mentioned the encouraging early signs for GBG GO.
Setting aside the two short-term factors that affected the first half and the comparative period from the last financial year, there is a trend for an improving growth rate in identity. Location, which represents 30% of total group revenue, continues to be the main growth engine for the group, with constant currency revenue growth of 4.8% in H1. That was despite some tariff-related softness in Q1. In terms of notable customer activity, we were pleased with our wins at Urban Outfitters and Alibaba and our scaled-up renewals at Shein and TalkTalk. Growth via our partner channel continues to be strong with customers like Oracle. Similarly, large enterprises like Microsoft are also recognizing the value of GBG's market-leading global addressing data for use in their own data quality processes. Finally, our smallest reporting segment of Global Fraud Solutions, which represents 7% of group.
In this business, we are continuing to see very strong customer retention and subscription renewals, including the logos included on this slide. New business and the related implementation services have been a little bit weaker than a couple of years ago, and overall, we are reporting 1.4% growth. The contribution margin from the segment has expanded considerably as a result of the strategic review undertaken last year, which has led to some material cost reduction, which allowed investment to be redirected to our highest priorities of Americas go-to-market and the continued advancement of GBG GO. Finally, before I hand back to Dev for some closing remarks, a few comments on the balance sheet and capital allocation.
As I said in our last year-end presentation back in June, with our debt leverage coming into this year comfortably below one times EBITDA, we did feel that for the first time in a while, we had a greater degree of optionality on capital allocation. We have been proactive in utilizing that optionality to drive improved shareholder value. Firstly, of course, we paid the final dividend declared in respect of the previous financial year. We have been continuing with our investments via exceptional items into our transformation initiatives and the costs of our move-up from AIM to the main market. We are confident that these initiatives will achieve strong returns for shareholders. We have also announced two share repurchase programs prior to today, the first ever in GBG's history. Those totaled GBP 35 million.
Including the GBP 10 million that we have announced today, we have committed to share repurchases totaling GBP 45 million, with GBP 17 million of this completed in the first half of the year and a further GBP 28 million now committed to be completed by the end of the financial year. Given the share prices that we have been executing these programs at, we expect that in total, we will have repurchased approximately 7% of our issued share capital, and this should drive EPS accretion on a fully annualized basis of close to 4%. Finally, we were very pleased that we were able to add the Data Tools business and team into the group. This was a financially attractive bolt-on opportunity to acquire a business that was known to us and which will add additional scale in a market where we are already seeing strong growth.
Based on these capital allocation decisions that we have taken so far this year, we still currently expect to be able to exit this financial year with a net debt to EBITDA ratio of approximately one times. With that, that concludes my section. Now back to you, Dev, for some closing remarks.
Thank you, David. Let's close out with a summary of some of the key messages you've heard today. Eighteen months ago, I said that GBG was a high-quality global business with scale, and that rings out even more truly today. I said we needed to focus on getting strong foundations in place for what was to come, and I think we've done a great job in getting that to a place where we can now turn our attention to driving acceleration of the top line.
In the first half, we've shown exactly how we will deliver effective capital allocation through the buybacks and acquiring Data Tools in Australia. What you should really take away from this is that we have a very clear strategic direction, a direction that means that our focus on Americas GO and our operating model will make the boat GO faster. We have confidence in improving growth rates, and those growth rates start to improve in the second half and beyond. Thank you all for your time, and we'll now turn to questions.
Thank you, Dev. Last question. Please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. If you're preparing to ask a question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Andrew Ripper from Panmure Liberum. Your line is open, Andrew.
Please go ahead. Yeah, good morning, everybody. I hope you can hear me okay. I've got two questions, if that's okay. First question is for Dev. You countered through quite a few KPIs there, Dev, in relation to North American identity. I wonder if you can tell us a little bit more about where you are within, where the new leadership team is making a difference, and when you referenced that new biz had been 4x the level of the previous year, how significant is that in terms of being a delta on future revenue? Thanks.
Thanks, Andrew. Sorry, we were waiting for your second one to come through at the same time, so I can take that. I think, as you said, we've seen some encouraging proof points as to where we're at with the Americas turnaround. It is one of our three key focus areas, and we're putting a huge amount of effort and energy into making sure that we are on pace, which we feel like we are. I think in terms of some of those metrics, four times more new business, not only that, we're also activating that new business more quickly. You'll all know as a SaaS business, signing a deal is great, but then actually getting the customer live is as important, if not more. We've seen encouraging progress on both of those. One of the reasons why we have won more new business kind of plays to your supporting question, which is we are focusing much more on where we win, and that's financial services, fintech, and gaming.
Almost all of that new business has come from those three verticals, and as a result, our win rate has ticked up. We've also seen in Americas where a customer has a more complex need and a larger order value, our win rate, again, increases. We're getting much more analytical with Tom now at the helm and doing some of the things that he's done in former turnaround roles that he has performed. In terms of significance, it varies. A lot of those deals will be mid-market, but a couple of those, and we've talked about PrizePicks before, are more significant in terms of their revenue add to this year.
Our next question comes from Nick Dempsey from Barclays Bank, please. Your line is open, Nick. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. I've got three if that's possible. First of all, can you give us some more color on the initiatives that you have in place to get NRR back over 100%? Do you expect to be at at least 100% in H2 2026? Second question, can you talk about the strength of your data relationships with the key credit bureau, LexisNexis, etc.? Are you confident that you will have all of the existing data built into your offerings for many years to come? Is that starting to prove a real competitive advantage for retention and new logo wins? The third question, do you have any more legacy platforms which could be in line for sunsetting, which could be a headwind at some point?
Thanks, Nick. I will maybe start with some of the color on the initiatives and then let David comment on the point around the 100%. I think the good news is that, again, I'll just refer you to three key initiatives that drive NRR. The first is Americas, which has been a laggard in terms of revenue growth and therefore NRR. I think we've spoken already to Andrew's question and in the presentation around the work we're doing there. The second is GO, which we think obviously underpins our NRR because we moved to a license model versus consumption model. Obviously, we think the opportunity to drive cross-sell and up-sell is significant. The third is our operating model. You heard me talk in the presentation around how the majority of our revenue comes from, it's effectively an 80/20 rule, 80% of our revenue from 20% of our customers.
By focusing more on those 20%, I think that's where we see a big opportunity to up-sell and cross-sell the whole breadth of GBG's solution rather than treating them as a kind of divisional customer, if that makes sense. Maybe David, you could talk about the kind of trajectory of NRR.
Morning, Nick. Thanks for the question. I think a couple of points I'll just add to Dev's commentary there. I think the other point that I think came through in the presentation we just gave was also how we're now seeing the benefit of pricing coming through. That's been a really big focus for us for the last 18 months or so. That's now much more embedded into everyday practice for our go-to-market team. That's also having an impact for us.
In terms of where do we expect it to get, we've said previously that across the medium term, we do think that NRR should be able to get back to 105%. That is our goal. That is probably a goal for a few years out. We see sort of a relatively steady improvement towards that sort of number. For the second half specifically, we will still have a bit of a headwind from the short-term factors I mentioned in the presentation. I think the combination of what we are doing, plus particularly an improvement in growth retention in the Americas, which I talked about, should see us get back to 100% even before making any adjustment for Santander.
Moving to your second question, Nick, around data relationships with bureaus or credit reporting agencies, the short answer is strong and strengthening. For example, for a couple of years now, we've been the only provider in the U.K. that has been able to have access to all three bureaus that operate here. Similarly, in ANZ, since Experian acquired Ilyin, they have now stepped into our very close commercial relationship that we previously had with Ilyin and is now with Experian. We have extended the length of that contract also in the first half. In Americas, alongside everything you've heard me talk about, there's a lot going on, and therefore we focused on the key things, but there's also work underway to drive data advantage and some early conversations with some of the people we've spoken about. I think we feel like we're in a good place. Obviously, it's my background. For many years, we've worked really closely with all three bureaus, large global bureaus, as well as LM.
It is an area where we continue to have a strong relationship and are talking about more what they could also take from us. The third question around legacy platforms. I think it is really important to remind everybody, we currently talk about having about 16. In the first half, we have taken the action to retire two. Those two were the ones that were most obvious to retire, the ones where revenue was going in the wrong direction and was not significant, but also cost was high and therefore made them really easy decisions. The next 14 will not be as easy. Nick, just to reassure you, what we are not saying is that as we retire those 14, we are going to see revenue go the wrong way. Our focus is on driving revenue growth, not shrinkage.
Therefore, we're going to be really deliberate and mindful as to how we upgrade those customers to GO over the next five to seven years. I think the good news in that is that there are operational efficiencies that therefore are not one-off, and we'll continue to see those over the midterm, and those will continue to help us drive reinvestment into our key priorities of America's GO and go-to-market.
Our next question comes from Gautam Pillai from Peel Hunt. Your line is open, Gautam. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I had a couple of questions on GO and to the comment you just mentioned, Dev. When you migrate customers to GO, what is the typical level of recurring revenue uplift you're seeing per customer? Also, beyond compliance and onboarding, what would you say are the differential capabilities of GO that kind of ensures pricing power and stickiness against competition? One more follow-up on pricing generally, especially in the US, are you seeing customers push back on pricing at all? How are the competition strategies kind of evolving from a discounting standpoint? Thank you.
I can probably have a go at both of those, and David, you can chip in. I think on GO, Gautam, just important to remember that in the first half and probably for the rest of this year, our focus is on new business. We are not launching a migration of customers across. We have offered customers on the compliance platform the opportunity to move across.
The answer to your question from a proof point standpoint is it's too early to say what the NRR uplift has been and will be. We think it's accretive to growth, but for right now, it's too early. The reason we think it's accretive to growth, though, is your second question in that, which is the differentiated capability. GO moves us away from an onboarding solution into an insights platform. When we talked in the presentation about some of the things we're doing to get our data into better shape, it's also that we can deliver more insights to customers. How is a gaming company performing in terms of its onboarding against its competitor set? What other things could we deploy into the workflow that will increase both the customer experience, making it better, but also increase the number of accepted customers and reduce fraud?
It is the analytics and the insights that we think will really differentiate us. We already have the underlying capability, so this really puts the icing on the cake is the way we think about it. On pricing, I think a little bit linked back to the question around NRR, we're not waiting for GO to drive NRR. Some of the work we've done in the second quarter, in particular in Americas, to get eight customers to renew with commitment has been driven partially through a pricing conversation. A conversation that says you've got the opportunity to defray price increases by signing up for commitment. The really good news is we have not had to give any of those eight customers a haircut on price to get them to commit.
It's the benefit of having someone that's done this for 20 years, Joe, who's joined our team to run our account management book, just driving best practice. We are also in Americas launching pricing initiatives, especially around the long tail, to see where we can see uplift. Those have not yet been launched, but they're work that's underway, and we'll update you on those as we close out the year, I'm sure, in June.
Great. Thanks so much.
Our next question comes from Kai Korschelt from Canaccord. Your line is open, Kai. Please go ahead.
That's great. Thank you. Good morning, gents. I had a couple, and just one is just to follow up on pricing, maybe more at an industry level. I mean, it seems like there are a lot of players in the identity verification space, and I think previously it has been mentioned that there's been sort of a downward trend on pricing. I am just wondering, how do you plan to avoid commoditization, I guess, if that's the right word, and offset pricing pressure? Seems like GO is an important part of it, but just sort of more general, if you had any thoughts on a midterm basis, that would be helpful. The second one was just around the capital allocation and specifically how do you weigh, I guess, doing more share buybacks versus paying down debt as you also get accretion from low-interest cost, as you've obviously shown in the half. Thank you.
Thanks, Kai. I will take the pricing one, and David, maybe you can chip in on the capital allocation. I think it's really important. It's another good example and an opportunity for me to remind everybody that the majority of our business, we have been really successful in maintaining and increasing price, be that the identity business in APAC, EMEA, or the location business worldwide. Really, where we've suffered on NRR has been Americas, and part of that has been the commercial model, which has been pay as you go. We think about pricing as a growth lever. We've demonstrated that, as I said, in most of our businesses, and we'll shortly be testing that in Americas. The ability for us to move customers to minimum commit underpins my confidence. What else underpins my confidence is the fact that the majority of our industry is pricing in that way. In Americas only, we are catching up.
The point around commoditization, I think you kind of answered your own question, Kai. GO is what we think will differentiate us, in particular the move to an insights-driven platform rather than a point-in-time tick in the box, which is never what we were, but I think that's kind of the underlying question that you have in the question that you've asked. Maybe David on capital allocation.
Yeah, good morning, Kai. I'll pick up the question on capital allocation. I think we feel good that we've got much more optionality than we've had for a few years now. I think it's been great coming into this year with a level of debt below one times. As I outlined in the presentation, the actions we've already taken and the decisions we've announced will probably mean that we exit this year at about one times EBITDA to net debt leverage, which I think we feel very comfortable with. Obviously, at the moment, very aware of where the share price is at, and particularly versus the level of interest cost that we've got on our debt. Buying back shares is attractive for us at the moment. I mentioned in my presentation that based on what we've announced in terms of share buybacks, based on our forecasting assumptions, we expect about 4% accretion to EPS on a fully annualized basis. That's pretty attractive.
At the same time, it's been great that we've been able to execute our first acquisition in a while to be able to add a relatively small bolt-on business, but actually a business that gives us a bit more scale in a market that was already enjoying good growth. We've added a business that was growing. It has got good profit margins, and we've added some very capable team members in a region that's important to us. I think it's also attractive. It's great to have sort of that full range of options around how we deploy capital. I guess the punchline is we are very focused on delivering improved returns for shareholders, and we will deploy capital in the best way to be able to do that.
Our next question comes from Julian Yates from Investec. Your line is open, Julian. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. I'd just like to dig a little bit more into the North America business versus EMEA to try and understand where we are in the upside. Do you have any color on sort of return investment metrics? What is EMEA doing in terms of revenue per sales, head revenue per account, return investment versus what North America is doing at the moment? Can North America move up to those sort of EMEA levels? Is there quite a lot of upside to go? On the flip, is it just massively underinvested in EMEA? In fact, it's going to be a cost taker for a couple of years before we see maybe sort of margins are properly to move up to that EMEA level.
Good morning, Julian. It's David. I'll have a go at answering that one for you. I think the first thing I would say is that the turnaround that we are executing in Americas actually looks very similar to the process that we went through for EMEA a couple of years ago. There are great similarities, which, to be honest, is very helpful for us. It obviously means that some of the expertise that we have in the EMEA team has been really helpful to the Americas team, as well as the new capability and stronger team that we've deployed into that region. I think there are some similarities. I think the way we think about the Americas business has been that we have had to strengthen the team that we have deployed there. We've talked about all of the actions that we've done to do that. We've also given them increased and better tools. They've got better internal tools.
They've got better support from the enabling functions. At the same time, we've talked about unifying our back office systems and CRM tools. All of those things we have done, and we are almost through finishing. That gives us a really solid foundation. Dev has talked about the fact that relative to our EMEA team, the Americas team is under-resourced, but we've always felt that we needed to solidify those foundations first. Once we've done that, there is a really good opportunity for us to then enjoy the benefits of economies of scale as we employ and deploy more salespeople into the region. I think that's how we think about it. I'm not sure I'd necessarily agree that it's going to be a cost taker. I think that was the phrase you used.
I think we see that it's a business that should scale relatively well from here. We do want to deploy more cost into the region, but we expect pretty constant and relatively quick returns on that cost. I think from here on in, we expect the opportunity for margin improvement for our Americas. It will be relatively modest as we put the cost in there. Obviously, there's the benefits of GO to still add on top of that. I think there's a number of things that we're pretty excited about.
Our next question comes from Tintin Stormont from Deutsche Numis. Your line is open. Tintin, please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Yeah, morning. Just I think it's two questions, maybe three. The first one is the quality of the pipeline. Is there anything that sort of a sense that you could give us that obviously there is the volume and the actual increase in the pipeline? When you are trying to convey to us a sense of the improved quality of the pipeline, is there anything that you can share in that regard? David, just picking up on your point on resourcing in the U.S., where are we in terms of the resourcing and how easy is it to find that additional resource in the market and for them to sort of kind of have the impact that you want them to have? Finally, from a competition standpoint, if you could just maybe describe sort of kind of in the environment if there are particular players that you are winning against with the GBG GO product.
Sort of kind of, I think, Dev, you talked about the features that are differentiating you, but would be really interested in the areas that you choose to play in, FS, gaming, fintech, etc., if there are particular competitors that seem to be relatively losing out to you now with this platform.
I think all three probably for me, Tintin. Good morning, Dev. In terms of quality of pipeline, I think, again, we do not really disclose volume of pipeline. I think we have talked about the number of GO opportunities specifically, but our pipeline is obviously much broader than that. I think what I can say is I think there are a handful of key opportunities that I am very close to that feels a bit different to maybe this time last year.
I will not say any more than that because I am breaking my own cardinal rule to not talk about those. In terms of resourcing in Americas, I think, as I said in my presentation, we have hired six new leaders who have all come from this space. It has not been difficult to find people that, number one, have deep industry experience, and it has not been difficult to find people who want to be part of the GBG story. I think what is encouraging is how we have seen many of those six leaders bring in people from their network. That is interesting to me for two reasons. One, I think we have hired the right people if they know people.
Secondly, the fact they're bringing people in that they trust and trust them means that their commitment to the cause and their ability to see the end of the turnaround and the start of acceleration is quite high. Open rates in the Americas, I think we measured them in days, not months. Lastly, on competition, I'm going to answer this slightly differently. I think we're focused on ourselves, and maybe that's also a bit different to a year ago. I think we're focused on how we stand out from our competitors, and I'd rather talk about what we're doing than what we're seeing in the market. Again, a good chance for me to remind everybody that for many years now, we've won against our competitors in location. We've won against our competitors in EMEA, and that's getting increasingly so, I would say.
In APAC, for a number of years, we've continued to have a really strong market share in ANZ that should only get stronger with the integration of Data Tools. Yeah, hopefully that answers your questions. I think that brings us to the end.
We don't have no further questions.
Yeah, I think that brings us to the end of questions. Thank you, everyone, for your time and for the questions. I will just close with a few short comments that really just reiterate what I said at the end of the presentation as it was. I think a good chance for us to always take the opportunity to remind everybody what a great business this is that operates in a really fast-growing space that is only getting more interesting and the scale that we enjoy.
Good to be able to stop now talking, hopefully, in these presentations around the four focus areas that we set out on back in June of last year, albeit our work is kind of never done on those. I think what you have heard today is really two things: a very effective and deliberate capital allocation that is all about driving increased shareholder returns and a very clear strategic direction that really means that you'll only really hear me talk about three things: Americas, GBG GO, and our operating model, all of which gives David and myself and the board confidence in improving growth rates, which, as I said in the presentation, start now.
Thank you all for your time and have a great rest of day and week.