Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Pinewood H1 FY 2024 results presentation. I'm Bill Berman, and with me today is the group CFO and my partner, Ollie Mann. I will begin with a short summary and a reminder of the Pinewood business model. Ollie will then take you through the financials for the first half of FY 2024, before I run through an operational review and strategic summary. If there are any questions, we'll be happy to take these at the end of the presentation. In the first half of FY 2024, we had a great start as a standalone SaaS business, achieving double-digit growth in both revenue and gross profit. The priority for us in the first six-month period has been the system rollout in the ex-Jardine Motors Group, Lithia UK stores. Based on our customer feedback, we are happy that these have been best-in-class system implementations.
Our teams have really excelled and gone the extra mile trying to make the implementations at every Lithia dealer a seamless and positive experience. We expect to conclude the rollout to Lithia UK stores in December of 2024. We are keen to expand our market penetration throughout the rest of the U.K. market, and as a result of this, we have restructured our U.K. sales teams to allow us to maximize our U.K. market penetration in the short and medium term. We should start to see the results of this in FY 2025. Our largest opportunity for the group is the North American market, which has been opened up for us by our partnership with Lithia Motors. In the first half of FY 2024, we started the discovery and planning stage of our rollout into North America.
We'll share a lot more of this detail, as well as our other aspects of our long-term strategy, at our upcoming Capital Markets Day on the twenty-fourth of October in London. Next, on Slide 5, for those of you that do not know Pinewood, we'd like to give you an overview of our system and our business. We are a software as a service, or SaaS group, and our product is 100% cloud-based, Azure-hosted, highly secure automotive retail ecosystem. Our system is used in automotive dealerships in 21 different countries and is used by the vast majority of the employees in those stores where our system is installed. Our system covers all aspects of the customer journey: the front of house reception team, the vehicle sales team, the service technicians, and the back of house accounting team.
Uniquely, we have a cloud-based system and have been installing our system in automotive dealerships for over 20 years. No other automotive ecosystem provider has this combination of technical architecture and automotive experience. We offer omni-channel sales and service products that allow our customers to effectively operate off of a single platform. Our system is multi-tenanted, and the same version is used by all customers, whichever country in the world you are located in, and it's language-agnostic. We have a very high levels of customer retention and have partnerships with 50 OEM brands worldwide, many of whom are long-standing partners. We're continually evolving our system, which is powered by our product and development teams out of a total of 263 people. All of our developers are based in the U.K. We have sales and implementation teams in Sweden, Japan.
We have partners in South Africa, the Netherlands, and the Middle East, with the rest of our team based in the U.K. I will now hand the call over to Ollie to cover the numbers.
Thank you, Bill. Good morning, everyone. I'll start with the statutory underlying income statement. In our first set of half-year results, as a standalone SaaS business, we have no discontinued operations. In our comparatives, we do still have the dealers and leasing business sold to Lithia within discontinued operations. In the first half of FY 2023, as this was before the Lithia transaction completed, there are still intercompany revenue and gross profit amounts that have to be stripped out of the numbers on a statutory basis, which is the reason for the very large year-on-year increases in continuing operations, statutory revenue, and gross profit. For transparency, we have split the PLC costs and legacy U.S. Motor business operating costs out within the underlying operating profit.
I'll move on to the next slide, where we include the intercompany revenue and gross profit, which enables us to give a much better comparison between the first halves of FY 2024 and FY 2023. On Slide 8, the continuing group performance for the first half of FY 2024 is compared to the first half of FY 2023. You can see that revenue increased by 11%. Key drivers for the revenue increase were a 3.6 increase in user numbers for the first half of FY 2024, upselling products to existing customers, and the impact of our inflation-linked price rises. The vast majority of our cost of sales are our Azure hosting costs. We have a number of ongoing initiatives to minimize these costs while ensuring that we have the hosting capability we need for the system.
This continued focus on hosting costs led to a gross margin improvement, with gross profit increasing by 12.4% compared to the 11% revenue increase. As expected, our costs have increased year on year, as we have invested in the business across a number of areas to ensure we are in as strong a position as possible going forward. Again, as expected, our underlying profit before tax reduced from GBP 4.6 million to GBP 4 million due to this cost investment. Underlying EBITDA marginally decreased by just GBP 0.1 million to GBP 6.9 million. Slide 9 shows the non-underlying items for H1 FY 2024. There were GBP 1 million of one-off transaction costs in the period.
These primarily related to the Lithia transaction that completed on the thirty-first of January, 2024, and were costs incurred as a result of the share consolidation and transaction dividend that occurred post thirty-first of January, 2024. Stock exchange costs for issuing new shares and advisor costs that were received post-transaction completion. The share of losses from the JV with Lithia was GBP 0.3 million. The GBP 4.3 million of non-underlying interest receivable was interest earned on cash held, while the group was finalizing the GBP 358 million dividend to shareholders that related to the Lithia transaction. On Slide 10, you can see the balance sheet position at the end of July 2024, compared to the end of January 2024.
The majority of the group's assets and liabilities were sold to Lithia at the end of January 2024, with the cash being received from Lithia on the first of February 2024. This is the reason for the large receivables and shareholders' funds balances at the end of January. The GBP 9.7 million pound investment is the GBP 10 million pounds investment in the North American JV with Lithia, less GBP 0.3 million, which is our share of JV operating losses in H1 FY 2024. The GBP 14.9 million pounds of other intangible assets relates to capitalized development costs. Within the receivables balance of GBP 16.6 million pounds, the largest balance is GBP 9.9 million pounds receivable from Lithia UK, which relates to historic tax losses that they will be able to utilize and reimburse Pinewood as the tax losses are utilized.
The payables balance of 9.7 million is made up from a combination of trade creditors, accruals, and VAT creditors. There was GBP 13 million of cash at the end of July, which was before our $4.2 million investment in the AI company, Seez, which equates to approximately GBP 3.1 million. I will now hand back to Bill, who will cover the operating highlights and a strategy update.
Thanks, Ollie. Next, turning to Slide 12. Operational highlights for H1 FY 2024 include our double-digit growth in both revenue and gross profit. At the end of July 2024, we had approximately 27,000 users in the U.K., with the remainder of our 34,300 users being our international customers. Our international expansion continued in a selective manner, as we are keen to ensure that our international growth is now targeted on areas where we can generate the best return on investment. The Lithia UK system rollout is approaching completion, and we're very pleased with the way these implementations have gone. Customer feedback is extremely important to us, and the reaction we have received from the Lithia teams following their system implementations has been very positive.
Our U.K. sales team has been restructured in the first half of the year to put us in the best possible position to maximize our U.K. market penetration. We should start to see the impact of this as we move into FY 2025. We have started the discovery and planning stages of our system rollout in North America. I'll talk about this in a little bit more detail shortly. Finally, in September 2024, we made a $4.2 million investment in an automotive AI company, Seez. Seez provides AI chatbots for automotive retailers, as well as a suite of e-commerce and omnichannel products.
The commercial strategic partnership with Seez will bolster Pinewood's product offering as the company prepares for expansion into the U.S. market alongside Lithia Motors, and it offers Pinewood exclusive distribution rights to the Seez products in the U.S. market, as well as with existing customers. On to Slide 13 and our strategy. We're gonna do a full strategy update during our Capital Markets Day in London on the twenty-fourth of October 2024. This will include running through all the key areas of our long-term strategy out to 2030, as well as the financials associated with this. The strategy update on the Capital Markets Day will include the discovery work done by a subject matter expert consultant on the North American automotive market. I'm looking forward to sharing all of this with you on the twenty-fourth. On to Slide 14.
Our strategic partnership with Lithia remains key to creating access to the extremely lucrative North American market. Following the discovery work that we have undertaken in conjunction with the expert automotive market consultant, we are now starting to engage with North American OEMs. Once we have a liaison with a number of key OEMs on technical requirements, we'll be able to start the development work needed for the North American market in Q4 of 2024. We then anticipate piloting our system in a number of Lithia stores in the second half of 2025, with the first quarter of 2026, before the full North American system rollout starts during 2026. A key point to highlight is the size of the North American opportunity. Although Lithia are the largest automotive retailer in the world, they represent just 1.5% of the North American market.
There's a huge potential to claim further market share in North America on top of the Lithia system implementations. Turning lastly to Slide 16. In terms of outlook, we've had a good start to FY 2024, with a lot of focus on the system rollout in the ex-Jardine Motors Group, Lithia UK stores. All of our associates that have been involved in this rollout have done a superb job, really going the extra mile and trying to make it as smooth as possible. There are only a handful of stores left to go onto our system now. We're in well-progressed discussions with a number of potential new customers from both the U.K. and internationally, and although there are some challenges in the broader economic environment, we do not see these as having a material impact on trading through our relatively sticky customer base.
We expect underlying profit before tax for FY 2024 to be in line with our current market expectations. Thank you very much. Ollie and I will now take any questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please signal by pressing star one. You may also submit your questions via the webcast. Again, it is star one to ask a question over the phone. We will now take our first question from Damindu Jayaweera from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.
Hi, gents. Hopefully, you can hear me. I just had a question on the Seez investment that you've done. The more I read about the kind of deal opportunity and what's happening in the automotive industry, the more I feel like there is a role to be played by GenAI in terms of helping reps do better conversion on a sales funnel or, you know, giving people a better experience on the workshop side. Could you kind of explain what Seez is and what they do? I mean, you gave a high-level view, and how that will fit into your existing products over the kind of the longer duration? And also, just kind of as an aside, am I overthinking the impact potentially, you know, chatbots and GenAI can have?
In its current form, obviously, they've been around for a long time now, but in its current form, can have on the experience, and therefore, the value dealers will get from their customers?
That was a lot of questions in one, but first off, I don't think. This is Bill. I don't think you're overthinking it at all, and you've already touched on some key components. So first off, Seez is a Dubai-based company. To your point, they have been around a long time. Their, our generative AI, not getting too much into their business, they have a unique tech stack that they call an agent and a RAG system, which I would consider superior to any of the other similar type products that are on the market, and that we feel will, over time, integrate within our systems very well.
Initially, to your earlier point, there is a definite opportunity when it comes to AI chatbots, improving both the front end, the sales journey, whether that is engaging with a customer online or after hours, and being able to facilitate a certain part of the transaction that way, or, conversely, the same thing in after sales, whether it's just initial question answering or scheduling. On a go-forward basis, we look to be able to integrate some of the Seez-type technology into our systems and take them even maybe to a higher level, let's say.
Whether it is building equity mining tools and using a single database, using their type of a product to sit here in real time, be able to value a customer's potential trade-in, say the car's in for a service, or somebody that we have a long-term relationship, be able to balance that off of current market incentives that might be out there from the OEM, and maybe be able to give the customer a better offer on a brand-new car that we wouldn't have access to if it wasn't for this type of technology. So, we feel highly, you know, positive about the investment in them. They're a fast-growing company. We're already starting to test and pilot their chatbots in our existing customer base.
And we'll have more to talk about that later in this year and probably the first part of next year. And then we would look to do more with them. But you will see more and more systems having to use AI, especially generative AI, not language-based, but generative AI, to sit here and further their products.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. And as there are no further questions on the phone line, I'd like to turn the call back over to Henry for any webcast, webcast questions. So it's you, Henry.
Thanks. Yeah, we've got one from Kieran Donnelly at Berenberg. There are three questions. Can you provide any color to your comments on the conversations with new customers in the U.K. and internationally? How progressed are they? The second question is, with respect to North America, can you give us an insight into how early conversations have gone with OEMs? Have they been receptive? And lastly, how will Pinewood's offering be differentiated relative to incumbent DMS providers in North America?
Okay, so this is Bill again. So if we start off with going after some of the larger groups within the U.K. and maybe even to Europe. We are in advanced discussions with several large groups. The good and the bad of a system like ours, the systems are very sticky. These systems are not changed out often. And to be able to facilitate this type of a transition from a let's say an older tech stack into our new tech stack takes a little bit of time to be able to work out the systems, the processes, run out the existing contract terms on the existing one, reshape systems and processes within a large group.
So, these sales aren't made on the same day, but we're in advanced discussions with several large groups within the U.K., and you know, hopefully in the weeks and months to come, we'll be able to announce some opportunities that they exist that way. As far as North America, we've kind of gotten down three fronts on that. We've engaged with several mid and large-sized groups on the customer side of the business that are eager to get more information about us and even to go down our pathway. If you saw what happened last year, earlier this year with CDK, and the major outage they had for nearly a month, taking the systems offline, it really opened up opportunities within this marketplace.
Conversations with the OEMs are in the early stages, but so far they've been very positive. We've had absolutely no pushback from any of the OEMs, and now we're also engaging with different third-party layered systems and apps that we will be integrating with through APIs to be able to enter the market. Things like tax, title, licensing, finance and insurance portals that communicate with the bank. So far, all the conversations have been very positive. I would say we're very happy with the way that's going and really look forward to breaking in to the North American market next year.
And just, Ollie here. Just the final bit on the proposition difference between us and others in North America. You know, typically in North America, you go into a dealership, there's five or six add-on systems or layered apps that are used, plus three or four other systems. So there might be 10 or 12 windows actually open at any one time for a dealer. Our system is completely different in that most of the functionality is within the core system, so the efficiency that brings, economies of scale, there's huge benefits there. So, that is a, that's a key difference for us in terms of us and the incumbents in North America, as Bill referenced, CDK there, also Reynolds and Reynolds, Dealertrack, you know, just a comparison there. Next one, please, Henry. Great.
Next one's from Harvey Robinson, Panmure Gordon. Relative to other software service stocks, you have a high gross margin. Can you explain more? Yeah, I think, you know, historically, we sort of referenced in the call, our cost of sales is essentially our hosting costs. Because the way we've built our system gradually over the years. It's been built in a very efficient way. The architecture is done, it's best in class, and that means that we can minimize those costs. Our teams spend a lot of time making sure that the system is maximized to its full potential. If we lower that cost too much, it impacts the customer performance, which is paramount to us. But I think it's basically a function of how our system's set up.
100% Microsoft Azure hosted, which is different to most others out there. There's only one or two others out there that's set up in the same way as ours. The vast majority in those major incumbents we've talked about, that Bill said in the U.S. and the U.K., they're not set up in the same way as us. So agreed, if you look at their gross margins, they're significantly different to ours. Do you see any more, Henry?
Yes, a couple more. So we've got two from Andy Wade at Jefferies. Firstly, what ongoing development work has been required for the APAC market? How significant is this opportunity for the group? And then secondly, have there been any surprises, good or bad, as you've been executing the Lithia UK implementation?
This is Bill. I'll go in reverse order. On the Lithia UK rollout, and not surprisingly, we had virtually no issues. I think both our team as well as the Lithia UK team, headed up by their CEO, Neil Williamson, have done nothing but a spectacular job in supporting us, and our team is supporting them in the rollout. We've had virtually no issues. The few minor things that have popped up, which are inherent, were quickly addressed. When talking to them, they seem very happy with the progress and are already starting to see benefits from being on our system versus their incumbent system. That went, you know, extremely, you know, well, as we've gone out there.
In terms of APAC, look, there's always some development work needed when we go into a market. However, we do reference this in a statement saying that what we are doing increasingly is being really targeted on our international expansion. So, you know, Japan's a core area for us. There's other core countries out there. What we're doing is we're making sure we get to scale in those countries. What we don't want to do is go into a host of other countries and have to do a lot of development work for not a big prize. So there's been a bit of development work. It's going well. Japan's the focus of that. We'll share a lot more color on this at the Capital Markets Day in three weeks' time.
Next one from Oliver Tipping, Peel Hunt. Costs were higher due to investment for growth, including increasing the headcount. How much more cost growth is required to get the business ready for the anticipated growth stage? And then question two, user growth was 3.6%. Is this likely to ramp up alongside the Lithia rollout, or is this the peak?
This is Bill. Once again, I'll go in reverse order. No, that's the three point six is not the peak. Part of this is just starting, the Lithia rollout did not begin until May, and really didn't get till full run up until July, August, and now through September, so we will continue to see additional growth both on the user count and revenue.
Going forward, we're gonna be talking about revenue a little bit more than just user count, because as we build additional products that we can sell vertically through our existing channels, things that will benefit our customers to a great level, whether it is being able to get higher productivity through sales people, more efficiency through the shop, or being able to run a leaner business and still get the throughput, we're gonna be focusing more now on revenue growth versus just user growth. We'll still keep user growth out there, but the real driver going forward is gonna be on the revenue side.
Just on the cost, yeah, we have invested across the business, so, you know, in a few different areas, sales and marketing, our development team, most of which we capitalize, but some of which we do expense, and also on our implementation teams. There's been a step change in cost, which we signaled early, as expected. Most of that step change is done now. So, you know, with that, that is getting to a normalization point. There will still be the main thing that we've got coming is the branding work, which we're just touching on now. But in terms of the team, we're in a really good place. Bill and I are really pleased with where we are across the business. We've got a great team, really low turnover. We've got. We had a few gaps, which we've filled now.
There's been a step change. There's a little bit more to come, but I think we've done most of that in terms of the cost increase there.
Great. We have three from Carl Smith at Zeus. First, can you go into more detail on the restructuring of the U.K. sales team? What changes have been made? Question two, do you think the implementation and sales teams are the right size now? Will you be looking to make headcount additions in any other parts of the business? And finally, has there been an increased focus on cybersecurity from customers following the CDK Global cyber incident earlier this year?
This is Bill. If you talk for the first part, basically, the restructuring of the team is to make it a little bit more robust, add additional resources and headcount into there. To the earlier point I made about selling vertically through our existing channels, to build sales systems and processes, to be able to show customers the different opportunities that exist through our vertical sales channels as well. As far as the growth within the team, that's gonna be constantly ebbing and flowing, but I think on a go-forward basis, especially with the additional development work that needs to be done with North America, as we start to build teams for North America into next year, whether that's sales, marketing, implementation teams, you will see additional headcount and growth go through there as well.
So really, you kind of have to bifurcate out existing business model with the U.K. and the existing markets we're in, and growth opportunities within there. That'll be one kind of stream. And then on the other side would be as we build teams to go into North America. But I think you will constantly see an ebb and flow in our staffing, but it'll all be based either with additional, you know, customers coming on board or to invest, like in North America, to see if you're gonna be able to break through that.
I think just to tie back to the previous question on cost, so most of that headcount increase will be in developers, most of which will be capitalized. And also, just to call out, which I think we have done in the past, the North American, well, for North America, we, recharged the JV. So from an underlying PLC cost point of view, just tying back to where we were before, we think we're not a million miles away from where we need to be. But as Bill said, yeah, that headcount will keep increasing, primarily through the, developers. Henry, sorry, what was the cybersecurity question?
The final question was, "Has there been an increased focus on cybersecurity from customers following the CDK Global cyber incident?
Listen, cybersecurity, security just in general, is always top of mind with our customers. You know, we're not gonna give our secret sauce and lay out everything that we have, but, we would say we have best-in-class, security systems built in. Once again, the way our system has been developed over the years, being cloud-based on Microsoft Azure and such, gives us added protection that others might not have if they're self-hosting, or maybe on a less secure, you know, cloud base. But, it's always a top priority for us. It's always a conversation we have with the customer. We feel that for us, it's a brand proposition for us, and it's key in our DNA, the way that the system's been built on over the years.
So, it's gonna continue to be, I think, to the point of what happened in North America with CDK. I think it'll be top of mind, maybe even more so. But we feel we're in a good place in that. But we're always constantly looking at that, testing our systems, and adding additional layers of security, to prevent what happened with CDK happening to us.
Next one from Roger Phillips at Investec. "Is there any guidance on how you expect US JV losses to develop over the next three years, or is it too early to say, given the exact nature of development work that's now being established? Are the receivables payables for H1 2024 at relatively normalized levels? And then lastly, what US market share do you conceptually think you can win from Dealertrack on a three-to-five year view?
I'll start with the latter half of that, then Ollie can touch on the first half. I wouldn't look at us comparing against Dealertrack per se. You've got three big incumbents right now, CDK, Reynolds and Reynolds, and Dealertrack. They have about, say, roughly 80%, maybe a little bit higher than that, penetration between them. And then you have a relatively newcomer coming to the market, Tekion, which is probably the system that's closest to us, and they're about our size and scale right now, but obviously just US-focused. You know, for us, when we put the 320, 350-ish Lithia stores on, at that point in time, we would have roughly 1.5%, maybe as much as 2% share at that point in time.
To look at the North American market, there's in excess of 20,000 dealers today. So if we put on 400 dealers a month, which nobody's ever done, it'd be a Herculean task. I'm sorry, 400 dealers a year, which nobody's ever done, and that'd be a Herculean task. In five years, we'd have 2,000 rooftops on there, and we'd be at, you know, roughly, you know, 20% share. So, and that's not necessarily our target, but it's a big market. It's a market not just on rooftop size, but just on the spend that dealers make, that's multiple times greater than what you find in Europe. And this is why we find it so lucrative and the partnership with Lithia so important, being able to break into North America. We feel we have a superior product.
We've got a great partner with Lithia, to be able to test, pilot, and be able to break into the market. And then, you know, for us, the way we're looking is, you know, kinda how fast can you run downhill? So really excited about, think the opportunity's great.
We've got some Ollie here. We've got some really interesting stuff to share at the Capital Markets Day, particularly around the size of the prize in North America. You know, we'd had some work done previously, but it's you know exceeded our expectations in terms of what there is to go after there. So that you know we're looking forward to sharing that in three weeks' time. Roger, just on your other question on receivables and payables, from a payables point of view, yes, we're pretty much at a normal steady state run rate. The receivables, that GBP 9.9 million tax receivable, that will gradually unwind over the next couple of years. So as Lithia use those tax losses, we'll get those back. So yeah, that'll unwind, so that will go down to sort of broadly GBP 7 million.
But yeah, apart from that, I think we're in a pretty stable state with the balance sheet. The deferred income at GBP 6-7 million also is around where it typically is. And the final question, I think, was on U.S. losses. So as we move into twenty twenty-five, those will increase as expected. Primarily, we'll be growing the sales and marketing teams in the U.S., and look, we're doing this in conjunction with Lithia. At some point in time, well, once the rollout starts, we'll, that will flip into the underlying result. So look, there will be an element of increase in twenty twenty-five, still relatively small, but as soon as the income starts coming, that will dwarf any costs in there. So again, we're comfortable with that.
We can go through that in more detail again at the Capital Markets Day.
A couple of questions from Ian Robertson at Progressive. "Can you give me an idea of the nature of the upsell? What's the difference between the most basic and the full bells and whistles? Further to that, what level of product has gone into Lithia UK, and what level of product will you go in to Lithia US with?
Okay. Not an easy question to answer. So, you know, the way we look at our system, and the way we're describing it, is an ecosystem where you can facilitate an entire transaction, whether it's from the sales side of it, all the way through a part exchange, into being able to arrange financing, to being able to schedule a service appointment online, and be able to track the progress of the work through an app, and be able to push it through. As far as Lithia UK, they mirrored the product portfolio that the old Pendragon stores were on. So they have probably 75%-80% of our products currently in the system.
As we test and develop additional products, Lithia kindly has allowed us to be able to use them as kind of our test bed, our incubator, and then go with it from there. There really isn't, you know, a base system without these additional functionalities, and it might not be the best example, but it'd be kind of like utilizing Microsoft Office, you know, portfolio, where you go in there, there's multiple different things in there. You might not use PDFs, but it's there, and if you need to turn it on, you can turn it on. That's the way our system is. These aren't additional functionalities that are outside of our system.
These are built in, and based on a dealership's structure, need, desire, their own systems and processes, we can either modify, turn these different products on or off, based on their need. What we're finding more and more is customers are liking our unified ecosystem, liking having a single, kind of view of the truth of the customer, one data stack, and then being able to utilize the different functionalities we have within a single ecosystem to be able to operate off. So as we go into North America, we see more and more dealers probably going that pathway.
That said, and Ollie described this earlier, you know, the systems that exist in North America are primarily accounting-based systems, and then they have different functionality that has either been layered on top of that through acquisition, through those companies, and/or, third-party layered apps that have been developed completely outside, and then have APIs that push and pull data through and are completely different, tabs, different URLs that you're trying to function through. And it gets quite cumbersome. If you go into a U.S. store, you can find somebody in the sales department having ten plus windows open, trying to utilize different functionalities through these different systems and pushing, you know, through. I describe it like Frankenstein, a bit of this, a bit of that.
It works, but it doesn't work necessarily as efficiently, smoothly. It doesn't give the customer the best experience possible, and we feel our system sits here and gets around those things with a unified ecosystem that we present.
Last one from Tom Like at Canaccord Genuity. "Is there any big bang event in the industry that could accelerate a change in existing systems towards Pinewood? You mentioned these are sticky systems that can be slow to swap out." The second question: "Are you able to break down the 11% revenue growth? You mentioned 3.6% increase in users, but can you split out what is existing from what is new?
So I'll take the first part, and Ollie can take the second part. I don't know there's gonna be a big bang within the OEMs, but I constantly see the OEMs and the different systems evolving. If you take Europe, for example, it's a very fragmented system. You take a country like Germany. I think there's in excess of 20 different DMS systems, no real market leader. It's very difficult for an OEM to sit here and have that many integrations, be able to communicate with the customers the way they like, how the dealerships operate in a kind of a consistent and unified manner, in relation to the end user.
So maybe not a big bang, but I could see over time OEMs limiting the number of DMS, layered apps, ecosystem providers that they will engage with. I feel that the team has put us in a good position with that, on building great relationships with the OEMs. But equally important, having, you know, a state-of-the-art, you know, top quartile system that facilitates and can do what the OEMs are looking for. So I just see over time being the market consolidating down on the number of DMS ecosystem, third-party layered app providers, and I think we would benefit from that highly.
And just in terms of the revenue growth, so historically, that was primarily through the user growth and our inflation-linked price rises. Increasingly, this upselling, the functionality of products that Bill was just talking about, is playing a part in that. So we don't split the 11% exactly, but you've got the 3.6% there in users, and, it's becoming a more and more meaningful part of the, the remainder, that upselling functionality and products is becoming a more and more meaningful part of that. So, you know, broadly speaking, you can split it into three. It's not quite an even split, but we think it's not a million miles away, and, you know, over time, that's just gonna get more and more important in the U.K., internationally, and, and in the U.S. as we move into there. That's it.
Great. Well, thank you, everybody. Lastly, from Ollie and myself, we'd just like to thank the entire, you know, Pinewood team. If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be where we are today, and really looking excited what the future holds for the company.
Thank you, everyone.