We're released on the NZX this morning from the company today. We have Nick Lissette, the company's Founder and CEO, the CFO Karen Cargill, Noah Loul , the B2B Rocket CEO, and Trinity Lawry , the Pearl Diver CEO. Just before I hand over to Nick to get started on the presentation up on your screen, I'll remind you that you can submit questions through the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen, and we'll get to those post the end of the presentation. With that, Nick, I'll hand it over to you. Thanks very much.
Awesome. Thank you, Simon. As the saying goes, aim for the stars, and even if you miss, you'll land on the moon. I never liked that saying because it implies that half achievements are still good. That's why at our Black Pearl Group, our catchphrase is simply "ad astra to the stars." There is no provision for compromise. Looking back at the goals that we set for ourselves in Q2, we really were shooting for the stars. They were incredibly audacious. We wanted to complete acquisition of B2B Rocket, and not only did we successfully complete that, but also we integrated, we've done the initial integration of them into the group, so we are now one.
We wanted to do a cap raise, and not only did we fully subscribe our NZD 15 million round, but we did this through broadening our shareholder register with some top-tier Australian investors, as well as great continued support from our existing investor base. We filed our application to cross-list onto the Australian Stock Exchange, and that process was actually made more challenging because we're doing that contemporaneously with acquiring B2B , and yet we are on track for mid-November to ring the bell. Lastly, and I would say what, in my opinion, was the biggest challenge, is we still demanded of ourselves that we hit some big organic sales numbers regardless of all these other circumstances, regardless of about how much effort and time these other things took.
Q2 was definitely our most challenging that we've ever had since being public, but it was also our most successful, and not just by a little, but by a lot. I can see that we've got many new attendees today, and I did want to take a few minutes to tell people about Black Pearl Group and how we're structured and what we're about. At Black Pearl Group, we're a data technology company. We are not a SaaS company. Karen, if you could just flip slides for a second. Here we go. That's for brownie point against Karen, who's driving the slides today. You got to be on the ball here, Karen. Come on, let's keep cracking. We're a data technology company, not a SaaS company.
Black Pearl Group's core technology asset is known as the Pearl Engine, and the Pearl Engine is a private data platform driven by an augmented large language model that creates and ingests over 21 billion, with a B, billion, sales and marketing signals daily. The Pearl Engine is actually unique in its ability to create and sustain what we call living data. This is data that increases all the time, improves all the time. It is never static. That living data both powers and creates product businesses. That is what makes it special. It's the practical application of that AI into the world. Like all true AI, Black Pearl Group's Pearl Engine has a flywheel effect.
For those non-technical people on the call, and obviously there was a lot of technical jargon in there, the analogy you can liken this to is like, we're not just an oil field, we're actually also a refinery and the vehicle fleet. We're the Hulk and it. Except unlike an oil field, which is finite in its resource, every mile those vehicles or those products drive feeds more information back to the refinery, teaching it how to refine even better, and information back to the oil field, which actually creates more oil. Also, what makes us unique, and I mentioned it before, is not just about creating data. We're about turning data into dollars, the actual practical application of that to serve real businesses' needs. Our target market is the small and medium-sized business market in the United States of America, and it has never been more challenging.
Access to capital has never been tighter, and uncertainty has never been higher. Our products are all focused at filling real significant pain points in the customer acquisition lifecycle. Starting off as an example here with Pearl Diver, right? Pearl Diver's unique superpower is letting you identify your ideal customer profile, but not just that, but those customers that are actually in market for your goods and services today. This is even pre-awareness, your ability of identifying people before they even know you exist, without having to, at this point, spend any money on ad spend. It then can go into the awareness part where you want these people to become aware you exist, right? Pearl Diver, you can use that data to then drive pay-to-play advertising platforms far more efficiently than you would without that unique data set.
This is where B2B Rocket fills a huge need in the market because so many small and medium-sized businesses just don't have marketing budgets to get in front of these people. That is where their agentic AI agents, which automate outreach via email, via voice, via LinkedIn, shine because for pennies on the dollar, you can get demos booked in your calendar with a set and forget program. It's literally an AI SDR, a sales development representative at your fingertips. Now you have a demo in your calendar. What next? This is where Bebop steps in because what happens is in the world of sales in America, you have to sell more with less.
80% of sales reps' time is not speaking to customers because they're doing pre-demo research and a whole lot of effort that you need to do to properly do a presentation and connect your product with a pain point of that customer. That is where Bebop's superpower is because it quite literally is like having tens of thousands of expert analysts on your staff and in real time putting together playbooks to align your product to that company's organizational challenges. Then you've got our foundational email products, and of course they sit very nicely in the cross-selling and upselling part to existing clients by leveraging that vacant real estate underneath an email signature to create digital billboards for cross-selling and upselling. That is what we're about. We are a data technology company. It's sure we have some SaaS products, but that is not what makes us special.
Now, with that said, there is the asset part, the Pearl Engine, and then there is the revenue-generating parts, and these are our product lines. To tell you about our amazing success over the last quarter, I want to hand you over to our CFO , Karen . It's a great day to be a CFO , Karen, with awesome results like these. Over to you.
It is me. It is Nick. Thank you. I'm pleased to report that we've achieved the high growth and stable metric whilst executing those major initiatives during the quarter that Nick just mentioned. We ended Q1 at NZD 14 million ARR, which, including B2B Rocket, would have been NZD 17.5 million. We finished Q2 at NZD 19.5 million. That NZD 5.5 million uplift is by and above the biggest ARR jump we've achieved in the company's history, made up of both acquired revenue and strong organic growth. We increased our group ARR by 39% in 90 days. Taking the NZD 17.5 million as a starting point for the combined group, including B2B Rocket, we grew our ARR by NZD 2 million or 11% during this quarter. Just to reflect, it's been an incredibly busy quarter, and we're so incredibly proud of what the team has achieved.
Operationally, this has been our hardest challenge, and we've achieved the growth while doing an acquisition, a cap raise, and working towards the dual listing on the ASX. Acquisitions of B2B Rocket's quality don't just land in your lap. We've had to work hard for this. Hundreds of hours of due diligence, planning, evaluation, contract negotiations, and integration. At this stage, we don't have a dedicated acquisitions and integrations team. That is literally all the people, the same people working on our day-to-day operations that have done that. Looking at our Q2 financial metrics, we're happy to report that these have all remained within our targeted ranges. Our churn rate has actually decreased, has improved from 4.9% down to 4.6%, which we are proud of. We've worked incredibly hard on that churn rate for the last few quarters.
From a balance sheet perspective, the capital that came in from our cap raise was NZD 15 million. As stated, some of those funds have gone towards purchasing B2B Rocket, some have gone towards the cap raising and the dual listing, and finally, we've created dedicated budgets for each of our revenue channels. You'll hear more about this from Nick later on when he talks about our venture-based organization. Next, we're going to hear from Noah, who is our new addition to the team. He's the Founder and CEO of B2B Rocket. Noah, over to you.
Hi everyone. I'm Noah, CEO of B2B Rocket. A little bit of background about B2B Rocket. As Nick mentioned, we build AI sales agents that book qualified demos for B2B companies through essentially email, voice, or LinkedIn. We're on a mission to empower over a million businesses to close more deals on autopilot. Basically, we help small and mid-sized businesses in the U.S. get their next customer without needing a big sales team or a big marketing budget. We compete with traditional ad platforms and offer SMBs an affordable way to convert their leads. We provide a better cost per lead that's far lower than what businesses are used to. We've bootstrapped our way from scratch to NZD 3.5 million in ARR, and we're growing very fast. A lot of you might wonder, why did we join Black Pearl and why now? The answer is very simple.
The skill, smart culture, and the data, which the Black Pearl team has worked very diligently and very hard to achieve. The way we came across the Black Pearl team and group, we were looking for a strategic growth path, and we came across several opportunities that were very competitive for growth, as we've worked very hard to build something that a lot of businesses believe in. Black Pearl was just the right, the right perfect piece of the puzzle we were seeking for our data engines. We previously were processing 4 billion data points that would feed into our AI agents, and Black Pearl 's Pearl Engine processes over 20 billion of these signals every day. That became a 4x boost in the data quality that feed our AI agents.
For our SMB customers, that translates to more demos that show up and convert as a result of that increased quality in data, lower acquisition costs, and ultimately it leads to more value per customer over time because we believe when a client makes money, we make money. Right now, our focus is in extreme and tight execution. We've been integrating Pearl Engine signals into our targeting and product. We've been optimizing our AI playbooks across channels. We've been improving our reporting systems and metrics that matter the most for businesses because we care about businesses converting value, and we care about retention. A little more about our background. We came in very capital efficient, and speed is a part of our DNA. We came in already profitable, and now with Black Pearl 's data advantage, we're going to scale way smarter, not just faster.
To add as well to our journey and experience, it's been an awesome start to be a part of a thriving team. We're all aligned. We're moving fast with laser precision, focused on awesome customer outcomes. We're here to grow, and we're here to grow very efficiently and effectively. I believe we're just getting started. Thank you.
Awesome. Thank you for that, Noah. Now I'd like to introduce you to Trinity Lawry , who is the Interim CEO of Pearl Diver. Over to you, Trinity.
Thank you. In response to growing demand from advertising agencies, Pearl Diver has launched something that's reshaping how they make money and retain clients, our wholesale data program. In simple terms, it gives agencies the ability to tap into the Pearl Engine for a flat fee. It's the first time agencies can truly own their own data strategy. Having spent more than a decade in advertising myself, I know firsthand the constant pressure agencies face, staying ahead of the curve, producing fresh insights, and delivering measurable results month after month to justify their retainers. It's not easy, and clients today demand more sophistication, more technology, and more efficiency from every campaign. This model gives them exactly that. They can control their advertising audiences, enrich CRMs, build data-driven products, automate campaigns, and generate entirely new revenue streams, all powered by Pearl Diver. It's working.
Early partners are seeing stronger retention, lower ad waste, and faster growth. They're turning what used to be a cost line into a profit center. Let me give you one example. A partner currently spends $30,000 a month with us. That's about NZD 600,000 in annual recurring revenue, which represents our average annual contract value. We're deeply integrated with their ad systems, and for them, that same $30,000 cost is generating around $200,000 in revenue per month. When I talk about turning a cost center into a profit line, that is exactly what I mean. For us, it's equally powerful. The model drives predictable recurring high margin revenue and cements Pearl Diver as the data backbone for challenger agencies. Looking ahead, we're expanding integrations, adding new data sets, and deepening our insights. This isn't just another offering. It's a scalable growth engine for both our clients and shareholders. Thank you.
Back to you, Nick.
Awesome. Thank you for that, Trinity. If we think about the other achievements, which we've already talked about, I don't want to labor the point on any of them, but obviously we're super happy with how the capital raise went and the fact that we're able to bring in such top-tier shareholders. The interest from Australia was just phenomenal, and it's super encouraging. I think, you know, sort of sharp steals the knife a little bit when we charge hard to get onto the ASX. The thing that we want to make clear is that when we do things, as they say in New Zealand, we go in boots and all, like we don't do things by half. If you think about our success in the U.S. market, it isn't because we've just sat here in our offices in New Zealand and poked around from afar.
We're boots on ground, working hard, and making sure people know who we are all the time. We're going to take that same approach to the amazing opportunity that we have by cross-listing onto the ASX. That's already started with roadshows. It's continuing with our now actually having sort of webinars rather than just your normal posted presentations on the MAP platform. Next week, we're in Melbourne, and I get to actually be one of the presenters at the 14th Annual Australian Microcap Conference, continue roadshows in Sydney and Melbourne. Naturally, strong PR and IR, but that is just the start. This is about us making sure that we are always, always front of mind and people understand the great things we're doing. I just want to be clear that we're going in and we burn boats behind us. There is no stepping back. There is only forward.
It's not that I'm burning anything. We're just going forward. We don't, there's no retreating. One of the things that we are also focused on with the use of our capital is putting in place our venture-based organizational structure. You go, what is venture-based organizational structure and why is it important for us? Basically what we want to do is take each of our revenue-generating products and let them go faster and have a higher focus on revenue. Like it was only just over a year ago, we really only had one rapid growth product, which was Pearl Diver, and now we've got three in action with, I guess, wholesale data being a subpart of Pearl Diver and taking on a life of its own as well. Now we want every one of those product lines to be able to perform and perform fast and efficiently on its own right.
By each of them having their own kind of P&Ls and firm accountability for outcomes, we're going to enable them to keep growing fast and be laser-focused on revenue. They still get the efficiencies of scale from shared services. They don't have to get weighed down by either the whole cost or the bandwidth that takes to have that in a venture. The group gets good control on all key areas, which is finance, HR, security, IT services, and more importantly, data. As I said before, that is our primary asset and making sure we have great flow in and out of the ventures on the data is really central for this being going to be super successful. That's top of mind. The last thing that I wanted to say and why this is important for us is over the last year, we've introduced two new product lines, right?
We've created one, which is Bebop, and we've acquired one, which is B2B Rocket. We are going to continue to do this. We literally have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to continue to create new, highly innovative technologies and to roll up other high-growth, early-stage AI companies, which have clear synergies with the Pearl Engine, right? This is not the end. This is the beginning, and this is the structure that we're putting in place to support that continued aggressive growth. I think we're onto the home straight now. I want to be clear that we do anticipate in Q3 that we'll experience the usual seasonal dynamics, right? What I mean by that is that cost of acquiring customers goes right up.
That is because you are competing against all the retail events, Black Friday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, not just the holidays, but this is the highest ad spend time of the year in America . You have all these retail brands pushing for that ad space. It really does take up mind share and costs. We're always super mindful. You heard it from Noah. You've heard it from Karen. You've seen our CAC payback periods. We are really mindful about growing efficiently. We want to grow efficiently. We want to grow wisely, and we'll continue to do that. We're not out on our gym boats over this period of time.
We still want to grow, but actually what we want the real focus to be over this quarter, as well as that, is executing a great cross-listing onto the Australian Stock Exchange, really doing it well, executing it beautifully, and also building in the venture-based structure and also getting the Pearl Engine data more deeply integrated in with B2B Rocket so that they can start getting all those additional benefits and ultimately look to increase retention and increase the average revenue per customer. It's going to be a big and busy quarter and lots to look forward to. With that, I'd like to hand it back to Simon to go through Q&A. Thank you.
Thanks, Nick. Thanks to everyone else. There were a couple of questions around the three CEOs being on this call and the venture structure, but I think you've just spoken to that, Nick, that's well covered. Just a question around your aim of growing to NZD 50 million ARR in the next three to five years. It suggests NZD 1.5 - NZD 2.5 million per quarter for the next three to five years. Why is ARR not expected to grow larger than the current rate per quarter as the company generates more business and gets bigger?
Great question. One, we're not about linear growth. You could see obviously we grew 39% in a quarter. These are step jump growths. You can't do that every quarter, but we certainly aim to pepper them in over that timeframe. I wouldn't think about it in a linear fashion in that way. Equally, as I've just signaled before, at the moment, I think we have all the products that we need to get to NZD 50 million in that timeframe that we put down. There's always going to be new opportunities of collapsing time or raising horizons on what we go to, which will be led through innovation or acquisition or a combination of both of them. Don't expect straight lines with us. We're after looking for these step jump opportunities when we spot them.
Karen, I may have misheard, but what was the ARR growth excluding ARR from B2B ? ARR was NZD 40 million at the end of June, but I'm unclear what it was at the end of September excluding B2B Rocket. P.S., great to have you back as CFO.
I know Karen might be on mute, so she's running the slide, so I can probably jump that in. You're right, it is awesome having her back in the hot seat. We started the quarter at NZD 14 million, and when we added in B2B Rocket, which was about mid-quarter by memory, like halfway through the quarter, it had gone to NZD 17.5 million. You can see that we had still really awesome organic growth layered in over the top of B2B Rocket as well. That was, you know, coming back to the thing, that was the thing that I think we actually did best this quarter because, you know, like Karen said before, like, you know, like, hey, there's just one team and we're doing all this work. There's really only, you know, like 50 core people in Black Pearl Group before we brought in, you know, B2B Rocket.
Every one of them is part of evaluating B2B, how they're going to fit into the group, you know, how they fit into our strategy. There's a hell of a lot of work that goes into that. One of the things I just want to make a point that, like, personally, I don't really differentiate hugely. Even though, yes, organic was great, I don't really differentiate or want to differentiate between, you know, acquired revenue or organic revenue. A dollar's a dollar, we have an investment dollar from shareholders, and where are we going to place that to get the most efficient revenue growth? Sometimes that's in one product, and sometimes we upweight one product. Like you would have seen the quarter before last with Bebop, we put in, you know, pretty much a lion's share of sales and marketing resources into that, and that took off accordingly.
Other times it might be in an acquisition, and other times it will be spread more fairly, but we're always going to be upweighting and downweighting our particular products and focus to ensure optimum group level growth. You can maybe think of it a little like a share portfolio, which I'm sure most of you are on here, you know, like sometimes stocks are running hot and, you know, and you pile in and you want to get in there, and other times, you know, that particular market might be a bit harder, and rather than becoming ineffective with your client customer acquisition, you might upweight something else. That's really the way we think about it as the group is winning. It's the team, not the individual.
Just a couple of questions on wholesale. Can you give us more color on the average wholesale client contract, and how many customers you've got to date?
Customer numbers we aren't publishing at this stage. What I can tell you is that Trinity's slide, which showed average monthly revenue of $30,000, seems to be like where the average is at. I've seen $15,000s, I've seen a $40,000. If you relate that to Australian or New Zealand dollars and annualize it, because that's $30,000 turning into $200,000 of revenue for that client, these are averaging out at $500,000 contracts. They can really move the needle. There is a ramp to these contracts. The key thing is, and one thing that I think Trinity's team has done a phenomenal job of, is making sure that the customer succeeds during the bidding in process of taking this data and turning it into dollars. It starts off as an example of a ramp.
It could start off at $10,000 month one, $20,000 month two, $30,000 month three. There's your ramp, and then it sticks at the $30,000 a month, the annual contracts. There's a little bit of a ramp to fully realize the subscription revenue that comes through from those deals, which is something we're obviously all mindful of. I don't know who said it, I think it was Noah. We get paid when our customers succeed. We want to make sure that the customer, in this instance, these agencies, are not getting overburdened from a cost center basis during that period. That's why we do the ramp. I think that's also a pretty good example of average contract value and the kind of benefit Trinity is pointing there that these businesses are getting out. Ultimately, we become a revenue line for them, and that is why this becomes sticky.
Thanks, Nick. Just a follow-on question. Just talking to why you've been so selective with wholesale clients to date and what the pipeline looks like as well.
I think the pipeline looks awesome. I'm really excited about it. I'm not sure about how much you want to quantify on that, but yeah, the pipeline's really good. We are selective because we're scaling that team up. Selling a customer is not the hard part. It's making sure that customer wins month in, month out, year in, year out. That is really the secret to success, right? Otherwise, if we're not in the one-off time revenue game, we're in the recurring revenue game. Making sure that we're getting the right kind of support teams and scaling them up efficiently as those customers come on board is really top of mind for us.
That's again why I think the venture structure is so useful because it gives Trinity, as the head of that product, the autonomy to kind of grow without having to coordinate that in too laboriously at a group level. I guess also we want to be a little conservative with how we're looking at it. All things seem to be a very, very exciting opportunity, like a massive opportunity. I mean, it could be, you know, single-handedly, it conceivably can get us to NZD 50 million, conceivably, but proof is in the pudding. As it keeps succeeding, we'll keep putting more energy and resource in there, and hopefully, that can just become a behemoth in its own right.
Just last question, Nick, are customers typically on monthly or annual lock-in contracts with Pearl Diver wholesale?
Annual.
Perfect. That's nice and punchy. Thanks, everyone, who's presented today. Nick, I might just hand it back to you for closing remarks, and we'll finish up there.
I think I've thrown all my good one-liners out. I'm never anything left in the bag. It was coming back to me. I just want to thank everyone there for their continued support. I also want to thank our team, the Black Pearl team. Bloody executed awesome last quarter, and we're doing awesome this quarter. Just keep it up. Keep it up, fellas. We're kicking ass. It's awesome. For everyone else, as I always close off, ad astra. Thank you.
Thanks, guys.