Good morning and welcome to this presentation on PaySauce's Half-Year Results for FY 2025. The interim report, the media release, and this presentation are available on the NZX website, and they will shortly be available on our website too. I'd just like to draw your attention to the disclaimer that we have. One of the key points is that nothing in this presentation constitutes legal, financial, tax, or other advice. The full slide is available to read, so we won't go through it all just now, but we will move on. So today we've got our CEO, Asantha Wijeyeratne, who's going to talk to us about the strategy that we have and our progress towards that. And myself, Jaime Monaghan, CFO, I'll talk to the financial results. One of the key things in the financial results is that we do use non-GAAP measures.
We use SaaS measures to record our results, and we'll talk mostly to those results, but the full GAAP measures are available within the interim report that's available on the website, so we'll kick off. Over to you, Asantha.
Thanks, Jaime. I'm delighted to report that we've had a really good half-year, as you'll see from the numbers. We are continuing to trend up on the ARR, where we hit NZD 8.7 million, which is 17% year on year. We continue to maintain profitability, which was a NZD 337,000 improvement year on year. I'm delighted to say that we saw a significant lift in the customer lifetime value, which now exceeds NZD 50 million, and it's sitting at NZD 50.5 million. That's a 24% increase year on year. Cash, which is the key ingredient to drive any business, we continue to maintain the positive free cash flow position for the year, and we were up NZD 250,000 year on year. So the key things from the half-year is that we've invested significantly back into the business, into tech, into people, into processes. I'm delighted to see that we are seeing those investments paying back.
So that's what we call the building for scalable growth. So, as I said, we've seen a good lift in ARR. We've also seen a continued improvement in the processing fee revenue, and we've increased our customer count so that the net customer growth has continued to increase. With the reduction in the overall OCR number, ARR impact from interest is not as significant as the increase in processing fees. The lift that we got from the interest component of the ARR was just 5% for the period that we're looking at. Just a comment on that, the external economy has been, as everyone knows, these have been difficult times that we've been operating in. And in these kinds of times, the majority of impact is on the smaller end of the market. And like every other provider, we've seen some of our customers being impacted by that.
But we're seeing some really positive signs now, and we're seeing that in the number of deals we're closing and the number of customers coming through. So looking at our plan and our strategy to deliver customer growth, a key component to what we do is the care we have for our customers. And that has been represented by some really good stats on the customer satisfaction numbers, average response time back, and we've seen a reduction in the churn rate, which again helps us grow the absolute customer numbers going forward. So what we have is a really solid platform that allows us to now get into some really high growth numbers, which is what the focus is. In order to do that in New Zealand, we did a significant sales and marketing campaign.
We've continued to add and increase our relationships with our partner accounting firms, which is a key referral channel for us, and it's great to see that yielding some good results for us. We've seen that if you're just looking at the customer numbers, we've seen a 12% year-on-year increase in new customer numbers. That's net new customer growth. The customer numbers stood at 7,821 at the close of the half. The other key driver for us is ensuring that we are scaled for growth. So there have been two really significant pieces of work done. One was the complete rebuild of our payroll engine, which has been completed. That's the Gen 2 payroll engine. The second piece is infrastructure. So we've now migrated all our solutions onto AWS, and we successfully did that with minimal disruption to our customers.
So we believe that we are on the right infrastructure platform, and we've set ourselves up for what's coming up ahead. That's very quickly a summary of the half. To look more detailed into the numbers, I'll hand over to Jaime, who will talk you through some of the numbers.
Thank you, Asantha. So a bit more detail of the financials. As I said earlier on, we do focus mostly on the SaaS measures, but I'll just kind of lean in a little bit more into some of the detail behind those measures. So a key component for us is that profitability that we announced at the full year last year. We have managed to continue that into the first half of this year, which is the first time that we've had a profit number in the first half to date. So we're very, very pleased with that. The profitability correlates very highly with the cash flow. So we have been in that position to generate positive cash flow again, and we're really proud of the fact that that cash flow has been sufficient to repay the debt facility that we had, and we've repaid that this year.
$650,000 term loan that we had on the balance sheet at the end of the full year, we've now repaid that. We've renegotiated that to an on-demand overdraft facility at significantly more favorable rates, which is a good outcome for us. We've also managed, as Asantha said, to grow our recurring revenue. We've increased that 20% year on year. During the period, that 20% year on year for the full period has been split evenly between the processing fees and the interest income. But as Asantha alluded to, on the annualized recurring revenue, the interest income component is lesser. That really shows the strength of the underlying processing fees and the contribution that that core customer delivery is giving to our bottom line. That comes through as well in the gross margin. The gross margin is up three percentage points.
And the next slide will go into a little bit more detail, but that's really a reflection of those increased processing fees as well as holding the cost to serve per customer flat year on year, which is a good outcome for us. So just going into a wee bit more detail on some of those numbers, you can see it over time on the graph in the top right, the expenses that we have in this half. The first half of our year is always the more expensive half for us. We put a lot of our investment into the first half, and then the increase doesn't come through so much in the second half of the year. So you can see the stability of that top line revenue growth.
We obviously can't use that as a predictor of the future, but the costs are significantly more deliberate in relation to where we put those dollars coming through, and you can see that those increases year on year, the revenue has increased 27% year on year, while the expenditure growth has been limited to 20% year on year, which is why we're getting that first half profit coming through in this year. In the bottom half, the cash flow, as I said, highly correlated with that first period that we've had two halves in a row of positive free cash flow, which is obviously where we want to be going forward. Looking into the SaaS metrics, this is really the way that we run our business. These are the core metrics that we use when looking at how can we get better at every stage of the customer journey.
These metrics are really highly correlated with other SaaS companies. These are standard measures across SaaS industries that can be used to see how we're faring against both ourselves in the past and other SaaS companies that offer a similar service. So we've deliberately set this up to align with our customer journey. So you can see at the top there, we have customers that we acquire. So it costs us NZD 575 for every customer that we acquire. Now, that cost has increased slightly this year. We have, as Asantha said earlier on, we put a reasonable investment into some out-of-home advertising, some above-the-line advertising. So that cost of acquiring new customers has increased in the first half.
We put some high investment into some digital assets and some production costs that we have here, as well as investing into the team that we have going out and partnering with those accountants that Asantha spoke about earlier on. So that cost to serve has increased. It's up at NZD 575 per new customer. So we pay that to acquire a customer. We then, on average, earn NZD 92 average revenue per customer per month. And that number has come up 8% on last year. But that's the average revenue per user that we earn. And that includes the interest income that's earned. So the interest income component is flattening off a wee bit, but that processing fee element is increasing. We then pay a cost to support those customers. The cost includes our bank transaction fees, our hosting costs, and our customer support team.
Those are the primary costs that we incur in order to support those customers. So if each customer is giving us NZD 92 per month and it's costing us NZD 21 per month to serve them, our gross margin works out at NZD 71 per month per customer. We then look at the churn numbers. The churn numbers are how many customers don't process a fee in any given month that have processed in the past. Now, it's not a perfect measure, and it's an indication, and it doesn't give an indication as to what might happen in the future, but it's a proxy measure that we use to assess how many customers are leaving our books and how long therefore we expect them to stay, so we're pleased to say that those numbers have reduced.
So the churn number has reduced, which means that the expected lifetime of a customer, how long they stay a customer for us, has increased to seven and a half years. Now, when we've looked into that, we do know and understand that it relates quite highly to the economic factors that Asantha was referring to before. So when customers are struggling, our customers, remember, are the employers of one to five people. They're generally owner-operators. And when things get a bit tougher, they end up doing the work themselves. So they let the staff go, and they don't have staff anymore. So our churn number is more highly related to those things as opposed to customers leaving our platform to go to another platform. Cool. So if we have those metrics put together, it costs us NZD 575.
We earn the margin of NZD 71, and they stay for seven and a half years. That equates to an approximate value of about NZD 6,500 per customer. So that's the value of a customer to us, assuming all things remain equal. And when we look at that and we say, okay, if we divide the cost to acquire that customer by the lifetime that we get, we get a ratio of 11 to one. And that's a fairly common customer lifetime value to customer acquisition cost metric is a very common SaaS measure that helps translate how efficient we are at acquiring new customers. So each customer that we get, what it costs us, we get that return back 11 times over, which is a very high number.
Going into the detail behind some of those numbers, Asantha referred to it earlier on, but if you look at the new customers, so over 1,000 new customers joined us in the half year, sorry. That's up 12% on the previous year, but also pleasing is the actual number of customers who churned, who left us during the year, so in the bottom right table, you can see that 582 customers left us, which is lower than the number of customers who left us over the same period last year, so we've increased the rate of acquiring new customers and reduced the rate of customers churning, which is driving that overall net customer numbers up by 9%. The other thing that is really pleasing on that front is the cost to serve those customers.
On the bottom left, our cost to serve our customers increased in total 8% year on year. And if we go back to that net customer growth, the customer numbers increased overall 9% year on year. So our cost to serve is increasing at a much lower rate than the increase in the overall number of customers that we have, which again is very pleasing, and that's helped keep that cost to serve per customer down at NZD 21 flat, while the processing fee element is increasing. The other key number I'll pull out of this slide is the Rule of 40 number. So the Rule of 40 has declined before, below 40 for us in this period. As we said, the first half is filled with a lot of costs.
So that Rule of 40 number, if you're not familiar, it's a combination of the rate of growth, rate of revenue growth, and the profit number that we're achieving. And the profit number is increasing, which is a key impact in there. But that rate of growth relative to last year when we had those very high interest rate increases is lower than it was previously. Okay, I will hand you back to Asantha to talk to where to from here.
Yeah, so based on the work, the significant pieces of work that we've done over the last 18-24 months, we've given ourselves a solid platform to launch from. We are confident that we've got the technology, we've got the people, and we've got the processes to build from here. We're seeing the early signs of that come through, which is really, really pleasing. We continue to work on making it easier for new customers to join us. You would have seen we've appointed a Chief Product Officer in Jess who's taken on that role, and that is to ensure that we really are in sync with what our customers are looking for, and we are able to provide the care and the consideration in all things related to employment. Our key business is about providing our customers peace of mind and time.
In order to do that, we've got to ensure that we can do that at scale. So therefore, the processes and the systems that we're building are absolutely vital. On the other side, we've got a strong relationship with the accounting firms we work with. That's going and understanding what their requirements are and what their customers' requirements are, and making sure that we are delivering on that. We've got a really good understanding of what it is that an accountant is looking for for a payroll system for their clients. We've got a really clear roadmap of the feature set we need to build. There's still work to be done on the UX side of things. That's the big project for the next 12 months.
So that'll enable us to have reinvented ourselves both back-end and front-end before essentially coming up to our 10th year. We essentially will be rebuilding ourselves from the ground up, which is, I think, really important to allow us to stay abreast of what's happening from a technology point of view, what's happening from a market point of view, rather than be encumbered with a technology that is 10 years old or 20 years old. We will have today's technology for today's customers, and that's really, really important, so we've also been working hard on understanding and making sure that the key market that we're looking to serve, that's the one to five staff member market, is looked after and well serviced, so that's what we've got. We've got an exciting period ahead.
And we are confident and optimistic with the platform that we've laid for ourselves that we can continue on this path. That's the outlook for us. Thank you so much for your patience and continued confidence in us as a business. We set out to reinvent the space that we are operating in, and we are well and truly on our way on that mission. So I'll now check with Todd for any questions that might have come through during this presentation. Todd, is there questions that have come through?
Thanks, Asantha. Yes, there's a few questions that have come through. The first one here is from Joshua Murphy. The question is, do you have a strategy for 100 million ARR and beyond? There are obviously mentions around reaching 10 million ARR, but at the current rate, that would be a year or so away. That seems to have slowed recently. Can you comment on why that might be and how that can change from bigger in the future? And also, what timeline could there be for more expansion into Australia in the year?
Great question, Joshua. We started this business not to be another payroll company in New Zealand. We set out with large ambition, and 100 million ARR is definitely in that scope. But the 10 million ARR is a good benchmark for a SaaS business to get to. And as you quite clearly said, we are within line of sight of that. And that growth and that revenue is predominantly coming out of New Zealand. For us to go from where we are today to 100 million will require us to operate outside New Zealand. And we've laid some of the groundwork for that. With the acquisition of SmoothPay, we've got a customer base that we can use to get a toehold and then from there progress into markets. Obviously, the interesting one there is Australia.
And so that's a piece of work that is continuing, and the new payroll engine will enable us to do that. So the pre-work that allows us to enter new markets to start seeing significant increase in revenues has been laid, and that's the path that we are on.
Great. Thank you, Asantha. There's another question here. This is from John Hennet. We'd like to know when management expects shareholders to receive some tangible return on their investment. For the last four years, returns as measured by stock price have been negative. Specifically, how do you plan to turn this around?
The key thing there is in terms of the expectations of the market, and the only way we're going to do that is by delivering good results that are recognized by the wider market. And what we can control is how well we do, and that's significantly our focus. And as you've seen in the half that's gone, we started to build strongly. And then it is then up to us to tell that story to the wider investment public, to get recognition, to understand what we're doing, and you would expect there to be support for the business. And it's really important to understand that the staff and management of PaySauce is significantly invested in this. So, John, as much as this is important to you, this is as important to us as well. This is, for a lot of us, our largest investment.
I personally, I am a 25% shareholder in the business, and so I'm not doing this for a salary. I'm doing this for us to achieve success and have a great return as shareholders, so our interests are very closely aligned, and that ensures that we continue to be focused on growing shareholder value, and we will be doing everything within our control to make sure we deliver on that.
Great. Thank you, Asantha. We have another question here through from Matthew Chen. What is your most recent NPS score? And are your customers happy with the increased price?
That's a really good question. We just completed at about the same time as we were doing the annual report, and the NPS score was 50. Looking at the commentary through there, it was an overwhelmingly positive response to what we're doing. In terms of pricing, we took a decision as a company that we would not be raising our price. So we're probably the only payroll provider in New Zealand that did not have a price increase in this last 12 months. So we've maintained price. And the decision we took was we understand that a significant portion of our customer base are facing significant cost pressures because everybody's been increasing price, and we made a very deliberate decision to hold price for that reason. So that's what we have done. And that doesn't mean to say that we have not had prices increase on us.
Just like everybody else, we've seen cost increases from both the labor side and from also the services side that we've not passed on via the price increase in this year, so that's what we've done as our contribution to the really important customer base we serve, which is the small and micro end of the market.
I'll just add to that a little bit. One of the reasons, if you're referring, Matthew, to the increase in processing fees per customer, the way that comes through is with our GoPayroll product, which is in the Pacific Islands. A lot of those customers pay annually in advance so that the impact of the price increase was effective last year. But it only impacts those people as their annual subscription renews. So that's part of the component coming through. And the other part of it is that customers are moving up the value chain. So we've got at the moment three subscription prices within our core PaySauce product, and some customers choose to move up that so we can extract more value from customers without necessarily just increasing the price increases.
I hope that helps clarify it, but please do email us if there's something that's not quite clear in that regard. Todd, are there any more questions from our audience?
Thanks, Jaime. Yes, there's a couple more through here. So one is from Matt Taylor. This is, with the falling interest rate environment, do you expect the second half of the year to be challenging to maintain positive Free Cash Flow and profitability?
We are well aware of the change in interest rates. And Jaime and the finance team do a great job of locking in rates into the short-medium term. We don't see a significant change in the interest revenue profile over the next six months.
Another question, Todd?
Thanks, Asantha. We have a question here from Malcolm Campbell. Do you expect to have all your existing SmoothPay customers across Oceania converted to PaySauce in their home countries by this time next year, November 25?
Great question, Malcolm. Yes, that's a project that is current and live. So the first phase of migrating the customers are scheduled for in the next 12 months. It is one of our very strong ambitions to become a single solution rather than supporting multiple solutions. It's something that we've seen is not ideal. It's one of the big drivers for us to ensure that we're providing a single solution that makes it easy for customers as well as for our engineering team to be on top of rather than having to maintain and manage a myriad of different systems and processes. So that's very much on the plan for the coming year.
Thanks, Asantha. We've got one final question here from Matthew Chen. I'm interested in your digital campaign video on YouTube. May I get a link?
Yes. Yes, we can send that through. No problem.
No further questions.
So thank you very much for participating today. We're more than happy to take questions by email. We're always happy to answer questions from shareholders or investors, potential investors. Please send through your questions, email them through, and we will look to answer them as soon as we can. Thank you so much.