Okay, we're live now. Good morning. Welcome, everybody. I'm John McMahon, the Chair of Solution Dynamics. It's my pleasure to welcome you all to the annual shareholders' meeting, and as you're aware, today's meeting is being held in person and online via Computershare's online meeting platform. In addition to providing a live webcast of the event, and access to the meeting documents, shareholders and proxies have the ability to vote and ask questions, and I'll shortly provide details on how to do this. We have the company's directors present today. We have Julian Beavis. We have Andy Preece. We have Elmar Toime, and our other director, Lee Eglinton, is not in Auckland today, but she has joined the meeting online.
We also have our CEO, Pat Brand, here, Suzy Watts, our CFO, and we have a representative of our auditors, Grant Thornton, present. I'm pleased to confirm we have a quorum, and therefore declare the 2024 Annual Shareholders' Meeting of Solution Dynamics to be open. The items of business for the meeting and the resolutions to be considered are contained in the notice of meeting, which was sent to shareholders on the 24th of September. Please note the important disclaimer information, as we will be making and commenting on forward-looking statements today. So our agenda today will take us through a number of matters. I'll first cover off the procedure for voting and questions. There will then be an overview of FY 2024, including some key metrics and the trends we're seeing.
We'll comment on our business strategy and then the guidance outlook for the first half of FY 2025, and we'll then take any questions that you might have at that point, and then lastly, we'll undertake the formal business of the meeting, and any other general business that shareholders wish to raise, and I'll now explain the voting process. From now onwards, for those online, you'll be able to vote on the resolutions that are to be considered at this meeting. If you're logged on as a shareholder and eligible to vote, a Vote tab will show on your screen, and to vote, simply click on that Vote tab, select your voting direction from the options shown on the screen, and you can vote for all resolutions at once, or by each resolution.
And your vote has been cast when the tick appears. To change your vote, select, unsurprisingly, Change Your Vote. You have the ability to change your vote up until the time I declare voting closed at the end of the meeting. Now, for those of you in the room, you will have registered and collected a ballot paper on the way in. Please raise your hand or let Sarah from Computershare know if you don't have a ballot, and we'll sort that out. And you may submit questions at any time on each resolution being put to shareholders. So the online question process.
To ask a question online, whether it's related to a resolution or to any matter, please just click on the Q&A tab, as indicated on the slide, type your question into the field, and once you have finished typing, please click on Send to submit it to us. And you can submit questions from now onwards, although we will not address them until the relevant point in the meeting. Note, your questions may be moderated, or if we receive multiple questions on one topic, we'll endeavor to combine these. However, if you don't consider your question has been addressed, then please do resubmit it. Finally, to ensure all shareholders have a chance to ask questions, please limit yourself to two. If we run out of time to answer all questions, we will make sure that we respond following the meeting. I do...
Again, I encourage you to submit questions early, if possible. The Q&A tab can also be used for immediate help. If you need assistance, please submit your query in the same manner as typing a question, and a Computershare representative will respond to you directly. For those of you in the room, questions will be taken after general business and after each resolution, but could you please wait for the microphone to be brought to you, so the folks online can hear your question, and also state your name and identify yourself as a shareholder before asking your question. Moving on now to the result and business commentary.
The past financial year saw SDL navigate a range of challenges that included a difficult macroeconomic environment globally, postal market pressures that continue unabated, and also the company's largest customer issuing an RFP covering services provided by SDL. Now, despite these headwinds, the company produced its second-highest-ever net profit result of NZD 2.8 million. Testament to the efforts of all staff across the group. The company's revenue declined slightly, down 4.6% to NZD 38.7 million. SDL's New Zealand operations made significant progress. We gained share in a declining local print and mail market, and we continued to pick up work, new work from a range of local councils and commercial contracts.
These new wins continue the sales progress, the strong sales progress from FY 2023 and will provide assistance as these new customers contribute more fully in FY 2025, in addition to further new business gains. International operations generated only modest new business, with SDL placing significant pressure on key existing client retention. Ongoing weakness from the U.S. mortgage market, which is the result of obviously much higher U.S. interest rates, that continued to negatively impact results, along with the timing of a large order around FY 2024 year-end, and that order moved into FY 2025, plus somewhat lower customer volumes from a weakening global economy. Look, these factors combined to result in a 12% reduction in SDL's software and technology revenue to NZD 25.1 million.
Now, the RFP process from the company's largest customer remains ongoing, albeit with no formal communication received in recent months. During 2024, FY 2024, SDL, for this customer, SDL implemented a global distributed print and distribution model, that enabled material cost savings for the customer. And SDL continues to be awarded ongoing work based around the customer's usual communications programs. Labor market cost pressure from COVID progressively abated over FY 2024, and the general labor market now appears quite soft. Several areas of operation were targeted for restructuring during the year, aimed at improving operating efficiency and productivity. In the short run, this incurred costs, along with a lag, while new staff came and are still coming up to speed with SDL's systems and processes. SDL closed the year with net cash on hand at NZD 7.95 million.
Now, that's approximately NZD 0.54 a share. The directors continue to maintain a preference for acquisition opportunities, most likely aimed at delivering product or geographic expansion, and remain conscious that any transaction must add value to shareholders and with manageable financial and operational risks. SDL's International Growth Fund co-funding grant from New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, NZTE, we got that in late H1 FY 2023. That continued to operate over FY 2024. It runs for three years, so to later in calendar 2025, and that reimburses 50% of US market development costs up to a maximum reimbursement level of 0.6 million. And now, a constraint of the grant is that SDL distributions, that includes capital, dividends and any capital returns, they are capped at 50% of earnings over the term of the agreement.
Look, the directors are very aware that the NZTE constraint has restricted shareholder payments, and subject to no CapEx or acquisition requirements, we do intend to review SDL's capital structure during 2025 , and we will consider and look at all options to enhance and maximize shareholder returns. I'll now hand over to Pat to discuss the result and business strategy.
Thank you, John, and good morning, everybody. Good to see you again. So despite the economic and postal market weakness that John described and the headwinds, we did generate our second highest profit last year, which quite frankly all of us were very pleased about, and our result of NZD 2.8 million in net profit was down 18% with dividends to shareholders totaling NZD 0.095 per share, fully imputed. The company's revenue declined, as John talked about, 4.6% to NZD 38.7 million. There were continued cost pressures, and we managed those with staffing levels and the restructuring that John mentioned as well.
We were able to implement some modest price increases, not only in New Zealand, but quite frankly, in other parts of our business as well. We did an extremely good job, I think, as the chart indicates, in managing our SG&A throughout the year. We upgraded several internal systems during the year, and I can't underestimate or understate the importance of what we've done here with the systems upgrades, including finalization of new accounting and ERP and CRM systems, and concluded the implementation of a new print job management system as well. That was quite significant and took about 18 months in total. These provided continued operational improvements and process improvements as well, and sales efficiencies.
We commented last year that success never runs in a straight line, and ongoing pressure on the postal markets in general, coupled with the headwinds that John described around macroeconomic conditions, continue to mean that we have our work cut out for us. But we, across the entire company globally, are aligned to deliver results with both the staff changes that I talked about and significant amount of product development supporting growth initiatives. And today, a little bit later, I'm gonna talk about the launch of GenCom AI, which is our new offering in the AI space, and you'll see it reflected on our website as well as of this morning.
SDL continues to continue its transformation as a global business through enabling global customer communications as a service, and we talked about that a fair amount last year. Our goal is really to unlock significant cost savings for our customers while improving their client engagement. And this global strategy has focused on several key verticals with large-scale global customer communication needs, such as global charities, like we talked about with World Vision last year, and several global CCM platform providers, including Pitney Bowes. And in fact, we just are finishing up our fourth year of implementation with Pitney Bowes to a great deal of success. Our global customer communications technology, delivered as a managed service, is really at the heart of what we do.
SDL has largely unified its software products into our platform. In fact, our leader of product development, Hash, is here, largely under his direction. Hash, thank you. And of course, we call that Digital Mail Centre, and that leverages a digital workflow approach to get the right message delivered to the right customer at the right time. This provides our customers with an end-to-end solution, covering both digital and print communications, and a mobile-first approach, which continues to assist us in capturing new wins everywhere in New Zealand and beyond. We are leading with digital transformation, and in this market, as our customers digitally transform, we have to lead with digital transformation and are doing that with success.
The traditional print and mail house market is expected to continue its structural decline and likely to continue to consolidate, as well, and that's no new news in our industry, but we expect that to continue to occur, and we're particularly pleased with the progress that we've made, particularly in New Zealand, with growing market share in this shrinking market. Everywhere we have a focus on new business, and that's driven by new talent and leading with digital transformation, and as you'll see in a minute, leading with AI. SDL's software business and our strong financial position, the NZD 8 million worth of cash that John described earlier, means that the company is well-positioned, not only in the New Zealand market as supplier of choice, but increasingly outside of New Zealand as well.
I'd like to talk about AI for a minute, because we really believe that AI is really the next leg of our journey as a company. During the second half of FY 2024 , we began enhancing our digital solutions by integrating artificial intelligence, known as AI, into our customer communications platform. The emerging landscape for AI, as represented on this chart, is, we believe, very attractive, but it's also very broad. So it's important that you understand sort of where you pick your spots in terms of opportunities. The best product market fit for SDL as we initially get involved in this, we've determined to be in the language translation space. And that's really given the needs of governments and global charities around the world for language translation.
We recently launched a product called GenCom AI, and in fact, you can go up on our website this morning and see more about that. It's an AI-powered global customer communications cloud and managed services offering. It integrates best-of-breed AI solutions with our powerful cloud software platform. This enables governments, charities, and businesses to quickly, efficiently, and effectively communicate with their customers and with their sponsors and with their citizens in their customers' preferred language. Governments at all levels are facing increasing pressure to ensure communications are accessible to constituents with limited English proficiency, obviously in the countries where English is the predominant language. These are some statistics that you know perhaps would ring true, not only in New Zealand, but other places as well.
Beyond regulatory compliance, communicating with customers in their preferred language can reduce the cost of delays in payment, follow-up notices, and call center support. Global charities as well need to quickly and easily communicate with their supporters in many different languages, which causes significant delays and expense. And increasingly, organizations are recognizing language accessibility, and I wanna emphasize that, language accessibility, as a customer experience initiative. GenCom AI, our new offering, makes it easy for organizations to connect with their customers in their preferred language, while reducing the typical cost of manual translations by up to 80%. And let me just stop there for a second, because typically, if you go to a language translation service, it'll cost you between 10 and 25 cents a word to have a translation done.
By using a machine learning-based approach, you can significantly reduce the cost and increase the speed of language translation. We believe that SDL is very well-positioned to leverage artificial intelligence, and it's an interesting and exciting new chapter in the transformation of our company into a modern, global software technology and managed services business. Digitizing the language translation process is a new space for us, undoubtedly, although we do have some experience with World Vision, in particular, around language translation. But we also think that it plays to our strengths in managing data and managing documents and complex managed services projects at scale. AI will quickly become table stakes in customer communications software, as it is in most industries. There may be first mover advantages, but this will likely drive further consolidation in our industry.
Our customers and our employees and our investors will view us as a more modern software technology provider, pivoting to growth markets.
... The business impact is difficult to predict at this point, although our business position is strong and we are moving quickly to launch, learn, and iterate. And I'd like to hand it back to John, and we'll take questions later.
Thanks, Pat. As you'll be aware, post our balance date in early September, we received an NBIO from a subsidiary of NZX-listed Being AI. The directors reviewed the terms of the proposed transaction outlined in the NBIO, and that was described as involving either a partial or full takeover by BAI, and with options to either take a combination of cash and BAI shares, and those relative proportions of cash and shares weren't specified, or take all BAI shares. The description of the proposed transaction indicated that there would not be an option for SDL shareholders to exit their entire holding in the company for a cash consideration only, nor did it provide any indication of BAI's future intentions for SDL, should it obtain a controlling interest without making a full takeover.
The NBIO remains an incomplete proposal, could only be seen as highly conditional, and in the absence of sufficient detail to form an opinion that the proposed transaction was in the best interests of all SDL shareholders, the board declined BAI's request for access to confidential due diligence information. We further noted that one of the issues with a partial takeover offer proposal is that it would likely face the hurdle that it would neither provide all of SDL shareholders with the opportunity to exit their holdings, nor any certainty as to the exact proportion of their shareholdings that may be able to be sold if any such partial take offer proceeded and was successful, and that's because of the likelihood of scaling under a partial takeover offer.
Look, BAI stated that further detail would be provided in the event that a formal takeover offer notice was provided to us. However, we have received no further communication and no takeover offer has been received from BAI since that initial approach. And just to be clear, the directors will consider and respond to any further approach or formal takeover offer in accordance with their directors' duties and obligations under the Takeovers Code. Okay, moving to the FY 2025 outlook. The new business momentum in New Zealand from FY 2024 should see SDL deliver additional domestic revenue in FY 2025, albeit the overall decline in print and mail house activity continues unabated. Driving growth beyond New Zealand remains the top priority, and GenCom AI provides new differentiating capabilities.
The company recently restructured its sales staff in North America and is investing in local sales and marketing that can better leverage GenCom AI growth opportunities. And we're also in the process of folding in the staff of a direct marketing services company based in New York City to provide enhanced local sales and marketing for GenCom AI. An experienced enterprise sales executive has been hired in Australia, and software pre-sales resources will be added in U.S. and Australia, probably early in 2025. The company will continue to add sales resources as we prove out that GenCom AI product and market fit. And just to be clear, while SDL is investing in this sales enablement process, during FY 2025, you know, enterprise sales in this space can be quite long. They can take easily six to 12 months.
So I wouldn't expect much in the way of meaningful revenue impact, particularly from GenCom AI, until FY 2026. Now, as previously advised, SDL remains unable to provide full year FY 2025 earnings guidance, while the RFP remains for its largest customer, remains outstanding. For the first quarter of the current financial year, SDL has traded broadly in line with internal expectations and is marginally ahead of the prior year. Forward orders suggest the first half FY 2025 result is now expected to be largely unaffected by the RFP tender, and the company expects earnings to be in the range of NZD 2.2 million-NZD 2.6 million.
Now, just the usual caution, in addition to large customer-specific risk, SDL, you know, cautions that significant volatility in results is possible, and from a number of factors, especially those macroeconomic headwinds and material declines in the postal market, and these are factors which are outside the company's control. That's the end of that part of the presentation, so we'll now take questions. And do you want to start online? So Andy's just going to read out any questions we have online, and Pat or I will respectively answer them.
Sure, happy to do so. There are a couple of questions from Kirsten Roberts. The first one is: You state costs for changes in labor that were made post-COVID. Can we supply the quantum of the one-off nature of those costs, please?
I would have to get back to you on that one. I apologize.
I did try and respond to Kirsten in such a manner, but I couldn't work out how to answer on the system, so apologies, but it, it's good to know that I got the answer right. Thank you. The second question... Would the chair like to comment on any thoughts or the outcomes that might be likely from the capital structure review to be undertaken next year?
Okay. I would think it would be the usual range of outcomes you could expect. Firstly, there's always the possibility that we make an acquisition in the intervening period. We'll still do the review nevertheless. In the absence of making the acquisition or having any material CapEx requirements, you know, you finish up looking at if we consider a capital return of some sort, you finish up with the obvious candidates of: do you pay a special dividend? Do you do a pro rata capital return? Do you look to do an on-market share buyback, you know? And I wouldn't rule anything in, I wouldn't rule anything out. Sorry, I wouldn't rule anything out at this stage.
We will look at all options and take what we think is the best course of action at the time, and that will be very circumstance-driven when we do it.
Thank you, John. And, the final one, again from Kirsten, is: with most commentators suggesting that a reduction in interest rates in the U.S. will lead to a better economy, can we assume that the weaknesses in the U.S. financials noted in the overview should lead to an uptick in SDL's U.S. revenue in the year ahead? I suggest that might be a question for Pat.
Yeah. So I think specifically the interest rate that we're dependent on in terms of the impact is really the mortgage rate, which is the long-term interest rate, which just for those of you who aren't familiar with the way the U.S. market mortgage market works, it's all based on long-term pretty much interest rates. So we haven't seen the rebound yet in the mortgage market in the U.S. that perhaps is beginning to happen in New Zealand, because our long-term interest rates are are slightly ticking up, actually, not going down. Short-term interest rates are going down, but long-term interest rates slightly going up.
I believe that that's temporary, that, you know, perhaps six months to a year from now, mortgage rates will be down, hopefully, in which case, we will begin to see the benefit in terms of a mortgage market rebound, which can help our customers and ultimately, hopefully, help us as well. In fact, the partners that we have begun to approach us again most recently as they see the mortgage market potentially green shoots, so to speak, coming back up again in the next six to 12 months, but it looks like that's unlikely to be sooner than the next six months or so. Probably not an impact to this fiscal year.
Thank you. Thank you, Pat. That concludes the online questions that I've got so far on my screen.
Okay.
Thank you.
I'm sure we'll have some questions from the room. Mike, can you just wait for the microphone to come to you, Mike?
Sorry.
I think I'm over.
For the folks online, Mike.
Oh, sorry. You've actually alluded to this already, John. Is that working?
Yeah.
Just regarding the balance sheet, the excess cash, and the NZTE, I assume there's about NZD 200,000 left. Is that right? Of the one year of three.
I can't remember how the timing of it went, Mike, but I will be very confident that we will have cut the entire grant. It will be by the end of this financial year, Susie, won't it? Yeah. Yeah. We'll definitely cut the grant by the end of this financial year.
So you have mentioned that you may look at not waiting for that, and my view has been, while there's significant selling in the market, and it's publicly known that some of the major shareholders have issued substantial showing that they're exiting or selling currently, wouldn't it be beneficial for shareholders to actually just flag the grant now and actually buy up the stock while it's at a six times PE or whatever?
Uh.
The value there would surely be more than hanging on to a grant.
Well, technically, we are contracted through to that period. We would have to approach them and try and seek release from it, which they wouldn't necessarily provide, and it may not be as simple as you suggest, of just turning up and saying: "We want to cancel it." And we are putting quite a bit of cost in, particularly around that GenCom AI area, into the US at the moment, and for the sake of a few months, I wouldn't like to forgo the benefit we're getting. And we do have to run through a capital structure review before we decide what we do, Mike, just to be clear. You're making a presumption that we will take a particular course of action. That might...
That is one of the options on the table, and we will be looking at all those options in the first half of twenty twenty-five, but we haven't made that call or that decision yet.
Yeah, I'm just saying, why would you wait when, why not-
Yeah, I-
... run the cost analysis now?
I get the question, Mike. I understand it.
Okay. Thanks.
Yeah, just...
Yeah, sort of an extension of this discussion about the capital. Obviously, you know, NZD 8 million, I could probably do with that in my bank account, but it's not all mine anyhow. But, what I wanted to ask was of the directors as to why they don't think they're able to find the... Because we've said now for about five years, looking for a good acquisition opportunity. What’s blocking that capability so that we could get a better return? I mean, obviously, you go and do an acquisition because you hope for a 20%-30% or even better % return. So that money's sitting there getting us 2%-3%.... What’s stopping us from finding the right opportunity?
It hasn't been for want of looking, I would say. We have run the ruler over a variety of potential candidates. We even got to the point where we made an indicative offer for one, but nothing has closed. I would say, particularly during COVID, in the private equity market, valuations got pumped up to what I would call nosebleed valuation levels. We could have bought something, but we would have had to significantly overpay to do it. So, you know, you talk about getting a 20%-30% return. If you overpay, by definition, your expected return is probably gonna be quite a bit lower than that.
So it hasn't been for want of looking, but we need to find, one, the right fit, and secondly, at the right price, with the right product or the right distribution strategy in the right region. So it's not like we've got a large universe of potential candidates that we can look to acquire, but we have run the ruler over a number of them. Anyone else?
Just, just a quick question.
Oh.
Sorry. Just, under the RFP, you've never really given us any indication if you would get... If it goes through, what's it going to do to our profit returns?
What we have said is it's very material to the company's financial results, and we would need to. We'd definitely be looking at doing a significant cost restructuring, and we haven't done sufficiently detailed work around that to be able to answer that question at this point.
My name is John Ridan, shareholder. I was wondering, what is the amount of money spent on marketing?
Want me to answer?
Yeah, have a go at it. I, I don't know the answer, so you should have a go at it.
Yeah. Yeah, we haven't spent a lot of money, nothing material, certainly, in marketing, to date as a company since we even founded, I think since 1996. In fact, we talk about it a lot at the board meetings. But we, as John mentioned, we just, we've just reached an agreement, actually, this week, with someone who runs a marketing agency in New York City area, who is joining our company. And in fact, we expect that we're going to be able to, as a result of that, significantly ramp up the amount of marketing that we have with our own employees, as opposed to having to pay an outside agency.
And in fact, if you take a look at our LinkedIn ads over the last month or so, you'll notice a significant improvement and a significant increase in volume of our LinkedIn marketing, particularly associated with the conference that we're attending this month in Amsterdam, this week in Amsterdam. It's going to go from insignificant to, I think, meaningful over the next six months. And I think it's really important because marketing is just another form of sales in this current modern world in terms of how sales gets done. And we really need the marketing to increase the awareness of SDL, particularly outside of New Zealand.
You're gonna see that ramp up, but I wouldn't in any stretch of the imagination say it's anything significant at this point in time. But that is, that is our focus going forward.
Okay. Thank you.
And just to add to that, most of the spend that we have done has been on, in direct sales, because typically we've been doing enterprise sales. So we've typically run a direct sales model rather than a more of a broadcast marketing model. But we're, as Pat said, we're now looking, particularly with GenCom AI, to raise a general awareness level around the company and the product, to broaden the focus as opposed to having targeted direct sales.
And I have a second. Just going on from the question about the RFP. Just wanted to clarify: we've responded to an RFP. I'm asking, have we responded, but we've failed to get an outcome to that response? And if that's the case, what do we believe has been the challenge that's caused us not to be able to lock this customer in? Obviously, you know, that customer's been there for about five or six years, from what I recall.
Mm-hmm.
And so there's been a challenge in locking them in. Now, we've pitched a deal, and they're not biting the bait, whatever we've put on the hook sort of scenario. So that, that's obviously going to be quite concerning. I'm wondering what we think the causes are.
Firstly, yes, we obviously responded within the timeframe. Presentations were given. There were a range of follow-up questions and processes that we went through. And as I indicated, in the statement, we haven't had any formal communication from them for several months. We're not aware that there has been any formal communication from them to anyone for several months, so it's not clear to us that they have concluded their process. It does seem to have taken an inordinate amount of time. I think it is a fair comment to make. However, we continue to receive work, and we've received additional work from the client, and we've got forward-looking indications that we should receive work for their programs early in twenty twenty-five.
So it doesn't appear to have gone away, but they don't appear to have made a decision either, and, you know, they'll run their own internal processes, as they see fit, and then I guess let us know in due course. But as I said, we haven't heard anything for several months, and I'm not aware that anybody has. Not an ideal position, I would agree with you. Do we have any other questions? Okay, thank you. In that case, we'll move to the formal part of the meeting. Voting today is by way of poll. Once all the votes have been cast, they will be counted by the share registrar, Computershare, and the results of the meeting will be released on NZX on the completion of verification of voting.
As a reminder for those online, you've been able to vote since the meeting opened, and if you're eligible to vote, a Vote tab will show on your screen. Selecting this tab will bring up the list of resolutions and present you with voting options. Simply click one of those options, and your vote is recorded when the tick appears, and up until the time the poll is declared closed, you may change your vote by selecting Change Your Vote. Now, all the resolutions today are ordinary resolutions and are required to be passed by a simple majority of votes. Proxies have been appointed in respect of approximately 3.4 million shares, which represents 23.2% of the total shares on issue.
The majority of these proxies have been directed in my personal capacity, and as Chair of the meeting, I hold proxies carrying around three million votes or about 20.6% of the total shares on issue. Moving to the resolutions. Resolution one is the re-election of Andy Preece as a director. NZX Listing Rule 2.7.1 requires the company's directors must not hold office without re-election past the third annual meeting of shareholders following their appointment or three years, whichever is longer. Andy will retire from office at this year's annual meeting. Being eligible, he offers himself for re-election as a director of the company. His biography was in the notice of meeting.
I'll take that as read and now ask Andy just to say a few words.
Thank you, John. Always an easy thing to talk about yourself, so I've been involved in the print and media industry and communications industry in this country for over twenty years now. I've been involved in paper and print. I've been involved in digital directories. I chaired Yellow Pages for people who thought it was. It is still around, and it is still a very large, what is now a digital company, so we were able to successfully transform that. I see that as a not dissimilar journey to the one that Pat articulated early on, so I guess that's my experience.
I've worked with this company as a supplier of its paper, and in my private life, I've also been quite active in the M&A space over the last five years with a growing group of import distribution businesses. So, that's my potted background, and I offer myself up for re-election. Thank you.
Are there any questions for Andy? Okay, no. Okay, in that case, I move as an ordinary resolution to re-elect Andrew Preece as a director of the company. Could you please cast your vote if you haven't already done so? Resolution 2.2, which is re-election of Julian Beavis. NZX Listing Rule 2.7.1 requires that the company's directors must not hold office without re-election past the third annual meeting of shareholders following their appointment or three years, whichever is longer. Julian will retire from office at this year's annual meeting. Being eligible, he offers himself for re-election as a director of the company. His biography was in the notice of meeting, and again, I'll take that as read, and ask Julian to say a few words.
Thanks, John. I'm very aware that I'm the longest-serving director. I don't think I had gray hair, in fact, when I joined the company. But I can also note that although the share price hasn't done everything we all would have liked over the years or isn't, you know, right at this point, in my time as part of this company, we've had a lot of good years, you know, that we've had the growth that we've strived to achieve, and that remains the challenge. Growing an international business from New Zealand is not easy. Now, my background is in the technology industry. It's with software. I was one of the early proponents of the shift towards software as a service in terms of our offerings.
I'm the first to admit I don't have the same background in paper and the, you know, those sorts of things, but that's the point of the board. It's to bring a range of opinions, experiences, networks, and the rest, and I think I've done that to the best of my ability over my time on the board to date, and I hope that I have the opportunity to continue to do that for a little bit longer with Solution Dynamics. Thank you.
Thanks, Julian. Are there any questions for Julian?
Hey, Julian, Marc. Look, the question I sort of have, and forgive me, I'll sort of define the business in two different ways, then I'm gonna ask you to comment on how you think it's doing in those ways. So is the business a print company that's developing a little bit of software, or has the business become a software company or a technology company sufficiently? My concern being the percentage of revenue that-
... effectively falls from print solely. And while there's a big number based on the, you know, offshore international, a big number of that is derived from that single client, where a big proportion of what they pay is all about print and envelopes, predominantly. And so I'm looking for your comment on that evolution, 'cause you talked about AI has, like, encouraged this evolution, and I'm looking for where do you think you're at scorecard evolution-wise? And I know the evolution moved forward quite well for a period of time, but is it stagnating now? Is my question.
Yeah, look, for certainly, the company was... Is that on? That's working?
I presume so.
Yeah. You know, in terms of my opinion and with regard to your question, Mark, when I joined, it was very much a print company, you know, in the conventional, traditional sense, right? And changing isn't easy, and it doesn't happen quickly, and it doesn't happen continuously either. So I think where we are right now, or where we have been perhaps in a little bit of recent times, we've been on one of those steps when we've moved ahead, and then sometimes you're a little bit ahead of your ability to perhaps do everything as well as you want to do, and you do need to consolidate. You do have to bring things together. You learn about what you're doing, you learn about what other opportunities there are, that in turn changes your own thinking a little.
You know, I'm talking about the company more generally here. You know, we had a step change, obviously, when Pat joined the company as the CEO, right? And that, to me, was probably the most conscious, direct, tangible change in what the business's outlook was going to be. In other words, it was largely to be outside of New Zealand. Now, despite that, the team here have frankly gone completely against the grain. The growth that this company's achieved in this New Zealand market is, you know, locally extraordinary. So I think it's a series of steps. You never actually ever get there. I think Pat talked about, you know, the AI initiative. That's the next big one for this company, and that's about software, that's about services.
That's not about, you know, print in its traditional sense.
Although, if I can add that it may well generate some print revenues. Yeah, 'cause every communication, there's always someone wants ink on paper as part of how they get it. Not everybody gets it via email, not everybody gets it via text. Sorry, I'm adding to your-
I was gonna add to that. I think, and as Marc knows, my background is paper. So I look at this business when I was involved with it. It was, to get to your question, a very large mailing house with a very small software development bolted on. And at every conversation that we had, we led with print, we led with paper, we led with ink on paper, we led with DM, we led with billing. What I can say now is that since Pat's come on board, from the board down, every interaction that we talk about is led by digital. So there's been this inflection point, this tipping point for the company, and it's only happened in recent times.
So we don't talk about what we are, we talk about what we should be and where we wanna be. But all I can say is that the print part of it now, which is absolutely bucking the trend and doing better than any other company in its market, because that market is in structural decline. So any part of a strategy that sees a reliance on continued growth in that area is, in my opinion, flawed. But what I see from the CEO and what I see from board down, is a company that now leads with digital. So if it leads with digital, and everything that you see there is digital, I think that tells you where we believe the company is. That's...
Do we have any other questions for Julian? Okay, no. In that case, I move as an ordinary resolution to re-elect Julian Beavis as a director of the company. Please cast your vote if you haven't already done so. So we move to the last resolution, Resolution Three, relating to auditors' fees. Grant Thornton is the existing auditor of the company and is automatically reappointed by virtue of Section 207T of the New Zealand Companies Act 1993. The proposed ordinary resolution is required to authorize the directors of the company to fix the auditor's remuneration for the purposes of Section 207S of the New Zealand Companies Act 1993. So I now move as an ordinary resolution that the board be authorized to fix the remuneration of the company's auditors for the 2025 financial year, and I've just noted a typo. It actually says "2024" in the document.
My apologies. So it is 2025 financial year. If you haven't already done so, please vote. I'll now pause for any questions and to allow you to vote.
Trump. Seriously.
Yeah.
No, that is-
... Yeah.
Closest.
Closest.
All right. Thanks, thanks, everybody. That concludes the resolutions, and your voting papers have been collected, and as a reminder, once the votes have been verified and counted, by the company share registrar, the results of today's meeting will be released on NZX. If there are any final questions, please ask them now. Is there anything online, Andy?
Nothing.
Nothing online. Okay. Do we have anything else in the room? All right. Thank you very much. We have no further questions. Thank you for attending our meeting today. I look forward to seeing you next year, and I now declare the meeting closed, and there are some refreshments available in the foyer. Thank you very much.