Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, welcome to the DATA Communications Management Corp second quarter 2023 financial results conference call. My name is James Lorimer, CFO of DCM, I'm pleased to be hosting today's call. Joining me on the call today is Richard Kellam, our President and CEO. Following our prepared remarks, we will be moderating a Q&A session. As a reminder, this conference call is being broadcast live and recorded. We'd also like to remind everyone that Richard and I can be available after the call for any follow-up questions that you may have. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that we will be referring to forward-looking information on today's call.
This information is subject to certain risks and uncertainties, as outlined in the forward-looking information disclosure in our press release, and more fully within our public disclosure filings on SEDAR. We have posted a brief video message from Richard, along with a summary of our results and key initiatives for the quarter on our website in the form of an infographic. This presentation will be added to our website for your reference, along with the post-view recording and transcript. Our detailed information is also available on our website and SEDAR. Please also follow us on LinkedIn to keep up to date with other business developments. I'd now like to turn the call over to Richard.
Thank you, James, and good morning, and for some of our international people dialing in, good afternoon and good evening. James and I are in different locations today. I'm doing some new business development, so James will be driving the slides, so hopefully technology will work here. Objectives for today, wanna talk about our consolidated results for Q2. We'll actually unpack those, as we typically do, under our bigger and better theme, and then we'll turn over to shareholders for any questions at the end. Before we get into it, I wanna remind shareholders that this quarter two of 2023 consists of one week of integration or one week of the acquisition in April, and then all of May and all of June, given we closed the transaction for Moore Canada Corporation on April twenty-fourth.
It's not a full quarter of full, you know, full acquisition of MCC into the quarter. It's 2 months plus a week, okay. Just wanna remind shareholders of that before we get into the data here. James, if you just go to the next slide. Talk about, I'm gonna start with bigger business, and we're really pleased with the progress we're making to continue to build a bigger business. As you'll see, our growth is quite significant with the acquisition of Moore Canada Corporation at just under 75% on the quarter. We added CAD 51 million in revenue to our top line on the quarter, coming out at CAD 119 million.
Really important to note, as well, if you look at the next slide, you know, I wanna put that 75% into context. If you look at our underlying business, the underlying business of revenue of both Moore Canada Corporation and DCM, you look at that bar on the right, you can see our underlying performance continues to be very strong at 8.2% growth. Not all that 75% or 74.7% came from acquisition growth. Our underlying business is very strong. On the back, as you can see in this slide, of two very strong, very strong halves prior, okay?
Our, our revenue growth in Q2 is now 7 consecutive quarters of year-over-year growth, and you can see from the slide here, you know, the continued performance quarter-on-quarter, so strength to strength. We're very proud of the momentum we've got in our business and underlying and, of course, now post-acquisition growth as well, and integration growth. Very good momentum from a revenue perspective and lots of reasons why that momentum is continuing. New business development, expansion revenue with existing clients, and just moving strength to strength with our commercial teams. Moving on to gross profit. Gross profit also growing well post acquisition at 56.7%, CAD 32 million in gross profit, and our gross margin is coming in at 26.9%.
I want to put this into context because, a big part of the deal logic here, when we did this deal with MCC, was MCC had a lower margin than DCM. Obviously that, that was very attractive from a value creation perspective. We're now applying the DCM operating model to move margin forward, and in fact, the margin that we have, the combined margin we have in the quarter, is a little higher than what we had planned at 26.9%. We have an active, plan, active process, active program to bring margin back into the 30 and north of 30 range.
Again, it was very much as expected, slightly ahead of target on the quarter at 26.9%, and you can see the overall gross profit margin continuing to be very solid, and we're very pleased. If you look at the next slide, you know, I talked about seven quarters of revenue growth. We actually have eight quarters of gross profit growth. We actually turned the corner on gross profit in Q2, or Q3 rather, of 2020, of 2021, and we've had solid momentum since then. Very, very good progress on gross profit growth, quarter by quarter, okay? Eight consecutive gross growth quarters. All right, turning it over to share price momentum, James?
Yeah, our share price has certainly performed very well this year. As we talked about last quarter, there's a little bit of noise in our earnings because of the fair value adjustments related to our long-term incentive compensation. For the current quarter, we've broken the kind of variations related to RSUs and DSUs and mark-to-market out as a separate line item. In our EBITDA reconciliation, you'll see that going forward, we'll be reporting that as a separate line item. We have at the end of this presentation, including a reconciliation, going back on a quarterly basis from the beginning of the Q1 in 2022, and we'll be posting that on our website so that you can look and get kind of a comparable perspective.
Those fair value adjustments represented about CAD 2.3 million in the quarter, given our share price appreciated by almost 23%, and year-to-date, our share price is up almost 133%. The total kind of adjustments year-to-date are about CAD 7.5 million. As a result, we've, we've reported adjusted EBITDA of CAD 13.8 million in the quarter. This also includes add backs for restructuring expenses and other one-time charges relating to the acquisition. We're very pleased that EBITDA was up almost 50% compared to a year ago. As Richard referenced earlier, this includes two months, plus a week of the MCC results. You know, certainly in the third quarter will be the first kind of full quarter reporting the combined results of MCC.
EBITDA did come down a little bit as a percentage of revenue at 11.6%, compared to 13.7%. This is really, as Richard noted, because of the lower overall gross margins in the MCC business. We have a clear plan not only to grow gross profit back north of 30%, but also to grow adjusted EBITDA back to north of 14%. Included in this table is a summary of how adjusted EBITDA looks for the past two years on a quarterly basis. Again, you know, two very strong quarters of adjusted EBITDA. We're tracking very nicely, going into the second half of the year. We've included here a summary of our financial performance compared to last year and a variance comparison.
Most of the numbers here are reflective of commentary that we've already talked about, talked about. What I would like to point out is adjusted net income for the quarter of CAD 3.8 million, compared to CAD 3.6 million last year. On an adjusted EPS basis, we came in flat at CAD 0.08, compared to last year at the same number. The adjusted net income impact really adding back restructuring expenses, acquisition and integration costs, fair value gains and losses on financial liabilities and the after-tax impact of those.
Really, the increase of about CAD 200,000 is mitigated a little bit by higher interest expenses related to the financing of the acquisition of MCC and also slightly ex-higher share count given the equity raise we did a couple of months ago. For the first half of 2023, you can see the comparisons here. We're at CAD 195 million of revenue, which is up CAD 57.7 million compared to last year. Gross profit again, up and on a year-to-date basis we're at 28.6% compared to 29.7%. That 110 basis point difference really attributed to the lower overall gross margins of the MCC business.
We are in our core business, certainly experiencing improved volume, and also, you know, good margins from some of the product mix that we're seeing this year. Again, adjusted net income for the year of CAD 9.7 million is up from CAD 7.7 million last year, and this only reflects, as noted, you know, partial results of MCC in the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA is still on a year-to-date basis, 13.6%. That does benefit, you know, particularly in the Q1 of us having higher overall adjusted EBITDA margins in the MCC business. We do have a plan to continue to drive higher levels of adjusted EBITDA margin. Now I'll turn it back to Richard.
Thank you, James. Clearly, great progress building a bigger business. Now we'll talk about what we're doing to build a better business. From an SG&A perspective, obviously, our total SG&A costs went up post acquisition. To remind shareholders, we brought on just north of 900 new associates into the business, so obviously that increased our, our total SG&A. If you look at the SG&A component of those 900, but again, less than revenue. Most important to look to the far right-hand side of the slide, that actually our SG&A, as a % of revenue, went down quite significantly, 19.3% versus 20.5% year ago. Well within our 5-year range of 18-20.
We see a path to the low end of that range, actually, as a result of some of the work that we're gonna do to continue to optimize the SG&A line and grow the revenue line as well at the same time. Very much in line with the deal logic and deal model that we completed, as, as, you know, in our, in our due diligence as part of this acquisition. You know, well on track from an SG&A standpoint, we're happy at the CAD 19.3 range versus CAD 25 year ago, CAD 20.5 year ago. Okay, James? If we look at, James, you wanna take this one on?
Sure. We, we did incur approximately $2.7 million of restructuring expenses. You know, I'll remind everyone that, you know, our target of $25 million-$30 million in, in annualized synergies will come with some restructuring expenses. We're certainly working hard to try and contain all the initiatives that we're working on within not only this year, but also 2024, and, you know, working hard to, you know, have a very clean kind of 2025 as we get out there.
Some of these things are gonna take a little bit of heavy lifting, but as you can see from the results on the right-hand side of this page, the initiatives that we've already implemented have generated approximately $4.2 million of annualized savings going forward. You know, really kind of 2.5, I guess really 100 days now into our acquisition, we're about 15% of the way to our target of annualized synergies. We did have about $3.8 million of acquisition and integration expenses. These are, you know, kind of post-closing tidy ups. That number will certainly go down in future quarters.
Okay, this is what I was referring to when I was talking about SG&A. You can see, we went from CAD 910 to CAD 1,822 post-acquisition. Importantly, if you look at the right-hand side of the slide here, our revenue per associate was at CAD 300,000, did not drop very much at all, in fact, pretty much flat post-acquisition at CAD 299. As we work through our integration efforts, we see a path easily into the mid threes and as we grow revenue up into the high threes and low fours on a revenue per employee or revenue per associate. You know, very good progress here, and you can see the glide path we've been on over a number of years.
Okay, so, certainly building a better business here from a productivity per associate perspective. And we continue to be proud of our ESG efforts. A lot of work on the sustainability side with waste reduction and with renewable energy and carbon footprint. We've also actively started to bring these programs into the acquired facilities of MCC. A lot of great work on social. I think I've told shareholders we're pretty active with Habitat for Humanity and many other supplier diversity programs, and certainly, you know, governance and our governance capabilities extended to the new, to the new MCC, to the new, and bigger and better company.
I think the one that we're very proud of, and we're proud of a lot of, of results we're delivering on our ESG strategy, but I think the one we're, we're, we're very proud of, James, you jump to the next page, is our PrintReleaf effort. To remind shareholders, we reforest 100% of our paper use for clients, and since we got into this program, just over a year and a half ago, we have reforested close to 1 million trees, 959,000 trees, about 79 million pounds of paper used. We flow these credits directly through to our clients as well, if clients wanna pick up the credits for their ESG for their ESG efforts. It's a very, a very solid program, and we will cross 1 million trees reforested in September.
Certainly we'll press release that, and we'll celebrate that. To put it in perspective, what 1 million trees actually looks like, it's roughly 20,000 acres of reforestation, about 80 square kilometers, 15,000 football fields, and for some of our American friends that are on the call today, it's 23 Central Parks. Significant, significant effort here on, on reforestation, which we're super proud of, and certainly our clients are extremely supportive of this program as well. We're also making good progress from a DCM Digital perspective. You can see that our first half growth is north of 18%, just under $3 million in revenue on our digital offerings.
A lot more- we'll report a lot more on this to shareholders over the course of the next, you know, kind of 3-6 months, but good progress from a digital penetration perspective.
From a, from a debt perspective, shareholders know we've been on a very good glide path over the past several years, paying down debt. We did incur some incremental debt, of course, with the fully financed transaction of MCC. We're, you know, we're pleased to say on a, you know, pro forma basis, while our debt spiked up to approximately CAD 145 million, with the acquisition, we've reduced that number by approximately 20% through the quarter. Probably more important is net debt, and we exited Q1 at approximately just under CAD 20 million of, of net debt. The MCC acquisition, net of cash, was approximately CAD 126 million. We repaid CAD 24 million of working capital as a result of the private placement we completed in May.
The Oshawa sale in June generated approximately CAD 23 million. Just additional working capital payments allowed us to exit the second quarter at approximately CAD 93.6 million in net debt. That's, I think, after, after including approximately CAD 21 million of cash at the end of the quarter. I will point out during the quarter, or actually, really, yeah, I guess during the quarter, we finalized the final purchase price adjustments for the acquisition of Moore. There was a subsequent CAD 4.9 million adjustment to the purchase price, which is showed in our accrued payables. That was largely due to stronger working capital in the business than we had int-- we had expected when we closed the deal.
A big chunk of that was cash, and as you see below, there was approximately $4.8 million of kind of net cash, in, you know, when we closed the transaction.
Certainly great progress from building a better business. As you saw, you know, improving productivity per associate, significantly reducing debt, the ESG efforts that we're delivering. Now I just wanna really talk about where we are on our integration. Talked to shareholders about a CAD 25 million-CAD 30 million annual synergy target across four areas: operation, organization, procurement, and revenue. To remind shareholders, we actually used Boston Consulting Group to help us prepare for pre-merger integration. We're obviously now well into a post-merger integration process. We've got Rael Fisher, who was the president of Moore Canada Corporation, leading our integration management office. A large team executing the integration, and the team is off to an incredible start.
Combination of Real and his team, as well as all the program managers that are in function, are doing an outstanding job. Obviously, you know, being well prepared helped, but now it's about execution, and the team's doing an outstanding job in execution. We did announce the closure of two plants, two facilities from an operation perspective. Those were announced about 6 weeks ago. Lots of work happening on organizational optimization, some already great work delivered from a procurement perspective. Then our teams have come together very quickly from a commercial perspective to drive revenue, and there's a lot of great results that we've delivered on both revenue, revenue expansion, so expansion within existing clients and several new business, businesses or new logos that we've brought on.
We're more than comfortable delivering this CAD 25 million-CAD 30 million in annual synergies. In fact, we'll likely be to the high end of that range. I can tell you the team is executing with excellence here, so off to a fantastic start. Remind shareholders that Wednesday of last week was our 100 days, and there's been a lot done in those first 100 days. Again, we were well prepared, but no matter how well prepared you are, you need to be able to an organization that knows how to execute, and certainly our organization knows how to execute. We're moving with strength across all areas here. Okay, James?
Maybe just to close on this before moving to Q&A, we updated our five-year strategic financial objectives.
We did present this at our last, at our last, shareholder meeting. We saw a path to north of 5% organic revenue CAGR. You can see the rate, 8.2% for the first half of this year. We see a path to north of 14% from an adjusted EBITDA perspective over the next five years. We're well on track there. You know, James took you through the, our relentless focus on reducing debt. You can see that glide path is a pretty quick one. We'll easily be in target here within the five-year plan, and then MarTech solutions are starting to ramp, and we'll see good progress on our digital expansion over the course of those that five-year time horizon as well.
We've got a very detailed, detailed 5-year plan that we're executing against, in addition, obviously, to all the integration efforts that we're executing against. Okay? Pleased with the progress we're making here. I think we're over to Q&A now, right, James?
Yes, we are, Richard. We'd like to certainly welcome questions from the audience. If you have a question, and you're accessing the call directly through Teams, you can use the Raise Your Hand feature in Teams, and we will queue up questions. Alternatively, you can also use the chat feature in Teams, and we will, we'll respond to chat questions as well. If you have dialed in, you may press star five to raise or lower your hand, and pressing star six will mute or unmute your microphone. Please introduce yourself once you are welcomed into the session. I have a question from, looks like Noel Atkinson. Noel, if you've dialed in, you may press six to mute or unmute your microphone. Okay, while we're waiting for Noel, we have a question in the chat.
The question is: Can you give an estimate of the synergies expected to achieve for the second half of 2023? Richard, do you want to run with that?
Yeah, I think I'll leave that one for you, James. Just, from a, you know, more comfortable from a disclosure perspective, if you answer that one.
Yeah, okay, sure. You know, the synergies we've talked about, you know, kind of CAD 25 million-CAD 30 million in aggregate. We're trying to get at those over the next 18-24 months. We see probably about almost one-third of those being implemented by the end of this year. As we have talked a little bit about, you know, costs related to those are probably about a CAD 1 for CAD 1. We're a little ahead of plan kind of in the Q2 with the restructuring expenses, kind of, versus the annualized savings. As we get into some of the bigger kind of plant moves, those costs will maybe kind of, you know, switch the other way.
Yeah, I'd, I'd, I'd look at kind of roughly about 1/3 of those will be before the end of this year and re-relate mostly to organizational changes. The Edmonton plant that we've talked about that we're closing, that's a, you know, relatively a smaller plant. That'll be completed by the end of December. The Fergus, Ontario plant, we've talked about that being kind of an 18-24-month project, so pretty complicated to move production. The plan is with Fergus to move that to our Drummondville, Quebec plant, which does a very similar type of type of work.
Yeah, I'll just add to that. If you think about the four areas, operation, organization, procurement, and revenue, operation takes longer, obviously, because we're talking about, you know, moving equipment around, you know, to James' point. Organization, a lot of detailed plans will happen, already started to happen. Procurement, we're already well into delivering procurement synergies, so a lot of those will be complete by year-end. Revenue, which we've actually modeled quite conservatively from a growth perspective, is a big opportunity for us, and you saw the numbers. We continue to deliver strong kind of revenue, revenue growth, so there's, there's opportunities to deliver even, you know, kind of more revenue synergies if we continue to accelerate that revenue line.
Okay, thanks. I'm gonna try, Noel here again, and I think I've had a little bit, figured something out here. Noel, do you want to go ahead?
Hi, it's Noel Atkinson from Clarus. Can you hear me?
Hey, Noel.
Yes.
We got you.
Okay, yeah, sorry, it was, wasn't letting me unmute. Congrats on a, on a really strong Q2 there overall, and, so very well done. I, I, you know, you've mentioned a few of the questions I was already gonna ask, but, I guess just so far with the MCC integration, how has that been proceeding? Like, are you seeing any client churn out of that unit or out of, out of the other ECM units that, you know, we would commonly see after a big acquisition?
Yeah, I can, I can take that on, James. One thing we did, Noel, is we were very well prepared on day one of the acquisition, day one of the integration. We closed the deal on the 24th. On the 25th morning, we had 120 salespeople together in six locations across Canada with a theme we called Moving from Competitors to Collaborators. It was a 2-day session, well planned, to talk about how we work together and how we, you know, how we, you know, how we protect and build our enterprise clients, especially. As you know, enterprise clients represent 94%-95% of revenue, and there certainly was some crossover in clients. As a result of that, our teams are working extremely well together.
We're off to an incredible start as true collaborators, and we have not lost any clients on this turn. In fact, if anything, we've secured and picked up some new business as a result of our the the the start, you know, the the how we how we started this. Most important thing, and I think it's a good point, right, deals that I've done in the past, you know, you gotta protect that client, that that client and that that that revenue line.
As a result of just being well prepared for day one, I think you talk to any of our commercial teams, they will-- they'll tell you the same story, that we're working very, very well together and have had very good success as we as we, you know, kind of align our commercial teams, right? Or integrate our commercial teams. A really good start from that perspective. No client losses at all.
Okay. Then, you know, you, you mentioned, I think it was like 8% year-over-year revenue growth for the combined business on a pro forma basis in the first half of 2023. Do you see the, you know, the, the environment out there for commercial print activity? Do you still see, you know, such a robust environment? You know, are you still seeing kind of passing through price increases, that sort of things? You know, how, how are you looking about the second half of the year?
Yeah. You know, as you know, Noel, we, we kind of mapped all the profit pools in the industry. You know, not all of them are equal, of course. We understand, you know, where to focus and how to focus and, you know, where to win and how to win. We still see, you know, positive momentum in the marketplace. James, I don't know if you want to comment outlook for the second half or not, but certainly, you know, experience we're seeing right now from a client standpoint, we're seeing, you know, certainly positive, positive momentum, you know, as we look out through the balance of the year. James, I don't know if you want to get any more specific.
Yeah, I, I, I think our Richard talked about our kind of 5-year objectives, and we think we can certainly exceed kind of 5% year-over-year growth. Year-to-date, our combined kind of pro forma business is certainly tracking ahead of that. From an inflationary perspective, I'd say we have certainly seen that moderate, and we haven't seen any significant price increases on raw materials for the last couple of months. We are continuing to kind of pass price increases a little bit of a, kind of a lag on some of our contracts still. The kind of inflationary benefit is gonna moderate.
I think a lot of the benefit is gonna be from, you know, the collaboration across our kind of combined business and the capabilities that MCC brings to us and vice versa, that we bring to, to their sales team.
Yeah, the only thing I'd add as well, Noel, is we're a very growth-obsessed organization, and, you know, we kind of look at the industry as north of a CAD 10 billion industry, even if it's flat or modest growth or modest decline. We're 540 on CAD 10 billion, CAD 540 million on CAD 10 billion, so lots of opportunities for us to go after. That's how we look at the market. Every day, we sort of wake up, we dream about opportunities, and we wake up, and we go and secure and source those opportunities.
Okay, great. Then just lastly, you know, maybe just if you could talk a bit about the, you know, the Assemble. I, I know you mentioned that you're, you're excited about talking about this in, in, you know, coming quarters, but, you know, where are you in the development process and the rollout process for Assemble specifically?
Yeah, great, great question. So as you know, we've been in market with a white labeled solution over the last year and a half. We've got, you know, a few clients that are using that white label solution. At the same time, we've been building our own platform to compete against, you know, some of the other DAMs out there in the marketplace. We actually have a beta product in market right now, and, you know, by end of year, we will release our final version or our final product once we get through the beta testing. We've got some active, you know, beta clients using it right now.
That'll be a pure, you know, kind of SaaS offering, if you will, Noel, that will have, you know, high-tech, high-tech, low-touch, marketing automation route to market. I think there's lots of opportunities even outside Canada with that platform, in addition, obviously, to our own kind of enterprise route to market.
Okay, great. That's it for me. Thanks very much.
Okay. Thanks, Noel.
Great. We've got a question from a phone caller, ending, 0469. If you'd like to press, star 6, that should mute and unmute your microphone. Okay, I think I've just done that. Oh, maybe that question has already been answered.
Yeah. Hey, it's, can you hear me? It's Chris Thompson from e Research.
Yeah. Hi, Chris.
Hey, how are you? Can you just quickly just go back and talk about the organic growth in the quarter? It was, it was fairly quick and as a %, was that for the DCM organic growth, or was that organic growth at both DCM and MCC?
James, you want to talk that?
Yeah. Yeah, I'd say the organic growth was at both, both businesses, Chris. Excuse me. In the, you know, the MCC business has, has certainly been solid. You know, even before we bought it, they, they had a strong Q1. Yeah, I, I'd say our product mix has shifted a little bit. We had some very strong orders for technology hardware equipment last year and some other resales products. Those were off a little bit this quarter. Really nothing unexpected, but our production revenue, you know, kind of more than made up, up for those declines. Production revenue for us certainly is beneficial because that, you know, more, more throughput through the factories, helps our, helps our overall gross margin.
You know, gross margin on both sides of the house were, you know, nicely above plan.
Okay, great. can you... When you're talking about, you know, the acquisition costs of versus the restructuring costs, I'm assuming restructuring will be similar moving forward for at least 2 more quarters. The acquisition costs, are they gonna come down then next quarter because you've, you've sort of closed everything off? How, how do you see that going forward for Q2 to Q3?
... Yeah, I, I, I think that's a good way to look at it, Chris. you know, restructuring expenses, you know, probably similar to maybe a little bit higher over the next couple of quarters, and, acquisition integration costs, will go down significantly in Q3 and Q4.
Okay. Finally, you break down your product sales by categories. I, I did a quick scan through. I couldn't really see a breakdown by MCC versus DCM. Are you? Is it gonna be merged together then, going from this point forward, so there'll be no separation of the two companies?
Yeah, we, we, we didn't break their results are quite the same as, as ours. They don't quite, you know, they don't have technology hardware equipment sales like we do. They do have freight and warehousing fees, so those have been broken out with our results. They do have what, what they refer to as sourcing, but in our kind of jargon would be resales revenue, and that would be products that they outsource, either things like envelopes or other commercial print applications that, that they didn't have capabilities in-house for. Those are all kind of in, or at least those, those would be in their product sales, so that would be in the kind of combined product sales bucket. Going forward...
Then historically, they're kind of what we call program management fees and subscription services fees. They have some professional services fees. At least for the time being, those are kind of included in their product sales. Those are typically attached to some of their, you know, program management, where they're doing transactional print work, which is pretty, pretty good margins in that business for them, particularly in the Q1, which is, you know, year-end statements and tax statements. But, you know, going forward, we'll be carving out some of their technology fees. Like us, they, they charge for their...
They, they have a, a platform called CustomPoint, which was kind of a legacy, RRD, platform that would be, you know, kind of the, the equivalent of our DCM FLEX. We actually have, a couple of customers that we're transitioning from that, platform to our platform, you know, kind of starting to work plans on that already. So we, you know, we expect to see positive contributions to our technology services and subscription fees going forward.
Yeah, Chris, as well-
Go ahead, please.
Chris, I'd, I'd also add, you know, your question, yeah, you know, as we, as we continue to fully integrate, it's gonna be tougher and tougher to report separate, you know, separate line items or separate growth between two businesses. We're already moving product around between facilities, and we're already moving product around between clients, so we think it's better to, you know, run a, you know, a lotto client through an MCC facility and invoice it through an MCC facility versus DCM facility or vice versa. We're doing it for, you know, the best interest of obviously margin, the best interest of the client and client service. We definitely are down the path.
We've already started to move a lot of volume between facilities to, you know, deliver that client experience and maximize revenue and maximize gross margin. We will, it'll be tougher and tougher to report independent, you know, independent businesses.
Okay. Then one final question. You, you mentioned that you had digital growth of about 18% to CAD 2.9 million, I think, if I'm correct, in one of those slides. When I try to correlate that with your, sort of your breakout, it looks like your technology sort of, you know, when you break out your revenue, the technology really, solutions haven't really increased, and there's not sort of a one-to-one correlation. How, how do you... You know, when, when looking at that, those technology sales, how do you sort of try to figure out what the actual growth is?
Yeah, that, that, Chris, that was a little bit of a subset of the tech-enabled subscription services and fees, and you see that as about CAD 3.6 million, year to date. There's some other fees that are a bit, kind of in, lumped in there, program management fees and other things, and we had a couple of things that, that kind of wound off. The actual kind of tech services fees were, were, were growing, as we showed in the, in the deck.
Okay. That's the... I'll just keep on using that as the growth metric then, as opposed to the numbers in the.
Yeah
... financial statements. Okay, that's it for me. Thanks. Great quarter. I look forward to-
Thanks, Chris.
seeing the continued integration.
Okay.
Thanks, Chris.
We have a, we have a question in the chat. Congrats on a good quarter. Is the current level of cash, lease payments in the quarter a good run rate, or do you expect it to increase over the next 12-24 months, considering the partial quarter with MCC? Yeah, in, in, in terms of kind of lease payments, cash lease payments, I, I would look at, you know, historically, last year, our business was about, I think about $9 million. The MCC business is about, it, it, it has been kind of $3 million-$3.5 million. That will increase a little bit. One of, one of the, as we, because included in that, not only equipment leases but also, facility leases.
Three of the sites that we acquired, Oshawa, Fergus, and Trenton, were owned facilities, and so there wasn't any rent on those. With the Oshawa site, we will see kind of lease expenses increase a little bit on an annual basis. Then, you know, we still hold the Fergus and Trenton sites. We still own for, sorry, Fergus and Trenton sites. We do have a strategy on those to move forward with those, and, you know, we hope to be able to report back in next quarter on some progress there. There will be some incremental lease rates, but really not significant.
I'd, I'd say kind of, you know, good number to use, kind of, for the annual year is probably, you know, CAD 14 million-CAD 15 million on a, on a combined, basis, on a, kind of an annual basis.
Okay.
Uh...
Yeah, it looks like we don't have any further questions. Richard, do you want to wrap up?
No, thanks for, thanks for joining us on this call today. Certainly, you know, we're very focused on, on continuing to build, both a, a bigger and a better business and, and drive success in this integration. We're off to a, we're off to a great start. As I said, we celebrated 100 days last week. I'm very proud of, of our team, our, our DCM, our new DCM team, and all the hard, hard work and hard efforts and results the team is delivering. Congratulations to the team for, for a great kind of first 100 days into our, into our bigger and better company. I look forward to reporting on Q3 results, in 3 months from now, I guess. Right, James?
That's right. Yes.
All right. Thank you, everybody. Enjoy the rest of summer.
All right, that concludes our call. Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their summer, and you may now disconnect your lines.
Thank you.