Welcome, Information Services Corporation. Ticker is ISC. Leading the discussions from the firm will be Jonathan Hackshaw. He's the Senior Director of Investor Relations and Capital Markets. Before I hand it over, a quick reminder that the Q&A tab is located right at the bottom of your screen there. Feel free to type in any questions throughout the presentation, and we can save time for Q&A at the end. With that said, Jonathan, take it away.
Thanks very much, Brendan, and good day to everybody joining us today. Really looking forward to sharing a bit about ISC with you and give you an idea of what's going on with us. I won't take you through the legal disclaimer at the beginning. I'm sure you're all familiar with it. The only comment I'll make just as we before we get into this is we report in Canadian dollars, and we trade on the TSX, as you'll see from the ticker symbol at the bottom. Just bear that in mind as I refer to any numbers from that perspective. If it's in a different currency, I'll mention that, but predominantly going to be in CAD. Just a quick overview on ISC.
We're a leading provider of registry and information management technology, and I'll talk a bit more about what that means and services for public data and records related to land, personal property, and corporation. For those of you not familiar with the registry business, they're essential for legal transactions, property rights, and corporate governance. We operate through three lines of business: registry operations, services, and technology solutions. Customers include government agencies, private businesses and corporations, legal professionals, financial institutions, and individuals, mainly in Canada, but some of our business is international. We've got about 560 employees. We've got eight Canadian offices, one international and a small international presence, another one, so we don't necessarily mention that. We just disclosed our year-end and Q4 numbers for 2024 yesterday. In Q4, we did about CAD 62 million in revenue and about CAD 21 million in Adjusted EBITDA.
We pay a quarterly dividend of CAD 0.23 per quarter, and we paid about just under CAD 17 million in dividends, but over CAD 150 million since the IPO. We're guiding about CAD 257 million-CAD 267 million in revenue. For 2025, we've got about CAD 167 million in debt from a CAD 250 million facility. I'll talk a bit more about what that debt's been deployed towards, but that's just kind of the overview of the company. In terms of what you'll really be interested in, here are some key considerations as an investor. This company is really focused on delivering strong growth, predictable cash flow, and revenue diversification across our three segments. Registry operations is a pretty unique business, and it's underpinned by our master service agreement with the province of Saskatchewan.
We expect to generate about CAD 1.3 billion in cash flow over the next 30 years through that division of that segment. Our services segment is really sort of our organic growth engine. We've grown this business from about CAD 12 million per annum when we bought it in 2015 to over CAD 110 million since then. Some of that's been through organic growth as well as some M&A as well. Our third smaller segment, technology solutions, has a lot of future growth and international expansion potential. We've got a lot of leading proprietary technology offering that differentiation. We've consistently rewarded shareholders through a dividend.
We've got a strong history of M&A and a good track record there, over CAD 200 million invested into eight transactions since 2015, strong balance sheet and free cash flow that supports that organic and M&A growth strategy, needless to say, supported by a great management team and board of directors. Let's talk about the company. As I said, we've got three segments. The first one, registry operations. The sort of profile in terms of how that looks, it's a consistent growth engine with strong and predictable foundation. It's underpinned by long-term contracts. When I say long-term, I mean long-term. The Saskatchewan MSA runs through to 2053, and that provides stable, diversified, and long-term sources of cash flow, and it meets the growing need for data management integrity. Our services business, as I said, is the strong growth business that leverages our core competencies in registries.
It complements all our segments, allows us to capitalize on a growing trend to outsource business processes, and meets industry standards for streamlined and secure access to really highly regulated information. Finally, our technology solutions business establishes significant scaling opportunities, and it layers technologies and long-term innovation into our portfolio and creates recurring revenues through software licensing, monthly hosting, support, and maintenance warranty services, that sort of thing. Still very much a burgeoning segment, but something we're quite excited about for the future. Registry operations, just to give you a dive a bit deeper into this. This is about the delivery of registry information and regulatory services on behalf of governments and private sector organizations. Each registry, and this is really more the Canadian model, serves a specific purpose and caters to different stakeholders.
The three sort of main types of registries are land, corporate, in the states, you'd call it your UCC, Uniform Commercial Code, and personal property registries. There are other registries that I'll talk a bit more about, but they're both typical and non-typical registries for government and corporate clients. A lot of our growth is supported by the free cash flow I talked about, the CAD 1.3 billion in predictable cash flow until 2053. That was really delivered through an extension that we signed with the Government of Saskatchewan in July of 2023. We paid CAD 300 million for that, CAD 150 million upfront, which will explain the debt on our balance sheet, and then five subsequent payments of CAD 30 million per annum.
We've made the first one and the first CAD 30 million payment was made in July 2024, and we've got another one coming up this year, and then three subsequent payments after that. Just turning to our services segment. As I said, this leverages our core competencies. It's about delivering solutions that unite public records, data, customer authentication, corporate services, collateral management. We deliver that through and report on that through these three divisions: regulatory solutions, that's about due diligence, identification, validation, KYC, that sort of thing, collateral management searches. We've got our recovery solutions division, which is asset recovery and accounts receivable management. On the corporate solutions side, we've got incorporation services and corporate supplies, which is sort of the heritage part of that business.
On our technology solutions side, we have proprietary technology in the form of our RegSys platform, which helps government and private sector registries to enhance their businesses there, but essentially leading technology that helps to deliver them to deliver operational excellence, market differentiation, and customer satisfaction. Just a brief overview of some of our clients here. On the registry operations side, Government of Saskatchewan, I mentioned them. We have also got a client in the Government of Ontario across two parts of our business in registry operations. We operate the Ontario Property Tax Assessment Service on behalf of the Government of Ontario for over 440 municipalities in Ontario. Most recently, we signed a contract with the Bank of Canada to deliver the Bank Act Security Registry.
That's our first federal registry, not material compared to the other two necessarily, but a great starting point for us to get into a federal side of things. On the services side, we can't disclose who our clients are through our contracts agreements, but we mainly serve institutions in the legal and financial industry. Currently, we've got 18 out of the 33 Schedule I banks and 12 out of the 15 largest law firms in Canada. On the technology solutions side, Nova Scotia, this is their corporate registry. That's a long-term client. We signed a contract with them in 2018 for 10 years to replace their technology supporting the registry that they have there, which we've completed implementation on that, and we're now providing support, licensing services, that sort of thing. States of Guernsey, it's a charities registry, which is a little bit different than normal.
Towards the end of last year, we announced a contract with the Principality of Liechtenstein to build, and I'm not going to try and pronounce the German version of it, one of their sort of corporate registry, equivalent of a corporate registry there. Just a bit about our industry. Market trends, and I've touched on these a little bit, but as you would have gathered, we operate in a pretty highly specialized and complex landscape, but we feel our business is really well positioned to sort of capitalize on four key trends. The first is the outsourcing of business processes and services, which I've talked about. The second, and this is pretty key to our services segment, is the increased regulatory and compliance requirements that we've seen grow over the years.
If you go back in our documents over the years, you'll see us talking about this many, many years ago. Over the course of the last few years, you'll see in our reporting that we've talked about an increase in uptick in our KYC and due diligence services, and we see that continuing. Obviously, there's an emphasis on the reliability and security of information that we manage and operate on behalf of clients. That's an area that we have a lot of know-how, process, etc. Dovetailing into all of that is we really do think there's an emerging global registry market and a sector that's emerging there across the three areas that we have lines of business. I feel that we're really well positioned to grow the business from there.
Just in terms of the competitive landscape across the three segments, you'll see a couple of there. Teranet is the closest competitor that we probably have. Apples to apples, they're a private firm. In terms of across the business, you've got the continuity is that the long-term contract nature of each business is comparable in respect to business, strong customer stickiness. That's a really important piece of our offering is an attention to customers. We really sort of treat our customers as if they have a choice. In the registry operations segment in Saskatchewan, that's not the case. It's a monopoly, they have to come through us, but we treat them as if they have a choice and make sure that we deliver exceptional customer service across the board.
We feel that this provides us with advantages in the competitive moat as well as if one of your core customers is really happy, that's a great reference when you're looking at other businesses. Just touching on the financial information quickly, I just want to take you through sort of the last 10 years here. I have talked a bit about in terms of the profile, but one thing to note, if you look at 2016, you'll see in the light blue, that's our registry operations when we only had the Saskatchewan registries in there. The slightly darker blue is the services segment. That's a full year of business. You can see we grew it to CAD 13.6 million in that first full year of operation under our leadership.
Then you see the Saskatchewan registry started to tail off in 2016, 2017, 2018, and Saskatchewan went through a bit of an economic downturn. What we have discovered, having been through a couple of economic cycles, is regardless of whether the economy is upticking or downturning, there is a basic level of transactions that happens in land, personal property, corporate. People do not stop necessarily buying houses or selling houses or registering businesses or having to file annual returns or looking, searching the personal property to see if there is a lien against a piece of personal asset. There is a certain continuity, but you can see that upward trend there culminating in 2024, which we just, as I said, released on Monday evening. This is what we expect to do in 2025.
The bottom line, which is really the key part, looking at this here, you can see the uptick there. Some of that is impacted by certain things. That is why we use Adjusted EBITDA, but CAD 90.3 million in 2024 and looking to deliver between CAD 89 million and CAD 97 million in 2025. Strong free cash flow generation, as I said. One of the things we looked at when we did the extension with the Government of Saskatchewan was we made a commitment to enhance the registry technology supporting the Saskatchewan registry. We have started that off. There is some expenditure there, but it is a multi-year project, but in due course, that will come off the books from that side. Just a bit of information here. Maybe just talk a bit more about the capital available to us.
As I said, we've got a CAD 250 million credit facility available through a syndicate led by RBC. We've got a CAD 240 million shelf prospectus in place, which is fairly standard. CAD 167 million currently drawn on debt, but we have been very judiciously looking to delever since we signed the extension and paid that CAD 150 million upfront with a view to getting back down to 2- 2.5 times EBITDA, debt to EBITDA in due course. That is the business as it stands today and a bit about it. Let's talk growth. When we were looking at this and we are now looking at our extension, we did an assessment of what have we achieved over the last 10 years and recognized that we doubled the size of the business.
Having done that on a revenue and Adjusted EBITDA basis, we looked at that and said, "Well, okay, what can we do to double the size of the company again on a similar metrics basis?" Using 2023's results as the baseline, we're looking to do that again, but in half the time, so five years. Looking to do that through a combination of organic growth and M&A, substantially through organic, mainly coming through our services segment and the balance being made up through M&A. We've got a fairly committed policy towards accretive M&A. Organic growth is the other aspect.
The registry technology that I talked about, it'll be great for the users here in Saskatchewan, but it also supports our pursuit of new registry opportunities in the sense that we have a brand new technology that we can either sell as a technology play or wrap it up into any kind of concession that we may be interested in. Just from a capital perspective, we've got a long history of being disciplined in that with a really strong future focus, as you would have gathered. This is just a bit, just a slide sort of outlining some of the companies we bought and absorbed mainly. The majority of them are part of ESC now, so those brands have gone away, but just an idea of that. In terms of our acquisition strategy, I'll just touch.
We typically in the 7-9 times EBITDA range in terms of what our acquisition multiple looks like. These are just some of the criteria that we're looking at. We've got a preference for what it for us is larger deals of CAD 50 million and above, but we do look at smaller opportunities that meet certain criteria and add value and can be easily tucked into the business. It is really about expanding the technology and services portfolios in that sense, augmenting revenue, especially recurring revenue, while making sure that our EBITDA continues to grow as well, or Adjusted EBITDA, I should say. Just focusing a bit here, we've talked about our 2025 guidance, just some graphics here to illustrate the pathway to growth and where we're at. 2023 was the baseline. On a revenue basis, we did CAD 215 million in 2023.
Last year, we did CAD 247 million, where this is a midpoint of the range you see above, just for illustrative purposes, and you can see where that takes us. We are trying to get towards around CAD 430 million in revenue by 2028. On an Adjusted EBITDA basis, based on the range, we are trying to get to that 146 and nearly CAD 150 million, just shy of that. That just gives you an idea illustratively of where we are trying to get to in the next few years. Just a quick leadership summary, and I am just conscious of time here. Needless to say, we have got a fairly robust leadership profile and board of directors.
Some of these names you will be familiar with, but fairly experienced in depth from that perspective. Our executive team, just for your understanding. Shawn, our CEO, Shawn took over the reins in 2022. He joined the company in 2012, just before it went public, which he was not aware of what was happening when he joined. He has been along for the journey ever since. He joined as the Chief Financial Officer at the time, and then when his predecessor retired, he took over the CEO role. Shawn has really kind of been pushing the business forward into growth mode. He has been very clear that he has a view that he would like to try to get one to two acquisitions done a year where it makes sense.
Bob Antochow, Chief Financial Officer, Bob joined the company a number of years ago. He was Shawn's Senior Director of Finance and stepped into the CFO role when Shawn stepped up there. Most of the folks have been with us for a bit. Todd Antill, VP of Registry Operations, joined us in May of last year. Jeff Fallowfield took over as President of ESC not long ago. Ryan Graham is our most recent addition.
He joined in January, and he's stepped into the role of Vice President Corporate Services, and he'll be taking over the technology solutions portfolio from Lauren Cizek, who's leaving us at the end of April. In terms of the board, one point to note, which is probably a bit unique, is that the Government of Saskatchewan still owns just under 30% of the company. Irrespective of that, they have the right to appoint a minimum of two directors to the company. At the moment, it's pro-rata to their shareholding. Joel Teal, Amber Biemans, and Doug Emsley are the appointees from the government, all seasoned business professionals. Amber herself is a lawyer.
The balance of the board is made up of people who are elected by shareholders every year, all very experienced people. Tony is an experienced board member, CFO at Ballard Power, if you're familiar with that company. Raj is retired, but on a number of boards. Heather Ross was at TD. Leon Brzezinski 's a lawyer here in Regina. Very experienced group of individuals on our board from that perspective. Just to sum up before we open up to Q&A, I would encourage anybody to take a look at ISC. I've worked in a number of sectors, and this business really is quite unique in its profile in terms of delivering value and significant growth, leader in registry and information management. We've got some great technology backing that, plus all of our experience, really predictable revenue model and stable cash flow.
We've got a proven track record of delivering organic and M&A growth, discipline in our capital allocation, and most importantly, a strong balance sheet to be able to support the future that we're trying to get towards by 2028. I think with that in mind, I'll leave that on there. With that in mind, I think probably at a point where we can open it up to some Q&A.
Fantastic. Thank you, Jonathan, for the overview. We can open the floor for Q&A here. I'd like to start at kind of the revenue profile of the company. I guess, what percentage of total revenue does that contract with the Government of Saskatchewan generate for the company? As more of a follow-up in the services business, I guess, is that more kind of recurring fee-based revenue? Is that more based off of transactions or maybe inquiries?
Yeah. Great question, Brendan. I mean, I'll maybe deal with registry operations as a whole. I mean, between that and the services is around 48%-49%. I have to admit, I have not done the math in the 2024 numbers, but that sounds about right. They're in the 40s, and they kind of are the two core segments that we have. Technology solutions are still burgeoning from that perspective. On the services side, the main clients that we have, we have 3-5- year contracts with the banks and law firms. It is a fee basis as they pay as they use it, utilize it. Where we offer them premium services, that's obviously an additional fee there. Typically, all of our contracts have price escalators built in and that sort of thing.
I think the thing to consider with the Saskatchewan MSA contract is not just so much about the revenue, but the EBITDA profile and the margin profile. I mean, that's a 55%-ish, typically 55% profile. It costs the same for us to process a $300,000 house as it does a $1,000,000 house or commercial or agricultural property. That will go straight down to the bottom line. For example, we have what we call a category of registration called high-value registrations, which is anything over 13, any registration that's a fee of over CAD 13,000-ish. Last year, we did over CAD 10 million in that, and that goes straight to the bottom line. It's really quite a fantastic aspect of that thing. Hopefully, that helps answer your question.
Absolutely. Absolutely. In terms of M&A opportunities, I guess, what are your acquisition opportunities in other Canadian provinces? Are there any in particular that you're targeting over others?
Great question. We love all opportunities that come across Canada. I mean, from the registry operations perspective and doing what we do here in Saskatchewan, they tend to be few and far between. In terms of the services business and the opportunities we look at there, we look across Canada as well. We think there's still opportunity there, but we're also open to looking at opportunities outside of Canada as well. I mean, we do have a small technology solutions business that has a business that we acquired out of Ireland and Dublin, so we do have a presence there. Typically, our focus is Europe or English-speaking Commonwealth just because the law is similar and familiar to us. We look at opportunities where it makes sense for us to do so.
Got it. As a follow-up, are there any significant barriers or challenges to breaking into international markets, I guess, both in terms of the registry business and the technology segment?
Not necessarily. I mean, from our perspective, we're familiar with legislation in Canada and Saskatchewan in particular. Obviously, if an opportunity comes up in a jurisdiction where they've got similar legal statutes and things like that, because registries in developed countries are underpinned by legislation, that's important there. On the technology side, we pretty much operate anywhere. We've got contracts that are international in nature, Guernsey, Liechtenstein, the heritage part of that business, and they're going to contract somewhere else as well. That just gives you an example. That really is an international business we go with the businesses.
Got it. Got it. In terms of the balance sheet, I think you mentioned the current debt on the balance sheet is really a function of that government with or the Saskatchewan contract acquisition. I guess, from a long-term perspective, what kind of leverage level makes sense for this business?
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, over the course of time, I think when we came out the gate in the IPO, we would have said two times. As we've grown, that appetite or that level of comfort has kind of grown. I mean, three times, four times. I mean, there's an argument that given the quality of the assets, particularly in the registry, you could go as high as five, but that's not necessarily always appreciated in the Canadian markets in any rate. Our appetite's kind of four to five, probably four to five times at this point. We haven't had to issue equity since we went public, but we also have that option as well where it makes sense. For us, it's really about what is going to be the cheapest cost of capital for us.
Right. That makes sense. Kind of as a follow-up in terms of capital allocation, I know you mentioned a stable dividend payment is a priority for the company. I guess, how would you rank your capital allocation priorities? I think, obviously, you mentioned growth is top of mind, but.
Great question. I think from that perspective, I mean, the dividend is a board decision. There's a commitment from the board to maintain the dividend, and they've issued one increase since we went public in September 2021, I think it was. Really, the company's in growth mode. It's really, I think that's priority number one at the moment, based on the board policy's dividend is there as well. Then we look at everything after that, but really focused on growth and deploying towards that.
Great. Great. I guess, outside of any outsized M&A-related integration costs, how would you describe the capital intensity of operating the business? I know you mentioned there were some updates you're making to the registry side, but overall, I mean, what's the capital intensity like for the?
On a typical, yeah, it's a great question, actually. On a typical run rate basis, prior to initiating that project, we were probably CAD 2 million-CAD 4 million a year. It's not hugely capital intensive in that sense, but our profile's changed a little bit in the sense we're in growth mode and we're doing some fairly major undertaking and fairly major multi-year project. In the past, it's been CAD 2 million-CAD 4 million in sustaining CapEx. It's been kind of the order of the day.
Got it. Looking at some of the guidance that you released, I think you mentioned revenue guidance in the CAD 257 million-CAD 267 million range for 2025. What factors or, I guess, instances would cause material underperformance or outperformance kind of relative to that range?
It's a great question. I mean, there are always risks. I mean, underperformance just depends. I mean, if we enter a recession, that may impact things. I don't think from the perspective of the current environment with tariffs and things like that, I mean, that doesn't impact us directly. We still think, as I mentioned earlier, registries in particular, there tends to be a base level of activity. So we're comfortable with that. Our guidance doesn't include M&A, but as far as I recall, we've typically, regardless of economic circumstance, been pretty spot on with our guidance.
Typically, we've never had to, I think, reissue guidance in that sense. We obviously, like most people, withdrew it during the pandemic years and didn't issue guidance for a couple of years until that settled down, and we had a better line of sight. It would be mainly economically driven, but at the moment, we're pretty comfortable. We issued our guidance for 2025 at the end of January and reiterated it yesterday. So we're still comfortable. Obviously, we monitor economic activity as it pertains to interest rates or tariffs, things like that. We will act accordingly if necessary and update the market if we had to.
Great. As a final question, we can conclude here. Maybe you could talk about what investors are missing here in the story and maybe why is the right time to look at the stock?
I mean, I think in terms of the right time to look at this, we have completed the first sort of phase of our growth as a public company. We are now into the second. We are one year in. We had a great start with 2024, really laying the foundation. It is not linear growth in that sense. This year is expected to be another great year. I mean, we have had record years. It's just been record after record with more revenue and more Adjusted EBITDA each year. That's what we're projecting again this year. I think there's a great opportunity to get into a company that's got fantastic quality of assets, really unique situation underpinned by that long-term contract with the Government of Saskatchewan.
I would encourage anybody, as I said at the beginning, to take a look at it. I've worked in a number of sectors over the course of my career, and I've quite come across a business like this in terms of its quality of assets, number one, and just the recurring revenue and the monopolistic side of things that are characteristics of this business. Finally, the team from a management perspective has really grown this business, but we have done it in a prudent and strategic fashion, I guess, is the other way to look at it. In the meantime, we do pay a dividend, so you have got a bit of additional value coming there.
Great. Jonathan, we really appreciate the time and the overview. Anybody who may have follow-up questions, you can see Jonathan's contact information there on the screen. Thanks, everybody, for the time, and have a great day.