I would like to introduce Cameron from Intouch Insight to make the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you. Let's see if we got this set up halfway right. Everybody can hear me? All right. Well, let's get moving then. A lot of people are familiar with Intouch, so I won't go through it. I'll go through a basic introduction for those of you that aren't, but I won't go into a great level of detail. I assume some of you may have one-to-ones with me to go through some of that. We're traded on the TSXV under INX. We're traded on the OTCQX under INXSF. This is my favorite slide, if you want to take a picture of it so you can read it at home, that's fine. Otherwise, we'll just move on past that one. Who are we? We're a new story. We've been around since 1992. We went public in 2002. We have been trading for a long time.
We've only done one share issue since it went public in 2002, and that was in 2017. That was to get into the software business. We effectively provide analytics insights to multi-location brands. Think customers like Petro-Canada, Burger King, people like that, where we help them with their customer service delivery, and we do that by feet on the street, and I'll go over this in a little bit in a different slide, as well as some of the software offerings that we have. I always tell people, basically my job is so when you go out in the world and you're interacting with a brand, you have a better experience doing it than if we weren't working with that brand. Where we're heading is on a growth strategy.
This time last year, I announced a four-pillar approach to growth, and I announced we would be doubling the business by 2028 from CAD 25 million- CAD 50 million. The pillars being our software business, our core services business, which has to grow to get to those numbers because it's the bulk of our revenue, as well as our merchandising business that we wanted to spin up as a startup and get into that industry. The fourth one being acquisitions, which were tabled until we got the other three moving and got some cash, because that's how you do acquisitions, because we're not going to dilute, and we've also announced that. The board of directors is Eric Beutel's our chairman. He's also our largest shareholder. Myself, I'm the second largest shareholder. Then there's Lee Bennett, David Oliver, and Jenn Batley are the board members.
Our structure is a very tight capital structure. We only have 25.6 million shares outstanding. We are trading at, this morning, CAD 0.31, which is tragically up from what it was a few days ago. I will show you some math on that later. It is a very inexpensive buy, I would suggest. Eric and I own 26% of the company. People ask me sometimes why I was not buying more if it is so cheap, and I always have to explain that unfortunately, I am not a founder, so I do not have founder shares. I do not have grants and gifts. I bought all of my stock on the public market. As I acquired those shares, I kept putting them into these TFSAs and RSPs, those are the Canadian tax-free vehicles.
There is a law in Canada. I cannot own more than 10% and have even a single share inside a tax-free vehicle. I have so much protected stock that at 9.99%, I have to stop. That is why I am sitting where I am at, whereas Eric does not have those restrictions. In fact, he bought I think around 800,000 shares just this July. A friend of his bought another 700,000 shares in July with somebody who was exiting with 1.5 million shares. The insiders are buying. Unfortunately, I am restricted. In terms of what we sell, we have an ecosystem around a platform, and then we have services, and we have software.
On the left is services, on the right is software. We do mystery shopping and site audits. That is where we go into a physical location on a regular cadence and provide feedback to that chain and its management on how that location and its staff did. We do that mystery shopping and audits, which really just one is covert, you do not know we were there, one is overt, you know we are there. That is the big difference. Merchandising is the business we are starting, and the difference with merchandising is that is a physical, hands-on, touching and feeling. The audits and the mystery shops, you are going in to look at how they are running their operation.
Merchandising, you are physically going in to help them with something in their operation, whether that is moving a rack, whether that is re-merchandising a shelf, whether that is putting up temporary displays, whether that is working on some of their point of purchase materials. All of those things. Recently, we just completed a project in a Walmart, which was moving all the racking around in and out so people could redo the flooring, for example. It is physically touching things, and that is why I want to do it as an extension.
It is our same customers because our customers are convenience stores, they are grocery stores. They are people like Walmart. Same customers on our services business need merchandising services. It is hands-on. It is very protected from the world of AI and those other things, and so it is a very good area for us to get into. On the software side, surveys are exactly what you think they are. Qualtrics, Medallia, when you go and you get those QR codes, that is us. We have one of those products. It is not one of our main lines, but we sell it as an extension to our customers. For example, though, fun facts for those of you here because it is Canada, Montreal Canadiens and the Ottawa Senators both use IntouchSurvey. IntouchCheck is a forms and checklist automation product.
That allows our customers to go out and do in the markets what we do to a certain degree in terms of audits and things, and track all that data, track that information. Anything they used to do on a form or a spreadsheet, they can now do through software. We have software for that. They can take pictures. They can annotate. If you're in a restaurant, you can even stick your Bluetooth thermometer into your sauce, and it will read and automatically register what the temperature of the sauce was inside the software. It's designed for operational execution being used by our customers. All of that data goes into one ecosystem. We call it IntouchIntelligence, but it's really our ecosystem in the middle there. All data flows to one place, so they can look at everything, they can analyze everything from one central repository.
We own all the software here, the survey, the checklist software, the ecosystem in the middle, which reports on everything. It's our developers, it's our software, it's our code. Which, of course, we're getting a little faster at now, like everybody else, which is one of the great changes of 2026. I'm not going to go through the numbers too much because I'll go through some highlights of the numbers later. Last year, we did a little over CAD 21.5 million of our CAD 25 million in the services side, just for relative scale. We're up about 5% there in the first half of the year. On the software side, it was CAD 1.7 million, and we did about CAD 150,000 all of last year in our merchandising startup. In the first half, we did about CAD 120,000, and I'll talk a little bit about where those things are going.
People say, "Well, what are you investing in?" Or, "How are you getting there?" We're investing in really two key areas. One is technology, which is kind of unsexy for a slide, but we're building our technology. We're building our differentiators. The second one, which is much sexier for the slides you see here, is we're building our brand equity. We're building our thought leadership. Our core verticals are quick service restaurants, QSR, petrol convenience, gas stations, convenience stores, and now we're entering into grocery this year. That's our key areas that we go into. We have a number of studies that we do, and these are industry-leading studies. They're respected studies. We push them out there. We provide them to our customers. We provide industry benchmarking.
What this has allowed us to do is we get on stages now and speak to the industry at significant conferences. This isn't pay-to-play. We don't pay them so we get to speak at the conference. We're speaking because of the content we produce, because of the study we produce, because of our credibility in the industry. They have us speak as part of their main stage presentations. These aren't breakout room presentations. These are on the main stage doing the presentation. Media coverage includes people like The Wall Street Journal when we publish our data and things like that. We're getting a brand reputation in our core verticals, which is helping us get that business and that growth. But I can tell you how great we are all the time.
I am going to let a couple other people talk for a second. I will just say that we have lots of testimonial videos. I did not do these for this conference. These are just the latest couple, and they are from this summer, so they are very recent.
How would I quantify the ROI of working with Intouch? We are saving over 1,000 hours. That is 20 hours per week that our managers can spend effectively working with the hotel team. My name is Lindo Perez. I am the Chief Operating Officer for Concept Hotels. We are a hotel management company that owns and manages independent boutique properties focused on targeting business and leisure guests who favor personality and individuality over your cookie-cutter hotels. We have been a long-time user of IntouchCheck for over five years. From the day that we received the demo with the team and just understanding the functionality, it was very easy to navigate. The reporting just gave you all the data that you needed after completing the audits, and it was something that was very important for us to do.
For our guest room inspections, it used to take anywhere between 10 minutes and 15 minutes per room, and now we are down to two to three minutes per room. Also, a full internal audit on paper, it would take us over eight hours, and now it is four hours or less. Now is the time to add one more KPI, which is guest satisfaction. Truly looking to see it from the guest's perspective. This is exactly what mystery shopping has done for us already. It has given a full understanding of how our guests see our properties. What value do I see in using internal audit tools and external mystery shopping together? It helps us measure some of our core values, which is associate satisfaction, guest satisfaction, innovation, transparency, and accountability. It helps us hold our team accountable.
If you are looking for a partner to help you be more effective with your operations and give you the data you need to make strategic decisions, then Intouch is the right partner for you.
Wawa and Intouch have been partners for over 20 years. We have grown into a multilayer program where Intouch provides consistent and meaningful data so Wawa can make operational decisions that impact our customers in a positive way. Hello, my name is Corinne Shinnick. I am the Manager of Continuous Improvement at Wawa Incorporated. Wawa is a convenience store retailer. We have over 1,200 stores in 14 different states. Our mystery shop really provides us with information as it relates to how are we executing on our internal standards. Intouch is able to provide us with a dashboard with true executable data that can be targeted by a time of day where we can identify if there's an opportunity for missed sales or initial interaction with our customers.
For example, when we rolled out pizza, we were able to implement a very quick turnaround shop that gave us information on if the pizza was hot, if we had it available during the times intended, and really get some feedback on that program as we rolled it out so we could adjust it during the rollout phase before we went live for the entire company. A few years ago, we worked with Intouch to transition the Voice of the Customer program to the Intouch platform for Wawa. During that transition, it was seamless to our stores. There's a huge benefit to having both our mystery shop and our Voice of the Customer programs on the same platform and in the same ecosystem. That is because there are two sides to the coin.
You have your internal standards, making sure that our associates are executing as we expect them, and then we're also listening to our customers to ensure that we're providing them with the best experience they can have when they come to their stores. Our goal as an organization is to fulfill lives every day, and those two platforms actually allow us to mesh the data together to have a more holistic view of what's happening in our stores. I would recommend Intouch Insight to other large-scale retailers, not only because of their commitment to excellence, but also because of the variety of insights that they are able to offer. Wawa's future is bright as we continue to grow our stores and increase our footprint. Intouch has been there with us.
They will continue to grow and help us identify trends and data in new markets so that we can make sure that we service our customers in the best way that we can.
Now you know what we do. Now you know that people value what we do. Let's talk a little bit about some of the numbers since I know this is an investment conference. Our revenue pre-pandemic was on the rise, and if you went back on the way back machine in February of 2020, I say this all the time, I was a very optimistic guy. We were trading at CAD 0.80. We had a revenue of about CAD 19 million trailing, and I had acquisitions announced, and I was expecting to do CAD 25 million in 2020. And I had an acquisition that I hadn't even announced yet that was in the back pocket. Then a little something happened in March of 2020. I don't know about where you lived, but where we lived, we had this little pandemic happen.
Unfortunately for Intouch, that was like running into a brick wall at 70 miles an hour. We lost 70% of our revenue the following quarter. There's almost a tale of two cities here in terms of the company history. We were building it, we were successful. The stock price was reacting. People were reacting. We hit the pandemic, and we had to hunker down. We retracted a lot of our spending, but we got through that period EBITDA positive. We lost 70% of our revenue one quarter. We got through EBITDA positive. We have since rebuilt the revenue, and we are now exceeding what we would've been then, and we're continuing to invest, and like I said, we're going to double the business by 2028 is the target that we put out there. We're now in that phase two, kind of 2022 onward.
We're now back and growing again. The share history, very tight share history. We're stingy. We don't have any interest in issuing stock, and certainly at current prices, it's not even an alternative. The only time we've raised money in the history of the company was in 2017, since its original IPO, of course. The only time was 2017, we raised a little bit of money, and I raised that to go into the software business. Look, I'm happy I did, because if I didn't have that software business, that pandemic would've been a lot more painful in terms of getting through EBITDA positive, because the services are what dropped off, obviously, during that time. The only other little blip there is where we did an acquisition. It was right after the pandemic.
We weren't sitting on a lot of cash, so we used some shares to do that, and we also gave some shares to some people who stood by us during the pandemic, didn't take pay, to get us through and keep us EBITDA positive. Other than those two blips, which are not very big, we don't dilute. We're 25 million shares. You heard Brent Todd, if you were here yesterday, talking about that's his sweet spot, 25 million. That's where companies can move. We like it there. Our revenues for SaaS have increased throughout the pandemic. They increased, they continue to increase. It's a place where we've just seen slow, steady growth without the type of investment that like a Qualtrics had to make to. Where they were losing CAD 1 billion a year. We're slowly growing that within our. We're bootstrapping it effectively within the services business.
That's where some of that cashflow goes. If you peel back the financials from 2026, the first half, our net income was CAD 65,000 compared to, if you net out the write-offs, it was about CAD 300,000 we made last year, so we made less this year. EBITDA was, again, CAD 580,000 versus CAD 925,000, so again, we made a little bit more last year. Our revenue's up 7% first half of the year. That's exactly what we said we're going to do. We're starting the growth curve, and yes, I can do math. I know that 7% for the first half means we have to have stronger than that for the second half to hit 10% for the year. I'm still maintaining 10% for the year. Also, we expected to make less money because I'm spending more money because we're going to get to that double of the business.
We're going to get to that growth, and that costs money. You notice we're positive. We don't need money. We're generating money. We're just spending it to make sure we can get to CAD 50 million quickly. Merchandising is, and I'm pretty transparent with this stuff. It is the disappointing one so far. Not disappointing in terms of as a strategy or as where it's going to get to or where it's going to go. It's disappointing in timeline. It's taking longer than we had hoped. Q3 is going to be strong compared to. It's going to be much more than the first half. It's lumpy, it's a startup, and so it's going to be ebbs and flows. It's going to be puts and takes. We're happy with its future. We love the pipeline we have right now, but it is a little bit slower, full disclosure.
I'm not sure I'll hit the CAD 1 million I had planned for this year there, but I do love the future of that business. Grocery, we released a study we said we're going to release. We're starting to build pipeline. Services, we have the healthiest pipeline I think I've had since I've been at the company. I don't think we've had a healthier pipeline in terms of opportunities for our services business. We have a significant contract we're expecting to sign for next year. SaaS, I've talked about some of these things before, but we're expanding with our largest QSR client, and we are currently a finalist for a seven-figure RFP around software.
We are starting to get some of these big customers looking at us, and anybody here who's ever done sales before knows that once you get the first big one, the other ones are a lot easier. It's that first big one that always takes you the longest. Bottom line, I'm maintaining my guidance for CAD 50 million by 2028. Everything is on track to what we said we were going to be last year. We've done what we said we were going to do this year, and I'm still planning to do what I said I'm going to do. For the roadmap, that means this year, double-digit organic growth. We're going to continue to invest into the future, but there's going to be no dilution. As we look forward, we're looking at strong growth.
We're looking at significant profitability, and that's only going to increase as we start heading into 2028. That's where we're heading. When you look at the value, because that's the thing, investors value our multiple on revenue right now, and I look at revenue. People, I know EBITDA, cash flows, all of those things. The challenge with us is that I'm intentionally pulling back on those numbers in order to deliver the CAD 50 million. But revenue is growing, and revenue is strong. As we proved in the pandemic, when we lost 70% of it and we still stayed even at a positive, we have lots of financial ability to pull levers and control. If we wanted to throw off and just say, "Oh, we're worth a whole bunch of money because of EBITDA.
At CAD 25 million, we're just worth all this money because we threw off a bunch of EBITDA," we could do that. But I'd rather throw off 2.5x that at CAD 50 million with economies of scale. Right? That's what we're trying to get to. When you look at a revenue multiple, look, it's not hard math. Last year, we did CAD 25 million. Right? This year will be over CAD 28 million based on forecasts. But let's call it CAD 25 million. With CAD 25 million outstanding, it's pretty easy math to figure out your multiples. Right? Today, we're at CAD 0.31 on trailing. It's pretty cheap for a profitable business, right? For a profitable, growing, stable business that's been around a long time, that's a pretty cheap price. People always say to me, "Well, what's your catalyst going to be?" Right?
When is the catalyst going to happen?" I always say, "Well, here's the thing. We've announced growth, so obviously growth is what people are looking at." But what's the catalyst? Could be lots of things could happen. What I always also say is you have to decide if you want to look at a business and say, "Hey, you know what? This is cheap. I know it's cheap. It's intellectually cheap. I should buy some." Right? Maybe you don't get the catalyst on the day before it happens, or you wait and say, "Oh, I'm going to wait till there's a catalyst." Yeah, sure, but good luck timing the catalyst right everywhere all the time and getting to it before the announcement causes the whole market to see it. Right? You do have to kind of make those decisions, is how I look at it.
With that, I'm going to say thank you and open it up to questions. I want to make sure we have some time for that. Our overall margins are about 48% these days. We don't segment our reporting in terms of margins, so I can't give you that specifically. However, what I do say is that they're typical SaaS margins. SaaS is obviously much higher than we see on the services, and the merchandising is the lowest margins. As it grows, it will probably put pressure on margins because it has a lot less below the line. Right? I always caution people on a service business, margins are something you've got to be careful about because I can decide, to a certain degree, my delivery model, and your delivery model can impact whether you have a 50% margin and a 10% profits, right?
Or you have a 30% margin and a 15% profits. But, yeah. But SaaS is pretty typical for SaaS for us. We budget for 3%. We don't get much churn on it, to be honest with you. Our SaaS model isn't a bunch of people paying CAD 20 a month. It's companies that pay quite a bit a month that use the services, and so it tends to be painful to change, and they're bigger tickets. So we don't typically have a lot of churn on the software.
It's a good presentation. I like the story, Cameron. 25 million, CAD 28 million next year. You said-
This year, I said we should be over CAD 28 million.
This year.
Yeah.
What is the trajectory to get to 50? Is it a big acquisition that takes you to the next level? Because 10% or 20% is not going to get you to 50% in a couple of years. How do you get to 50?
You are saying if I add 10% to 10% to 10%, I do not get to 100%? Okay. I get the math now. Yeah. No, you are right. 10% in year one, if it continues on that trend, will never get you to doubling the business. 10% in year one was the goal, because this is also the investment year into that growth. Some of that thought leadership, that pipeline building. There is a backlog you have got to fill in order to come out. To answer your question, next year, we cannot be 10%. 10% organic was this year's target while filling the pipeline and investing in things. Next year, it has got to be much more significant than 10%. That is what our planning is going to be.
Our plan is going to be for a much more significant growth next year based on the activity for this year to sign for next year. Then again in 2028, you need to continue that trend. We have acquisitions as an option, but it is not designed as part of the requirement for the CAD 50 million. We expect to get most of that growth out of organic growth from pipeline. The acquisitions are the thing that maybe in 2028, if I am going to be CAD 5 million shy, I need to go buy something. It is not designed to be part of that, we are going to get there by a big acquisition. What is the certainty in that? Or how do we believe you are going to go from 10% this year to 40% next year ?
Well, I do not know. You can choose to believe, I guess. But we have a plan. We are working the plan. We are feeling confident with our plan. We like our pipeline, and I am still feeling good about getting there.
Which business segment?
First of all segments need to grow. Merchandising needs to double, triple, quadruple. It needs to really grow, but it is coming off a small base. SaaS needs to grow, but it is coming off a small base. So you have to have the growth in the core business. If the core services does not get significant growth, we cannot double, realistically in three years. So for me, I want growth from SaaS, I want growth from merchandising, and I absolutely want growth from services. All three have to be part of that growth story. Any other questions? Well, at current prices, equity is off the table. If we were trading at CAD 1, would I consider some equity as part of it? Maybe. Depending on the deal. They have to be accretive to shareholders.
We would typically use our own cash flow, and some version of debt, and potentially VTB-type structures where we can use our own cash flow. If you look historically, we have done lots of acquisitions. You have only seen one where we used some equity on that slide I showed you, and that was because it was post-pandemic, and we did not have any money and it was hard to get debt. But typically, we stay away from equity, especially the way it is today. We like the tight flow. I think I have time for one more question.
Are you able to say that AI?
Oh, yeah. AI is great. We're taking advantage of it in just a number of ways. One is we were using some business process outsourcers for some of the downstream work we did, where it's repetitive task type work we were using, which are people like in India or low-cost jurisdictions. Well, now the machine can do that. If it's any repetitive work we were doing or paying for, we're starting to replace with AI. We're using AI to actually do designs and guidelines. I told everybody in my company a year ago, "You won't be replaced by AI, but you will be replaced by somebody who knows how to work with AI, so you might want to get on board." Every role uses AI for their own efficiencies.
I don't care if you're in HR or finance, AI gives you efficiency in your role, so we can expand without expanding headcount. Plus, we're reducing reliance on people who are doing repetitive tasks and using machines. I'm also using AI because I write software, right, to code faster, better. Our velocity is increasing all the time because of what AI allows them to do. With that, I see her standing up to tell me I'm getting the hook. So appreciate you very much. I can see you tonight at cocktails if you're around, or maybe you've got a one-to-one with me over the next couple of days, or see me in the hallway. Thank you.