 New Business Momentum
ActiveOps plc is pleased to report strong momentum in new business wins to date in the second half of the year ending 31 March 2025. Six new customers have been signed so far in H2 FY25, bringing total new logos won in the year to date to nine, versus three in FY24. The initial scope of the new contracts supports existing consensus market expectations* and each of the contracts has further exciting global expansion potential, in line with the Company's Land & Expand growth strategy.
The new logo wins are across North America, APAC and EMEIA and follow the Board's decision to invest in the Group's international sales teams. Customer acquisition in North America has been particularly pleasing, with further growth potential in the region supported by a healthy new business pipeline. The new customers secured include blue-chip banks, BPOs and an international healthcare insurance provider, with several adopting ControliQ Series 4, the most advanced iteration of the ControliQ platform, providing access to the latest AI and ML capabilities.
ActiveOps Executive Chair, Richard Jeffery, commented: "It is pleasing to report on the strong new business momentum we have seen around all our territories so far this year. These wins, alongside our sustained expansion performance, are a clear example of the need for our solutions as large enterprises continue to invest in technologies that boost efficiency and improve employee satisfaction. While enterprise sales cycles remain elongated, our performance so far this financial year gives us confidence that the strategic decisions we have taken to invest in our product, positioning and sales teams mean we are well placed to continue to build on our achievements."
Notes: * In so far as the Board is aware, as at 4 February 2025, consensus market expectations are: FY25 - Revenue of £29.4m and adjusted EBITDA of £2.3m; FY26 - Revenue of £31.6m and adjusted EBITDA of £3.0m. |
Paul Hill and Paul Scott provide an upbeat review on AOM's prospects here. Starts at 14.35m |
Thank you. Do you have anything for future years and how EPS is expected to accelerate? |
Full year revenue of £29.3m with PBT of £1.6m, EPS of 1.5p. Net cash circa £18.7m. |
Interim results states that full year trading is in line with expectations. Does anyone know what these expectations are? |
ActiveOps (AOM) Interim results presentation - November 2024
ActiveOps Executive Chair, Richard Jeffery and CFO, Emma Salthouse present the group’s results for the six months ended 30 September 2024.
Watch the video here:
Or listen to the podcast here: |
Interim Results for the 6 months ended 30 September 2024
Revenue
ActiveOps' ARR at 30 September 2024 totalled £26.15m (30 September 2023: £23.73m), representing year-on-year growth of 10%. The successful launch of ControliQ Series 3 in September 2023 has bolstered the ARR growth in the first half of the year with upsell to multiple customers, compounded by new customer wins. This strong upsell performance is anticipated to continue in the second half of the year, during which a high proportion of renewals take place. On a constant currency basis, the ARR growth exceeded 12%. Total revenue for the Group at £14.32m (H1 FY24: £13.06m) is 10% ahead of the same period last year, with recurring software and subscription revenues increasing by 11% to £12.96m (H1 FY24: £11.72m) on a reported basis. Training and Implementation ('T&I') revenue at £1.36m (H1 FY24: £1.34m) was in-line with the prior year.
Margins and operating profit
Gross profit margins have remained in line with prior year at 84% (H1 FY24: 84%). Software and Subscription margins marginally increased to 88% (H1 FY24: 87%), due to prudent cost management. Operating expenses (excluding share-based payments, depreciation and amortisation) increased by 7% to £10.92m (H1 FY24: £10.17m). This is primarily due to the investment in our global sales operation. Adjusted EBITDA increased to £1.04m (H1 FY24: £0.79m), reflecting revenue growth and good cost control.
Statutory Results
The Group reported a profit before tax for the period of £0.47m (H1 FY24: £0.10m).
Earnings per Share
Basic Earnings per Share for continuing operations was a profit of 0.52p (H1 FY42: loss of 0.14p).
Cash flow
As is typical for the business, cash flow from operations in the first half of the year was negative £4.32m (H1 FY24: (£5.35m)). The negative cashflow position in H1 is attributable to the phasing of renewals over the year, and the timing of invoices raised. A significant level of renewals take place in the second half of the year and the timing of payments of annual in advance bills significantly impacts the cash position at 30 September 2024.
Balance Sheet
The Group has maintained a strong balance sheet position with cash and cash investments of £13.44m (H1 FY24: £9.90m) and net assets of £9.29m (FY24: £8.80m).
Current Trading and Outlook
The second half has begun well, with the signing of two new engagements, with a multinational BPO and a well-known global healthcare company, which is also the first customer to contract for ControliQ Series 4. Both engagements have significant expansion potential given the size of the organisations. Whilst the reduction within one customer will impact exit ARR at the year end, we see a range of expansion opportunities elsewhere and the business continues to trade in line with full year expectations. Looking ahead, we are confident the investment into our sales team, and the growing AI capabilities of our platform, provide us with a fantastic springboard for growth in FY26 and beyond.
Richard Jeffery, Executive Chair |
That's very good. But it is merely a copy & paste of thr RNS.
What's your point? |
Trading Update and Notice of Half Year Results ActiveOps plc provides an update on trading for the six months ended 30 September 2024. The Board is pleased to report that the Company has delivered good revenue and profit growth in the first half of the year and is trading in line with full year expectations.
FY25 H1 Financial Highlights
The Group expects to report overall revenue growth of approximately 9%, or 11% on a constant currency basis ("CC"), to £14.3m (H1 2024: £13.1m), including 10% growth in SaaS revenue (11% on a CC basis) to £13.0m (H1 2024: £11.8m). ARR increased 11% (12% on a CC basis) to £26.2m (30 September 2023: £23.7m), and NRR increased to 108% (H1 2024: 104%). With this solid revenue performance, the Group expects to deliver EBITDA growth for the half and an increase in profit before tax. ActiveOps remains well capitalised and highly cash generative, with cash and cash investments at the period end of £13.4m (H1 2024: £9.9m).
ActiveOps Executive Chair, Richard Jeffery commented: "ActiveOps continues to deliver for our customers, and I am pleased with the progress achieved so far this year. AI has the potential to transform service operations, and our platforms and people are at the forefront of making that a reality for our customers. While cognisant of the ongoing challenging market environment, the strength of our offering, customer base and balance sheet provide us with confidence to invest in our sales team as we seek to accelerate our organic growth rate and remain focused on converting the opportunity at hand."
The Company intends to announce its results for the six months ended 30 September on 14 November. |
At 16:15 Columbia Threadneedle manager James Thorne sings his praises: |
Top 9 investors hold circa 72% of the issued shares as at 17th September 2024.
Canaccord Genuity Group: 13,325,000. 18.67%
Richard Jeffery: 9,825,750. 13.77%
Gresham House: 5,505,000. 7.71%
Neil Bentley: 5,060,400. 7.09%
Pershing Securities: 4,232,422 5.93%
River Global: 3,510,220. 4.92%
Herald Investment Mgt: 3,335,522. 4.67%
Schroder Investment Mgt: 3,334,123. 4.67%
Liontrust Asset Mgt: 3,049,857. 4.27%
Top 9 Shareholders: 47,841,107: 71.7% |
"Still undervalued and its a super high quality business" Brendan Gulston, Gresham House.
AOM cover starts at 18.15. |
 AOM mentioned....
The Long and Short of IT - 9/9/24
Agentic Workflows: Cornered the debate
There was among the panelist a ‘we are at the beginning’ consensus. There was a positive view on AIs opportunity to unlock more creativity and free-up staff from the mundane, i.e. the Co-Pilot principle as work is dominated by repetitive language tasks. Yet after a year of AI pitches the VCs are battle-hardened, and now need evidenced-based ROI. The conversation led to the UK being ‘better’ at the AI application layer, rather than tools or infrastructure. We have supported the idea of RAG-AI whereby vertically-focused companies create ROI (our list is Relx: for Legal, Government, science and medical vertical markets analytics; Pearson: Ed-tech; LSE: Capital markets; Capita: Government Services; Moneysupermarket.com: Personal finance; S4Capital: Adtech; Trustpilot: C2C concierge, and Experian: Fintech) but we confess that we have been disappointed by their intent/adoption this year.
In the intervening period traditional Enterprise and SaaS companies have been ‘AI-ifying/washing’ their products. The general criticism is that they are “wrappers” around third-party AI models, and do not add enough incremental value and are easily copied. However one of the more interesting developments that has gained traction is the notion of agentic workflows.
Agentic Workflow is a new way of interacting with and completing tasks using LLMs. These are AI agents who perform tasks in a dynamic and iterative manner. As such they differ from the approach where the agent performs a specific task on pre-defined rules. By contrast, agentic AI is autonomous agents that can perform tasks, make decisions, and interact with their environments independently and can set goals, plan, and learn. These are in development at ‘classic’ workflow software companies, vertical market SaaS companies and IT Professional Services firms. The goal is to use AI to automate workflows which are impossible, too complex or too expensive to achieve by people.
We remind institutional investors of UiPath (below), but also ActiveOps also adding greater automation, and dare we say ‘agency’, to its workflows with an opportunity to not just mimic existing process flows, but to doing things that we are not doing at the moment. Agentic workflows are at the start of a large debate (which we will save for later) which, for us, illustrates; (i) the early nature of the AI market and, (ii) for investors that the AI market is larger than the hardware companies(the infrastructure) and with that comes greater appreciation of the wider AI ecosystem. |
mginvestor - you would appear to be right about Calculus. Don't know about any further reduction by Schroders - they last reduced their position by circa 25% back in May this year. Anyway there should a further RNS on disposal issued in due course.
"Calculus invested £4.7m in ActiveOps in 2014. Calculus has maintained a seat on the board throughout the last seven years and has supported the company through three acquisitions. Calculus has exited 75% of the holding at 6x return for investors." |
Was the Calculus stake. BGF a good catch - supportive, long term etc. |
Hi Measureguy,
We find out today that it is BGF (Pershing) which bought into AOM. Good to see that it was taken off another institution at a good price. I think it's actually Calculus Capital, a PE, that offloaded as they had ~4.27m (~5.9%) of AOM. But Schroders were also reducing albeit they have less shares. We'll find out soon I'm sure.
Looking forward to trading updates/results. FCs are for strong FY25 profitability numbers |
Looks like a large trade this morning - 4,232,422 shares sold @131.934p and then bought @132.0p at circa 10.30 this morning. Assume that the sale is by Canaccord Genuity. No impact on the share price but as this constitutes just under 6% of the issued shares there should be an RNS in due course. |
Momentum here resumes ! 😎 |
Hardly a ripple in the shareprice during the recent market volatility. Still around their 28 month high ! |
Shareprice up almost 100% since I first invested in May 22 and has now also hit a 28 month high. |
Nice move up again today on a very small trading volume. The shareprice is now up 16.5% over the past two weeks and has also just hit a 2 year high ! 😊 |
I’ve got quite a few as well. The P/e ratio is alway bonkers when breaking into profit - the test is whether forecasts are realistic.
I guess thats where the opportunity lies. If people look and dismiss it on current valuation grounds and the gearing works out, they’ll wonder why the share price kept rising.
The level of ARR is sort of like an annuity for a business. Its what Amazon are constantly trying to do by telling us that Prime is some sort of exclusive benefit when a few million people subscribe. Its all SaaS, although I’d rather it works for AOM than for the tax-avoiding parasites. |
Thanks 18BT - The concern over valuation is only because they didn't check what the forecasts for FY25 & FY26 were BEFORE the results came out.
Brokers have increased significantly the profitability forecasts (EBITDA, EBIT, PBT, EPS) for the next 2 years after the results announcement. They had 2 brokers and now a 3rd has joined them.
Operational leverage will kick in now and expect margin expansion too. The real measure is the ARR which should continue to grow 10-20%.
I put my money where my mouth is and bought AOM as declared on X. It is currently just over 7% of my portfolio. The senior management team here is one to back IMO.
DYOR ATB |
Good write up in IC and in their podcast - worth listening to. Concern is only around valuation. |
Will take a look - missed it somehow |
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