Earnings call transcript: Intelligent Monitoring sees growth in video guarding, Q1 2025

Intelligent Monitoring Group Ltd (IMB) reported its Q1 2025 earnings, highlighting a positive cash flow and strategic acquisitions aimed at enhancing its service offerings. Despite a traditionally weak first quarter due to seasonality, the company has shown resilience and is positioning itself for future growth, particularly in video guarding services. According to InvestingPro data, IMB’s stock has delivered an impressive 38.83% return over the past year, significantly outperforming many peers in the security sector.

Key Takeaways

• Positive cash flow with an increase in cash balance to $16.2 million.
• Acquisition of BNP for $4.2 million to bolster physical guarding capabilities.
• Expansion into video guarding with significant revenue potential by Q4.
• Completed network upgrade from 3G to 4G in New Zealand.

Company Performance

Intelligent Monitoring has demonstrated robust performance in Q1 2025, despite the seasonal challenges typically faced in the first quarter. The company has increased its cash reserves while strategically acquiring BNP to enhance its physical guarding capabilities. This acquisition aligns with its goal of expanding beyond technology monitoring into comprehensive security services. The company is also focusing on video guarding services, which are expected to become a significant revenue driver by the fourth quarter. InvestingPro analysis indicates that while IMB was not profitable over the last twelve months, analysts expect the company to achieve profitability this fiscal year.

Financial Highlights

• Positive cash flow for the quarter.
• Cash reserves increased from $15.5 million to $16.2 million.
• EBITDA expected to reach $46 million for the year.
• Targeting a long-term EBITDA margin of 25-30%.

Outlook & Guidance

Intelligent Monitoring is projecting significant growth in its video guarding services, with expectations of accelerated growth in the latter half of the fiscal year. The company is also focusing on two key growth areas: Access Control and ADT Guard. With a strong pipeline and continued customer acquisition, the company anticipates substantial expansion within the security market. This growth trajectory has contributed to IMB’s impressive 24.47% year-to-date price return, as tracked by InvestingPro, which offers 6+ additional insights and dozens more financial metrics for serious investors looking to make informed decisions.

Executive Commentary

Managing Director Denison highlighted the company’s transformation over the past three years, stating, "Three years ago, we were overlevered, if lucky making a buck." This underscores the company’s strategic shift and financial discipline. CFO Jason added, "Everything we did was with our cash," emphasizing the company’s focus on sustainable growth and prudent financial management.

Risks and Challenges

• Seasonality in the first quarter could continue to impact financial performance.
• Integration of BNP acquisition may present operational challenges.
• Competition from traditional guard companies like Wilson Security.
• Potential market saturation in the security services sector.
• Macroeconomic pressures that could affect customer spending.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about deferred large contracts, inventory build, and working capital dynamics. The company clarified its marketing strategy for video guarding and provided details on capital expenditure and the transition from 3G to 4G networks.

Overall, Intelligent Monitoring Group Ltd is leveraging strategic acquisitions and innovative service offerings to position itself as a leader in the comprehensive security solutions market. The focus on video guarding and expansion into broader security services are expected to drive future growth and enhance the company’s competitive position. Investors should note that IMB is one of 1,400+ companies covered by InvestingPro’s comprehensive Research Reports, which transform complex financial data into clear, actionable intelligence through intuitive visuals and expert analysis.

Full transcript - Intelligent Monitoring Group Ltd (IMB) Q1 2026:

Denison, Managing Director, Intelligent Monitoring Group: Right. I think we are up and running. Welcome, everybody, just to the quarterly, just quarter cash flow discussion for Intelligent Monitoring Group. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it. It’s a Friday for some of you and possibly a different time for others of you around the world. Just a couple of comments from me. I’ll get Jace to make some comments, and then we can essentially go to questions. We don’t have a presentation per se for this other than just to discuss the release itself. I should note this is probably the last foresee we’ll do. You know, we’ve reached a scale and size now. We are, I’m not sure, you know, technically we don’t need to do this form of release. We do, though, intend to do quarterly releases moving forward, just maybe not in the same exact financial format.

Kicking off the bat for me, I think the highlights for the quarter are, you know, we’ve made the comment around giving guidance at the AGM. We’re not expecting there to be sort of a material concern around that. We’re still just working through our plans, etc., and, you know, we’ll get to everyone with a bit more of a fulsome presentation on the 10th of November. I think the feature here that, if you step back, that really sits out is the continued growth in the commercial enterprise workbook. Since we’ve put out the full year result in August, effectively from the end of July to now, we’ve had something like a 24% increase in the size of the book, being the growth book. Now, that’s a revenue and opportunity-weighted pipeline. It’s not the gross work pipeline.

I think that underpins, actually, you know, essentially our confidence in and, you know, faith that what we’re doing is working and will actually translate through now into an increasingly growing business. I think to call it out, though, what we’ve also seen, as we saw last year, is it is a little bit seasonal when you’re working commercial enterprise, and there are a few factors at play in the first quarter. Firstly, happy, you know, to have a positive cash flow, I guess, is always good, but it is a weak quarter in the sense that there’s a bit of timing that goes on in the first quarter.

I make the comment in the release that, you know, the way we’ve come to understand this business as we’ve built it up over the last two years, and I guess also inherited it with ADT, is fourth quarter is a very strong quarter for us by profile. Quarter two is a reasonably strong quarter as you lead into Christmas. Quarter three is an okay quarter as people come back from their Christmas break, and quarter one is really the resetting of the pipelines and opportunities and rebuilding for what is the full year. We are in that quarter at the moment. How does that translate? It translates essentially into order book has gone up, which tells you that it’s going to be a good year.

We’ve had to order equipment and taken on working capital, but it hasn’t yet and doesn’t yet translate through until we get a bit further into the year. The best way I’ve found to give you confidence and articulate that is, when I called out the October cash flow in the release, in October, effectively we started the month as per the end of this release at $15.5 million of cash. We ended it at $16.2 million of cash. In that period, we also bought a business for $4.2 million of cash. Once you start to work out of the quarter and into that sort of second quarter and then beyond, the cash flows essentially catch up with the business. Probably just a couple of other little comments from me.

One, we did do quite a lot of work through this period and a little bit of change around our inbound sales function. We’ve created a new area, the monitoring sales, inside ADT. It’s my pleasure to let you know that Shanine has actually taken control of that team about, I don’t know, six weeks, eight weeks ago, and the impact there of the restructuring, refocusing of the team around what we’re selling and how we’re selling has been really, really impressive. Setting us up to deliver on our plan, which is to really accelerate our video guarding service towards the back end of the year. Probably final point for me is just the full year result.

Tax was a discussion point there and did impact in the end our balance sheet, and as, as nauseum has been an annoying irritant for us, and a non, it’s a material but not that material impact on us actually, and that it’s relatively short term. We are profitable. We are going to end up having to pay tax soon one way or another. We have engaged a further advisor who’s now truly, you know, separate and independent from the prior advice we had had, and their initial take, which is still subject to more work, is, you know, just continue on. The tax losses are fine, not to paraphrase them exactly, but effectively. We intend, as we sit here today, to file our 2025 tax return as if our tax losses were essentially fully preserved.

In our balance sheet, they’re only essentially valued or noted at 40%, which was a number the auditors dreamt up in their sleep the day before we released it, without being too overly direct and pointed. You know, it looks like, as the company has consistently made the point, they will hold, so a nice potential little win there. I’ll pause. Oh, sorry. One other thing just to call out, within the results themselves, really great start to the year for Australia. Again, totally consistent, and frankly, you know, some really happy with the work we’ve done in Australia, the things we are seeing. Not quite as happy with the New Zealand business, not the business per se. Commercial book there also looking strong. Definitely an economy that is under a lot of pressure down there.

I think, not necessarily something sitting in Australia or rest of the world, yeah, we’d understand, but that economy contracted 0.9% in the last GDP print, doesn’t actually really necessarily impact security usually, except for the single biggest customer to ADT New Zealand is actually the New Zealand government. They were coming towards the end of what has been a number of years of, you know, sort of replacement upgrades. That work stream has definitely softened, slowed for a period. We were expecting that. That’s not really a surprise. On the other side, though, the work that we have grown into and expect to grow into is just taking a little bit longer to kick in. It leaves you with, again, a bit of a disjointed moment in time where you’re carrying a little bit more resource and inventory and what have you in advance of the work starting.

At the same time, you’ve seen one of your big customers soften away for a period. It did have a detrimental effect probably versus expectation, but Australia on the other side more than offset that. Just to call that out, I’ll pause. Jason, I’ll throw it to you if you’d like to make any particular comments about the quarter or finances.

Jason, CFO, Intelligent Monitoring Group: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Denison. Good morning, everyone. I think the really sort of key thing to get across for the quarter is this was an all cash quarter. Everything we did was with our cash. We bought businesses with cash. We grew cash. We had a positive cash flow from operating activities. All of our acquisition costs were covered with cash. I think that’s probably a really positive thing to sort of take out of the quarter’s overall results. Our extraordinary expenses were low relative to other quarters and previous movements that the market’s seen from us, with only a small amount of extraordinary expenses related to some redundancies and restructuring, which is just part of gearing the business up and retooling for the year ahead, as well as some work within New Zealand around the transfer pricing framework, which plays into the broader tax conversation for the future.

As Denison said, we’ve engaged PwC as a complete fresh look at the tax position, and all conversations thus far have been very positive, and we are continuing to operate under the expectation that our losses are preserved, which is a very positive outlook. I’m happy to take questions from the floor for anyone who has them.

Denison, Managing Director, Intelligent Monitoring Group: Yeah. Look, we’ll just open it up, guys. We’ve got the system we put in place at the full year result. If you just want to, I think Shanine, you control the flow. If anyone wants to start questions, don’t be shy. Pile away. We’re here for you, of course. We’re also available outside. Let’s just see if anybody has anything they’d like to know.

Shanine, Sales/Marketing Leader, Intelligent Monitoring Group: Thanks, Denison. Maybe I’ll start with Christian. He has a few questions. Christian, if you could please unmute yourself and ask your question.

Denison, Managing Director, Intelligent Monitoring Group: Hi, Christian. Sorry, Christian, you’ll have to unmute if you haven’t.

Hi, Denison. Can you hear me?

Yeah, gotcha. Perfect.

You mentioned the cash flow report that you expect to issue guidance at the AGM. I totally respect that and that you likely issue guidance in line with market expectations. Based on the latest broker note I’ve read, that would be around $46 million EBITDA. Would that be a reasonable assumption or could you give me any color on that?

Yeah. Look, we haven’t locked it away fully. We are very privileged and lucky and thankful to have a number of brokers cover us. We look at a sort of a spread across, but I don’t think that’s inconsistent with where our mind’s at, you know, Christian. I think one thing I would just say is, with the understanding of the profile of earnings now, we have come to really appreciate over the last two years that, whilst we have an incredibly consistent underlying business and we do, as we are growing more and more rapidly and again, representing with the pipeline growth, we have this little bit of seasonality in the business. Priorly, I think I probably would’ve talked more about, we talked a lot about run rate through this journey to try to indicate earnings.

I think now we need to be a little cautious about sort of full year to full year. What I’m getting at is those sort of numbers, Christian, will be incredibly good year on year growth. There may be people that expect that you could shoot way higher than that, and I think that would be an unfair kind of representation of the reality of the business and over expect what is humanly possible. Happy with that. Happy, very happy with the pipeline, how we expect to translate through. We think around those levels would represent a really impressive underlying performance for the business. We’ll come back obviously with a bit more detail and build up to August.

Gotcha, Denison. Thank you. While you’re talking about the pipeline, it’s noticeably higher than in the half year report. What drove this improvement in the pipeline?

Yeah. Look, it is, and it was, you know, I was surprised myself and we’ve not sought to over-punish that number to give a glowing result here. It feels like a very fair representation of the last couple of months. What’s driving it? Look, it is, it’s broad based. I mean, you know, whilst we don’t control the flow, I mean, in essence, we have come back into the market. We’ve started to say yes to existing customers, which, you know, to be honest, has been a lot of the growth really in the last, certainly in the last year. A lot was more about saying yes to existing customers around their expansions and things they wanted to do than priorly under maybe other owners or, you know, under JCI, the business had been inclined to just say no and not go with customers.

Now we’re starting to see new customers. I think, I don’t want to make too much of it, but, you know, I’m aware myself of a new, say, data center customer that’s been added, you know, essentially to that pipeline in the last month or two, which is an entirely new customer, one that would not have been on the radar, you know, in my world and probably for the team, you know, until about six months ago who have come in, seen our work, our credential, understand the proposition we’ve built and the network coverage we have and the talent we have, and signed up. That is a material piece of work. It’s not material enough to create the change there, but, you know, across what is a fairly broad book of work, just adds further.

I feel like what that represents is the change from the sort of awakening of the ADT to the wider market and conversations coming to us matched with us now going out, notably last week, Shanine, the week before last, we were at the IMAC conference, which is essentially, I’ll call it the Australian Resources Conference. That would be the, well, one would be, I think, just about the only security company that would’ve been there or had ever been there. Two, it’s certainly the first time we’ve put money to work to really put our name back into the industry, to be present. I’m really pleased with the conversations that we had, and the conversations that have now started, you know, so we’re, it’s, I think it’s moving because we are moving and people are realizing it. Now that we’re broadening and widening, where does that take us?

Not sure, not sure whether you can infer that keeps going up at that rate in the next quarter on quarter on quarter, but very good, very, very good lead indicator. One, it’s validating what we’ve built. All the sort of, I guess, M and A and platform building we’ve done to this point has been validated by customer wins. Two, it’s a very good signal about the financial performance of the business as we look into the next few periods.

Okay. Sounds promising. Maybe let’s switch to another topic. What kind of surprised me was that you mentioned in the cash flow report that you’re currently not advertising video guarding. Maybe you could elaborate on the reasoning behind that because, based on my understanding, its unit economics are significantly better than anything you offered so far. Would it make sense to focus on generating as many leads as possible to make sure that the margin improves?

Yeah. No, great question. Good pickup. There’s a smile from Shanine and I probably like to be a little bit more, look, we are spending money. We’re not, we haven’t increased our allocation or spend, I think is probably more what that was trying to indicate. We’ve started, and we’re okaying a bit of proactive advertising now. We’ve started to do some programmatic video advertising online. Up to this point, our spend has really been search engine optimization, inbound leads, people looking for us can find us and us working. The reality though, the deeper part of the question, Christian, is right now we don’t need a lot more than what we’ve got.

I might ask you, Shanine, on the spot if you would want to comment on this, but in terms of where we’re at with leads and demand, what’s your expectation around what we need to do there and where are we at?

Shanine, Sales/Marketing Leader, Intelligent Monitoring Group: Thank you.

Okay.

I was going to say, Denison, you’re on point. We do have a lot of demand. Whilst video monitoring is really good for us, you know, from a financial perspective, it is a value prop, a product in the market that the customer doesn’t really know about and understand. We are starting, we’re pushing out like in November, we’ve got more going out, which is under the video monitoring banner, talking a little bit. We’re starting to put it a little bit more into our marketing so that the customer gets educated, the market gets educated on what video monitoring is. The reality is we do get an average of qualified leads of 1,200, 1,300 leads that come into the business, where customers are looking for security. The conversation with the customer starts with video monitoring.

It’s giving the customer the value, and explaining to the customer the value of the solution. That has, so far, been very successful for us. In what Denison’s put out in the report, we haven’t increased our marketing spend and we haven’t focused a lot on video guarding marketing spend. We’ve been able to grow the video guarding customer base by utilizing our existing marketing channels and the leads that come through.

Okay. Understood. Appreciate it. Thank you, Shanine. Thank you, Denison. That’s it from my side. Thank you.

Denison, Managing Director, Intelligent Monitoring Group: No problem. Thanks, Christian.

Shanine, Sales/Marketing Leader, Intelligent Monitoring Group: Good.

Denison, Managing Director, Intelligent Monitoring Group: I get it.

Shanine, Sales/Marketing Leader, Intelligent Monitoring Group: Sorry, Shanine. Go ahead.

Denison, Managing Director, Intelligent Monitoring Group: I was going to say I’ve got Stella who has a couple of questions. Stella, do you mind unmuting yourself? Hi, Stella.

Hi guys, can you hear me?

Yes, gotcha. Hi, Stella.

Great. Great. How are you? Thanks for the update and taking questions. Got a few, follow-up on previous comments to start with, if you don’t mind. Firstly, during quarter update, you highlighted two deferred large contracts with one being very much alive. Could you maybe update on that? Similarly, earlier this calendar year, you signed a $1 million plus guard client through Signature. At that time, you did highlight it’s got significant national expansion potential. Could you please give us some idea how that is going?

Yep. No, great, great question. In regards to the first question, if you step, I’ll go right back to the start of that conversation. There were two contracts we sort of called out at the end of the financial year, which actually did, we thought would actually land in a late financial year, which took a little bit of cream off us at the end of the financial year, albeit it was a very strong end. One of those, people change, procurement change, and frankly, they’ve gone right back to the drawing board and they’re about to go back and re-reg go through a process. Frustrating, nothing actually to do with us, we just have to sit with the customer. The other one, similar story in that there was a CEO change. It is a major financial organization with a big branch coverage across Australasia.

New CEO in, so delayed is the piece until new guy got the seat. Now they’ve gone and actually split that contract into a few parts of which we’ve won one of the parts. The expectation is still maintained that there’s two significant pieces of work we would like to win and expect to, but in the hands of the customers and timing, not inside our control. Notably that actually, if you want to think of it this way, did get reduced in our pipeline. Therefore our pipeline moving forward is reflective, not just of only wins, it’s also reassessing things that were in the pipeline that are taking longer that we have to reweight differently. What to take out of that is what we’ve also been learning.

I’ll be honest, Stella, we are learning this, I won’t say real time with you, but a little bit in front of you. Then, having to carry the market through this journey too is that we have to be more cautious in our timing around expectation of landing and working on these commercial enterprise type customers. The timeline from discussion when signing to actual start can delay in ways that we have to be cautious about our over communication of it in the short term. I think that’s exactly effectively what happened in New Zealand, by the way, where there is a major piece of work sitting out there. I won’t disclose it for sake of the commercial materiality of it, but it is significant infrastructure in New Zealand that’s highly known.

There was about a three-month start delay to the whole project that just kind of created a bit of a weakness in that quarter for them. I think that might’ve answered in terms of the guarding customer. Yes, won some good guarding customers. That particular customer is an ongoing conversation. It’s, again, it is about security, this customer. I think I need to protect their security interests themselves, but it is an into a charged environment, is probably the best way I can put it. Therefore, they are very sensitive. They’re very serious about security, very much needing it, very much thoughtful. I don’t know what the word I could use is.

I won’t call it political, but that will be a conversation that I think will go on for some time and continue to increase as they develop their own comfort around, you know, not, it’s not really even just the technology, it’s the trust and service providers. There’s a fundamental issue there for that customer around just trusting generally, and I can understand it. Great start. We’re in the right spine, opportunity to go. Lessons that have come out of the ADT guarding piece, and I think this is the really important bit I’d take it to is, I guess that lesson along with a few others of starting to bid effectively full security work, which we had not done until we started those type of contracts. We’d never lined up against, say, a Wilson Security or a Southern Cross Protection or any of the guarding patrol companies.

We had always been a subcontractor to them for a bit of monitoring and maybe service installation work, small value stuff for us really inside what were much larger full security contracts. In the last year, we’ve started to look at these, started to win a couple, started to tender and learn about it. Our lesson from that was we need to present like a guarding company because at the moment we were essentially turning up what would look like as a technology company. While some early adopters would be happy to do that, there was always that kind of sense within that I could feel, which was, well, yeah, but you don’t really do this. This is something different, what you’re selling us and what is a like for like.

That’s why we bought BNP last month, because it is a traditional guarding patrol business that already starts to use cameras, trailers, and poles. They subcontract the labor themselves, so it is a little cute to say they are a patrol guarding company. They are, but they actually outsource that part of their business. That, alongside having the ADT guard division now inside ADT, which is run by David Midhurst, who I think we introduced, certainly introduced to a number of people in the last month, who was one of the founders of Southern Cross Protection, a former Managing Director to run ADT guard, has put all the tools in place now for us to go forward and progress those. Since he started, David’s picked up those conversations for us. He is now a known, credible industry player in full service security, and we’re seeing the results to that.

Not to overspeak it, again, I think caution and timing here is the issue. We won last week a major industrial 30-site significant, physical land used in their business industrial, the first site in South Australia for them to essentially show proof of concept. Subject to that, they would expect us to roll around. They’re a major player in their industry. It’s a significant industrial player, and that only happened because they saw us as effectively a cheaper but higher quality solution for their physical guarding, which is part of the BNP, David portfolio. Sorry, Stella, a lot of words there. Hopefully that got somewhere to the answer to the question you were asking.

Yeah. Thanks for the color on the benefit of acquiring BNP because, obviously, it’s a bit of a deviation from what you previously.

Yeah.

Yeah, focused on technology-based. It’s good to see now with them on board and presenting as the key part of the guard proposal, it is starting to roll forward previous hesitant clients, like the South.

Yes.

South Australia one just mentioned. Okay. All right.

With.

Yep.

With BNP, there were a couple of things that were immediate changes there. First is we’ve introduced our technology stack to what they were already doing. What we have, our solution, security solution is advanced. It’s the most advanced, I believe, intent solution in the market, but if not, you know, almost in the world for a major security player at this time. We started that process of effectively updating their existing customer base. That will lead to efficiencies for us, cost savings, but also allow them to scale. We’ve started the conversation with their existing customers around sort of expansion potential. That win that I’ve mentioned, albeit it won’t be singularly material for our business, is a really nice pickup with, again, potentially long-tailed growth relationship there, is a really, really good sign, frankly, earlier than I would’ve thought.

The guys have hit the ground very well from here, and you’re right to call it out as different. I think we tried to make that point. I wasn’t sure whether it resonated with people. It was different, like it wasn’t, you know, at Western Advance was about more network coverage and a bit of specialty as per everything else we had done since we bought ADT to build that commercial enterprise story out. This was about unlocking that really big addressable market that we’ve identified around guard and patrol replacement. From here, where do we go? We don’t have particular, say, M and A plans now ’cause we’ve got what we want, but we do wanna see that grow rapidly. The opportunity and the economics available to the existing industry are pretty significant. We’ll give it a little, we’ll give some time to settle in.

Everything’s gotta settle into the group. We’re cognizant of being careful, but I’m really excited about that ADT guard opportunity. It looks really, really, really interesting to me.

Did you say, in your previous comments, BNP outsourced the physical guarding labor force?

Yes.

Is that what they outsource? Okay. In terms of your gross margin and operational leverage level, I’m just conscious, do they keep a decent base of guard team, for example, and therefore it’s a higher fixed cost and that would impact your margin. How would their addition into your group change your margin and fixed cost base?

The.

Think to customize it?

Yeah, look, the current margin is not dissimilar from our group margin. In terms of adding it in, it won’t significantly skew the optics at the group level. Moving forward, scalability, the incremental margin is high. If you just step back, the situation we have is at the moment our installation service margin is about not that different to our monitoring margin, being our long-term recurring, the value driver we’re trying to create and build. To build that, we need to win more work and service, maintain to get that work. Therefore, that grows. Now, that margin we’re pretty determined to hold and not discount and make sure we make money. We want to be paid for everything we do. As we do that, the incremental, the margin of the monitoring area should grow.

The sort of countervailing effects are, you’ve got installation, which will, if that’s growing rapidly as it is at the moment, will kind of, in a way, set your margin increasing or puts a bigger base around that current margin. As you move forward and monitoring, the proportion of monitoring grows, that margin will grow. The impact on the group will depend ultimately on how fast your new customer acquisition is going. As that’s going, in a funny way, it probably, well, it doesn’t suppress your margin, but it stops it from incrementing significantly for the period that you’re in strong growth until such time as the growth starts to go down and your monitoring base is so big. Then that monitoring margin will ultimately, you’ll see the margin of the group start to rise.

I’m not sure if I’ve explained that well, but the net result is I think our margin at the group level is probably fairly sticky around here for a while. What we’re looking for is faster growth. In the long term, that margin should be able to rise. What’s long term? I mean, I don’t have a strong view in, like, mathematically modeled it, and it does depend on growth. Because we want growth, again, it speaks to not seeing margin rapidly rise for some time. Ultimately, I see this as a 25% to 30% EBITDA margin business, and I think 25%, if we could move towards that over the next three years, that would be a great result.

If we’re winning a lot of new work that’s going to give us lots of long-term recurring high-margin monitoring service work, then I don’t know that we’ll be too worried about it either. We and hopefully you will be happy.

Great. If I could just squeeze one last one, ’cause you are now consistently disclosing your pipeline. Could you tell us how this weighting calculation is worked out?

What we’re looking at there is effectively of the work that is in the pipeline, what’s our weight that we expect to win, you know? That’s obviously, you know, we want to be conservative, sort of talking about conservative factor. It’s also over the next 12 months. Some of the work in that pipeline we expect to run for two years, some of it’s pretty substantial new build work. We do have some new data centers, for instance, and from way to go, there’ll be more than 12 months. It is very much a probability-weighted to 12 months pipeline that we expect to translate to revenue.

Good. If with some more time down the line, if you can disclose some billing rate, it’ll be great. That’s all from me. Thank you very much.

No, perfect, Stella. Thank you very much. Appreciate your interest and support.

Tom, I think you’ve got a question. Do you want to unmute yourself?

Hi team. Just checking you can hear me. Yep. Gotcha. Yeah. Perfect. Just a quick one for me. I might have missed it at the start. Apologies. Just the step change in operating cash flow as at 30 October. You obviously, you know, included $4.2 million for acquiring BNP. So just trying to get a sense for the sort of natural run rate in the second quarter, notwithstanding that a big contract win could mean an upfront investment. Can you just give us a bit of a high-level status quo? What the sort of run rate for second quarter cash flows could look like given the step change in the most recent month?

It may be some, it’s a great question. I think, you know, if I’m just being transparent about it, we have a cash forecast model that Jason runs. I’m not sure we’ve really got to the bottom of being able to be really confident that we can give a clear answer that will be correct. My view, given the seasonality I’ve talked about, is that we now, we’ve had essentially the inventory rebuild slow, just timing of work coming on the first quarter now speeds up. Of course, the goal will be to get through most of this work once they hit the go button. It’s now, oh, we’ve started a bit late, let’s get it done faster. It doesn’t necessarily change anything other than the delivery now happens more intensely so that you get the, you start to run the other way, which is what October is as well.

It’s like, okay, now you’ve actually sort of start to have the other impact, which is what we kind of called out in the fourth quarter last year. You see, look, it’s a couple of million too high on that really strong cash fourth quarter we had, was like, great to have, but on the other side of it, it’s probably, I think it was about $3 million, sort of the opposite effect. Best sort of guidance I think we could give fairly would be cash flow and EBITDA should match up more now running forward. There should be a bit of catch up now to catch up that first quarter over the rest of the year, but hopefully conservatively, you know, kind of monthly EBITDA should catch it.

We may need to take it offline and come back and help you just to plan out for your first half sort of cash numbers and things. What we don’t see is a repeat of a low cash quarter like the first quarter. Again, we look, rightly or wrongly, on top of the seasonality. Last year was very acute. This year, there was a little bit, we do tend in the start, that first month to the new financial year, to put in place, it seems to build to a lot of change. The prior year, that’s when we stopped the capitalization of the ADT products. We wrote back all those ADT-owned contracts back to customer to really clean up the pen so that we could have a really clean FY 2025 financial year. We merged Adeva and Signature and essentially created Signature financially from that first July start.

There was a lot in that July, August last year; there was actually a lot of noise if you look back on it. This year, not anywhere near as much, but we did do a few things like this restructuring inbound team costs, the change costs there, which are far smaller and becoming, not immaterial, but much smaller as a proportion of the actual business. The other thing I would call out is we made an investment, a $300,000 investment of debt financing into one of our Signature Security new customers as we’re starting to build partnerships there, secured against their lines to help them grow, to speed up overall use of video monitoring across Australasia, not just ADT. That quarter tends to be a bit messy for us. Next quarters don’t tend to be; now we’re actually, we don’t foresee significant, there’s no significant structural change.

We are who we are. We know who we are. Maybe from time to time you’ll get some restructuring. The timing issue in New Zealand has focused certainly me a little bit on that New Zealand business around just really now going through and really honing in on it. It’s well run, it’s a good business, but it frankly didn’t get the executive level time in the first year of our ADT journey as ADT Australia did, where all our energy was really primarily focused. I think now there’s an opportunity to really get that New Zealand business replicating some of the success we are starting to really see in Australia. Sorry again, long answer, maybe let us come back to you, but in the intervening period, I think EBITDA, maybe with a little bit extra, should be a good guide. It should be a good second quarter, clearly.

Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. One quick follow-up question. In terms of the inventory build, like you win a big contract and then you have to scale up initially pre-delivering that contract, what’s the sort of timeline of building that inventory build and then delivering the contract?

Yeah. Look, it very much does depend on the job itself. There’s a range, but essentially, and maybe Jason, you’d have a better feel, but I could imagine a two to three month kind of working capital lag for some things, certainly for big enough jobs. If there’s a lot of wiring, I’m thinking of, again, not to overpick this area, but the data centers where you’re laying a lot of cable for a period of time, a lot of product, it does depend on the relationship with the customer too and when they will pay and how the contract is put together. Probably a couple of months. Again, Jason, do you want to, like I said?

I don’t think it would be much more than that. A lot of these jobs are sort of staged work flow, like it’s set out at the start of the contract, it’s time to work with, time to work with stock in to land at site. I wouldn’t have thought much more than that from a timing perspective. Most of the large inventory investment we’ve had have been ahead of that structural change around, like I say, the 4G upgrade project, Tom, or when we invested in CyberSense a couple of years ago, just to drive that project. I think commercial working capital drag shouldn’t be that high. I just think it’s because we’re looking quarterly on quarterly, right? I think if we were half yearly, and this is where I make the point, I’m not sure.

Quarter, like again, not to shy away from it, but I’m not sure quarterly, any one month, you can have a little bit of movement. It’s not, as a point I’ve made to you, Tom, privately, it’s not like running an airline where your cash is moving around crazy. The cash doesn’t move around crazy in this business, but it does have effects. I think if you start the year and do a few things, we also cleaned up the Adeva shareholders, you’ve got a few things that come through that you just want to put away. You can end up having, you get a bit of timing on deals, on job starting, a bit of inventory build. You get a quarter like you’ve had now.

The flip side is, as long as that’s not a replicable thing, as was shown last year, you build into a good cash flow, but the timing’s only a month. These are not six month, year, it’s not, you’re not building like a bridge or something. You have to build an arch that’s going to take you two years before you deliver it and get paid. It’s ordering largely electronic equipment, cameras, wiring, NVRs, servers, stuff. It’s getting it in, getting it configured and getting it to site. Four, eight, 12 weeks is probably the max of the cycle. Perfect. Thank you very much. Appreciate you taking my questions.

All right. Thanks, Tom. Appreciate the support.

I’ve got Richard. Richard, do you want to unmute yourself and ask your question, please?

Yeah, thanks, Shanine. Thanks, guys, for the update and for the opportunity to ask a question. I think quite a few of my questions have been asked and answered already, so that’s been great. I guess I’ll just ask on the CapEx that you had in the first quarter. It was around $3 million. It seemed maybe a little bit higher than at least what I was expecting. Maybe you could just touch on, was that sort of acquisition related, or what was driving that and what can we expect for the remainder of FY 2026?

Yep. So.

Can you adjust to that?

I think if you were to take the sort of number that we were talking to at the full year, sort of an $8 million to $10 million range, I think we’re comfortably within that. I agree it’s probably a little bit higher than we expected, but it is just the last stages of stocking the 4G upgrade project in New Zealand. It’s almost exclusively New Zealand. There’s a very small amount in Australia around some software development items, but largely we’re looking at the 4G upgrade project as well as the fleet over there. I think we’ll see it go as a higher first half and then it’ll taper off to the back half, but still not be that much more than that sort of $8 million to $10 million.

It won’t be more than that $8 million to $10 million that we’ve talked about at the full year number.

I think, Jason, if I remember rightly, looking at the numbers, the actual 3G upgrade CapEx this quarter was about $3.4 million. Was it something that I picked up on that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

All other business CapEx was about $500,000.

Yeah. Look, it is just to call it out, you know, that medical business is, you know, emotionally a challenge for us. By that I mean it is the one business that generates CapEx now. We’d like to be able to present a very simple journey for you, for the market and for analysts around cash translation from revenue through to cash flow. We understand the importance of that. That is the business that stops us being able to do it. It does generate positive returns. We are going through the 3G piece, but it is an item that does come up for discussion around strategically, you know, does it make sense? You will note for anyone that’s really eagle-eyed that when we started, when we bought ADT, we had the intention of really building up ADT care.

Again, now we went through that exercise in Australia and determined the return on capital, returns to the business just weren’t really, they weren’t our best use of capital given the opportunity sets in front of us. We’ve actually unwound that and redistributed some of the resource into different parts of the business for other higher value growth, and/or made some redundancies and changes there. New Zealand, we stuck with because it has existing scale today. It is an existing scaled operator, has a market presence, it is a prime player, albeit the return on capital would be the lowest returns in our group, you know, across, because of the leasing model effectively. We’re buying equipment, leasing it to the underlying customer who’s often government funded back to those. So, you know, a high quality customer, but for relatively low returns on that capital. We felt we had no choice.

We had to go through 3G. Our view’s always been, let’s get the business transited, let’s actually get it onto new technology, onto a new platform, and then we’ll need to determine how we run that business going forward. That includes even just how we run it and it interacts with the broader business. At the moment it is, whilst it’s physically housed inside 8010 shares, IT, finance and all that, it is actually kind of a standalone operation that uses our monitoring. We are taking a moment to look at it, and it does form that CapEx. Without that CapEx, though, just to be clear, this business is probably a $2 million to $3 million a year CapEx business as we move forward. Very low outside of that CapEx. That makes a lot of sense.

When exactly do you expect that transition to be completely finalized and no longer sort of going through the 3G to 4G? Is that next quarter or more towards the end of the financial year?

I think, and I will get the provider wrong, but the last provider, which I don’t want to speak ill of, but I think it might be One New Zealand, I’m not sure which one it actually is, is due to shut off March next year on current run rate.

Okay.

Yeah. Sorry. With these things, what you find, we have to buy the equipment to be ready to go. The actual customers taking it over and doing it can be quite late in the piece depending on the customer and, you know, how fast we can get to them and their receptiveness to it, et cetera. The discussion around 3G, full stop, that we’ve had to bear, firstly in Australia, which was really awful for us a year ago in terms of just the mess it created in our accounts, through to New Zealand now where it’s not per se messy for our accounts, but it’s just distracting. That entire journey will be finished by March next year and we’ll cease to discuss the two acronyms ever again.

That’s great. Super helpful. Thanks. I guess just last question from me. I think at the end of FY 2025, you mentioned having about 300 sites on video guarding. How’s that progressed? Could you maybe give an update on that number?

No, look, it’s, so sitting here today, I mean, I’ll answer it, Shanine, and you can rebut me if you wish to come over the top, but we’re sitting here today with 50 sites pending installation, and growth month on month on month. It’s really accelerating rates currently. That’s installs waiting to happen, and we’re living inside a good turnaround time on those. There’s nothing sort of extraordinary about that, which is my key pinch point of making sure we can deliver the work that we sign up. We expect we are now moving into a place where we are accelerating that business. It has started to accelerate.

I think we’ve, and again, just to go back to that sort of structural changes we made, call it two months ago, was all about taking the lessons, coming back together, putting the teams in place with those lessons so that we can now just move to accelerate sales, delivery, sales delivery, day in, day out. From here, we look to that accelerate. I may, I don’t know if I will, will it be meaningful or not, but we will start to come up with some, we have a model. We know where we wanna be effectively as we, I think we put in this release.

Our view as it stands is, by the, call it the start of the fourth quarter this year, we expect, on current run rate, that guard will start to pull up our customer base, being revenue and profit and monitoring, and then forever kind of into the future. At the moment, we’re still, good month, bad month, depending on attrition and our intrusion alarms and guard sales. As these guard numbers pick up, ’cause, and of course recognizing they’re highly valuable, they’re much, one guard sale is from a recurring point of view, effectively three times higher value than a true alarm. It doesn’t take much for us to really start to see that business move on. That’s when I’ve said, we’ve got one rocket at the moment pushing us, which is the Access Control Enterprise workbook, essentially that install workbook that we’ve disclosed.

As we tip over through the back end of this year, we’ll actually start to have two rockets firing us, which will be the ADT guard product as well. I think that’s when we really start to see forward and encourage investors to think that way. We’re building a business. I think that the really exciting times, whilst we’re doing well and we’re happy with where we’re at and we are growing and we think we’re moving into great shape, I think they’re really, I wouldn’t lose track of the fact that as you start to look out six and 12 months, if we can deliver what we are seeing currently and that increased scale, that’s when we really start to see some interesting times ahead.

That’s really great. Very exciting. Thanks, guys. Well done.

Thank you.

That’s it. I think that offers all the questions, Tyson.

Were you happy with that, Shanine, given your

He’s happy with that. Thank you. Yeah.

Excellent.

Yeah.

Okay. If there’s no other questions, again, thanks for your time. We are happy with that quarter. You know, recognize that more cash is best cash. I think Jason’s point at the start was right. It is a cash quarter. I think the really notable thing I would say to people if you sit back is, three years ago, we were overlevered, if lucky making a buck with the market value. Certainly when I took over as Managing Director, if I remember right, the market cap was $7.9 million. In the last six weeks, we’ve bought two businesses for over $8 million out of cash and resources and expect to be fully cash funded this year, growing our cash balance and looking to accelerate and move forward. For us, these are exciting times. Really grateful for the support and interest.

Totally available for questions and we’re looking forward to this next year. We think it’ll be really interesting. Thanks very much. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

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