Good morning, welcome to the Aquis Exchange PLC full year results webinar. Before I hand over to Alasdair Haynes and Richard Fisher to take you through the presentation, I would like to remind attendees that you'll be in listen-only mode for the duration of the webinar. Written questions can be submitted at any time throughout the presentation via the Q&A tab at the bottom of your screen. Thank you very much. I would now like to pass over to Alasdair and Richard to bring you through the presentation. Thank you very much. A very warm welcome to all of you, to the presentation of the Aquis Exchange PLC 2022 results. I'm joined here today with Richard Fisher, our CFO. Hey, good morning, everybody. Well, look, this has been a transformational year for Aquis. We've reached many operational milestones. We've achieved a number of the objectives we've set out, I think we are incredibly well-positioned going forward from here. The very observant amongst you will also notice that we've had a very successful rebrand, the purpose of the rebrand really is to reflect the diversification, not just in the product, but also in the revenue streams that we've achieved over the year. I hope you all like it. Onto the first slide, absolutely delighted to be reporting a strong performance across all divisions. Our revenue, our net revenue was up 24% to GBP 20.1 million. The underlying profit was up 41% to GBP 4.7 million. We've seen growth across all three divisions and across the four revenue streams. If we look at Aquis Markets, which we formerly called Aquis Exchange, which was a little confusing, which is now rebranded Aquis Markets, we've seen the diversification with the purchase of the UBS MTF assets and the creation of the Aquis Matching Pool, AMP. We've seen that grow substantially throughout the year. We'll cover a little bit more on that later on. In Aquis Technologies, we really have started to see the dividends being paid for the investment that we made in this cutting-edge cloud and 24/7, the perpetual matching engine that we've now introduced. With the Aquis Stock Exchange, we achieved 22 new IPOs throughout 2022, and that is more than any other growth exchange in the United Kingdom. That is a game changer again for us, and we think we're incredibly well-positioned going forward. Of course, what we're also seeing is growth of 29% in our data revenues. Again, the prospect, and Richard will talk more about this, of the consolidated tape, which has really moved from being if to now a question of just when. Richard, over to you on the numbers. All right. Thank you, Alasdair. Yes. I'm very pleased to present such a strong set of results for this year. First of all, our performance in 2022 was slightly ahead of market expectations. Net revenues of GBP 20.1 versus an average consensus of GBP 19.7. Profit before tax, an outturn of GBP 4.5 against an expectation of GBP 4.3. We're very pleased to have beaten market expectations once more. If we look at operating expenses, as Alasdair alluded to, they are up year-on-year at 23%. I think for ourselves, the most pleasing aspect is we're immediately starting to see the rewards for those investments that we've made in the year. At the half year, we indicated we were hiring into our technology team, especially. As you'll see, we've seen significant success in our technology delivery in the year. A very good transformation of investment to outturn. Just to note on our results, we restated our 2021 financial results. This was for FX arising in our European subsidiary. This has had the impact of moving GBP 0.3 million in 2021 just between OCI and operating expenses. As such, we have presented the results here on an underlying basis, which shows the movement year- on- year, including that adjustment. As Alasdair sort of mentioned, underlying profit is up from GBP 3.3 million to GBP 4.7 million. If I then turn to the next slide, looking at the revenue story. There are probably three main reasons for why we are so excited about this revenue story. That's firstly, the increasingly diversified mix of the revenues. Secondly, it's the combined sort of, sorry, continued strong growth that we see. Perhaps even most importantly of all, it's the opportunity set provided by the very nature of those revenues. If we look at the chart on the left-hand side, this very clearly shows the diversification of the revenues that we earned in 2022. I think that the point we need to consider is back at the time of the IPO, 100% of our revenues were predicated on that MTF business, and now only 51% of our revenues are coming through there. We truly are a diversified business now. The chart in the middle, I think is a clear statement of our growth and also our ability to continue each year to set and meet expectations. Just say it's the chart on the right-hand side. For those of you I've spoken with before, this is one that I've been talking about a lot since I joined Aquis, and it's probably what I'd regard as an almost unique set of revenue attributes. Seventy-three percent of our revenue is on a recurring basis, but it's perhaps the revenue which we call here as the long-term tech contracts likely to renew. For me, this is the technology contracts. It's almost you have to imagine that counterfactual position of what would prevent those technology clients not renewing of us. The exchange technology we provide is so integral to their models that we continue to see renewals as clients come to the end of their existing contracts. Do we genuinely believe that that revenue continues in the future? I think it's this resilience that this revenue gives us has enabled us to have such a successful year in what has probably been a very difficult market for others. From that, if I turn to the next slide, back to yourself, Alasdair, to talk to Aquis Markets. Thanks very much indeed. Well, look, in Aquis Markets, we've seen good revenue growth, double-digit revenue growth. As promised at the Capital Markets Day, we've now diversified this business away from what we originally had, just the lit book. Now, having, as I said before, the AMP, the Aquis Matching Pool, now the closing auction, the Market at Close product, as well as the periodic auctions. We're not stopping there, and over the next few weeks, you'll hear about more initiatives in this space where we'll change and upgrade some of the products that we have. We think there's a lot more to be gained out of the Aquis Markets division. Continue to grow client numbers, both market makers as well as all liquidity providers, as well as actually broking and bank customers. We've increased prices during the year, I think this is really, really important because being able to change for the very first time in our 10 years of existence, we absolutely saw no pushback at all. We think that we will see further benefits as members go up through those tiers. Remember, as a member goes up through the tiers, that is a 100% in effect margin for our business. If you just move to the next slide and actually then dive into the other products. You can see from the chart on the left, the Aquis Matching Pool, the market share. You can actually see that dip in July that we talked about at the Capital Markets Day, and we were talking about at the results in the half year. That is because when we moved, having purchased the assets of UBS MTF, we put them on, first of all, their own technology and then moved it to our technology. We said at the time that we would see a setback as clients came back onto the system. Actually, what we've seen since then is a continual progression of increased market share. Today, we are just under 8% market share of all European dark trading, and we will believe that this will continue to grow significantly. In the Market at Close product, we've seen great momentum in that. Although unfortunately, we have seen a brief dip in market share from early March. We wanted to point this out because one client is temporarily not using the MAC whilst they make internal technology adjustments. They'd identified some things from their side that they wished to change. We've spoken to that client, and we believe that they will be returning within the next few weeks. Impact, just to let our investors know, the impact of that has been around about 0.9% of our market share because the Market at Close product trades a huge amount, and therefore, you know, it is significant in our overall market share. However, there is no revenue impact. This is a subscription-based product, and the client is still paying their subscription. No revenue impact whatsoever, although it has a temporary market share impact. If we look at our Auction on Demand, you can see that when we have changed a few things, and as we are talking about new initiatives coming along, we made some changes in October last year, and you can see the significant progress that we've done in the auction. This is the periodic auctions or otherwise known as Auction on Demand products. Today, we now count north of 10% of all the periodic auction trading in Europe. Back to you, Richard, for the technology. Great. Thank you. Yes, this division really excites us at the moment, cause I think this year we believe we have fundamentally changed the economics of exchange technology. I think in addition to our market leading cloud expertise, this year, we've now delivered the first regulatory grade 24/7 exchange. We've designed it, built it, and now sold it. We'll be putting some announcements out on Monday about this new product, which we are calling Equinox. It is a real game changer for how people will view technology exchange startups, I believe. I think this market leading position is enabling us to compete and win on probably a number of contracts that we would not even have been considered for the shortlist on just 2 to 3 years ago. There's been a fundamental shift in the perception of the technology that Aquis is delivering. To note, we now operate across a range of asset classes and also geographies. No longer would I view us just as a tech start up in a crypto space. One client we are talking to is a national bank. I think there is a range of clients that perhaps will surprise our investors. In terms of performance, we were delighted with net revenues of GBP 5.2 million in the year, so up 50%-51% year-on-year. Some wonderful financial outcome. Perhaps of even more significance is actually the fact that in the year we won two new contracts, we had an extension of an existing contract. As we sort of call out in the investor deck here, two of those contracts we have yet to recognize any revenue on. As we've identified before with investors, IFRS 15 prescribes about when we can recognize the revenue on these contracts. For two of these contracts, we have not yet recognized any revenue at all. I would also note just in this sort of bar chart to the right-hand side, we're just showing that there is revenue on the existing contracts where we've recognized revenue. There is still further revenue to go. We recognize upfront implementation fees, but then we also have ongoing maintenance revenue, which we recognize over the contracts. I think the last point on this is almost how we're starting to view this. I think we're starting to see not just good prospects for ourselves in the financial services sector, but the game-changing nature of this technology is that we're starting to identify opportunities outside that natural target addressable market. I think there is a scope for what can exchange technology give that is really quite exciting for us. If we turn to the next slide, I just wanted to make it very clear almost with regard to how cash flow works on these technology contracts, because the IFRS 15 does require us to recognize revenue in advance of cash flow. What we just set out here is just to help investors see through to how cash flows are likely to move over the near term to medium-term horizon. Three point five million of cash has been received in the period 2020 to 2022, but we have contractual future cash flows of GBP 9.6 million, which we would recognize over the length of those contracts. There's a substantial cash balance which we'll be receiving over the period, and it's that cash which we will be able to use part of that to continue to invest in our cutting-edge technology. On that point, I'll hand back to Alasdair for the Aquis Stock Exchange. Okay. Well, the word here is profitability. For the first time, probably in its history, we have made the Aquis Stock Exchange profitable with GBP 400 thousand of profits there. We will continue to be profitable for the foreseeable future. Even in the difficult economic climes here that we believe that this is a profitable business going forward. These are difficult market conditions by anybody's standards, and therefore I'm really pleased that we managed to do the 22 IPOs last year. That has made us the largest growth market in the UK based on the number of IPOs. Since starting the business, and this is basically the last couple of years since we changed the rules, we connected people, we changed the technology. We've actually raised over GBP 300 million for micro-cap and small-cap businesses with over 50 different institutional investors. We've added last year two online brokers, two major online brokers, IG and Hargreaves Lansdown. We have a huge opportunity in front of us for Aquis Stock Exchange. The reason I say that is that it has never been more important to this government in order to get scale-up capital. We've said for a very long time that start-up capital is something that is available to entrepreneurs in this country because of EIS and SEIS. Scale-up capital is incredibly difficult. We've always said that the way you fix that, and you create a marketplace like the United States, is to bring competition. We've always said that to create that competition, we have to fix the plumbing and sort things out first. Having done that, I think Aquis Stock Exchange is now in a position to be a truly credible alternative to the growth market in London, where we can actually compete and force competition and force innovation to make the United Kingdom an incredibly attractive place to raise scale-up capital for companies. I want to give you an example of that. If we look at the next slide, we had a company join us last year in July called Equipmake. This is a growth business in the new economy space. Goes Aquis having done a beauty parade in the marketplace. It raised GBP 10 million from institutions during its IPO in July. Price rose 50% over the next few months, and they were doing well, and they wanted to raise more money. Again, in incredibly difficult markets, they raised a further GBP 6 million this year. Its market cap is now GBP 61 million. If you look at that means the company, this company has been able to grow. This company has raised its scale-up capital. The investors have got a return. The brokers are happy because they were able to find the money and find the capital for this business. The stock exchange is obviously growing on the back of it. This is good news all around, and it's good news for the British economy. That is exactly why I believe that Aquis Stock Exchange is incredibly well-positioned to capitalize on the back of the scale-up capital revolution I think we were going to see. Richard, over to data. Thank you. In the data stream, we've seen good, strong continued progress, I'm pleased to report. We continue to be able to attract new licenses, and we've also demonstrated in the year our ability to increase prices. We still price at a discount to our peer set, so I would note that there are still further opportunities in this space for us. The result for the year of GBP 3 million is up 29% year-on-year, and obviously, the data area still continues to attract the high margins that we previously referenced. Probably in the data space, the most exciting aspect is for us around the consolidated tape. As Alasdair referenced earlier, I think the internal management view on Aquis is very much that this has now shifted to a when, not an if. I think that's quite a significant change. For ourselves, we'd often held this out as a sort of 3-year event horizon, but each year it seemed to stay at that 3-year event horizon. I think over the last 12 months, we've actually now started to see that come in, and we're seeing the evidence points that makes us believe that this will happen. Our internal management view is that we believe we should see strong progress and delivery over the next 2 years. We wouldn't believe there to be any financial benefit to Aquis through 2023 or 2024, but potentially in 2025. We would just point to the fact, and I think we've talked about this before, but any data revenue that arrives from the consolidated tape does, by its nature, disproportionately benefit Aquis just as we do not charge our members for data. Whether the logistical cutting of the consolidated tape revenues occurs, for us it has to be an upside. I think it's quite an exciting one to watch as that moves forward. That's quite a neat segue into the next slide, if I could just turn to the drivers of future revenue. Cause while it's been very exciting to talk through our successful 2022, I think for us it is we don't stop there. I think we see a very clear opportunity set across all four of our revenue streams into the future. What we set out here, and please it is just a pictorial representation, so please don't try and measure the size of the dots or the gaps in between them. What we really wanted to set out was how across each of the four revenue streams we see the drivers of that future revenue coming through. In the very near term, we can obviously be very clear that as we increase the number of tech clients or new members join or move up the tiers, those will be immediately driving our near-term revenues. As we look to the medium term, as I've just discussed, we see the opportunity set around the consolidated tape. As you continue further out, we've also spoken about AQSE, and we're starting to think, what is the opportunity set that as we grow AQSE to a critical mass, what are the opportunities for data indexation, for example. I think in summary, we really do see an opportunity set across each of those four divisions going into the future. On that I'll hand back to Alasdair for a few closing remarks. Okay. Well, I just really want to finish with the fact that all divisions are growing, and we see, you know, huge growth in the future for all the divisions. Ironically, conditions are actually in our favor, which seems strange when much of the city, it has got its problems. We see government supporting competition. We see a government that wants to see scale-up capital that helps us in, as I mentioned before, the Aquis Stock Exchange. A consolidated tape that is almost certainly going to happen, and as Richard pointed out, probably by the end of 2024 there will be further revenues coming into Aquis because of that. The technology is a game changer. Literally, the product we've introduced, no one in the world is doing today. Not only is it available in the financial services, we think there is potential outside of financial services on a global basis. We have customers today in Asia, in Africa, in Europe, and in the Americas. We're already globalizing the business through our technology. We have this diversified product in markets. We think that as we continue to bring new initiatives into those markets and look at other things, we will continue to build our market share and our revenues through the subscription model. I actually continue to remain unbelievably excited about our future and believe that we have an enormous opportunity not only to build Aquis, but to get great returns for our investors. At that point, I think I will open it up to questions. Please, fire away. I can actually see questions coming in straight away. Thank you, Alasdair. Thank you for bringing us through the presentation there. This now brings us to the Q&A section of the webinar. I would like to remind any attendees that wish to submit a question to please do so via the Q&A tab at the bottom of your screen. There will be no facility for verbal questions, so I do please ask that you submit any questions. Okay ...in writing via that button. The first question. Well, okay, let me just read the question. Let's see. "What are you seeing in the current market for listings in the UK?" These are hard market conditions. We've actually done 3 IPOs this year. That again is slightly more than AIM has done. We have a sales funnel of 50-plus companies. Now, admittedly, some of those have pushed them back slightly because these are not the right environment. These companies have chosen Aquis. We know that they're in the pipeline, we know that they want to come to market, and we know they want that scale-up capital. Despite the market conditions, we actually are very optimistic. As I said before, the way that we actually gain our revenue for the Aquis Stock Exchange through issuer fees, through data, through the charges that are done to the banks, the brokers, et cetera, et cetera, we believe this remains to be a profitable-. Yeah ... business even if we're not, you know, we had 0 IPOs. It won't be the case. Yeah. I would, I'd chip in on that point because I think as I've spoken to you before, one of the wonderful accounting quirks is that with regard to admission fees for new IPOs, we recognize those over a 9-year period. It's meant to reflect the average duration that somebody stays on an exchange. From an economic perspective, if the number of IPOs was to be sort of lower than we'd hoped for this year, it really doesn't move the dial unnecessarily on our financial results. As Alasdair says, that's why this year we actually recognized a deferred tax asset for AQSE because we are so certain about future profitability. Next question, which is very important. "The lit trading is down. Is that a permanent shift in your opinion?" No, absolutely not. I believe that the movement between lit, dark, auctions, close, and other products out there is like a pendulum. The market sometimes, because of its conditions, prefer to trade in dark, and then over time it will move back into lit, and then it'll move to different areas. Where Aquis is now covered is that we've diversified, built these products so that we can actually, regardless of where the pendulum is at that time, we can actually take advantage of it, which we couldn't in the earlier stages of our business. That diversification has brought a security as well as an opportunity to that division. I think again, it's the opportunity set because we have started to look at by having a lit book and a dark book, what are the available opportunities for us? If you could look at potentials for Dark to Lit Sweep. I think there's an opportunity set that we've not really scratched the surface on yet. Having just set up the AMP last year, I think we've largely grown that in probably at the expense of other existing dark pools, but I think there is a real space here that we can step into. There's a couple of questions we're getting regarding the consolidated tape. I'll sort of combine the questions, which is if the management view, what's the management view of the consolidated tape? If actions, what actions will management take to prepare for the eventual launch of the consolidated tape? Also, what's the estimate of the pool, the total pool for the UK and the EU? The estimate is very, very difficult to give at this point in time. The reason I say that is that the regulators at the moment, it's actually going, the European one's going through trialogue right now in Europe. They haven't decided exactly what the rates are going to be, exactly how the reimbursement for the data which is taken from the exchanges. The detail, the fine detail is not there. It's very difficult to give an exact assumption of what's gonna happen. I think one can look at the United States, and you can build some models based on the way that it operates in the United States. I think it's likely that a consolidated tape provider in the Americas, we have the Consolidated Tape Association. That is something that the regulators in Europe are looking for right now. In fact, there was recent discussion that some of the exchanges in Europe wanted to provide that themselves. What is good news is that the UK was looking at having multiple tapes, but actually, they have decided that they will have one bond tape and then one equities tape, one derivatives tape, and not have competing tapes. That's really important because it reduces the costs for exchanges to provide that data to do multiple tapes, obviously more expensive than providing it to a single tape. The question about what we're doing is we're actively involved in talking to regulators, obviously so, you know, both in Europe and in the UK about the design of this tape. Our voice is being heard around the table. As I said, though, the feedback we've got as this thing goes through trialogue in Europe and is actively being talked about in the regulators here in the UK, that we are confident that a tape is going to happen, and we're confident that the tape is going to be on the same type of structure that we've got in the United States. I don't know if there's anything else to... I think probably the only one I'd add is actually that you've obviously seen the, as Alasdair alluded to, the Europeans, some of the existing exchanges talking of forming a joint venture for how they would look at it. That almost to me is one of these evidence points about the natural order. It's not just our internal Aquis belief this will happen. You can see this is an industry-wide acceptance that this has now shifted from a, "Is it going to happen?" to "How do I now deal with what is going to happen?" I think quite interesting that it's not just ourselves who are seeing this shift in the sands. Nick, I can see you've asked a question, which is very, what other areas do we think our technology may be relevant for? We brought some of this up at the Capital Markets Day. Procurement is the obvious one. If you think about what a matching engine does, it literally, in this case, matching buyers and sellers, but it can be people who wish to purchase and sell. Let's take an example where we did have some conversations a number of years ago when we hadn't had this, we didn't have this product. Actually, with the airline industry, which is looking at buying and selling seats on planes. Their ability to be able to hedge their positions because of, you know, whether people were buying in seats, et cetera, and having a more advanced technology than it's utilized now. When you look around, you know, Betfair is a matching engine. eBay is a matching engine. There's plenty of businesses out there who are looking at matching buyers, sellers, procurement, whatever it is. Now, we haven't touched it yet, but it's certainly an investment that we are seriously looking at because this is absolute cutting-edge technology which we don't believe. The ability to have an engine that never needs downtime, becomes perpetual, is hugely important for global businesses that operate the literally 24/7 clock for their business. we think there is a serious opportunity here. Yeah, I think so. I think I alluded to it earlier, but I described that we believe that we fundamentally changed the economics of setting up a technology exchange. I think it, you know, we often said when Aquis was set up, it probably costs about GBP 1 million to get the exchange up and running, the technology aspect of it. We can now get somebody up and into the cloud in a shorter period for a fraction of that cost. I think that then broadens your horizon of who is able to afford that considerably. I think that's quite a fundamental game changer. I probably should reference that we still see a significant target addressable market just in the financial services space. Whilst we're starting to look at what else is possible now that we've developed this technology, I think the opportunity set just even in the near term is significant. Claire, I see you've asked: What can we expect to see from Aquis for Aquis Stock Exchange growth markets for the rest of 2023? I think the point here is, you know, we all know that market conditions for raising capital at this point is particularly difficult. I'm not overly optimistic that we're going to see dramatic change in that backdrop for 2023. However, that doesn't change the fact that there is capital out there. Yeah. It doesn't change the fact that there are a number, huge number of new economy growth businesses that need scale-up capital. It doesn't change the fact that Aquis is now a real challenger stock exchange. The point that we have connected retail and that we can get more retail directly involved in the IPO process along with the institutions, means that there is an access to capital that I think many of these companies have never thought of using through the public markets. Whilst I don't think the numbers are necessarily going to be enormous for 2023, I do believe we can continue to position ourselves as the home for growth companies, and that is exactly what we want to be. Great. I was at an IPO ceremony for one of the companies who's listed this year, and it was talking to the CEO about why they had chosen Aquis. One of the points really is that they identify with us almost as a kindred spirit. A lot of the companies who are listing with us are disruptors in their own way, and they do see that in us. It's interesting as to why list with Aquis. A lot of the companies are starting to say, "Why would you not list with Aquis?" Which I think it's lovely to hear that expression. I think that's the, Oh, hang on. No. I think that's the final question, actually. I'll hand it back. If there are any more questions, let me know. Otherwise, I think it's a thank you all very, very much indeed. I think Richard and I are both delighted with the results that we've got, and we're certainly, as I think we pointed out during the statements that, you know, we've had a good first quarter, and we're absolutely in line with the market expectations for this year. Thank you all very, very much indeed, and hopefully speak to you all soon. Thank you. Take care, everyone.