Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the LTG 2022 interim results. My name is Claire Coley, and I will be supporting the session today. Before we get started, I'd like to go over a few items so you know how to. The session will be split in two sections. Firstly, our Chief Executive, Jonathan Satchell and CFO, Kath Kearney-Croft will present the half year results. Following this, we will ask the questions. You may send in your questions at any time during the presentation. Type in the name on the right-hand side of your screen. When it comes to you'll be unmuted and invited to ask your question directly. In the event that we have a poor connection or cannot hear you, we will look for your typed question in the control panel on our side. Now I'd like to hand you over to our Chief Executive, Jonathan Satchell. Thank you, Claire, and good morning, everyone. Well, in these trying and intrepid times, I hope that we've at least brought a little light to your day today. It's only a joy to be able to deliver these results this morning. We feel that they represent a really strong set of overall performance from the group and probably a really important affirmation of why we bought GP Strategies and why it's an excellent acquisition for LTG. Indeed, first of all, let's just talk about resilient growth across LTG. Our software and platforms division performed really well. A little softer in our content division, but as you know, this is a more short-term project-based division. It is understandable that we are seeing a little bit of softness and slight stuttering in some of the sales cycles in that business given the macroeconomic backdrop. It still remains very strong, and we're very comfortable with the sales pipeline and the clear book. I think the standout point for me this morning is that the less positive amongst the investment community might have said, "Well, LTG buys things well, pays good prices, always improves the margins, but isn't there growth?" Well, believe me, there's 4.6% organic growth in GP Strategies which I'm very confident will continue throughout the rest of the year. They've also, by the way, more than doubled their margin. At the moment, their run rate margin is substantially ahead of that. GP Strategies ticking the boxes on all fronts. I think our commercial discipline is vaguely becoming fashionable. You know, the fact that we've always cared about profits and cash generation, more to come on cash generation in a moment, and not just focused on growth at any cost may actually be to our favor now. We certainly feel very comfortable with those principles and fundamentals being focused on by the group. Of course, we're not going to pivot to that focus, as many are at the moment. We have absolutely imbued that focus in the organization. It's in the very DNA of LTG and has been for the last nine years. That is why GP has been able to be imbued with the same philosophy so quickly. I take my hat off to all of my GP colleagues, all 4,000 of them, because they have inherited and embraced these commercial principles very swiftly, and that shows too in the numbers. I also appreciate the feedback that we get about the fact that we've done 17 acquisitions over nine years, and we're complicated, and some people don't quite understand is this a basket bag of bits, or is it actually something really meaningful and strategic and has an overall cohesive proposition to take to the market? Well, we do. We designed it that way. We are going to give you a lot more color about that at our Capital Markets Day on the 13th of November. I hope many of you will be able to join us then. I'm going to shoot across these financial highlights very quickly. Kath is going to go into detail for you. It's fair to say, of course, we should recognize and accept the fact that we are benefiting from FX tailwinds. I do want to be very specific with you here. Had we not had any strengthening of the dollar over this year, our business would be on track to deliver, or perhaps more, consensus expectations, both in terms of revenue and EBIT. We are benefiting further from FX tailwinds, and I think why you're seeing quite a substantial upgrade this morning. I don't want you to, in any way, misinterpret this and think that the dollar is helping us justify our results. It isn't. It's It's helping us to achieve more in our results and more than expectation. Kath will go into the organic growth in a bit more detail for you. I think an important highlight to call out is the fact that as expected, almost exactly on the numbers we predicted, 71% of our revenues are derived from software and long-term contracts. That gives you great comfort and visibility, particularly in these inclement times, where we may well find that there is some softening in our customer base in terms of their activity. 70% of our revenue is derived from long-term contracts, so that gives us a lot of comfort. Not often you can say you double your profits year-over-year, and I very much look forward to continuing that message in the second half. Kath will talk more to the whole cash generation situation because it's got detail that's required for you to understand it. I'll make just a small comment so all of you are aware of it, but we have always chosen the natural hedge to borrow in dollars. We have always, you know, normally, in fact all of our large acquisitions have been dollar denomination in terms of purchase price. Of course, when the dollar strengthens, it does mean that we value our dollar loan on the balance sheet in pounds every month. Likewise, the dollars we're shedding, they keep on going up in value when I'm generating, we're generating lots of cash, and it should be coming down. You understand the technical reason for that. Without further ado, let me hand over to Kath to give you the details. We're really pleased with the second result, not only was it beneficial to the strategy, significantly adding platform performance, but also the underlying organic growth of 5.2%. The total revenue is at GBP 241 million to GBP 281 million. A combination of the 5% organic growth with mainly inorganic elements of the Q on acquisition of Switch, Reflektive and CBT. The FX tailwinds, as Kath mentioned, is from the US dollar and a significant contribution to strategy. Adjusted EBIT has grown to GBP 44.1 million, reflecting the revenue drivers discussed on the growth drivers. As expected, a lower Adjusted EBIT margin following the portfolio mix change with the acquisition GP Strategies. I'll cover the rest of the metrics in the following slides. The comparisons on these charts are FY 2020, FY 2021 comparing to H1 2022. If you look at the chart on the left-hand side, this shows the relative value of our transactional and SaaS and long-term contract revenue. As expected on a percentage basis, so a percentage of the business relates to SaaS and long-term contracts, which continues to give us great confidence on the visibility and the security for future revenues. In the middle chart, you can see the significant contribution of GP Strategies for the first half. This is representing 66% of group revenue and content and services of GBP 22.9 million represents 8% of group revenue, with GBP 23.9 million of software and platforms revenue representing 26% of the group revenue. Looking at the right-hand chart. As expected, we continue to be predominantly exposed to the US market. US revenue similar in H1 2022 is similar to FY 2021 on actual basis and remains at 12% of group revenue on a proportional basis, with significant exposure to the rest of the world, giving us the ability to deliver to truly global companies who want global delivery. As we move to look at software and platforms, we saw a step-up in revenue in the first half to GBP 23.9 million. This represents 6.5% organic constant currency revenue growth, with the remaining inorganic elements of Switch and Reflektive and FX tailwind partly offsetting lower performance by PeopleFluent. Excluding a 10% reduction to PeopleFluent, which is a higher churn and customers with less complex needs, organic constant currency growth for the remaining businesses in the segment is 16%. Adjusted EBIT for the first half increased to GBP 18.8 million for similar reasons, and Adjusted Margin declined slightly as operational leverage achieved on faster growing businesses was offset by a reduction in margins for PeopleFluent and incremental central costs from the larger group operating under normal conditions. Moving to look at content and services. Revenue increased to GBP 22.9 million with organic constant currency growth of 1.6%, supported by good performance in Preloaded and Abaci, CBT and Neo at the segment average and lower service revenue from software businesses due to a large implementation project in 2021 not repeated. The segment is firmly underpinned by a strong order book and sales pipeline, but we have seen in some cases customers taking longer to finalize and proceed to the implementation phase, and we expect this to start to improve in H2. Adjusted EBIT increased to GBP 5.9 million, with margins at 25.6%, slightly lower than last year. It was a broadly neutral portfolio mix and incremental costs from the larger group operating under normal conditions. Moving to look at GP Strategies. Revenues for the first half was GBP 184.9 million revenue and GBP 19.4 million Adjusted EBIT, representing a 10.5% margin compared to much lower margin of the prior acquisition. In H1 2022, revenue increased on an organic constant currency like-for-like basis by 4.6%. We're delighted to see the commercial transformation of not-for-profit growth businesses we have completed. We're very pleased with the delivery of the commercial transformation and the increase we're seeing on the margin improvement is as expected. I'd like to confirm that GP is on track to deliver margins of 12% for the full year, with exit margins in the mid-teen range. Moving to look at cash flow. We've updated the way we present cash flow with a move from Adjusted EBIT through Adjusted Operating Cash Flow to free cash flow. The cash conversion calculation has also been updated so that now is based on Adjusted EBIT and includes capital expenditure. Adjusted Operating Profit. Sorry, Adjusted Operating Cash Flow was GBP 8.2 million higher than FY 2021 last year, with the entire Adjusted EBIT partly offset by normal H1 typical working capital investment in GP Strategies. This reflects their normal working capital payment, which mostly reverses in the second half, bringing their full year cash conversion in line with LTG's normal average in the mid-80% range. If we look back at GP 2021, since 2021 and since 2019, excluding results, we also see a large capital investment in H1 resulting from a combination of the higher payable outflow in H1 compared to receivables, which rebalance within the second half to leave a small working capital investment for the year. Cash conversion of 60% reflects its working cash investment. It masked good performance in the rest of the business, circa 98% on a new basis of cash conversion. If we look at that on our calculation basis, that would have been 85%. We do expect to be normally mid-80% range for the full year. Increased net interest and tax payments reflecting the large size of the group, and integration and transaction costs primarily relate to the GP acquisition and earn-out payments related to Switch, CBT, eCreators, Watershed for FY 2021. The proceeds from the net asset sale relates to the disposal of GP's MaJIC investment, which was completed in April, resulting in free cash flow for GBP 8.2 million for the half year. On this slide, the top graph shows the walk from net debt as at the end of 2021 through to net debt as at June 30, 2022. Looking at free cash flow as we've just seen, and then we can see the impact of the FX on cash and debt. As Jonathan mentioned, we are seeing, you know, a fairly significant hit on the net debt through the strength of the US dollar, and we wait and see progressively what will happen with the rest of the year. Needless to say, that we are expecting to continue to deleverage. We finished December 2021 with an 8x leverage. June 30 was 1.5x leverage, and the target is to be south of 1x by the end of the year. You know, that might be adjusted by where the FX goes, but we will continue to deleverage during the year. Perhaps dollar-pound currency might help. If we look at the chart on the bottom left-hand side, we're showing the EPS for H1. This represents a 61% increase of GBP 0.02785 for the half year. The board has declared a GBP 0.045 dividend, a 50% increase on last year. With that, I'd like to hand back to Jonathan to take you through the strategic review. Thank you. First of all, I'd like to just focus in on detail around the GP Strategies' commercial transformation. I'm hoping that this will do quite a few things to give them the comfort and confidence that it's well on its way. Frankly, we're going to continue to see margin improvements because of the seeds we've sown already and our staff have sown. But there won't be a lot more in the sowing. There are some long-term contracts that we can't get out of yet, but that we'll do so next year that will give an additional margin boost. But really, what's done is done. I'm hoping that you'll be able to gain comfort from that. As we see the margin continue to grow for the rest of H2 and into next year, you'll understand that the trajectory is well embedded. A couple of highlights. We have mentioned it before, but you know one of the big aspects that we did was we literally profiled the way we looked at labor allocation for our chargeable work. That resulted in more of our internal labor doing that work and less contractors. That is probably the most profound and swiftest change. Of course, that literally removes costs, therefore improved margins. That's the reason you saw this big step up. Actually, if you look at the monthly results, we had, as you know, a very good end of last year, 9.2% margin, which surprised us. It's higher than expected. If we actually went back a little bit, I think it was 8.5% in the Q3 of this year. We had a number of costs that we incurred willingly and knowingly. The margin in the Q2 of this year has been particularly strong, which just underpins the progress that we're making. We've also seen further margin progress in July, August, September. We're very comfortable with that. Overall, the commercial transformation is very much on track. You'll note here that actually we've given an upgrade to 10%-12%, but we've even been bold enough to say upwards of 12.5% in FY 2022 on that slide. We are still very confident about that further margin improvement during 2022, obviously at a slower pace now. The big part of the job will be done by the end of this year as we exit with a run rate of circa 15%. We're previously guided to expect an exit rate of circa 17% at the end of next year. All of which we're particularly comfortable with. That's the aspect of the margins. I did want to pick up on something I said at the beginning and tap the edge side. I've not known a situation in the past where asking people to focus on something that hasn't been their first priority, hasn't caused a change in behavior, but hasn't caused something else to be diminished. We, of course, said all of the appropriate things about customer service is paramount. Commercial transformation is important, but secondary. Even so, you worry about what you do to the business in these situations. I call out two things for you. Our second largest client has given us the most positive customer service feedback that GP has ever received for its work with them, and they've been with them for about seven years in the last six months. Congratulations to the team achieving that. That 4% or 4.6% organic growth is a great affirmation of what the GP team and others around them are achieving. And I feel very comfortable that we have acquired a high-quality growing business that had some commercial differences of the way they approach things. We have eradicated those. We've imbued them with the LTG philosophy, and this business is now on a very different track and will continue to be. I'm not gonna go through too much detail around what the group now has to offer, because I will merely be taking away from the capital markets day in three weeks' time. Today, period. Today. I do think it's useful if you just look across these three columns and simply comprehend the magnitude of the capabilities that we now have. This is a very wide array with not a lot of gaps, some gaps of course, but not many. We really are genuinely able to get alongside our customers, very large global organizations with many challenges about the way that they hire, retain, develop people. Get alongside them at the point they are in their journey with the technology that they have at the time. Assess that with them, give them a candid interpretation of what's going on and where their weaknesses are and what they can actually derive benefit from, where they can get more from what they've got. Mainly say, "How much would you like of us to do that for you? We can provide you with a full range of services where you usually outsource responsibility to us, or we can fit in like a, you know, the appropriate piece of the jigsaw puzzle to work alongside your team and now build into what we're doing." It really is an astonishing array of capability. Technology is nothing without interpretation, consulting and the ability to make it work properly by knitting it together appropriately with content and other types of interaction. That's the way you develop people. This is a multifaceted, complex journey to maintain and develop talent, and we have a range of service and capabilities that really do achieve that. That's why the concentric nature of the intersection of these circles is a true area where transformation magic happens. We will give you a lot more detail focused on what customer journeys and problems are really like in three weeks' time. If I move on to just quickly, we are delighted that a new analyst has started to recognize the power of the combination of LTG and GP. As you know, Fosway, we've shown you many times up in the top right-hand corner on the right-hand grid. But NelsonHall have also recognized the power of that combination. It's not just us talking about it. You know, we are a comprehensive capability being recognized in the industry. Quickly go to the fact that GP provides all of these different capabilities, but it is a full-service global business, and that's what it's done to transform LTG. We have locked into that capability and provided the benefits that we can provide, and we are seeing a lot more work going on between our teams and our staff. We will announce where we're going to go to market, the brands we're going to go under, how we're organizing ourselves for check into a much more streamlined, straightforward approach to the market. That again, will come in three weeks' time. I talked about some of these before, but I just wanted to give you a sense of the fact that cross-selling is already happening. I've said many times you can't keep good salespeople away from doing business. I'm delighted that they've been so innovative and impactful. We've mentioned many times a major professional association in the U.S. and the financial services industry that uses literally about five of our products combined together, and then is actually having that implemented now by GP Strategies team. We also are working with one of the biggest insurance providers, MetLife, where we're working with their internal audit team to provide much more engaging blended learning solutions with some gamification inside them, and that's been very well received. Finally, an Asian-based bank which is in that challenge of delivering learning to many different regions where cultures and learning styles are genuinely different. You could not do this just with one single approach. The combination of having GP alongside us with boots on the ground in the right places is a powerful one. I want to talk to you about how we're integrating products. People have asked a number of times around, "Well, you've built many different software businesses." Yes, you're right, we have, intentionally. It takes time to decide how we want to bring those together. Indeed, in some cases, while we're bringing them together, we also want them to have a direct go-to-market solution on their own. Bridge is the tip of our spear in terms of our product. You'll recall we acquired this in the early part of last year. It's a very modern technology stack. It's not what I would describe as a mature software company at all. It had a lot of private equity money invested into it in terms of developing the technology, and we are genuinely benefiting from that. We continue to invest heavily in the idea of that product to take it forward, but we're also benefiting from the fact that within our stable we have a talent marketplace. Our vision for talent mobility with skills ontology, matching recommendations, these are really important aspects of the way people learn and develop themselves these days. We, of course, support Reflektive, which is a highly capable and very elegant form of assessment system and was a standalone product that is now being integrated into Bridge to enhance those capabilities, and it will effectively remove some existing lesser common technologies, and they are being replaced by Reflektive, which will be fully integrated. We're also bringing our long-standing mobile device authoring tool has already been integrated, and indeed within what we've just called our Instilled video platform, that advanced video capability is already there. That's a particular benefit because we were paying quite a lot of external costs for Bridge's preexisting video capabilities that are now being removed. This is a platform that is moving at quite a pace in terms of the products being enhanced, and we think that we're going to see the significant benefits of that in due course. We have made it very clear that, while we paused for M&A while we concentrated, and focused on the GP transformation, we're now very much back in a situation where we have the bandwidth and ability to look at M&A opportunities. We've been actively pursuing a pipeline since the spring. Software and product companies continue to be the greater focus. We think that's where our emphasis should lie. I would be delighted to be bringing you internal announcement of more medium-sized deals over the coming months, and year or so. We are not at the moment contemplating a large acquisition, but will do so in due course, when we think the time is right. Obviously there are a number of factors that you can imagine what they are, that will dictate when we think the time is right to do that. I think there will be many opportunities, and we're already beginning to see them, that will emerge in our market over the next 12-18 months. We're also, unusually for us because we've never needed to before, we did acquire, you know, GP Strategies with a slightly unusually shaped group that I commend the executive team. They'd done an awful lot of what I would call cleanup activity, cleaning up disposals of non-core assets prior to our acquisition. We were fortunate in that. But there are one or two that are left. There's an engineering business, an apprenticeship business that are left that are non-core. We are right in the middle of looking at practical plans as to how we will exit those in due course. Then finally I'm excited, I say not that I'm not already or nearly. I'm excited to be announcing a new target. We were existing without a strategic growth target at the moment. We will be sharing that with you in due time. That reflects, I hope, the sense of comfort and ambition that we've conveyed to you this morning. That is. That leaves me just to provide you with a summary of where I think we're at. I would call out the organic growth that continued in GP Strategies as one of the highlights, and the continued resilience and strength in the rest of the group. We are absolutely confident about the remainder of this year. Naturally, we will be cautious about our expectations for next year. I think there are many unknowns in the macro backdrop. At the moment we are not seeing anything in our business that gives us cause to believe that those macro issues will have significant negative effect on us. We are reassured by our 70% plus our long-term contracted SaaS contracts. I really am not being nonchalant, but when I say to you that GP's transformation is well embedded and on the way, I do mean it. We plan to have a few more months in the road in getting to the next stages, where if you pardon the pun, we're obviously going to be moving to more marginal gains that take a bit more concentration to achieve. I'm absolutely confident both with the packages and the way they start to embrace it, and also with our ability to ease out, that we will achieve them. As Kath Kearney-Croft mentioned, I'm very excited that we'll be able to. I'm excited by our go-to-market strategy for what we're achieving in the market. That's our primary purpose of course, and I'm also excited to share it with you at the capital markets day in more detail, because I think it will really help you cementing your minds why we've done what we've done in the acquisition trail we've been on, and what we're trying to achieve and why it's relevant. I assure you, we're going to be on a very customer problem challenge-focused journey on that capital markets day, not a financial presentation. In terms of outlook, I do want to just reaffirm the fact that without the FX benefit, our company, your company would have been very well and would be in line or better than analyst consensus. We do have a substantial FX benefit and that is why you've seen the upgrade this morning. Net debt we've spoken to, you understand the dynamics there. Yeah, we're back on the road again. Expect the group to not just grow organically, but expect it to grow inorganically over the coming months. Thank you very much. I'll listen to questions. Thank you very much, Jonathan. We're shortly going to be opening up the lines to questions. Just as a reminder, if you'd like to ask anything, the questions pane is still open for you to type your questions in. The first question today we have got Ben [uncertain], who I'm just going to unmute now. There we go. Ben, if you'd like to ask your questions to Jonathan Satchell. Morning, Ben. You might be muted on your side, Ben. I think you're okay on our side. If not, I'll be able to read your questions out. No? Okay. Well, we'll move to the questions email. Ben had three questions. The first question was: Within the software and platforms division, there were some big license renewals that helped these figures' organic growth. Was there anything in GP Strategies that bolstered its organic growth in the first half? Actually really interesting. Nothing of outsized noteworthy, no. A number of new contract wins. We had a number of new customers, notably a very large telco in Latin America. I think we won it right at the end of last year. It started generating revenue earlier this year. We also saw some big expansions with some clients, basically Microsoft going some government work, and maintained steady track with our other clients. We didn't have that sort of. We weren't replacing losses, as it were. It was just a very sort of steady, strong progress that was nicely diversified across a number of clients and both expansions with existing clients and some new wins. Thank you, Jonathan. The second question that Ben has was GP Strategies has delivered 4.6% organic growth. How much is price versus volume, and what are you banking into GP top line guidance in upcoming years? Gosh, that's an unpack that question. My temptation is to say not a lot in price. It is fair to say that we have looked at some of the pricing. There were some underpriced contracts. As one or two of those have come up for renewal during our period of ownership, we have focused on trying to adjust the commercial dynamics of those contracts, sometimes more successfully than others. We've had some resistance to that. Because our general margin direction of travel is upwards, we can accommodate some lower margin work where appropriate. I think it's less about pricing, it's more about genuine growth of the amount of work we're doing. Can I just remind me, the second part of the question is, how will that affect guidance for coming years, right? Yeah. I can just repeat that second part. How much is price versus volume, and what are you baking into GP top line guidance in coming years? No growth. Yeah. I mean, we're not moving away from our margin guidance for new range, which would be circa 4% for content and services, which includes GP. I think as we move into you know, closer to the end of the year, looking forward in more detail to next year, we'll be able to give some more color on that. Okay. Thank you. The third of Ben's questions was around FX. If the dollar strength does level off, albeit that looks unlikely in the near term, that is going to be a big headwind for P&L next year. Are there any plans for hedging more actively for this? Well, when we look at our FX, you know, the benefit is really coming from translation effects, because when we look at it from a transactional perspective, we are, you know, mostly naturally hedged given the nature of our business in terms of aligning the content delivery and software business is mostly US dollars, so the costs are linked to the revenue. You know, it is something that we will re-look at as we're going into next year in terms of whether there are any mismatch from a transaction perspective, but most of the benefit is coming through from translation perspective, and unfortunately, that is what it is. I'm not aware of any companies that hedge those translation effects. Okay. Thank you. That is the end of Ben's questions. I'm sure if he's got follow-ups, he will reach out. We now have a further question. We've got questions from Gareth Davies. I'm just going to unmute Gareth. Gareth, you're live. Gareth, can you hear us? Yeah. Hi. Can you hear me? We can hear you. Good morning Gareth. Morning, both. Just the first one sort of goes back to the initial part of Ben's question around the mid-single digit growth in software and services. Can you just talk about sort of confidence there in H2 in 2023, and the moving parts. I think in the statement you allude to picking up some business for Effective People through a client and expanding a contract there. Maybe if you could touch on that and sort of how you see that organic evolving over the next 12-13 months. And then secondly, on the margin in the software business, just again, what the moving parts are there as we move through H2. Is this seasonality that would help us into H2, and how we think about that next year. The third one, just you alluded to those couple of UK disposals. Can you give any feel for scale? I'm sorry if I missed that. Sure. Yeah. Well, I'll take the margin growth, the margin one in H2. You know, we do sometimes get some leverage in margin coming into H2. We, you know, assuming that history repeats itself, you know, might see a little bit of that coming through. We would expect, you know, a little tick up in margins, but I wouldn't be anticipating anything, you know, excessive in there. On the disposals point, they are. The two disposals are circa GBP 25 million revenue in total, and about GBP 5 million in profits in total. As and when we move into firm terms on that, we will update and move those businesses into asset held for sale. Sorry, that's not much difference now, but GBP 25 million [and earning more dollars?] [Sterling]. Yes. Yeah. They are U.K businesses, yeah. Yeah. Okay. I think you're talking about the mid-single digit growth. You said software and services, but did you mean software and platforms or content and services? Sorry, I meant the software business. Yeah, sure. No problem. I see no reason why that's not going to continue to grow at 6%-7%. Obviously, as we see the divergence between PeopleFluent, sadly, but realistically continuing to decline at circa 10-ish%, and maybe we'll abate that rate, but at circa 10%, which is of course coming down to become a smaller proportion of the overall software and platforms total revenue. We've still got gangbusters growth in Breezy and Instilled astonishing us every year. You know, it continues to just grow really, really well. We are, you know, really comfortable with the sort of solid growth that we're seeing out of Bridge and Open LMS and others. You know, that cabal of businesses will continue to grow. I think it will not be as there won't be quite so much of a proportionate drag from PeopleFluent. I think the sort of six to seven percent organic growth rate that we have achieved this time and described in our medium-term guidance feels comfortable to me, notwithstanding some very unexpected slowdown in customer activity caused by other factors. Fantastic. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Next question is coming in from Yemi, from Goldman. Let me just unmute you now, Yemi. Morning, Yemi. I don't think Yemi is connected to audio, so I may need to read out the question. Great. The question, first question is, as you mentioned, organic growth has been very resilient. I thought it was interesting that PeopleFluent Trends and Food could not comment on how quickly you expect that business to stabilize from here. That's a [toughie]. My sort of quick version of the analysis is that PeopleFluent is a very comprehensive piece of software. It does a really good job. It isn't very elegant because it's so complex, so it's very configurable. And therefore it's a bit of an administration nightmare. If you have complex requirements, you love it because you can change lots of different things and make it do exactly what you want to do in the way you want to do it. If you don't, and you're skirting along the top and you want something that's beautifully elegant, you find it hard work. The hard work clients are the ones that are churning. There was a real sort of sales thrust in the early 2010s through to sort of 2016, 2017, whereby a lot of those clients were acquired, and they did a good job of that. Some of those now are saying, "Enough's enough. We want something more modern and simpler to work with." There are still at least GBP 20 million worth of the circa GBP 60 million of PeopleFluent subscriptions that are those category of clients. Not all of them are going to go, of course, but we will see continued churn in that regard. Eventually we'll get to a point whereby we don't have anything like the proportion of those lesser low functionality, low use of functionality clients compared to intense functionality usage. We would expect the decline and the churn rate to abate. How long that takes, I don't know. Do I expect another couple of years? Thank you. We've got two more questions after Yemi. The second being, could you please provide some color on the scale of the non-core assets you are seeking to dispose of from GP Strategies? I think in fairness Yemi might have asked that question earlier and I think we've answered that. Just to reiterate combined the two of my UK assets their revenue is circa GBP 35 million on a combined basis and they're circa 20% margin so they're circa GBP 5 million of EBITDA. That's the scale. In the whole context of the group they're relatively small. Thank you. The third question is on pricing. Outside of GP, where it seems growth is more volume focused, could you please speak about how pricing dynamics are evolving in software and the remainder of content and services? Yes. They evolve very quickly in our project-based work because the sales cycle is very short, delivery cycle is relatively short, 6-9 months. We're not in any long-term contracts there. The one benefit is we can price accordingly, and customers seem to be accepting the higher pricing that we're charging. We are fortunate in that we're jolly efficient in the way we do things, that's reflected in the margins. We're not under any great pressure to start ramping up our prices by 10% or anything. We have the ability, we have the timing ability to be able to price our quotations as we like it, so new proposals, new prices. That's in the content project business. In the software business, we have very few contracts that allow mid-term pricing changes. It's not been a commonplace thing at all. If we take on a three-year SaaS contract, we're in that price for three years. We're comfortable with that. We like the long-term beneficial nature of it. But we are able to renegotiate prices at contract renewal on all our contracts, of course. We're finding that we're having the understanding conversations with customers where we're able to roll pricing increases through at that time. The time of the year is the time that we're able to deliver this. Thank you. Okay, we're gonna go on to Thomas Singlehurst from Citi. I'm just going to unmute you now. Tom, hopefully. There we are. Morning. Can you hear me? Yes, we can now. Perfect. It's working well. I'm enjoying the webinar. One of the—I think Kath mentioned the some delays in sort of individual sort of sales sort of cycles for some contracts. I'm just interested in whether you think that's sort of a broader phenomenon across the business, whether it's you know it's focused on any one particular geography and just more broadly, how we should think about sort of contagion from a slowing macro environment and cyclicality more broadly. Try to get that then. We're only seeing it in one place, Tom, and that is in what I would call the more discretionary learning topics. In our LEO business in particular. Interestingly, it's not happening at GP. GP GP have a much larger contract business than we do. We're happy with GP. Sorry, you've gone mute. We're not seeing it in GP, which is curious, but we have seen it in LEO. Now, LEO is more U.K. focused, so that may well be a reason, although we have quite a U.S. aspect to the LEO business as well. We're only seeing it where I would generally call the sort of topic or the learning program to be not compulsory. I know that it's not regulatory related, it's not perhaps a product launch related. It's not something whereby there is necessarily a compelling timescale. It's only in a relatively small number of situations. I'm actually not seeing. We're still seeing customers come out to tender for these things. We're bidding appropriately, but then it's getting a bit stuttery and, you know, they're not making a decision. A couple of organizations have said, "Look, we're really interested in your proposal, but we're gonna shelve this until next year," that sort of thing. It's relatively minor at the moment. Do I think that's going to become more contagious? I think, look, if things get really tough out there, then that type of discretionary spend is bound to be vulnerable. We're talking about relatively small amounts of our overall revenue. You know, at the moment, I'm talking about a sort of GBP 30-ish million division in our LTG business, which is, you know, seeing a small bit of softness in the very single millions of sales that we would have expected to get that we've not got yet. It's at the moment, it's very minor for us. We won't give up without the full color and picture. In our software business, we're just not seeing it. We're not seeing it slowing down. Maybe we'll see a pipeline diminish over time, but we're not seeing it yet. Perversely, our GP Strategies pipeline is the strongest it's ever been. There is an aspect there. I think, again, I'll cover this more in the capital market, so I don't really want to present that. There is one aspect that is where GP provides managed services solutions for large global customers. The history of this is it's seen very much a four or five-decade-old organization. In prior recessions, we've seen a trend towards more organizations using their services, particularly in managed services, because they're very fixed price contracts, and it has less variability to it, and they choose to downsize their staffing. Who knows? We'll wait and see what happens there. We are very active with a very strong sales pipeline in GP. That's very clear. The second question was, I suppose maybe more helpfully, you know, broader sort of macro concerns might be putting downward pressure on sort of expectations of valuations for companies looking to sell themselves. Is that something you're seeing? Is there anything you'd call out in terms of sort of private valuations of interesting companies in the pipeline? Thomas, valuations depressed out there at the moment. I I hadn't noticed. Mm-hmm. Um- Well, yeah, they're a bit more challenged in public markets maybe than private. Concern. The irony is that there is still some interesting shooting ambition out there. We were hoping that the contagion from the public markets situation might well have got right the way through to private companies now. Hence, well, some of them still think they're worth 5x revenue when they're losing 30% for a year. It's, you know, all the public growth, you know, all the forces blah blah blah. I mean, it just, there's quite a bit of, I think, quite a bit of realism that still needs to arrive in those markets. Frankly, from my perspective, I'm not disappointed by the pace of change to valuation expectations in the private market because we're not yet in a position where I think we've got our firepower sort of reignited, so that we can go for the bigger acquisitions anyway. Certainly, we weren't prepared to from a sort of a structural standpoint with us focusing on GP. What I hope is that we'll see a convergence next year of our ability to finance a large transaction and a realistic valuation expectation, particularly in software companies that have. That's still suffering from a bit of cash burn and growth has become more muted. There are some examples of those. I think we might well be able to say when those come out. We're seeing some direction of travel of valuation reductions, but still some unrealistic valuations. We're having quite a few conversations where we just say, "Sorry, to the broker. We are respectfully there for this sort of valuation range. We appreciate you think that we're worth something much better. We wish you well with your process. If you don't achieve it, we are there for you. You know, we're a real buyer at the right valuation." It's worked for us many times. I won't quote the deals we've done on that basis. I think it would be inappropriate. Believe me, two or three deals of the not so recent nature, you know, in recent times, have been done on that basis, and we work very well indeed. That's very clear. Thank you. Lovely. Okay, let's go on to the next question. We have got Jai Mistry. We'll just get him to unmute. There we go. You should be live. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. I appreciate when you presented, you said it's not imminent, but I'm just curious with regards to the comment you made about a more substantial acquisition, which will require an equity raise in due course. I'm just wondering, is there a specific target in mind there or a specific gap in the portfolio that you're looking to address? Thanks. Thank you, Jai. Good morning. Yes. Look, specifically, I don't want the specific words to be interpreted wrongly, because I would say if I say it's specific, I've done plenty of work. I'm perhaps talking to management, and there's an initial sort of warming up conversation and so on and so forth. I'm not doing that. Okay? What I would say to you is I have some very specific named targets on a list. You know, we know our gaps, we know our white space, we know where we want to take the comprehensive range of our offering. I know what we want. I think some of those will be actionable, over time, and a number of things need to converge to make that possible, including, of course, if we are to consider using equity, we would need to be very mindful of when it would be appropriate to do that. Okay. That's great. Thanks. Hopefully I'll manage to attend your capital markets day, and I'll maybe follow up with you around that. Thanks very much. Great. Thank you. Brilliant. The next question is from Kai Korschelt. Morning, Kai. Kai, one moment. There we go. Kai, we should be able to hear you. Thank you. Yeah. Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Morning. Morning, Kai. Good morning, Jonathan and Kath. I had a couple, the first one was around the interest costs and I think obviously, all of that, and I believe also there's a sort of fixed amortization schedule. I'm just wondering, sorry, that is a closing rate. My question is quite simple really. We were sort of assuming current interest rates stay where they are, and the current amortization schedule roughly, what would the interest costs be this year and next year, just to help us for our model? That was the first question. The second was, it might be a bit sort of premature, given it's Capital Markets Day, but if you look at the GP Strategies portfolio, you know, that highlighted the potential disposals. I think they have some businesses in there, where they do things like sort of marketing and fascination materials for some of the automotive OEMs or, you know, a consulting business integrates SAP SuccessFactors, which is a competitive software solution to some of yours. I'm just wondering, do you think the strategic review, if we can call it that, of kind of the GP assets is done and you're very happy with the portfolio or is there potentially more over time that you might think, you know, may not fit strategically or yeah, I'm just wondering how you feel about that. Thank you. That one, maybe. Yes, we have done a very thorough review of the entire GP [eStatement]. There's a tiny engineering business in California which takes prototype parts for prototype aircraft, which is non-core, which we will dispose of. Then there's an apprenticeship business in the U.K. which is focused on nursery and care home, adult care home workers. Again, what you might call adult learning. It's non-core. We will be disposing of that business or getting rid of that business. Also there's an engineering business in the U.K. that has expertise in creating food manufacturing plants. Again, non-core. Those are going. The other business you allude to, absolutely not. You know, as you look at the broadening of our proposition, the first thing is we are really excited about customer education. That whole extended enterprise is a great opportunity. The budgets are normally quite large because it has to look great if it's coming from the marketing department rather than the training department. There's so much more across. I mean, our role in the automotive industry is the quality materials that we need to create when we're training dealer sales staff or to brief frontline staff about a new product. You know, let's face it, there are new products flowing into these dealers every single month with electric vehicles and so on. They're complicated, and they're new, and they're complex. We're creating some very extensive learning around that. That translates without an enormous amount of work into the sort of customer-facing education that we want to do, because customers are similarly interested in learning lots about the new vehicles and what they're capable of. Alongside all of that, we're very comfortable that that falls within the overall sort of mission parameters of our corporate learning goals and vision and mission. That one very much to say, if not, I'd like to be an expansion of that. Predominantly, we're not becoming a marketing agency just because this is, you know, alongside learning that we're doing within the business. If we're doing stuff for SaaS and it can be translated to stuff for customers, bring it on. In terms of the technical implementation business, SAP SuccessFactors, you're quite right. It's a highly respected HCM piece of software in our space. We're the competitor. It's, it has moderate crossover with PeopleSoft, but actually only place where I'd say it could really directly compete. Bridge would not be considered a direct competitor at all. They address different market needs. Our business, which we now have renamed Effective People, by the way, has a long-standing relationship with them, and is an exceptional partner, and it continues to grow very well. What we're also going to do is we're going to use that foundation of that business, respecting the exclusive and relationship of the SAP SuccessFactors relationship, but also adopting those practices and expanding the capabilities so that we can provide further solutions across the LTG portfolio. You know, effectively, we've got the capability baked in in terms of those tech implementation skills and processes. Then that's very much a core asset as well. It was renewed. I think I got a lot of questions about that this time last year, whether we would be disposing it, and we were clear about it at the time that we wouldn't be. I would affirm even more so, and you'll see as we make some progress with that business going forward, that it's very much seen as a core asset. So no, in answer to give you a detail on those, but in answer to the overall question, we've reviewed GP. There are two UK assets that are very minor, American engineering businesses, tiny by the way, that are identified as non-core. Everything else has assessed as being very relevant to what we're trying to do. Brilliant. Thank you, Jonathan. That's it for the Sorry, Claire. I think I answer the third question on interest and costs and the debt. All of our debt is in dollars. We have a GBP 265 million-dollar loan on an amortizing basis. The amortizing basis is we start paying in December about GBP 9.5 million. Every quarter thereafter through 2023 we will be paying that off with the full amount in 2025. Interest rates this year. We had guided originally about 3%. We're expecting now that will be more in 4% range. We rolled our loan for 6 months in July, and so in July we locked the rate for the rest of the year, which allowed us to take advantage of no future increases. Things have seemed to bed in more aggressively than had been anticipated. If we look into next year, obviously that loan will come off. At the moment, I think we'll be looking in the 5%-6% range. We have been looking at about whether we should put some swaps in place. The challenge is that the swaps are expensive and the pricing is basically baked in. And also the expectation to kind of keep moving. We are looking at what we can do in the space to mitigate interest rates as much as possible. On the offset is if you assume that interest rates are high because the dollar is strong, then we will get the benefit on the debt facility that lies partially to offset any increase in interest rates. It is an area that we continue to look at. Presumably, as we continue to generate that cash, we could choose to. We could choose to pay down loans. Yeah. We even talked about something with the RC activity possibly. We did. Yeah. Part of our discussion, I thought very fit the point in this case. Yeah. Very helpful. Thank you very much. Thank you. Brilliant. That is the end of the session today. With that, it's coming up to 10:00 A.M., so we will end the session there. I hope everybody has a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you.