Beeks Financial Cloud Group (LSE:BKS) — Final Results for the year ended 30 June 2021

0:02 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the BEEKS FINANCIAL CLOUD GROUP PLC investor presentation for the financial results for the year ended 06/30/2021. Throughout this presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted anytime via the Q and A tab situated in the right hand corner of the screen. To click Q and A, scroll to the bottom, type your question and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. Have the company review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. These will be available via your investor me company dashboard, and you'll be notified

0:32 once they're ready for your review. I'd also like to remind you this presentation is being recorded. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll. Excuse me. I'd now like to hand you over to Gordon MacArthur, CEO and Fraser MacDonald, CFO of BEEKS FINANCIAL CLOUD GROUP PLC. Good afternoon.

0:48 Thanks, Paul. Good afternoon, folks. Gordon MacArthur here. Good afternoon. Fraser McDonald, CFO also in attendance. Okay, folks. So I'm gonna go through the first few slides, and then we'll hand over to Fraser to go through some of the financials. So

1:08 first slide is just really positioning side. So slide. So, you know, business is now ten years old, been a PLC for four years now. We we believe we're the largest pure play cloud provider in capital market space with the growth over the last few years. We're getting towards including some kind of contracts resource. We are just over a 100 people globally now around the world. ICE was certified as of two years ago. So if we slip to slide three. So I I'm I'm kinda gonna not spend a huge amount of time on, you know, positioning the business and and get more into the the results because I'm I'm assuming that a lot of the people on the call have have known us for some while. So so BEEKS is a clean computing company that specializes in capital markets or financial markets.

2:03 We provide compute, connectivity, and analytics solely to financial services clients. We as I said before, we're we're now ten, eleven years old. We have historically always been a 95 plus recurring revenue model business. We'll change a little bit going forward with the the advent of Proximity Cloud, which we'll talk about later. And we also have a a software only analytics offering, which is not recurring in its nature because it's software, but we'll cover that. Faiza will cover that a little bit. I think anyone that that's that's listened to any of our calls or or looked through any of our information over the last few years will will understand that, you know, the majority of our business is institutional clients.

2:51 We do have a small retail division that was really legacy. The start of the business back ten years ago with the VPS side of the business, and then we acquired a couple of smaller competitors. That retail business accounts for 11%, not not particularly important to us. It's it's just the legacy business. And and the the focus of the business has been for many years now the institutional segment.

3:18 Revenue is is kinda widely displayed around the world. UK is actually the the biggest portion followed by The US, Mainland Europe, and then the rest of the world. So let's go to slide four. So, again, this is kinda anyone who's followed us for a while understands this is a kinda well worn map for us. We've we've had it in all of our slides for the last few years. So I think at latest count, we're around 21 data centers around the world. We over the period, we've opened up and expanded in Australia. We we made an announcement with ASX about five or six weeks ago, I think, about putting our cloud into the Australian Stock Exchange data center in Sydney.

4:03 And we also have expanded in the year into Toronto with one particularly large client who has taken we took two data centers lives in Toronto through over the last few months. So '21, London is by far and away the biggest physical deployment for us. We've got four or five sites in London, some of the largest environments followed by New York and and then Chicago. So and then, you know, the the the dotted lines between the the data center location shows the BKS backbone. So we have an you know, historically, we've always connected up our data centers with low latency connectivity so that clients can send market data or trade information between their sites, on our cloud pops around the world.

4:57 So slide five. Again, you know, we we we have talked for the past twelve months about, you know, the the the the period being the year of product, and and we're pleased with the progress made there. So two major products released, BEEKS analytics, a SaaS platform, so it's available in New York, London, which was us taking the VelociMetric VelociMetric software product that we acquired about eighteen months ago, making some investments in it, changes to the underlying technology, and making it available via the via the BEEKS platform for clients to consume on a month to month as a service. That was available for from around January, February last year. We have a number of clients on the platform, and we will continue to grow that product offering out.

5:51 So, you know, in terms of touching the numbers, and I'm gonna spend a bit more time on proximity cloud as cloud as we go through because that's our kinda landmark product, really the future of the business. So I'll I'll spend some some time on the on the slides dedicated to that. But the numbers, so we had a 24% growth in the revenue in the period. So I think, historically, you know, since we've come to market, we have been fairly consistent between 20 to 30% revenue growth each year, and we we managed to hit that figure again. Law of averages, as the numbers become bigger, then that becomes more challenging. But, you know, as I say, we've historically always hit that figure. The committed monthly revenue, which is our key metric that we've always measured in the board level, was at 13.8 at the end of the the period.

6:42 I think if you've seen the trading update from yesterday, you've seen that that has gone up to 50,000,000 in September. So we've, you know, we've continued for the really good first quarter. Again, we'll spend a bit more time on that. So, you know, we we continue to land and expand in our tier one clients, and tier one bigger institutions has been the focus of the business since IPO. We have been successful. We have won a number. We've we're in discussions with many more. And and almost every tier one client that we have, you know, successfully won, we have we have grown after the initial deployment. So we you know, that's a core part of our strategy. It's not just to keep continue to win new logo accounts, but to take more market share as we as we enrich the product offering.

7:37 So Proximity Cloud, we launched about six weeks ago as an available product. It's really, you know, eighteen months of of hard work and really the the future of the business. But as I said, I'm gonna spend a bit of time on that further in the deck. So, you know, again, I I I would hope that most people seen our trading update yesterday. Record quarter for us. And and most pleasingly is a few things. You know? Summer is usually our quietest period of the year. We we kinda usually write off as a bit of a nothing period. There's a bit of a, you know, strategy, tidy up, you know, various bits and pieces within the business, but it's been our biggest period of signings ever with around 5,000,000 of TCV. And and equally pleasing was it was across a range of services.

8:32 So our biggest kind of contract by a partner for a a large European bank for large private cloud rollout within the European region that will expand to the rest of the world next year in the world as we successfully roll out the European part. We secured a large ish analytics deal with a tier one bank for a deployment in the middle sorry, in Asia Pac. And most pleasingly, I think we secured the first contract on Proximity Cloud. So as we've been building out the products, we've had, you know, a couple of beta partners working in that final stage of deployment and testing feedback, and one of them has committed to a million dollar contract. And the first proximity cloud has been delivered to them in a London data center. So, you know, again, kinda pleasing for the strategy in that,

9:32 you know, it's covered three different areas of the business that we have built in product. We've acquired product and, you know, our core private cloud offering, which we'll continue to focus on going. EBITDA has has creeped up and and ACMMR likewise. Let me move on to next slide, number six. So the business has evolved, and and, you know, I I think it's worth spending some time here. So, you know, day one or, you know, the early years, BEEKS was, you know, a VPS provider before it was called cloud computing. Right? We we provide we we specialized in providing retail cloud instances, if you like, to retail brokers who widely own our platform. We still do it, as I said.

10:22 And that's still the domain of individual traders looking for small amounts of resources and strategically important data centers. So we call that a kind of public cloud environment. You know, over the last four or five years, we've been doing much more private cloud. So private cloud is still hosted by us and our spaces around the world with a variety of dedicated infrastructure depending on client requirement. Could go from this dedicated compute resource up to a fully dedicated environment that is only accessible and used by a particular client. And then proximity clouds and and that sorry. Private cloud is the domain of mid market and, you know, kinda some tier two organizations, maybe, you know, some larger clients would would go down that route, and proximity cloud is is is certainly a tier one play, which matches into your strategy.

11:23 So we're calling it the three p's, private, public, and proximity. So Proximity Cloud, when when explaining it, it sounds like it's not that different from what we've done before, but, you know, we have tweaked the way that we're delivering a service to a client. So for the last few years, we've had lots of conversations with lots of big organizations, and you tend to have these line of business conversations, and they love the speed. They love the agility that we can give them with, you know, you know, real capital markets cloud infrastructure in a in a private environment in our spaces. And then you get to the security team, as you get to the compliance teams, and because it's under our security model, because it's our engineers that are accessing the systems physically and and logically, it's still a big problem for the largest entities out there.

12:20 And for the last few years, we've been trying to come up with a way of getting around that and and putting putting the control into the the hand of the the institution. So Proximity Cloud does that. So Proximity Cloud is is a pre racked, preinstalled, preconfigured environment that gives you a full BEEKS private cloud with all of the IP that we built up over the last ten years, low latency network, low latency bare metal servers, you know, the operating system is all stripped back and, you know, optimized for trading infrastructures, virtual machine pool for, you know, day of UAT testing, storing market data, analytics within that rack, giving you, you know, full latency monitoring and market data sorry, trade life cycle analytics.

13:20 In Iraq, preconfigured, prebuilt, delivered to a client site. So this is the this is the change. We do not host we can host these environments, but we don't expect to host that many of them. You know, if you look at the biggest banks in the world, they have their own kgs and spaces in all of these financial data centers. We are Proximity Cloud allows a bank, an investment manager, whoever it is, to consume our services on a month to month OpEx with real time orchestration spinning up and managing the resources to meet, you know, demand of the business, whatever it may be, month to month basis in their space under their own security model, managed by their own security processes and accessed by their engineers.

14:13 So a lot of the security questions and security issues that banks,

14:20 you know, have it you know, very prevalent in the mind is taking out the equation. So, again, it sounds not that big a change, but, you know, we are the only people that will give you our capital markets optimized private cloud engineered environment that you control and manage yourself. So they get a a BKS portal. They can deploy infrastructure. They can see full visibility of the stack, and they pay a month to month cost for the compute that they order that can scale up and scale down depending on on the on the contract. Has a slight impact on our commercials. They're all long term deals, and Fraser went through that as he's talking about the the the kinda the number side of the business.

15:09 So we've we've spent a lot of money on on building this and changing our platform, changing our systems to, like, this this version one of the product. We're already learning on version two and three. Believe it ahead of the game, having lots and lots of conversations, inbound inquiries, you know, a lot of sales activity, a lot of proof of concepts, and we believe this is the future of the business. This this is what we think will take us beyond, you know, the current forecast to, we hope, multiple times the size of the current organization over the next few years, and we will continue to invest in it quite heavily. So the next slide just sorry. Slide eight. Sorry. I've talked through slide seven if I can order it.

15:58 So slide eight kinda just positions us. You know, there are other the hyperscalers have got on premise cloud offerings, but, technically, they don't work for capital markets. They don't support the data types that's needed. There there is no lay low latency versions of them. You know, these the the big hyperscalers are trying to sell to every industry in the world. We are not. We have fully optimized the entire stack for capital markets and trading environments. So we're out there on our own. You know, even the competitors in our in our space, you know, we believe we're really the only cloud provider in the space. There's many service providers out there that that leads back cloud against our name, but there's no one anywhere near our capability.

16:48 So it's a bit of a unique offering. And, you we're proud of of the the product we built. Done a lot of demos over the last six weeks and a lot of positive feedback from our customers. So I'm very happy with the team and and how they've delivered it to market. It's now down to sales execution. Just the last one on on before I hand over to Fraser to talk through the numbers. So this is a kinda example of of we've always talked about winning big accounts because the ticket sizes are, you know, just night and day bigger than than we are used to. And, again, I always caution investors and then people that that that think these walk into these accounts, and they hand you the keys to the kingdom on day one. It doesn't work like that.

17:38 So every big organization tends to work the

17:41 same. As a new vendor, you get through the onboarding process as a project for you to do. That tends to be a smaller project. And I think if you look at the slide the the graph on the right is one of our, you know, bigger clients' customer journeys, and and we signed them on last January. So we've had it, you know, for the eighteen months or so. And the client started in a relative you know, it was a decent sized commitment, and we gradually rolled it out. And, you know, that that contract is now worth, you know, a couple 100% of its original contract size. They started at a million dollars,

18:22 we are now at the 3.7 after eighteen months. I mean, we expect that to continue to grow. So that is all about getting the first project, getting through the the, you know, the onboarding process of delivering the project. Right? You know, it is pointless to overpromise and under deliver to to take projects that we can't do. You're given a test, and and it's the same on every other account that we've that we're involved in. If you pass the test, if you you deliver the the first small project, you tend to get larger share of, you know, the wallet within that organization. So it's not just about the sales process. We we are, as a business, absolutely focused on delivery, and and we've always said, you know, while, you know, you do get negotiation on commercials, our business lives or dies on quality of service. So we we continually focus on ensuring that we are delivering to client demands.

19:24 So I think I'll hand over to Fraser now who will talk through a bit more of the the numbers.

19:35 Okay. Thanks, Gordon. So I think in terms of f y twenty one, so, you know, those of you that follow us, 1% that we did call out this year as a year of investment across products, people and operations, and particularly around products. So Gordon mentioned the two major product launches we've had during the year as analytics and proximity clouds, which is just post year end. And in terms of what we've invested, we have invested this year double what we've done over the last couple of years. So actually FY 2021 investment has been more than twenty twenty put together. In terms of proximity cloud, about £1,500,000 has been invested.

20:20 A lot of that is internal staff cost because we have a sort of build strategy. It's quite a unique product that we have built. And so for mentioned, we're we're almost a 100 people here and we're about 80. And of that 80, we then have about 24 developers who are who are building out these these products that differentiate us within the within the marketplace. So again, it's been, as I say, it's been a major investment product and people. In terms of our infrastructure as well, we've we've spent significant amounts, 4,700,000 compared to just under 3,000,000 last year. And in terms of how that's put up, so just about a million pound into proximity clouds. And that's the really the first five proximity clouds of which, as Gordon says, we we sold one already just obviously just up over a month after launch, which is good. And we have pipeline across the other ones as well. In terms of the other CapEx investment, the 1,600,000 just gains facilities to that tier one growth that Gordon talked about in the previous slides.

21:26 A lot of our investment is on the growth. So in terms of maintenance, we're just under 20%, so quite a lot of CapEx is facilitating growth. Again, in terms of our income statement, so just looking at some of the key financial metrics, we kind of say that half year, we are 24% up in revenue over the year, which I think is a decent year. We had some slight challenges whilst COVID didn't really fundamentally affect our business. It did slow down some customer decision making and also, you know, when we sign a customer, we don't actually get to recognize the revenue until that infrastructure is deployed, you know, within one of our 21 data centers, and we did have some access to data center issues during the, you know, peak times of of lockdown, but that's that's now easing off. But it did have a a slight impact in the year, so, you know, it's pleasing that we've still overall grown revenue by 24% in spite of that. And and again, you know, those who follow us will understand that our model is fairly consistent and repeatable.

22:39 So our gross margin for the year 50%, similar to what we've achieved over the last couple of years. There is a cost of what we do in terms of infrastructure. So quite chunk of that cost to sale goes in our, you know, the the the depreciation on the infrastructure that we buy and the cost of the data centers. And in terms of our mix going forward, it may change slightly. Gordon mentioned, we do have software elements to business now as well, but just now, as it stands just now, vast majority of that is the infrastructure sales. And then just coming down to operating profit. So PBT, we've still grown the business, which again, was pleasing. So 13% growth at PBT level in spite of all that investment. We see a slight reduction in in operating margins, you know, in light of what we what we invested over the year. And, you know, we our we've said before, our our our model of government isn't particular particularly price sensitive, but most piece of, you know, peaks and troughs in terms of margin changing by a couple percent, you know, fluctuate depending on the level of investment.

23:42 Okay. Next one. Again, just following on from cash. So being a recurring revenue model, you can see that the the operating cash flow has has grown, so £4,000,000, which is up 35% on on previous year, and 5,000,000 overall when you when you look for some working capital movement. And then similar again to to to prior years, we have reinvested that and more in the business. And so we spent 6,700,000 that I referred to the previous slides. And you can also see the the loss in excess of business that we acquired last year. And there was some deferred consideration in a year one year now, so there were extra million pounds in that. So of the 5.2, we've invested 7.7 back into the business.

24:28 We've changed banks during the year, and we've got additional flexible finance facilities to allow us to flex up and flex down as required. And we've now got, you know, that that RCF facility. We're still relatively low in terms of gearing, so we're point four times EBITDA. We we actually bought a we've bought a purpose built in head office. So we've increased our our debt slightly, so we've been quite seven times a bit now, but we're still still relatively low in terms of gearing. And we we in April, we did an equities of of just over £5,000,000, which is the kind of initial raise to help support the the Proximity Cloud offering. So overall, in terms of cash, we're we're 2,000,000 and higher in the end of year, but 3,300,000 remaining.

25:15 And Gordon Gordon touched on this earlier on in terms of our balance sheet, The proximity cloud model is slightly different to our traditional model. So there's a higher CapEx investment on on those types of on those types of private proximity clouds. So the payback's about thirteen or fourteen months, which is about double our traditional. So, you know, we're we we will keep an eye on our balance sheet because the, you know, the the deal sizes and the proximity clouds can be significant. So, you know but as I say, are relatively low in terms of gearing and and, you know, for the foreseeable future, certainly. In terms of our forecast, we we don't have we really have immaterial play proximity in there just now. So that's just something in terms of, you know, to to to point out those of you who follow us. If you look at the consensus, our our revenue for for this year is about 17,000,000 across the consensus, which again, we we believe is relatively prudent given some of the deal sizes.

26:12 Gordon mentioned, we exited at 50,000,000 with some one off deals in there as well to the tune of 1,000,000. So we're in a good position really at the start of the end of the quarter, which again, as Gordon says, is a relatively quiet period for us. So good start to the year. Alright. Thanks, Fraser. So just to kinda close off, then and then we'll we'll go to q and a if there's any. So, you know, the priorities for next year. So, you know, we we've invested in the sales team quite heavily in The US and Europe. I think we mentioned last time that Asia Pac was still the net or the next area for us to look at that we've we've got growing deep you know, cloud deployment in Asia Pac.

26:58 So we're currently looking for someone to manage that business from a a sales point of view. So there there's, you know, expansion in Asia Pac for the next year. And, you know, proximity cloud is the biggest thing we've ever done and and the biggest opportunity the business ever had in front of it. So we were we are absolutely focused on driving and closing Proximity Cloud deals, you know, before the the end of, you know, 2021 and and into 2022. And as I said earlier, there's a really strong pipeline, strongest pipeline we've ever had attached to you know, a lot of that attached to Proximity Cloud. You know, I I you know, we've we've always worked in the partnership model.

27:48 We have we see a lot of business from referrals, from exchanges, from liquidity providers, whoever it might be, technology providers. So, again, a a key priority for us is to expand the amount of people that we partner with and work with. And we will continue to grow headcount. I mean, we're never gonna be thousands of people. I think we're 20 or 25 extra people over the next twelve months, you know, but subject to revenue coming in. So, that will continue to expand. And and in order to support that, as Fraser mentioned, we we have bought a an office in Glasgow just not far from existing office. So, yeah, it may seem a strange thing to do, you know, buy a building given our kind of expansion mode and growth mode. But, I mean, I think if we we were kinda getting to the realms of possibility and the current space we were in, we're spending about $15.17 grand a month, I think it was, on on on that rent. So over the period of ten years, we're gonna spend a couple million pounds on a bill on a space that was too small, that wasn't ours.

29:03 And then a building came up that was an x n two building not far from us, and, you know, we we bought it for 2,100,000. That is gives us the ability to grow a couple 100 people extra. There is actually some revenue or some rental income. There's there's some couple of small companies that rent a small part of it. Not material amount of money, but it was just a no brainer. The one of the the problems is not like London. You know, there there is a limited amount of, you know, off decent office buildings in the areas in Glasgow that we were interested in that we could get. So when this come up for the price, considering we would have spent on rent, it it made it was a no brainer to to buy it and and have it as a an asset within the business. So that transaction has gone through. We're hoping to move in February of March after doing some and moving some of the some of the tenants around in it because, you know, they they take about an eighth of the space, we'll be happy to let them let them be for the the time being.

30:07 Slide 14. So just a kind of summary on the outlook. So, again, not to overplay this, but, you know, by far now, we are best quarter ever and and historically our weakest period, you know, with nonrecurring revenue. And nonrecurring revenue, we will we are going as we over the next few periods, as we report, we will strip out nonrecurring revenue and ACM RR because Proximity Cloud and software will contribute to nonrecurring revenue. So we will ensure that as investors, have full visibility what's recurring and what's not. But because of Proximity Cloud recognizing some of the revenue on day one, because the the the client takes title of the asset, then that should become a bigger number going forward.

30:59 And, you know, the focus is now this year is continuing that product development, investing the people, but sales execution now, you know, it's it's this is we think we're gonna have a landmark year. I hope we're gonna have a landmark year, breakthrough year. So it's all about focusing on that sales execution, breaking into some of the big accounts that we have been talking to for some time and converting that into revenue. We have, for the first time ever, I think, upgraded the, you know, the the the consensus from the our investors, an upgrade on full year revenue. We you know, the the profit number has remained fairly constant despite the the revenue uplift, and that's because we think over the next twelve months, we have such a large opportunity with Proximity Cloud that we're we're looking to continue the investment there to get version two and version three out quicker than, you know, we we would be able to by, you know, continuing the current course and speed. So, you know, as we just believe that if we invest, you know, a couple million pounds this year, it will stand as a good good a good space for the next, you know, two to three years to be way further ahead of the competition.

32:19 So, you know, again, still another year of investment, but all big sales execution. And as Fraser says, we're doing the maths, you know, at at 15,000,000 exit run rate at the end, you know, September with just about 1.2 or 1.3, I think, of revenue already recognized. You know, we're not at the consensus of 17. We're we're not any material deals, again, will will take us above and beyond. We hope that that consensus forecast. So we hope this is, you know, our biggest year ever. Fantastic. On that note, that's a great way to end the presentation. Gordon Fraser, thank you very much indeed for updating investors today. Ladies and gentlemen, do please continue to submit your questions using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of the screen.

33:10 I just want the company to take a few moments to review those investor questions submitted already. I'd like to remind you the recording of the presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published q and a, can be accessed via investor dashboard on the Investor Meet company platform. I'd also like to remind you that your feedback is important to the company. And immediately after the presentation has ended, you'll be redirected for the opportunity to provide feedback in order that the company can better understand your views and expectations. Gordon Fraser, as you can see, we've had a number of questions submitted by investors, and thank you to those attendees who have submitted those. If I may just hand back to you, just click on the Q and A tab, where appropriate to do so, if you could read out the question and give your response, that'd be fantastic. Thank you. Oh, sorry. So sorry, Paul. Forgive me. Where's the q the q and a tab? Well, we're not I'm not I can't see the the the q and a. Is there something we should be clicking on?

34:16 So so sorry. If you hover your mouse over the slide deck, just make sure it's not in full view. And can you see a little white pane next to the slide where it's got chat, q and a, and polls? Or if not, you see a little blue speech bubble at the bottom, just click on that. You got that there, Gordon, just click chat click on the q and a, and you'll see the list. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. You got it there, guys? Got it. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you. If you could just read the question where appropriate to do so and give your response, that'd be great. Thank you, Gordon. You've passed the test for the afternoon. Thank you very much. Yeah. My technology guy. So, I mean, you know, I sorry. Just looking at question from Chris r. So how can you penetrate for the tier one?

35:07 So, I mean, it but it's building out product sets that are relevant to them that that allow them to procure services from us. So, you know, as I said I think as we said through the presentation, Proximity Cloud just gives, you know, the the people who say no less excuses to say no, you know, from a security and a compliance point of view. So it's now about going and having as many conversations with as many of these large banks, brokers, exchanges as possible to to ensure that we are getting in front of them and and and they're aware of what we do because still a lot of them are you know, we're still a bit of an unknown to some of the bigger guys, but that's now the job of the sales team to do that education process.

35:54 Simon, do you compete with ION and Fidescent anyway? Not really. ION for the I mean, you know, ION Fidescent is a, you know, massive organization. They're more in the application space. They do have some infrastructure capabilities, but, you know, they are trading applications, and that's not our bag at all. So I I wouldn't say that's any you know, we don't come across iron for this as a as a competitor in every every day business. Next one from David. Proximity cloud is targeted at a large global market. Do you have an estimate for the total addressable market? We get asked this all the time, not just about Proximity Cloud, but but the answer is no. There is no you you can't go and pull a Gartner report on something like this or an analyst report on what did what did banks, hedge funds, brokers, spade on infrastructure.

36:50 It's I mean, it's a very big number, but, you know, there's generic cloud computing numbers out there. You know, these you know, the the analysts will tell you that it's gonna go 50%, and there's hundreds of billions. You know, a bank, a single large bank will spend a 100 to $150,000,000 a year on a a trading infrastructure, multiply that by, you know, however, you know, twenty, thirty big tier ones out there. You know, there's the it's it's a large number, but I don't have an exact addressable market value, I'm afraid. David, so, yeah, will Proximity Cloud be displacing a client's existing infrastructure fresh solution? It's a good question. Both really is the answer. So we've seen a lot of use cases where large western kind of European and American banks are looking at deployment in Asia to some of the the not the smaller exchanges, but the smaller countries.

37:55 You know, we've had conversations about Taiwan, Korea, where they don't necessarily have the the staff and the office infrastructure that would support an existing environment. And then you get larger, footprints that need refreshed, and and clients are getting driven by boards and and what have you to to move to an OpEx type of model. So so a bit of both to to answer that question. Terry, why don't you get more levered? Yeah. I mean yeah. I mean, I think we do have access to more more debt, and, you know, I I wouldn't rule that out because the options in the the proxy. We're not we're not gonna not deliver these solutions for for lack of cash. So if we need get more debt, we're likely we won't do it.

38:40 Alright. Michael, how do you how quick do you expect to see closing Proximity Cloud deals? It's a small it's a small commitment for an organization on day one. Right? You know, entry levels can change 15 k a month. However, they do move slowly. So, you know, I I have my expectations that we will certainly sign business before the end of the calendar year. Sales team have been driven by that. But, again, we're in the the onboarding circle with a lot of larger organizations, which we have very little control over. David, whom are you seeking operation partnerships?

39:27 Technology providers, exchanges. You know, this this the the Proximity Cloud works very well as an exchange cloud. Right? So, you know, you can't have an AWS instance in the, you know, whatever data center exchange data center. We're having some conversations with exchanges about them white labeling the platform to run-in their exchange to offer easy access to buy and sell site within that exchange data center. So big target of the exchanges. Technology providers has actually been one of our biggest revenue drivers. So, you know, people in the application space in the world who don't want to do their underlying infrastructure platform. So these are the type of people that we're looking at for partnerships.

40:19 Will the head office acquisition put pressure on short term cash resource? No. I think, you know, so we've as Gordon says, already, we've we've purchased the office, so it was just over 2,000,000. And we we did take some bank debt, so it's about 500,000 take 500,000 in terms of our existing cash, so, you know, not not not a huge amount. Ray, on what features are targeted approximately version two and three? Are they driven by current client quest? Yes. Yes and no, actually. So, you know, we've still so analytics is in the in available as part of Proximity Cloud, but currently, it's a separate UI. So there's a lot of work being done to mesh the two UIs together so that you get the analytics as part of the inbuilt user interface of Proximity Cloud. So that's one big thing for clients.

41:10 You know, user management, alerting, network automation. And we are picking a lot of these up with clients as we go through the demo POCs type cycle who will suggest things. You know, I'll ask questions. Do they do x, y, and z? And and we then make them as future requirements. So we've got a we've got a very rich road map going forward for the the version two and three. Do you have a vision on which you can share where revenue could be in two, three years' time? No. I I do, but I'm not gonna share it because then people just will, you know, have that in their heads. I mean, we we expect significant growth in Proximity Cloud, but can't give you an exact number. Very difficult to do.

42:00 Ray, you said you'd expect expanded CapEx in building five prox load system, also only sold one currently. Are the other four types of specific client prospects? Yes. They're all currently under proof of concept, and we have starting to order more. With ProxCloud is higher upfront CapEx, do you have the resources to grow as fast as your prospect list will allow you to need additional finance? Yeah. I mean, I I think you've possibly answered that. I think, you know, in terms of our current balance sheet, given what we think and what what this will be, then we'll probably have to to go back and and and get more out of debt. But, again, it's a good it's a good problem to have. Tiara is asking, do you think there are other verticals where you could apply your expertise?

42:45 No. We are financial services. That's what we do. Ray, are there our q one orders 5,000,000 plus 1.3 or 5,000,000 total. That is 5,000,000 total, some of which is recurring, and we've stripped out what we are we are recognizing as nonrecurring upfront. David, operational resilience. So regulatory requirements are a major thrust by FCA, ABA, and others. Is this a further opportunity? So we we get involved in these types of conversations. We have we have clients who will just ask us and help use us to help design robust resilient cloud infrastructure to support their their core activities. So so, yes, it's part and parcel of well, we are not regulated by the FCA because we don't we are not a, you know, a trade execution venue.

43:44 We have to be aware and work with FCA regulations with all of our clients. So does it give an an an opportunity? The fact that we understand, work with it, can talk meaningfully with our clients about it, gives us an opportunity because we we understand their world. Guys, I thank you very much. You've answered every single question that's come through from investors. And, of course, any further questions do come through, the company will have the opportunity to revoke review those and post responses where appropriate to do so on the investor me company platform. Perhaps before we, redirect the attendees to give you some feedback, I may just ask you for a a few final words before we wrap up. Thanks, Paul. Yeah. I mean, I think to summarize, you know, we we're in a in a unique position.

44:30 Our business has grown, has matured over the last four years in the in the public domain in the last ten. We now have a unique product set, focused on a niche area that is growing, that, is unaffected by COVID, and we believe we're in a a genuinely unique, area where we have a a value proposition different to anyone out there. So, we have invested in the team. We've invested in the footprint. We've invested in the product, and now we are gonna be focused solely in next twelve months on executing from a sales point of view against the strategy that we've discussed today. That's absolutely fantastic. Gordon Fraser, thank you again for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session? It should be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations.

45:22 This will only take a few moments to complete and is greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of BEEKS FINANCIAL CLOUD GROUP PLC, thank you very much for attending this afternoon. That concludes today's session.