Beeks Financial Cloud Group (LSE:BKS) — Final results to 30 June 2022

0:01 Good afternoon, and welcome to the BEEKS FINANCIAL CLOUD GROUP PLC final results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time by the Q and A tab situated in the right hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Gordon McArthur, CEO.

0:31 Good afternoon, Chester. Thanks, Alessandro. Good afternoon, folks. Gordon McArthur, CEO and founder of, BEEKS Financial Cloud. Good afternoon, everyone. Fraser McDonald, CFO of BEEKS. I've been with BEEKS six and a half years in current role for the last four years. Alright. So we I've got six or seven slides I'm gonna go through in terms of last year and and what do we do.

0:57 I'll I'll kinda go through that high level. I'm gonna pass over to Fraser who's gonna go into the financials in more detail, and then we've got q and a at the end. So if there's any questions, just take them in as we go through.

1:10 So review of last year, it was a a big year for us, I think, a record year. It was, I guess, you know, in terms of revenue, probably not huge amount of surprise given that we've done a trade update very recently, and and there was three broker forecast upgrades in our second half of the year as we'd kinda seen some some large deals mostly in the second half of the year towards end of the our financial year of June. So revenue was up 57%, committed monthly run rate, which is our kinda key metric of the health of the business, I e, what have we got committed from our customers. That was at 19,300,000 at the end of June, and our EBITDA was up at 6.3.

1:57 I think we we made a couple of announcements on Monday on results day where just to show that, you know, some of the a couple of private cloud deals, not massive, but, you know, decent size to to kinda show that we're continuing to grow that monthly committed run rate towards the the full year forecast for this year. So just a couple of a minute or on on what we do. So for those of us that those of you who don't know us that well, BEEKS FINANCIAL CLOUD, we're a a cloud computing play for financial capital markets only. So we provide compute connectivity and analytics for trading firms or financial services firms, and key data centers around the world. We've got three different product lines that I'll cover in a little bit more detail, as we go through the presentation, public cloud, private cloud, and proximity and exchange.

2:53 So that slide, those of you who've who've followed us for a while will will have seen that slide evolve. So this is a a footprint of where our public and private cloud deployments currently reside. So I think we're in about 24 data centers around the world. Good good geographical coverage now. London's our biggest physical footprint by quite some way. We've got six data centers in London now supporting various different clients. We are going to be going in to further expanding in Canada this year, along, Mexico as well as as as as a definite a lot of to support partnership with IPC. And we've got potential expansions in Spain and and the Nordic regions. Also looking at potentially India depending on so it's kinda client specific. So as you can see from the the map, we've got good we've got good global coverage where if people want us to to use our public cloud or shared cloud or for us to deploy a private cloud for them, then we can do that in any of these locations that you see on the map.

4:02 The the dotted line between the locations is our wide area network or backbone where we can transit traffic from any of the data centers to any other data center around the world in a in a secure, all latency manner. So why do people why do people use BEEKS? It's no different from any other cloud play. Why why are people embracing cloud computing? It allows people to flex their business and change their business quickly depending on the demands of their market. So it gives clients, you know, agility. We are in all the locations that or a lot of the locations that, people in our our world expect. So we've spoken previously about the fact that we pick our data center strategically to be directly connected to exchanges, banks, brokers, FX venues, whatever they may be. So, know, if you are looking for that these specific data centers, we can certainly help.

5:06 Our cloud is fully integrated. You know, you you can come and peel off infrastructure from us at real time rather than doing it yourselves. Fully supported by our knock up in Glasgow twenty four by seven. We've had quite a sizable investment headcount this year. We're just over a 100 staff currently. 60 to 70% of the of of our staff set up in Glasgow are software development teams, our network engineering teams, and our back office functions. We allow people to deploy infrastructure on an OpEx model. Right? So rather than spending hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds of dollars in CapEx, you can do it on a month to month cost.

5:52 So it's no different to any other cloud play. Right? There are reasons why people no longer want to do their own infrastructure and want to utilize cloud computing. So that slide just kinda further on our products at the moment. So you we've kind of evolved as as as we've we've grown more materially over the last couple of years. So we still have a a kind of public cloud part of the business. It's it's less than a million pounds of turnover, I think, now less than 5% of what we do. And and we've said for the last few years, it's not really that strategic to the business where the growth in the businesses is in the the three other areas. So private cloud is where we will design a private infrastructure for a client's sole use, And that has been many different flavors. Right? They they may it's always exclusive use of computing power. They may take some level of shared networking and shared connectivity, but we take a client requirement for an infrastructure in capital markets and design a solution for them that they sign off, commit to, and we go and deploy.

7:06 Still the largest part of our business by quite some way. And then we we released Proximity Cloud about eighteen months ago now. So I think it was about eighteen months ago. So Proximity Cloud is a it's aimed at larger customers, right, who are more interested in complete dedicated infrastructure that can reside in their own space and then exchange data center. So it's not hosted by BEEKS. It can be, but usually customers want to put it in their own space so that they it's under their own security model, serviced by their own engineers, but they still get a cloud platform that comes with all their orchestration and automation tools and the in built analytics.

7:52 So that was released a year and a bit ago, I think, from the from the full year report. 12% of our revenue is coming from the the proximity cloud deals that we've we've done already. And then the last product line is is a kind of pivot or a a derived version of proximity cloud called Exchange Cloud, which still has the same underlying technology, but is aimed at being used by exchanges for various two different real business cases. The the most popular one is for them to provide a multi honed cloud environment in their exchange data center that they sell as a service to their clients. The other one is, you know, for the exchange to use themselves for, you know, global market data distribution or trade matching or anything that they workloads that they have internally.

8:48 So we you know, Exchange Cloud has been getting built for last year and a bit on the back of a, you know, a partnership with with one of the the the largest exchange group in the world. So we announced a few weeks ago that ICE Global Network's part of the ICE Group, which owns New York Stock Exchange and various other exchange technology functions, have licensed Exchange Cloud exclusively as a as a as a cloud play for their global locations. So, you know, a material a materially large endorsement in the technology was a year and a half to nearly two years in the making from first conversations with Exchange to getting the the platform live in the press release out a few a month ago. So major endorsement in the technology stack.

9:40 It's gone through, as you can imagine, all sorts of security testing, performance testing, all that type of stuff to to to win that piece of business. So

9:52 that is a that is a product set as we go forward. We will be investing further as we as over the next couple of years to drive these products forward. I don't see, at the moment, another new big product release in the pipeline. I think we've still got a lot work to do to enhance feature function on both Proximity Cloud and Exchange Cloud from the current states to where we want them to be, and we've got a full product development road map that that that kinda goes out over the next eighteen months. So the exchange cloud opportunity, that is a really exciting space. So, previously, you know, all the big equity exchanges the majority of the big equity exchanges all own their own data centers. Right? So they have their matching engine in a building that they own us, but, you know, they have they bought a big part of. And, previously, if you want to trade on that exchange, you would go and buy an empty rack from the exchange with power and space and have direct connectivity into the exchange matching engine.

11:02 What Exchange Cloud does is allow us allow the Exchange to carve off a part of that data center, a number of racks, however many be however many it may be, and BEEKS will deploy a cloud platform in the Exchange data center connected directly to the Exchange themselves. The Exchange then can sell it as a service to their members and their clients where they can peel off in real time, you know, dedicated compute virtual machines sitting under a low latency network with full inbuilt analytics. You know, based on the analytics product we bought a couple years ago, we've spent a lot of time, money, and effort improving that solution and integrating it into the Exchange cloud and Proximity Cloud UI so that it gives clients of the Exchange and the Exchange themselves or the customer themselves the ability to have real time latency monitoring, what's called microburst detection and gap detection so that they can see if there's any problems in their feeds from the from the exchange.

12:08 It's really interesting because there's not really a relevant competitor in the space. Some of the hyperscalers do have private cloud type racks. However, they they really struggle with some of the underlying technology that is relevant for an exchange. So particularly multicast data, precision timing, and and they really don't have the analytics capability that we do. So, you know, we we won ace. We're in a a number of conversations with other larger exchange groups and some mid midsize exchange groups through the world to replicate that deployment, I e, for BEEKS to be, you know, the the cloud provider private cloud provider in the exchange building. We we license it to the exchange, so it's effective that white label. We sell it once, and it's up to the end of the exchange to sell it to the members.

13:00 Why that's interesting is we then no longer have to worry about end, you know, end client MSAs and procurement exercises. All of these customers are already papered with the exchange or are going through a papering process. So they they just see it as an extra service potentially on the exchange order form. So you can buy, you know, the the markets you want access to. You can still buy, you know, empty racks, or you'll be given the the ability to buy BEEKS infrastructure, cloud infrastructure, you know, and a number of servers, a number of virtual machines, and analytics. So, you know, it gives us access to a a very large pool of customers, but ultimately, our our we've got a single client, and that's the exchange.

13:48 Some of these exchange data centers are, you know, fairly sizable with, you know, up to a thousand racks of customer equipment in in them. Roughly, it depends what what what we put in the racks, but it's we price it per rack per month over a a a a fixed term, and that, you know, can be anywhere between 750 k to a million pounds of of TCV per rack just depends what's what's in there. So, you know, you start doing the maths on on some of these larger exchanges. There's a

14:19 very large footprint for us to attack and potentially and get, you know, get some very large wins there. So exciting product. We've kinda found a a very lucrative niche with the on the back of designing it, you know, with ICE and with input from some of the other exchanges that we're that we've talking to. So we've got high hopes for it going forward. I think Proximity Cloud has done well since we launched it last year. We signed 5,200,000 of of of contract and the the stand alone proximity cloud technology since its launch. We've got a good pipeline of opportunity going forward. And, really, proximity cloud is for a single use client. Right? Exchange cloud is is multi home that we can be carved up to, you know you know, to accommodate securely a number of different clients. But proximity close proximity cloud is for a bank, a broker, an investment manager, a technology firm for their own use. And that and that's the kinda that's the kinda difference between the two.

15:25 Proximity, single use. Exchange cloud is a multi whole platform. Again,

15:32 you know, these are all multiyear deals based on how many racks of equipment a customer wants. Fraser will cover the revenue recognition. It's it's different to your kinda public cloud and private cloud, but we will we will call it out separately as we go through the numbers over the next couple of years. So over to Fraser just to talk through high level some of the some of the financials. Right. Thanks, Gordon. Yeah. Just covering some of the the key metrics during the year. As Gordon says, it's our it's been our biggest ever year in terms of sales growth. So, you know, we're up 57% on on last year. I started over the last kind of few years. We've we've typically grown about 25 to to 30%.

16:19 So, you know, really double that growth for the for the current year. The the key kind of drivers behind that really around the the size of the deals that we're winning now. So going back couple of years ago, we announced our first ever million dollar contract. You know, we know, in the current year, we've you have multiple deal sizes of that range and, you know, some higher. So I think the one of the biggest contract wins was over 4,000,000. So we are getting, you know, larger deal sizes from both existing and new customers. And that revenue growth is all organic. So and and as I say, driven really by the the bigger deal sizes. And as Gordon says, some of these Exchange Cloud deal sizes that that we have in the pipeline, again, are are are even outweigh those. So in terms of our, Gordon mentioned earlier on, our committed revenue. So again, metric allows us to kind of forecast ahead what's committed on the books just now. So we're over £20,000,000 committed for the year.

17:16 I think if you look at the consensus forecast for this year, it's between 24,500,000 and £25,000,000 revenue. So 80% of that is really is largely there. It doesn't take that many additional proximity and, Exchange cloud deals layered on top of that to to get to the full year number. As Gordon says, we had three forecast upgrades in in the current year. I'll just go back a wee bit. You moved my slides, Gordon. I think in terms of profitability, again, depending on what profitability metric that you look at. So EBITDA is up 52% to 6,300,000. Underlying profit before tax is up 28% to just over $2,000,000 We did have a reduction in operating profit margins against last year, as we anticipated and as was forecast, given the level of investment that's gone into the business. As as Gordon says, we've now got over a 100 staff. You know, we've been on a big recruitment drive over the last couple of years.

18:22 We have we believe this is a right sized, skilled team now to, you know, to execute and and to continue to build build out product. We have around a third of our our staff are in that product development space. Headcount is, you know, one of our if we're looking at profitability and and and managing that, that's one of our, you know, key metrics that we look at. It's about 30%

18:43 of sales just now. We still have a relatively low cost model up in Glasgow. You know, our average cost across all our staff is 63 k, and that includes board members. You know? So it does allow us to, you potentially manage these margins. I think going forward, controlling our headcount, as I say, is our biggest area when we look at profit margins. We will not expect to grow the team to the same levels based based on on that that revenue growth we've seen. So if you look at the year ahead, we'll maybe bring in about 10 or 15 people to boost the team. But given some of that revenue expansion, we expect margins to start coming up if we control that headcount.

19:28 We're also aware of other things going on in the world, the increased power charges that we're just getting note of from our suppliers. So we take we pay for power space connectivity across the data centers that Gordon presented in the earlier slides. So we've always done annual price increases to our customers, and, you know, we're in the process of quantifying what that power increase may be for us and how we how we manage that going forward. Exchange rates as well, you know, given, you know, we we have a a natural hedge in terms of our exchange risk. We have about 45% of our of our revenues are in US dollars and about 40% of our costs. So, you know, we are largely hedged from that. We did a small gain in, know, about 80 k, and we will look at how we we hedge going forward.

20:16 Just moving on to the to the next slide. So, yeah, I mean, so proximity exchange is is is different in terms of how we account for it. We spent you know, quite a number of months with our auditors, Grant Thornton, to to agree the principles. It's it's kinda more akin to a a hardware and software type sales. So, ultimately, we, you know, we deliver a proximity cloud and an exchange cloud appliance all preconfigured to the customer's data center. And because of that, that's quite a high proportion of our performance obligation to the customer is what the accounting standard states. So you have to recognize about half of it upfront, which I mean, this and and this is accounting only. It's it's it's not cash. So it does give us a a slightly different model going forward. We've always had that 90% recurring revenue, you know, which which we like.

21:06 So it does change things slightly. The we hope and, you know, Gordon, she'll talk about pipeline, but the the the current revenue recognition in terms of recurring percentage in the year is 76%. However, you know, the point to note really is we've still grown that. So our ACMMR is up is up 40%. So, you know, we'll have a combination of private cloud wins that will contribute to recurring revenue and then layer on top of that, the the proximity and exchange cloud wins. The benefit of these contracts is they are, you know, they're high TCVs, as Gord says, a million dollars per rack, and there's a there's thousands of racks out there that we are hoping to get a land grab on. They are long term. They're with tier one clients. We believe they have a slightly lower support model from us. So the the infrastructure is owned by the customer, and it sits in the customer's own racks.

21:56 So we don't have the power space connectivity charge that we would typically play in in in private deals. So, you know, we we we do believe from a support point of view that, you know, it should be a a lower cost to to support that, which is why if you look at some of the broker forecast, we show a slight uptick in margin over the next few years. As Gordon says, we'll report it separately, proximity and Exchange Cloud. And pleasingly, it was about 12% of the revenue increased this year purely from that new product. So, again, key driver for the revenue growth is we have these multiple products now that that we can sell compared to where we were a year or two ago.

22:34 Just back over to you, Gordon. Yeah. Sure. Thanks, Fraser. So, you know, objectives for for 2023. I think we've talked about years of product and years of employees previously as we've, you know, had to scale up the the members of staff and and build our product. This year going forward is gonna be the year of of sales execution. Right? We are we have a a pipeline that is substantial and, you know, much greater than we've ever seen before. So this is about continuing to develop the products. You know, as I said earlier, I think exchange claim proximity in private will continue to be developed, feature function added. So, you know, we are we are continuing to do that.

23:23 And it's about converting the sales pipeline. Right?

23:25 Some of these deals, as I said before, just to kinda set scenes, you know, a private cloud deal is anywhere from $1,000,000 well, $500,000 to, you know, a couple of million that we we've we've announced private cloud deals at couple of million dollars already earlier in the year. Proximity cloud deals can, you know, be anywhere between 2 to 5,000,000. We think some of the larger exchange clouds could be between 5 to 20, not on day one. Right? You know, it's you know, the way that these things tend to happen is, you know, they will start with our level of infrastructure as they build it up and fill it, then they'll they'll come in and take more.

24:12 So we've kinda got this variety in the pipeline now where we've got small deals that or relatively small deals that can happen relatively quickly. In the private cloud space, proximity takes a little bit longer, maybe up to, you know, six to twelve months. And Exchange Cloud is anywhere between a year to eighteen months. You know, that's not to say we're starting now on Exchange Cloud pipeline. There's a number of exchanges we've been talked to for over a year. So, you know, we we will look at that sales execution as a priority for the year. You know, we are we are a very partnership led organization. So, you know, our our biggest partnership

24:52 so far is is with IPC, and and we've got a great relationship with them. You know, we we mutually bid in on lots of business, win lots of business, and and there's business between your two organizations. So we'll continue to grow that relationship. Obviously, with ICE now coming in, another large organization who can sell our services. Right? They've got lots and lots of salespeople around the world, and and they will be incentivized to sell, some of the the the BEEKS products. So continue to invest and grow strategic partnerships, and that's always the way that we've we've kinda taken ourselves to market. So, yeah, just final slide, I think, on on Outlook. So we for people, again, that have followed us for for since IPO, you know, getting the referenceability of doing this these types of platforms for large organizations who are happy with what we've done what we've done is worth its weight in gold. We now have quite a an impressive list of clients that

26:00 will reference us. We've got some case studies out in the public domain, obviously, the the ICE release. Having that referenceability makes life a lot easier for us when we're now talking to potential new in client new clients around the world. We've got opportunity on private proximity and exchange. And as I said, they are, you know, various sizes of deals, and the pipeline is is more substantial than than we've ever seen it before. You know, if it all come in at one point, we may have a problem. It it won't, but, you know, you know, some of these will be spread out throughout the year. So I think, you know, we're in a a very good position. You know, we the the team have worked very hard over the last two years to get the products to a position they're in.

26:50 The the support teams and engineering teams up in Glasgow keep our customers happy, and that's why they invest more money with us. So, you know, we you know, the business is in a good position from a head count point of view. The the technical engineering function that we've got is is is stronger than it's ever been. You know, we are you know, we have to keep abreast of of of the macroeconomic things that are going on in our world. I mean, I think supply chains are still stretched. Those are one of the big reasons that we took the the the the what what turned out to be a fairly significant investment in the in the fundraise in April was to front buy a load of capacity. Right? We have enough physical capacity on-site in our Glasgow stores that will get us to and and slightly beyond the the full year forecast. So, you know, that was why we took a big chunk of, of of investment, in April.

27:48 And you can see from the balance sheet, there's a couple million pounds worth of, capacity sitting in Glasgow We wait to pull down for these proximity cloud exchange cloud wins. And as Fraser said before, you know, power costs continually going up. We can pass the majority of that on to a lot of our customers. So while we keep an eye on it, it's, you know, it's not something that we're overly concerned about at the moment. Who knows what happens in the future? But so we do keep an eye on these things, but we're in a good we're in a good position to weather the storm and and both of the supply chain and and the the power increase. We continue to grow market share and and wallet share from existing clients. I mean, I think we as we Fraser mentioned earlier, we we seen the first million dollar deal two and a half years ago. That customer now spending over $8,000,000 a year with us, that's purely because we deliver platforms that work for them and help their business and allows them to scale.

28:44 So we continue to try and expand our footprint with existing clients and when you we as I said, we we announced a couple of kinda smaller wins in private cloud on Monday that just shows that, you know, we are kinda marching towards that full year '23 number. I think our you know, we're at 19.3 when at the end of June, we're we're over 20,000,000 committed run rate now on a 25,000,000 forecast or or or broker forecast. So, you know, we've not got a million miles away to go where, you know, at the start of the year, we're in a in a good place. So, we hope that we can replicate last year where, you know, we they set you know, we we get into the second half in a really strong position, and the broker will then look at where we where they think we are.

29:36 And that's that was it for me. I think we've got some appendices that you can you get access to, but. K. Gordon, Fraser, thank you very much for presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just using the q and a tab situated on the top right corner of your screen. But just for the company to take a few minutes to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A can be accessed via our investor dashboard. We received a number of pre submitted questions today. I want to start off the Q and A session with these. The first one reads as follows. What went less well in the past period and where do you want to improve on in f y twenty three and how will you do it? Maybe one for you, Gordon. What went less well? That's a hard question to answer.

30:25 I mean, listen. We could always I mean, you know, my background is sales. Right? So I always want want we you know, could have could have closed more deals. You know? I would have loved to have I've had a an extra couple that that's maybe kinda spilled into this year, closed before the end of the financial period, but so be it. I mean, I think software development, we've invested a lot in our software development team. Scaling that, you know, we we have historically been an infrastructure provider. We are now half software, half hardware. I think we've had real challenges as we've scaled up the software dev team. You know, the more people you add into a software development team doesn't necessarily mean productivity does that. Sometimes you get challenges with distributed teams and the amount of people involved. And so, you know, we've had some challenges in software development that we've we've kinda put an end to and and figured out ways of ensuring that productivity no matter how, you know, how much we scale that team remains high. So, you know, I don't think we're alone in that. It's not especially coming from that infrastructure background. So so you know? But we're we're we're on top of that, and and we've seen we've seen real improvements in the last four, five months as we continue to grow that.

31:48 I mean I mean, it's been a great year. Right? It's been a record year, so I'm I'm not gonna focus on what you know, the negatives. It's there's not been that many. I think the the team has performed incredibly well. And we've got real innovative products in the marketplace, and and we a pipeline to support it. Fraser, I don't know. Anything you've got there? In terms of less well, I mean, the audit took too long for me. That's I would say. No. Yeah. No. I think you say it. You know, it's it's been a it's been a it's been an outstanding year, this is sometimes quite hard to think thinking back when when what went less well. So, yeah, I think it's been a bit of a blur to me last few months. So, yeah, nothing to add. Perfect. Thank you very much. Maybe another one for you, Gordon. What kind of product development can we expect this year? Expansion of existing product lines, do you expect to introduce new projects slash revenue streams?

32:42 Good question. I I think I kinda briefly covered it in the in the in the slides. We are we are our product development road map over the next eighteen months is to build out feature function into the existing product lines. Maybe I'll regret seeing this if we come up with something in the next year or two, but I don't expect another big, you know, new product, new fork in our in in our product lines. I think we have got enough work to do to to try and extend out some of the feature function of, you know, private proximity and exchange. And Matt, our head of product, has got a road map that that that shows us doing that. There's there's some failure. I don't wanna go into the the low lying technical details of it, but, you know, we've still got some way to go and and and and some of the the product developments. But, no, I I don't expect any major forks. I might love to regret that statement, but, yeah, not at the moment.

33:44 Thank you very much. Maybe one for Fraser here. Could you give us a bit more color on one of the key objectives in f y twenty three, which for this investment, which is to see a return on investment? Yeah. I mean, I think, as I say, we we've all we we we always kinda quite Scottish and tight the way that we run the business. You know, we always have an eye on profitability. However, you know, it's not it's not as important as driving that sales growth right now, you know, given the opportunity ahead. So, you know, if for us, as I say, controlling the headcount, writing goods contracts that allow price increases, making sure our support model was such that, you know, we are not adding lots of people to the business, which we're not, is is really how we, you know, drive back value to shareholders. You know, we are aware we took a considerable investment in April, as Gordon says, and, you know, we we we want to deliver that return.

34:39 So we may still see some short term operating margin pressure, you know, but, you know, really, as we, you know, as we sign these bigger size deals and we get scale, we operate on a on a cost plus margin basis. Right? So, you know, we're not we're not concerned about eking out profitability and and return to investors in the in the medium term. I don't Gordon, is that that fair? Anything you want to add to that? No. I think that's fair comment. No. And then, again, maybe just picking on the next question. So what sort of EBITDA margins? So, again, so we've kinda typically done about 35% EBITDA. I mean, operating profit margins, you know, we've been up at sort of fifteen, sixteen, 17%. We're down right now. But as I say, if you look at the broker forecast, I think we've been reasonably conservative in what they are showing and where we're comfortable in terms of coming up a percent per year. We should be able to deliver that given some of the deal sizes out there and what we think we can deliver in the year whilst controlling the cost base.

35:44 Perfect. Thank you very much. That's great. That actually concludes the pre submitted questions, but we've received a number of throughout today's presentation. If I could just ask you to read out the questions and give responses where it's appropriate to do so, I'll pick up from you both at the end. Sure. I'll I'll kick off with it. So first question is what plans do you have in terms of geographical expansion? And in terms of Pateline Pateline? What is the typical length in closing contracts to customers? So, yeah, geographical expansion. I think we covered it, you know, on the on the on the map on the first couple of slides. So we are looking at Mexico with IPC at the moment. We are looking at something in Spain, consideration for India on the back of a a particular contract.

36:31 And, you know, we'll continue to increase the footprints in our existing sites. In terms of typical end to closing contracts, it varies. Right? I I think, again, it kinda covered a little bit of it, you know, private cloud, you know, $3,400 k to, you know, couple million dollar type transaction, sometimes three, four months. Proximity cloud, that's a little bit bigger, six to twelve. And then I would I would put exchange cloud twelve to eighteen months as a, you know, first conversation to, you know, system live and billing. So, yeah, I hope that answers that. Thierry, plea could you please elaborate on your competitors?

37:16 I mean, I don't really like spending much time talking about competitors. I mean, you know, the hyperscalers are the competitors to us. Yes and no. You know, most of our private cloud deployments connect to AWS or Google or Azure because, you know, other the the the organizations have non trading execution services or workloads in these, you know, hyperscaler clouds. We've got a couple of managed service competitors that kinda focus on our niche, but the managed service providers, we're, you know, we're a cloud computing platform. So, you know, we're not really like for like competitors.

38:04 We don't you know, we are not market data companies. So so, I mean, yeah, I mean, we have we have competitors. I'm I'm not really going to talk negatively about anyone or positively about anyone. You know, there are a couple of niche competitors, and and we keep an eye what the hyperscalers are doing. But, you know, the the you know, they are not tech technically, there's still lots of issues about the whether the the genetically we'd ever be able to do large scale chain execution and and high, you know, high performance multicast platforms. What is the scope and length impact of the of of the period of exclusivity granted to ICE? Unfortunately, for NDA reasons, we have put out into the public domain all we are allowed to. Right? It's a multiyear agreement with ICE, and there is a period of exclusivity as as BEEKS being the exclusive cloud provider for the for the IGN business. I I can't go into any more than that, I'm afraid, under NDA.

39:08 I'll pick the next one, Gordon. That's from Louise. How many staff are involved with software development? I mean, the the software dev team is about a third now of the headcount, so it's about 35, I think, at at last count. So, yeah, about a third in, you know, we've we've built that over the last couple of years. So, you know, we'll we'll probably add some heads to it over the next year, but but not massively. Perfect. Gordon, Fraser, thank you very much. I think you've addressed all those questions you can from investors. And, of course, the company will review your questions submitted today and will publish those responses on the investment company platform. But just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to you both, Gordon, could I just ask you for a few closing comments? Yeah. Of course. So I think, you know, it's been a it's been a record year for the company, you know, material contribution from from everyone involved.

40:01 And, you know, I, you know, I thank them for the the hard work and the effort supporting the the growing client base and and keeping them happy and and delivering innovative products. So, you know, the business in a good position. We start the the period in a very strong place with a huge pipeline and and and, you know, what we believe is market leading products. So, you know, excited for the next year or two ahead of of the company, and and and we we get heads down and focus on execution and an opportunity ahead of us. Gordon, Fraser, thank you very much for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This loan will take a few minutes to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of BEEKS FINANCIAL CLOUD GROUP PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.