Essensys (LSE:ESYS) — AGM 2023

0:01 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the ESSENSYS PLC Annual General Meeting. Throughout this meeting, attendees online will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions at any time and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, company can review your questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so. I'd also like to remind you that this meeting is being recorded. I'd now like to hand over to John Lee, Chairman. Good morning.

0:32 Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Mark. It's now 09:30 as we have a quorum present. I therefore declare the Annual General Meeting of ESSENSYS PLC open. My name is John Lee. I'm the Chair of the company, and I would like to welcome you to this annual general meeting of the company. Welcome also for those of you joining online. For those of you who are interested in our most recent financial results, the results presentation given on the 11/02/2023 is available to you via the Investor Meet company platform. Joining me are fellow board members, Mark Furness, CEO Sarah Harvey, CFO Charles Butler, Elizabeth Sandler, and Alexandra Notoli as nonexecutive directors. I'll also move soon move to conduct the formal business of the AGM.

1:22 I'll open the poll for those in the room with us here. Following the conclusion of the poll, the directors will be available for a Q and A session. Shareholders were given the opportunity to submit questions in advance of the AGM. As we have heard at the start, questions also submitted to our team at any time during the meeting. Are there any comments or questions to the board for the shareholders' concerns?

1:49 If you have any questions, raise your hands. Please note, any shareholders, no proxies, and corporate representatives are entitled to participate in the meeting. Okay. No questions. I propose we would now proceed to the formal business of the meeting. Today's meeting was called a notice from an AGM posted to shareholders on November 8. That notice explained the various resolutions which are proposed, and today's meeting has been called to consider and if thought fit, pass those resolutions. Accordingly, the requisite notice to the AGM has been given. I therefore propose that with the consent of people here, the notice of the meeting should be taken as read.

2:40 Okay. So move to voting. For this meeting, in line with good governance practice, all resolutions will be voted on by poll. This will ensure that voting wishes of shareholders who couldn't join us in person today are also counted. I'm appointing equinity as scrutineers. Ordinary resolutions require a simple majority of votes to pass. Special resolutions require 75% or more of votes to pass. I'll put the resolutions to the meeting one after the other. The actual terms of the resolution set out in full in the notice. I should also note that I'm I'm holding proxy votes in favor of each resolution in excess of 90% in each case. The first ordinary resolutions relate to the accounts.

3:29 Number one, to receive the report of the directors and the financial statements for the year ended 07/31/2023. Number two, to approve the report of the directors' remuneration for the year ended 07/31/2023. Resolutions three to eight propose reelecting the directors. Three, Mark Furness. Four, Jonathan Lee. Five, Sarah Harvey. Six Charles Butler, seven Alexandra Notte, and eight Elizabeth Sand. Resolution nine seeks to reappoint BDO LLP as auditor, and resolution 10 seeks to authorize the directors to determine the fees payable to the auditor.

4:17 Resolution 11 seeks to authorize directors to allot equity securities up to the limits outlined in the notice. I also propose two special resolutions. Resolution 12 seeks to authorize directors to dissupply preemption rights in certain circumstances, and resolution 13 seeks to authorize the company to make market purchases. I've now proposed all the resolutions as set out in the notice and declare the poll open. Okay. And so Equinity will now collect the poll votes.

4:59 All poll cards have been submitted and now declare the poll closed. The detailed voting figures will be released via RNS and published on our company's website as soon as they're reasonably practical. That concludes the formal business for today's meeting. Now open for q and a from both shareholders here and to those joining via IMC. Are there any questions anyone would like to ask?

5:33 Mark, you able to see any? Yes. There are three questions. We have three questions. If you're happy for me to read them out, mister chairman, I'll start with the first one from George, who asks, given the negative sentiment in The U. S. Commercial real estate, please could you comment on your prospects in this market? Okay. Yeah. I can take that. Thanks, George. So I think what what we're having and what we're seeing in the commercial real estate market globally, actually, what, you know, if you think in consideration to The US, is really a bifurcation of the market. So it really is a flight to quality. So higher quality office blocks, office assets with better quality amenities, better tenant amenities are performing significantly better across the market than lower quality product. Now that's helpful for a census in the long term because our customers are primarily landlords and space operators that operate at the top end of the market and with premium product. But undoubtedly, there's pressure, the long tail of the commercial real estate market for lower quality products. So, yeah, undoubtedly, we're seeing that. And but we think that for long term, our long term opportunity.

6:52 But actually those buildings, those assets with higher quality amenities, better tenant services, more shared spaces actually plays into the ESSENSYS proposition and the problems we solve for our customers. That's great. Thank you, Mark. And just to remind attendees online, just any questions, simply type them in the q and a tab on the right hand side of your screen and press send. If I may turn to the next question from Alastair. Thank you, Alastair. How in very broad terms do you see the business evolving over the next five years? Not looking for numbers, forecast, but I guess just a big picture account. Hi, Alst. I guess I'll take that one again. I think we've had a couple of questions before, Alstair. So, you know, this is very much a long play. This is an industry evolution. So commercial real estate is evolving to meet the needs now and the future needs of its tenant community, its occupiers, and if you will, its customers.

7:49 And and accordingly, the the things we deliver, the problems we solve, our software and technology is all designed to to meet those changing requirements. So if you think about the evolution over time, today, you know, a low percentage, single digit percentage of all commercial real estate is consumed or delivered in a flexible way. And in in future, we expect that to go through ten, twenty, 30, maybe even 40% of all commercial real estate. So we believe we are really well positioned in terms of our long term prospects because because the market opportunity is evolving right in front of us. So our job is to make sure that we are embedded and trusted by the world's largest real estate companies, the world's the world's largest space providers so so that as they go on the journey to meet the demands of their customers, we're alongside them. And it's our technology, our software, our solutions that are helping those customers and those providers deliver that. So we're still very excited for the long term potential of our business.

8:56 Thank you, Mark. And I guess a follow on there as well. In the last investor meet company presentation, you described the initial impact of on a census of the developments with WeWork. What has happened since? Wonder if you could give a little bit of color on that. Of course. And if you wanna ask any questions with the rest of the board at any point, that's okay too. And, yeah, I think, you know, WeWork were

9:23 a sort of flag bearer for the flex and coworking industry and really helped educate a lot of the demand side. A lot of customers' businesses are now familiar with the concept of flexible working and flexible workspaces thanks to the huge efforts of WeWork to educate the market. Notwithstanding that, obviously, they're clearly, business model is one where they have a lot of

9:49 costs associated with their lease liabilities, I think that's the challenge for them. In terms terms of of how that impacts our opportunity, clearly, we're seeing now is landlords are looking to develop their own integrated offerings. So the larger the landlord, the more likely they are to develop their own integrated flexible space offering. I think actually we referred to that in our full year results is actually what we're seeing is these landlords are now saying, hey. How do we meet the requirements of our occupiers? You know, we're not looking to attract three, four person startups. We're trying to make sure that our biggest occupiers, our global brands have the the their requirements are fully met by our space and services products.

10:40 So So I think WeWork's helped to educate the markets. I think landlords now are increasingly due to their risks associate those risks now associated with WeWork are looking to bring those operations back in house. And we're definitely seeing those conversations accelerate with those those landlords that we work with. That's great, Mark. Thank you very much indeed, mister chairman. There are no further questions at this time. If I may just hand back to you. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much for your attendance and the questions, and I look forward to talking with more of you during the coming year. Thank you. And, mister chairman, thank you very much indeed. And if I may, that one question is just coming from Paul, if you would be happy to take that. Sure.

11:25 I noticed, recently the actual experience of former WFH Darling stock, which has invested 50,000,000 has gone under. Would there be merit in a sense as buying the technology and taking on staff? Surely, would complete an offering in an area of hybrid working at minimal cost. Okay. So actual experience we're one of a number of the new digital workplace or digital employee experience platforms that we've seen develop over the recent years. I think the the work the the world of hybrid working mean means we need to really understand the employee experience using technology. An actual experience was a great example of a business that I had done an awful lot of work over a long time to deeply understand what really goes into an employee's digital experience.

12:19 Now I can't comment on how applicable that technology or that IP would be to ESSENSYS. But what I can say is that we're very, very clear on the direction for our customers of how we can help them understand the experience, the digital experience in these spaces. And organizations like actual experience, you you know, know, there is a similarity to some of the things we're developing and delivering for our clients as well. So, yeah, I think there's, you know, there's many organizations across that digital experience arena that we are looking to learn from to help help our products develop for the benefit of our customers. That's great. Thank you, Mark, and thank you for allowing that final question to come through. So to the board of ESSENSYS, thank you very much indeed for sharing your AGM online this morning. Can I please ask attendees not to close this session as we'll now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the company can better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the board of ESSENSYS PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's AGM, and good morning to you all.