Synectics (LSE:SNX) — Final Results

0:02 Morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the SYNECTICS PLC final results investor presentation. Of your screen. Please 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 can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish our responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet company platform. And before we begin, as usual, we would

0:33 just like to submit the following poll. And if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from SYNECTICS PLC. Amanda, good morning. Thank you. Good morning. I'm Amanda Lander, CEO of SYNECTICS. And with me, I have Chris Pennington, our interim finance director. We are pleased to be able to present the, full year results for SYNECTICS for the year ended 11/13/2024. So in terms of content today, I'll give a brief overview of the company, and a performance review of each of the business units. Chris will then take you through the consolidated results, and then I'll come back on, and talk a bit about our strategy and priorities looking forward. Next slide. Thank you.

1:21 So SYNECTICS provides advanced security and surveillance solutions that help protect people, property, and assets around the world. We focus on core markets where security and surveillance are critical, and and these are often regulated markets where our expertise can really make a difference to the customer. Since the year end, we have strategically redefined our sector, better aligned with current market dynamics and emerging opportunities. For those of you who already know the business, oil and gas now sits within a broader energy sector, gaming within leisure and hospitality, and then we've defined the remaining markets into, three sectors of critical infrastructure, public space, and transport. And that's to ensure the right focus on these areas.

2:08 We'll be reporting this way, from 2025 onwards. The common market drivers that we tend to see in these sectors includes regulatory compliance, growing security threats, and technology and digital transformation. We have two business units, SYNECTICSystems, which develops proprietary technology led solutions to specialist markets globally, and that's predominantly through local systems integrators and channel partners. Second business unit is Ocular Integration, and that's a UK based security systems integrator delivering solutions to end users. We currently have geographical hubs in The UK, Germany, North America, Singapore, And we're in the process of setting up a presence in The Middle East, and I'll come, back to talk about that a bit more later.

2:56 Within our solutions, we supply software, hardware, and cameras, and I'll give a brief overview, of some of that core technology now. So our software is our proprietary synergy command and control platform, and extremely important to our customers is the open architecture. So effectively, our software is completely technology agnostic. We can integrate into pretty much any other technology, be that software, hardware, or cameras, that the the customer may already have. And there's a number of reasons why that's really important to our customers. So we can pull all of their technology and data together to provide them with a simple unified solution through a user friendly dashboard instead of having many, many multiple systems.

3:42 And that enhances safety. It creates operating efficiencies as manual tasks are reduced, and it enables smarter, faster decision making and response capabilities using real time data. The modular design allows to be tailored to meet the specific security and operational needs of the customer. So we'll work with them. We'll understand, what they need, and then we'll be able to tailor the design to work as the customer needs them. So altogether, this makes synergy extremely scalable. And, ultimately, having such a flexible system drives cost savings and long term value for the customer because there's no need for them to rip out legacy systems if these are working well. We can integrate synergy into those, and there's no expensive customization needed either.

4:30 In October last year, we launched, the first part of our AI suite of tools, which provides live hazard detection, and will notify an operator in real time, if it detects something. And then additionally, it's also able to support the operator through a workflow of how to respond to the hazard. So there's currently 12 tours in total, and some examples of these are things like unauthorized access by people or by objects, crowding or loitering, traffic flow management, missing PPE, and people falling over. And and and and able to answer one of our, pre submitted questions, which was, can you explain what the upcoming launch of Synergy Search is?

5:17 So that's the next stage in our AI suite of tools. It's a forensic search tool. It's really, really easy to use and uses natural language queries. So just like you would use in chat GPT, for example. And the tool will search through recorded data and then present back to users extremely quickly, what it is that they're searching for. So there's a number of user cases for this, but one example could be searching for a lost person. So you may describe, type in the, the detail of the person that you're looking for. For example, a girl in a red coat with a black cat, black trainers, something they might be holding. And the search will very, very quickly then highlight all the recent clips in the areas that you've selected, that shows somebody matching that description.

6:07 Again, this saves what can be hours of time of people searching through, data and video clips. Our COEX cameras, are designed specifically for hazardous and high risk environments, for example, offshore marine and oil and gas. They provide exceptional image quality and long term durability in extreme conditions and are certified for use in explosive atmospheres. COEX also seamlessly integrates with other existing security and control systems, meaning that customers can really maximize their investment on surveillance technology. Our COEX cameras have, built in AI capabilities. That means they're capable of automatically detecting unauthorized access and monitoring operational safety.

6:53 We're also currently in the process of, developing and improving those further. We have a great list of customers, and customers tend to stay with us for a long time, which really gives us the ability to evolve our solutions whilst we're working with the customers to help solve their challenges. I've showed some of our customers that we are able to name on this slide. So oil and gas customers along the top row, a mixture of some critical infrastructure and public space customers. Then we've got some transport customers, mainly bus and train operators, and then leisure and hospitality at the bottom. Moving on to FY '24 highlights. It was a strong year for the group, and I'm really, really pleased with the results from 2024.

7:40 There was growth in all sectors, record gross margins, and results ahead of market expectations, which were upgraded as well at various points across the year. We saw excellent cash generation such that we finished the year, with a record cash balance of 9,600,000, boosted by a couple of million, from the large casino win that we announced in the year. Market momentum and contract wins were positive in all sectors, and hence, we finished the year with a very robust order book of 38,500,000.

8:13 We have a progressive dividend policy in line with earnings, and therefore, we recommended a final dividend for the year of 2.5p, which would give an increased total dividend of 4.5p per share. And during the year, we've had some, new board members. It's been great to work with Bob Holt and John Kempster, who were appointed as nonexecutive chair of the board and nonexec director and chair of the audit committee respectively. I'm also pleased to be able to say, that we're at the final stages of the CFO process, and I hope to be able to announce, something very, very shortly. Post year end, the positive momentum has continued into 2025 with order intake continuing, across all sectors.

8:59 We continue to invest in our technology. It's really important to maintain our position as a trusted adviser to our customers, and our continued investment in technology is key to that. And over the last couple of years, the team have done a really great job stabilizing the company following COVID and focusing on achieving, good gross margins. Now we're looking forward to how we scale the business. We've been refreshing our strategy to focus on future growth, and I'll talk a bit about that later. I'll move on now to the divisional performance. For SYNECTICSystems, we've seen solid revenue growth in SYNECTICSystems in FY twenty four. And as you can see from the graph, there's been growth in all sectors, particularly gaming, which has increased by 20% year on year.

9:49 We noted this time last year that there had been a delay following COVID, particularly in North America in the refurbishment of large casinos. However, we are now seeing an increase in both new and upgrade activity, in gaming, and we expect this to continue moving forwards. In particular, there's also a number of cities around the world, that are investing in new large casinos to attract tourism and investment over the next few years. Oil and gas demand can fluctuate in line with the, economic conditions and the geopolitical events. We've seen an increase in activity in oil and gas in the last year or two. Given how critical oil and gas assets are to national economies and the increasing focus we're seeing again from the likes of BP, for example, who recently announced their plans to significantly increase their oil and gas spends, we do expect demand in this sector to continue.

10:43 And then public space transport and infrastructure, which was, one combined sector for 2024. That has been a challenging sector during recent years, and remains so again in '20 in 2024. But our revenues increased here by 11% year on year. We expect demand in this sector to grow given the recent announcement by the government, about investment in infrastructure. So that's including prisons, including health care, for example, digitalization of the NHS, as well as in critical national infrastructures, things such as significant investment planned by National Grid to its estate. We're really pleased with strong gross margins that have continued in this business. This is reflective of the high level of operational gearing within the gross margin, but also combined with the sector mix of higher margin gaming sales replacing slightly lower margin oil and gas sales as a proportion of the division's total revenue.

11:43 I'll pick up and talk about the partner program in the strategy section a little later. The positive contract momentum in the year, includes these two important case studies that we announced during 2024. The first of those being the major casino upgrade, an expansion to one of the most iconic casino resorts in the world.

12:08 We first installed SYNECTICS there just over ten years ago. There's major expansion going on in this resort, and it's fantastic that they've chosen to upgrade, with us again. It really shows how much they value our solution and our relationship with them. That project has now commenced and is expected to be delivered predominantly during 2025. And the second case study relates to oil and gas. So two important contracts to provide advanced security and surveillance solutions for critical oil and gas operations in Qatar and Brazil. In Qatar, SYNECTICS will deliver COEX cameras to North Oil Company as part of the Ria project in Qatar's largest oil field. And in Brazil, we'll supply, security and surveillance solution, for a vessel, which will be, critical to the vessel security operations.

13:04 So moving on to, Ocular. SYNECTICS Security was rebranded to Ocular in November 2024. And this was part of a broader transformation program in this business, which included a refresh of Ocular strategy, including ensuring a targeted approach to both its go to market, as well as the solutions that it provides to customers in those specific markets. So the program was kicked off with an internal promotion of Chris Jepsen to managing director of Ocular and a new sales director such that we now have a strong leadership team, there. And the team are making good progress so far, with this refresh in 2025. Outside of the leadership team, we have and we are still investing in the wider sales and marketing team to ensure we've got the depth and breadth of expertise needed across the sectors.

13:59 And we saw a strong increase in revenues in ocular by 17% that related predominantly to the transport sales, impacted by new vehicle registrations and the drive towards, zero emission vehicles. And we've said this before, but gross margins in ocular continue to remain, high for an integration business, which we're obviously really pleased about. We're trying to focus specifically on those projects where we can add more value, and hence, command the higher margins. During 2024, Ocular was awarded, 6,000,000 worth of contracts as part of the framework agreement with National Grid. National Grid is also a customer of, SYNECTICSystems, but this is different to the work, provided by SYNECTICSystems and relates the work provided by Ocular relates to the upgrades of physical security on National Grid sites.

14:54 And I'll now hand over to Chris to talk through the consolidated results. Thank you, Amanda. So we'll look now in more detail at the SYNECTICS group result for FY '24. And primarily, this will be with comparison to FY '23. However, we wanted to start at the top of this chart, the top of this slide by showing five charts with a three year track record, showing positive trajectory in terms of revenues, recurring revenues, underlying profits and underlying EPS. In terms of FY '24 itself, we returned a 14% increase in group revenue to GBP 55,800,000. And as Amanda noted, that came from both sides of the business.

15:42 So SYNECTICS PLC grew by 12% on the top line and Ocular by 17%. And that translated to a GBP 3,900,000 increase in gross profit or a 20% uplift, which was both an absolute increase and an increase in the margin itself, growing by 2.2 percentage points to 42.9%. And the driver there was the sales mix and in particular, an increased proportion of gaming sales. At an underlying operating profit level, we grew by 57 from GBP 3,100,000 to GBP 4,800,000 in the year, and that's prior to around GBP $05,000,000 of non underlying items. Again, that came with an increase in the margin of 2.4 percentage points to 8.6%.

16:34 And we've seen effectively a trebling of the EPS over the last three years from 7 to 14 to 21.6p in the current year. Looking now at where the revenues came from and where that movement sat. The first point here is SYNECTICS is a diverse business in terms of the geographies in which we operate and also the end markets that we serve, which provides a range of opportunities at different points in time. The chart on the left shows the revenue split on a geographic basis. But had we shown this on a sector basis, we would have seen growth in oil and gas of 5%, public public space transport and infrastructure of 11%,

17:16 gaming 20%, and ocular 17%. The movement by geographic basis here reflects the statutory presentation. And in EMEA, we saw an uplift of £3,000,000 driven by oil and gas. And conversely, a 1,600,000 reduction in the Asia Pacific region, again, principally driven by oil and gas demand. Had we shown here APAC on a three year basis, we'd see a positive increase from GBP 6,000,000 to GBP 12,000,000 to GBP 10,400,000 in FY 'twenty four. In North America, we returned a strong increase of just over GBP 2,000,000, growing to GBP 7,100,000, in this case, driven by the gaming sector.

18:02 And in ocular, as referred to previously, a 17% uplift. And looking at the right hand side, Ocular is broadly 40% of the business with the balance in SYNECTICS PLC and an even split in FY 'twenty four between oil and gas and gaming with slightly lower revenues coming from the public space transport and infrastructure segment.

18:27 Moving on, we'll look at the revenue profile and the order book profile and the strong second half of the year. And towards the right hand side of the slide, we can see that of the group result of £55,800,000, 7,500,000 of those came from recurring revenue contracts, which was an increase of just over 6%. And we've shown here as well £8,700,000 coming from what we call repeat revenues. And those are noncontractual, but very much revenues that move hand in hand with those contractually committed recurring revenue streams. So for example, where we have a maintenance contract,

19:07 we will derive call out charges as we execute that contract. And those two blocks together accounted for 29% of the revenues in FY 'twenty four. We closed the year with a record order book of $38,500,000 versus $29,200,000 in the prior year and with an expectation of around about 90% of that being delivered during FY 'twenty five.

19:34 In terms of the underlying operating profits, we grew from 3,100,000 to £4,800,000 And we can see here the first building block in the movement coming from gross profit with a GBP 3,900,000 increase referred to previously. In terms of the operating costs, our largest cost within that operating base relates to staff costs. And we grew by £2,000,000, which was primarily relating to the existing workforce in terms of salary increase, employment taxes, bonuses, etcetera, but also investment in new people who joined the business joining the course of FY 2024. In terms of the overheads, which grew by just over £1,000,000, that relates to inflationary increases, but also some areas of new investment.

20:20 I would highlight here the investment in the ERP system, which will mark significant move forward for the business.

20:28 Other movements here included lower depreciation and amortization and an increase in capitalized spend in the year. Uncapitalized costs moved from £1,000,000 taken to the balance sheet to £1,200,000 which is of a total r and d spend of £3,700,000 in the year, just referring to one of the questions that we've had on the chat.

20:54 Moving on to the last slide from me at this point. Net cash grew from GBP 4,600,000 to GBP 9,600,000, an increase of GBP 5,000,000 over the course of the year. We had strong operating cash flows of GBP 6,500,000, shown prior to non underlying items, which are across on the right hand side of the bridge. Working capital inflows gave a gain in the year of GBP 2,500,000, and those were heavily driven by advanced payments on some large customer contracts. We invested GBP 1,900,000 in CapEx in the year. A big chunk of that was £1,200,000 on capitalized development spend, but also spend on the ERP system, in this case, capitalized, and on other tangible assets.

21:46 And those items, together with a small amount of cash payment of tax payment, gave us strong free cash flows of £7,000,000 in the year versus £2,200,000 in the prior year. On the final blocks in the bridge, we can see lease spend, which included some new investment and also dividend spend in the year of 800,000. And at the bottom right of this slide, we can see the growth in dividends with the proposed increase of 4.5p in FY 'twenty four, marking a 50% uplift versus the prior year. In conclusion, FY 'twenty four result included revenue growth, recurring revenue growth, growth in underlying profits.

22:33 We invested in people and systems and closed the year with a record order book. We generated strong cash flows, increased our positive net assets and finished with a robust balance sheet, which included no debt. I'll pass you back to Amanda. Thanks, Chris. So I'd like to just take a few minutes to share with you how we are refreshing our strategy to move forward, to look ahead, and to focus on sustainable growth, by increasing our market share, leveraging our product innovation, and optimizing our operations. So our strategy is being driven by four key priorities. So firstly, our market presence, really having a clear focus on our target sectors and markets where we possess the highest level of skill and knowledge, and then ensuring that we have the appropriate routes to market in those sectors.

23:30 And I'll move on to talk about market share a little bit more in the next couple of slides. Secondly, developing our partner program to provide a more effective channel to our global markets and specifically looking to become the technology, provider of choice, with partners that we work with. So during the year, we launched our new program, which provides better support to our partners, so, including things such as a portal, and training materials, for example. We've created a new role, which we are currently recruiting, which is to lead the partner program, For example, to manage our partner relationships, to develop an effective incentivization scheme, and to really increase the ability of our partners to be able to promote our solutions effectively.

24:17 And this will really drive the support of our partners moving forwards.

24:22 The third priority is focusing on customer relationships by providing our highest quality service consistently to all customers, and there are a number of areas of focus on this internally. And then finally, investing in innovation to position ourselves as leaders in technological advancements. So that's both internally in how we work as well as in relation to our solutions and how they meet evolving customer needs. There's two initiatives that I'd like to specifically pull out here. Firstly, we mentioned last year that we had started the upgrade of our ERP and CRM system to remove the very old legacy systems that we have in place. This is absolutely crucial for the scalability efficiency of the business. We need to be able to automate more of our processes and have a system that can provide, a real time view of our performance as well as maintain operational control as we grow.

25:19 Good progress has been made in SYNECTICSystems, with Ocular now starting to follow, and we expect to have the full group implemented, by the end of the year. And then secondly, is our subscription pricing model. So core synergy, is currently sold on a perpetual licensing model. We're currently in the process of developing our subscription based pricing for sectors and regions outside of oil and gas, which tends to be more hardware heavy. So this will involve, conducting customer and market research, developing the subscription packaging models, defining a customer migration plan, and then estimating the financial impact, of the models.

26:05 I expect this to be completed, by the end of q three, this year. It's in progress at the moment, and therefore expect that we'll be able to move to implementation, at the back end of this year or the beginning of the next financial year. So there are certain factors that will impact take up of subscription pricing, and it's currently not particularly commonplace in our markets. So we wouldn't expect that this won't be an immediate shift to this type of pricing, and we expect that the impact impact will be gradual over the next few years. In addition to the core software, we have a number of new products, so some of the AI tools, the transport cloud services, and a couple of others that are subscription pricing only.

26:51 And as sales of these start to take off, I would expect to see more, annual recurring revenue generated from these moving forwards. Underpinning our strategy are our people, and internally, I want to ensure that we foster a positive and engaging culture and one of high performance and integrity. And finally, our refocus strategy, it is an organic strategy. However, if we can advance this or enhance it by m and a, then we would look to consider consider some specific targeted acquisitions. There are obviously some specific criteria that we'd want to look for, so that would include complementary products, for example, enhancing our existing offering or access to customers or markets, as well as some financial considerations, including, increasing our recurring revenue.

27:43 If I look at, our market presence now, this is our market presence today. So our focus in North America is gaming. We do do a small bit of oil and gas in North America, but we don't really have a particular presence there. Across our hubs in UK and Germany, we serve all the market sectors. However, our market share, is generally quite low. And then we have a good brand for oil and gas in The Middle East, and we're also well known for gaming and oil and gas in Asia. We have a small, market share in growing markets as illustrated by, in the graph by the small sort of slightly longer wedges, in between the bigger ones. So those smaller wedges highlight SYNECTICS share of each market.

28:31 We've calculated an estimated serviceable market of about 2,600,000,000, and this relates to existing market sectors that our products can currently address. And hence why we're investing in our sales, our marketing, and our partner program to increase our market share of these markets. Perhaps unsurprisingly, about half of the available market is in North America, And so we're in early stages of developing relationships there with partners and with contacts to expand our other sectors in this region outside of gaming. And also in Asia where wide opportunities as well. In addition, we have some potential new market opportunities, which are excluded from the 2,600,000,000 serviceable market, and we're currently completing competitive market assessments on these.

29:25 So these are renewables, particularly offshore wind farms where the conditions are similar to those in offshore oil and gas, and also data centers which have recently been designated as critical national infrastructure by the government. By later in the year, we expect to have more, visibility about how viable these markets are for us, in the coming years. And, The Middle East is set to have substantial investment over the next few years focusing on luxury tourism. Something like 30,000,000,000 of investment projected in hospitality alone in this region by 2030. The mega casino resorts that they're looking to build and the infrastructure, projects that are planned are core areas for SYNECTICS. So we are in the process of setting up a presence in The Middle East.

30:14 We've received our trading license, and we'll be going through product certificate. So moving on to our FY '25. To summarize those objectives, execute on our growth opportunities in both new and existing markets, scale global presence through new partnerships, enhanced sales and marketing initiatives, development of our global subscription model to drive future recurring revenues, leveraging recent product releases to strengthen our customer engagement and to enhance revenue growth through those. And finally, to go through our caps certification.

31:01 So this is something a little bit outside of the normal development spend. It's a certification that's managed by the National Cyber Security Centre. And while CAPS compliance isn't yet legally mandatory for all critical national infrastructure sites, many government critical infrastructure organizations are starting to require CAP certification, as part of procurement contracts. That's due to growing cyber threats. So we're already seeing the requirement for that in some of our upcoming tenders. So this is something we see will add significant value to our products. And so then just to summarize, good performance in 2024. We've entered '25 with good momentum with a strong order book and pipeline.

31:50 Results to date are in line with board expectations. We have a strong cash position to be able to invest to execute our growth strategy, and we will, of course, continue to invest in our technology, including our AI capabilities. So thank you very much for listening. That concludes the presentation. And now we'll be happy to take any questions. Perfect. Amanda, Chris, if I may just jump back in there. And thank you very much indeed, for your presentation this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab that's situated on the right hand corner of your screen. But just while the team take a few moments to review those questions that were submitted already, I'd just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published q and a, can all be accessed via your investor dashboard.

32:41 Amanda, Chris, as you can see there, we have received a number of questions that were both pre submitted ahead of today's event, as well as those that have made their way through throughout your presentation this morning as well. So firstly, thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. And guys, at this point, if I may just hand back to you just to read out those questions and give your responses where it's appropriate to do so. And if I pick up from you at the end, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you. So I'll start. So the first question asked if we could explain the upcoming launch, so what Synergy Search is. So, hopefully, I addressed that near the beginning of the presentation in terms of our new forensic search. Second question, Shore Capital show an estimated revenue of 65,000,000 for 2025.

33:30 SYNECTICS has told us you have a record order book of 38,500,000. How confident are you of hitting this target, and where do you see the remaining revenues coming from? So we are comfortable with the Shore Capital forecast, and our results today in, f y twenty five are in line with, board expectations. While our recurring revenues, as as Chris showed you in one of the, slides currently account for a smaller portion of revenue. The ratio of order book to forecast, is quite usual for us at this time. So we have a book to bill in excess of one. So the remainder of the revenues, this year will come through pipeline converted throughout the year.

34:22 The next question was asking us to provide more details regarding the move to a subscription based model and the impact of revenue recognition. Hopefully, I answered that. I guess, just to add that in terms of how it impacts revenue recognition, we are working through all of that. So by q three this year, we'll we'll be able to provide, more guidance on the impact of that going forward. Chris, do you want to take the next, one? Thank you, Amanda. Sorry. Just struggling to unmute. Yes. So in terms of the r and d, we spent 3,700,000 in FY twenty four, of which we capitalized 1.2, and that was an increase versus the prior year of £500,000.

35:23 Okay. So who are your largest partners? Our partners vary quite considerably across the different regions. So we have different partners in Asian gaming to what we do in American gaming and then in in The UK, a number of different ones again. So rather than rather than probably providing details on the largest partners given they span so much across the regions. To what or to whom do you attribute the significant decline in your share price following the publication of your FY '24 results. That's one that we've been asking the the brokers quite a lot over the last few days.

36:13 So there's a number of things at play here. First and foremost is the the AIM market challenges at the moment. I think there are a number of examples of good news that then impact the share price. Secondly, there was a medium sized sale relatively early on in the on Tuesday morning after we released the results. And thirdly, the share price growth in recent month months means that there's potentially an element of profit taking in there that we don't always see our results announcements. Who do you consider to be your main competitors?

37:02 I'll just note a couple of those. Again, slightly varying across the different regions and sectors. But Genentech, which is a a large Canadian business, Dalmyer, Milestone, and also Motorola, especially since recent acquisitions by Motorola in the last couple of years. I'm trying to find one for you to do, Chris. What are your plans for the net cash that the company holds? So so there's a mixture of things there, mainly things we've spoken about. So the investment in our sales and marketing initiatives and the partner program, that will be quite significant investment as we go into 2025, as well as determining our subscription models, completion of caps certification, and are the main answers there. As I mentioned also, should there be an appropriate targeted m and a that is gonna enhance that organic strategy that we have, then we'd also look to invest in that as well.

38:32 Why did you want to not quantify the value of the order book at the time of your FY '24 results? I think we did quantify, unless I'm misunderstanding the question. We did quantify the order book at the end of twenty four. That's it's a couple of million less now than it was at the end of the year, having started the year delivering some of those orders. And December, January, given December, January for us, given Christmas, etcetera, do tend to be quite a year quite a month for order intake. How much of the $13,200,000 casino contract will fall into 2025?

39:28 Most of that will fall into 2025. There is a subscription based service that we're providing for that customer in there as well. So that's a smaller bit of that that will drop out into the following years, but around, you know, $910,000,000 of of of sterling, say, will fall into 2025. How close are you to a contract in The UAE? That's so our teams within the business have been to The UAE a number of times. We've developed some good contacts out there. Key to us is recruiting somebody to be permanently on the ground. So we're in the middle of that recruitment at the moment so that we stay close to any developments and contracts as they arise.

40:22 We need to ensure that our products are certified before we can actually enter into any opportunities in The UAE. Do you have any communication with associated? Yes. Whitehall is a high net worth family. The this is the second generation of the family, and the first generation have been long term holders of SYNECTICS for for many, many years. They're a good support in the business, and we catch up regularly. We we were aware that they wanted to look at diversifying their portfolio a little bit more as well as adding more liquidity into the SYNECTICS shares, which is why they've looked to shave off a few percent of their holdings in recent month.

41:24 And and can we say anything more about global about data centers? At the moment, we're in the very early stages of investigating this. So because in The UK specifically, they're now designated as critical national infrastructure, it means that the capabilities and functionalities of the solution has to comply with those for critical national infrastructure regulations. So we're just working through with the it's obviously a very recent changing the regulations. So the industry themselves are just working through at the moment to understand what that means, what the timeline is of compliance with that, etcetera. So we'll be able to come back with more on that later in the year.

42:13 Are there any plans to move to the main market from AIM? Obviously, we're aware that that's there's a number of AIM companies thinking of doing that at the moment. Not at the moment from our perspective. I think we're slightly slightly too small still from the market cap perspective. You know, I wouldn't say never say never in the future, but at the moment, we feel that AIM is still the right market for us. And do you anticipate US tariffs will affect your US business? Obviously, that's still moving kind of every day as we speak at the moment.

43:02 So if anything, it might impact our competitors perhaps more than it does us given that we have European competitors and Canadian competitors. Our much of our sales from The US is imported from The UK. So if there are any repercussions or or tariffs implemented specifically on The UK, then, yes, this could impact The US business. Although, at the moment, it seems that we're not expecting that and therefore no significant impact expected at the moment. Amanda, Chris, if I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for being so generous of your time and addressing all of those questions that came in from investors this morning. And of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll make these available to you immediately after the presentation has ended. But Amanda, perhaps before really just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company, I could please just ask you for a few closing comments just to wrap up with, that'd be great.

44:12 Yeah. Thank you. I mean, first of all, I'd just like to say thank you to everybody for their time today and for joining us. Hopefully, you share our view that the the group's long term outlook is really positive. We're not where we want to be yet. We've got more work to do following a really good couple of years. We're a small market share and fantastic growing markets, and there's plenty of opportunity for us. So we're really looking forward, to what the future brings. Thank you. Perfect, Amanda. That's great. And thank you once again for updating investors this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the management team can really better understand your views and expectations.

45:02 This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of management team with SYNECTICS PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good morning to you all.