Kelly Partners Group Aktie

[Audio Gap] our Chief Financial Officer, Kenneth Ko. We've had a tremendous enrollment of people for this call today, which we're very grateful for. And to those who are here on time, we'll just get moving now I can see more people coming in.

But I want to start by acknowledging the quality of our teams. We have tremendous people in the business led by very, very capable leaders who have made long-term commitments to the business. And it is really that leadership that makes so much difference within the system.

And so I want to start by acknowledging those more than 100 partners as leaders really leading from the bottom up, our incredible people to deliver our 20th year of results that I think can only be described over that period as extraordinary.

We started in June 2006 with AUD 200,000 of billings. And this year, you can see that our revenue is AUD 159 million as a group, which is 800x the revenue that we started with. And while when we started, we did have an intention to make an impact to improve the quality of opportunities available for people within accounting firms and in the accounting industry.

And we were ambitious on day 1 to take that number to -- I remember us hoping that by year 10, our plan was we'd have $50 million of revenue. We are continually grateful for the quality of the people, clients and communities that are part of the ecosystem of our business. And every day, the business becomes, frankly, more fun and the difference it's making to people is more obvious after this period of time, and that's very, very gratifying.

So as we like to say in one page, you can see across the top there, the team has got over 700 people. Average revenue per person remains very high by industry standards anywhere over AUD 220,000 per person in billings, it's 105 partners, 43 businesses in 6 countries, $159 million of revenue. Current run rate is about $164 million.

The shares on issue, 45.2 million are still below the 45.5 million shares that were on issue at IPO. And that revenue today, revenue at IPO was forecast to be about AUD 30 million, and we haven't increased the share count since IPO, which I think shows the discipline of the model and the team.

Free cash flow per share is $0.221 and is up 17.5%. Our return on invested capital at 23.2% remains very high. Organic growth, 2.9%, we're pleased with and our ROIC plus organic growth is 26.1%. And so from a numbers perspective, they're a good set of numbers.

On Page 3, Kenny, if we can whip through this, 20 years of growth. The business has doubled 6 times in a row, and we've tried to lay that out here for new and long-term investors. But the point here is that Kelly Partners Group Holdings operates a business system and that system is in the habit of doubling itself consistently.

When I moved here with my family of 5 in January 2023, our trailing revenue was AUD 64.9 million. And this year, that revenue is AUD 160 million. You see in that period, again, the business has doubled. As it's now done, that's the sixth time, which is great.

On Page 4, the book value of the business has compounded at 34.3% CAGR for 20 years and particularly pleased with that, and that was a goal of mine from day dot to compound that book value of 30% or more annually and it was a quiet goal, and I'm very pleased to be able to sign off on that. 20-year track record that I regard as a really interesting investment track record. Because when we started, accounting firms were not regarded as even businesses let alone as investable businesses and the industry itself was just not considered investable, which is very interesting.

On Page 5, Ken has done a huge amount of work. We are consistently asked questions by people confused by our structure and the accounting conventions that standards mandate. And we've tried to be very clear here, and I want to thank Ken, our CFO, for the effort that he's made to again try and make this clearer.

Our Partner-Owner-Driver model means that the HoldCo owns typically a 50.01% or more interest in a local accounting firm. And often, I get some people on Twitter who are confused by the accounting. And I don't think they're confused. I think they've just spoken before they've taken the time to look carefully at the accounts.

I think as a group, we've done the best now we can to make our business as understandable to a quality shareholder with some insight who can sit down and have a good look at the business. So that's laid out there, and I'll get Ken in the financial section come back and take you through that carefully.

Page 6, and this -- all of this presentation was published this morning on the ASX. You've got statutory versus underlying NPATA and EPS. And you can see the consistent growth in the business over a long period of time.

Page 7, some financial highlights for you. Underlying EBITDA is $17.9 million. Underlying NPATA, $10.8 million, up 18%. NPATA, $8.4 million, up 18%. Balance sheet remains very, very strong with a very high cash conversion and owners earnings of $10 million. And our returns 35.7% on equity, up from 31.9% last year. I think those numbers -- the value -- the business is trading at an EV to EBITDA multiple of 12.6x, which doesn't appear to be excessive and earnings per share on an underlying NPATA basis are up 18%.

On Page 8, some common misperceptions. We've published this. We get asked many, many questions every day, and we try not to do one-on-ones with investors. We really try to hold to these types of meetings twice a year so that nobody really has an information advantage. And if anyone asked these questions, we'll often publish them in a quality shareholders' letter or to Twitter or in an ASX announcement as is appropriate. But these are some of the questions that we get asked. And often, I do think they're by people that haven't understood our model because they haven't perhaps taken enough time to really look at the materials.

Now often, I get the other criticism that we provide too much information about the company. We're now at a point where there's more than 20 quality shareholders' newsletters, 9 years as a public company accounts published and results presentations. I must have done 30 podcasts or so and plenty of interviews. And our team have done a great job on our website of publishing an AI engine that will allow you to search much of that information.

And so we are getting to a point where saying much more than we've said about our model and how we generate the returns we do. We don't really believe at a point is in the interest of the business. I'm not that interested in sharing any of our trade secrets as interest in this sector continues to grow. And so you'll see a posture from us of less sharing of the operational and other insights of the business because we do think we've done our best to, at this point, make clear what the business is, how it operates and to some degree, how it generates the returns it does.

On Page 9, one of the very, very exciting things about the business today is that the business now never sleeps. It's trading 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which gives us this opportunity to take a flywheel and not -- even 5 years ago, our flywheel was certainly in operation, but it was really only in operation 10, maybe 12 hours a day, let's say, certainly for a good 8-hour workday, Ken is in Hong Kong and has been for 10 years. So we've extended it a little bit. And Ken works a lot as, does his team. So yes, it was a little bit more than 8 hours a day. But today, genuinely, I'm very pleased that our business is a global business, and it is operating 24 hours a day, most days a week, hopefully not on some days and is compounding and that flywheel is being established and is starting to turn.

Now I don't know that I've got a good photo, Ken, but you might find it and pop it up at the end of our presentation when we take some questions. But -- our signage officially went up today on the new office in Dublin, in Ireland. And so our partners in Wexford have opened the office in Dublin. And that's a 20-year vision for Stefan and his father who built that firm over 55 years in Wexford. And I'm very, very excited about the opportunity that will come from that, which is just another fantastic thing that's going on.

So you'll see us talk a little bit today about the next stage for the business. And I'm confident that today, our revenues outside Australia are at or above what they were at the time that we IPO-ed the business in 2017. And while they're not as profitable as we would like them to be in the U.S., we're certainly beyond benchmark in Ireland. And there's really no reason that we won't close the gap on those earnings over time and very dramatically grow this business, which is particularly exciting.

So on Page 11, many years ago, for people that are new to the group, I used to sit with investors who weren't that interested in the sector, let alone Kelly Partners and they'd say, "Can you just give me the story in 10 seconds." So this is KPG in 10 seconds. This is where this slide comes from.

Lots of green dials, basically, revenue up 18%, margins are very strong. Parent NPATA, very pleased with. Returns on equity at 40%. I don't think anyone can be too upset about that, 38.8% on the underlying group NPATA. Gearing at 1.52x net debt to EBITDA, I think, is very moderate.

I saw a large competitor backed -- PE-backed competitor recently here in the U.S., 6.5x net debt to EBITDA seems to be very common, which is not Kelly Partners. And to emphasize, we can fund in the manner that we have the type of growth that we have for decades at these levels of gearing at 2.5x or less.

Cash flow is up 20% to $32.4 million and our cash conversion is -- I think our teams are doing an exceptional job there. Our people remain very, very effective, as you'll see with revenue per FTE and our group operating cash flow at 47.9% is a slight tougher number we're happy to see.

So tons of graphs on Page 12 and 13, which I'll leave for you to admire and not me that these are our teams just epic efforts and on a consistent 20-year basis. And I really want to emphasize that, Ken and I have the pleasure of presenting these results, but this is 100 partners, 700 people who every day turn up for their teams and their clients and make a difference in their local communities, and I could not be more proud of them.

On Page 14, this is a slide you've seen before, but Stage 5 of what we're doing is really this is what we've built in Australia. Can we now take this business global over these next 5 years. And the answer, I think, is yes. But we'll be doing that with our partners as we always have. So it's not a sort of HoldCo operation. It's a 51-49 with our partners. And at $134.6 million in '25, we're on our way to try and double that again because 7 is a lucky number and 7 doubles would be excellent. And so that's what we're on about. The revenue CAGR remains very, very strong.

I might leave the rest of these slides for you to review in your own time, but I think much of it you've heard from me before and then really hand over to you, Ken, on the financials and then take some questions.

Okay. Awesome. Thanks, Brett. And great to see everyone again and have the opportunity to present the financial results for 2026. This slide, we publish every year for the group, and it has the consolidated metrics as well as the attributed metrics for the parent. As Brett alluded to earlier, we've had investors ask us about just focusing on the attributed measures. And that's why we presented the Slide 5 in the presentation that is a one pager on just the parent attributable economics and metrics.

So going forward, if you're after group and parent measures, look at this old slide. If you're just after -- all you want to see is parent attributable economics, then look at that new slide that we published. I won't go through this slide in much detail because a lot of the metrics and measures are covered in the later slides.

So on the P&L, revenue of $159.2 million, an increase of 18.2% on the prior year, driven both by organic revenue growth of 2.9% and acquired growth of 15.3%. I just want to highlight here that if we exclude the effects of consolidating offices that we did during the year and exiting unprofitable clients, our organic growth was 4.5%.

On the right there, operating EBITDA margins of our operating businesses was 28.4%. Our Australian businesses achieved 31.9%, which is a very strong result. And on the right here, you'll see that revenue has grown 18.2%. Our operating expenses have increased in line with that. Our underlying EBITDA has increased in line with that. And I'll leave the rest for you to look at. At the very bottom of that table, underlying NPATA to shareholders of $10.8 million, up 18.9% on prior year.

In terms of the balance sheet, 1.52x is our leverage ratio as at 30th of June 2026. The group return on equity of $40.8 million (sic) [ 40.8% ], parent return on equity of 35.7%. If we look on the right there, lockup days, which is something we like to measure regularly because it gives an indication on how well we are managing our working capital is very strong at 52.8 days, which comprises of 8 WIP days and 45 debtor days.

On the summary of the balance sheet there at the bottom, you'll see our total assets of $229.9 million, having increased because essentially of the acquisitions that we completed during the year.

On the next slide, in terms of our debt and liquidity, we had as of 30th of June, $89.4 million of facility limits, of which we drew $74.7 million of drawn debt and $70.7 million of net debt, leaving us with $18.6 million of cash and headroom, representing 25% of the gross debt drawn.

I just want to highlight there on the right because we have had, again, some investors and shareholders misunderstand, they think that the consolidated debt is all debt relating to parent, and that's not the case. This table, which we publish every period shows that where the debt actually sits. So in terms of the $74.7 million of total debt in the group, $28.5 million sits in the parent's balance sheet and $46.3 million of the debt sits in operating businesses balance sheet. So I just want to make that clear to everyone to see that. And as we said before, the group gearing increased to 1.52x EBITDA from 1.42x in the prior year due to the debt that's been taken out to complete the 6 acquisitions during the year.

This is a new slide that we have put in this year. Again, we have had feedback from shareholders. We used to publish and we still do in the appendix a slide called net debt per partner. We think that this is obviously a much better way to look at the debt situation or the leverage of the group. And here, I've presented since IPO, all of our debt-to-EBITDA metrics for the last 8 years.

And you'll see that I've put different calculations, net debt to underlying EBITDA, net debt to underlying EBITDA after you take out rent expense, net debt to statutory EBITDA, if you reduce rent expense and you don't add back the nonrecurring items, what would it look like?

And if you look at the history of the business, we have never exceeded 2x EBITDA in the last 8 years, which demonstrates the disciplined approach in us repaying the debt. And as Brett said just now, we come across examples in our competitors, that has much higher leverage than what we have. So we think this is very moderate.

I also note here at the bottom left of this slide, we often also get asked why we don't include contingent consideration as debt. So contingent consideration is the deferred component of the purchase price when we make acquisitions, and that's because we pay this through saved operating cash flow. We actually don't borrow again to pay for this. We set aside cash flows in our businesses to pay for those contingent consideration. And that's why we don't count it in the leverage ratio.

In terms of the cash flow, very strong. As you can see there, $32.4 million of cash from operations, up 30.1% from the prior year. If you take out the scheduled debt reductions of $13.1 million, you get to a free cash flow to the consolidated group of $18.4 million, which has grown 50.5% on the prior year.

You will see that during the year, we drew debt of $23.1 million, and we used that primarily to complete the 6 acquisitions during the year of $20.5 million, and we also did fit-outs on 3 of our offices of $3.5 million. Again, $13.1 million of scheduled debt reductions. We think that is a very disciplined approach in repaying down the debt, and we're very pleased about that.

And then the parent NCI waterfall, which we have presented since the previous year showing how we get from the 51% to 49% share of the net profit before tax to the statutory split, which is affected by parent taxes, interest on parent debt, depreciation, additional investments and nonrecurring expenses.

I might just go quickly before I hand back to Brett, just to those -- to the parent attributable slide on Slide 5 and just explain quickly what I've done here. As I said, this is a one page that shows all the economics of the parent. Previously, all of these metrics are available in the slides just in different sections, but we've put it now together in one slide for everyone to refer to.

You will see there on the top how the consolidated revenue and EBITDA per the statutory accounts and how we then kind of do a waterfall to show how that then the parent gets a share of the operating business underlying EBITDA. It spends the additional investments, it spends on interest, depreciation, income tax to arrive at the underlying NPATA. And on the right there, you'll see some parent specific measures, balance sheet return and valuation metrics that I think will be helpful to everyone.

So with that, I would like to hand back to Brett. Thank you. Brett? You're on mute, Brett, sorry.

Thanks, Kenny. Just for everyone that's attending today, we have a Q&A service where you can put in a question, and we can do our best to try and answer that question. And so we'll give you a moment to do that.

General comments are that the business is in a really tremendous place. We have a settled business model, and we are in a market where there's probably never been more acceptance of what we're doing as a good place to invest. There are -- we have had a strange year of people being worried by AI, but I do believe that there's a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the potential of that technology for our business coming through.

We believe that we've got a very strongly differentiated understanding and deployment in that space that will create tremendous value for the business to such a degree that we won't say much about what we're doing or how we intend to use that technology to make our shareholders better off, but we feel very comfortable that that's just a massive, massive opportunity. And I think I've said enough in various presentations over the last 12 months to give people some comfort that we're aware that AI is a thing, and we might have some ideas as to how to create some value from it.

I have written a shareholders' letter for our quality shareholders today that I hope you find helpful. And I want to acknowledge that the last 12 months, share price performance has been very distressing for many people, including myself that owns shares and quite a few of them in the business, although we do take a decades-long view of the business. And so we -- while I do find the gyrations of the share price annoying, I accept that, that's the mood of the market. And to some degree, that's just one of the things that you accept when you run a public company. Other than that, the business is very much in posture to aggressively grow from here.

We've mentioned in our presentation that there are 3 things that we're working on, and we're working -- we've been working on them for a couple of years. We've really invested a fair bit of capital and certainly a huge amount of time to really move the business now onto a global footing. And those things are to continue to investigate and at some point, execute a listing on an international exchange to secure long-dated debt funding in the style of Constellation's 15-year debentures. And to implement a dual class structure for long-term governance of the business.

So those 3 things we think will add huge capability to the businesses opportunities to grow. And that growth is really about taking our unique Partner-Owner-Driver model into markets where there is real demand, not least a few in the U.S. We think that our model very much sits between private equity buy 100% and grow you into a big monster and try to swim by yourself at an increasingly older range against a market that really is on the move.

Our model is tremendously unique and differentiated with a 2-decade track record that I think is without peer, frankly, in the industry globally. And I think that's probably become quite well known. So there's good acquisition pipeline, and there's real deep opportunity for the business.

Now Kenny, I can't see any questions there, whether they're published. Here we go.

They are in the comment section, Brett.

Focusing on SME clients, do we see the risk that your customer gets acquired and losing that customer?

It's true that from time to time, clients companies do get acquired. I'm pleased to say that we often keep them as clients, but it's very marginal at best as a risk to the business, and it's been that way for a couple of decades.

Number two, you are still working on the new structure and the financing of the company and mentioned that it takes a long time. Could you be more specific?

For the deal we look to close in Cyprus, we were pleased that we were able to attract from the Bank of Greece funding that duplicated what we've done in Australia. We've duplicated the arrangements that we have in Australia in Ireland, and we're confident we could do that in those places. We are working with Westpac on how we structure long-term for global growth, and we think that a 15-year debenture at HeadCo would do the best job of that, but executing that is not without its challenges. So we continue to work on that together and Westpac have been a long and excellent partner of the business.

And then there's a third question, the partnership in Cyprus that we look to buy in that deal didn't go through as the company suddenly asked for more money. That's true. Did we have to pay any fee for walking away?

No. We didn't have a break fee because we had a binding term sheet. And when the vendor asked for a lot more money at the end, we just said no. Deals that don't start well, seldom end well. And so we're very careful at this point. We've got a huge amount of internal opportunity, and we've got a lot of incoming partnership opportunity. And we're really continually trying to raise our standards as to the quality of the people and partnerships would bring into the business because when deals get difficult, they do absorb a lot of time and they don't create additional value for that time. So they're the answers to those 3 questions.

I've got a bunch of people with us. Have we got any questions?

Brett, there's more in the review section in the Q&A.

Sorry. Had them in the published bit, great. Group investment went to 3.1% of revenue, the highest level for 5 years. Where do you think the right level is for the business? And what are some of the investments being made and expected benefits returns for the business?

It's true that our additional revenue at the group level is the highest it has been in 5 years, but a careful look at what the pattern of that is over the last 20 years is frankly more relevant. We are duplicating all of the capabilities to a great degree that we've got in Australia and on a global basis. And so that has been seconding team members in here, investing in infrastructure, technology and teams. And I think short of 1 or 2 people, we've probably got full capacity now that Australia has in the U.S. across Hong Kong and into the U.K. So we feel pretty good about that.

If we've been public the first 10 years of Kelly Partners, it would have looked like this. In fact, that's -- that number would have been about 4%, could have been up to 5%. I think when we started services, it was between 12% and 14% of revenue. And post IPO, we committed to the partners, we would keep it at 9%, and we would pay the difference at the HoldCo level. So I feel really comfortable in that. It's a capital allocation decision. It's taking internal profits and essentially directing them to internal growth. And any serious study the book "The Outsiders," will -- an analysis of our business would show that our best returns are from additional partnerships, and next best returns are from internal investments of these very, very high ROICs.

Brett, I appreciate if you can talk about the recent dilution in your shareholding down to 31%.

Chinmoy, I really took the position in a situation where there was a massive fire in L.A. and I said this to our shareholders at Berkshire catch-up in Omaha and again in London recently. There was a big fire in the middle of L.A. We're living in Malibu, and I needed to relocate our family to the other side of that fire. My wife has a serious heart condition. And Beck had said to me for years that the stress of the gyrating share price does affect her much more than it does me. And I committed over time that, as I had said publicly in 4 versions of the owner's manual that I would look to have a Warren Buffett style 35% shareholding.

So I took on some margin loans because when I needed to buy a new house, I couldn't get a term loan. I couldn't sell a bunch of stock. I approached Morgans who've been our bank for the IPO and they were going to sell some stock for me, but it came up short a few days later after being quite confident that they can sell the stock. And so in an emergency, I entered into facilities that I thought confident it was unlikely to see a 50% decline in our share price in the period given the results you've just seen, the market has moved in a different direction to our business.

It was simply a bet I took as a shareholder in a business that was founded by my wife and I, on the bet that I could take the $200,000 of personal billings I had and turn it into something. So most of our bets have gone okay. This one has gone strongly against me. I thought that our shareholder base was less likely than the market to react to broad AI fears. And I would say to our long-standing quality shareholders, many of whom have smaller holdings that we did have a couple of larger shareholders in February sell down pretty aggressively, one in particular across all of their portfolio. And that seem to have spooked the market.

So I've paid a real price for that, but we have diversified our family's financial position, which is good for my wife and kids, and we've been able to move homes in an emergency. It's not the way I would have liked to achieve that outcome, but it was the only option available after very exhaustive inquiries by me over a period of time.

I've held a significant shareholding in the business for 20 years. At IPO, I had 65 personal guarantees and Westpac released their charge on my family's trust in about January, February this year, which held our entire stake in the group. And so I think my wife and I have taken on a fair amount of responsibility for a long time. And I don't think in that period, I've been overpaid either. So it's generated a lot of commentary. I think a lot of the commentary is what it is. I won't say much more than that, but I feel very confident as the largest shareholder in the group to continue to be the largest shareholder in the group.

There's a fair amount of commentary around funding sources, given the low debt to EBITDA doesn't seem like it's limiting your near-term growth.

That's true.

What's the thinking behind the long-term debt funding?

Long-term debt funding at the HoldCo would allow us to grow very dramatically outside Australia. It's difficult to get an individual banking situation in each country to do what might be, at least in the first instance, smaller 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 deals. So Constellation software is the best example. They're in over 100 countries. They can move very quickly and give certainty to people about joining their group. We bought a 51% interest in Kudos Network, and it has got 60 firms in 48 countries. Many of those are smaller firms, smaller countries would be harder to finance. And certainly, Westpac couldn't do them under our current arrangements. And they've been a tremendous partner in helping us grow this initial global foundational footprint. So that's the thinking. But again, we're thinking decades out, trying to get the structure right and the funding structure right now so that we can do as we've done in the current business, just continue to get that flywheel moving and keep it moving on the same basis.

Can you please give any updates on acquisitions or partnerships and what you're seeing on the ground?

We're seeing a huge amount of activity as always. We feel unanxious about doing much. I think we did 6 or 7 deals in the first 6 months of the year, Ken, up to the end of January. The share price fell 70%, Ken. So maybe if we do less, share price will get closer to intrinsic value. Who knows? There is -- we'll just continue to do what we've always done, and that's not be desperate to do a deal that doesn't make sense. But there's a huge amount of activity in the market, and we'll always get out there this year. We're pretty confident.

Any update on listing in U.S., Canada markets?

I can't say much more because there are real laws about that commentary. But we are -- I have visited and shared openly online that I've been to the London Stock Exchange twice. I've been to Toronto Stock Exchange. We've been to New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. You can see disclosures in the accounts for the last more than 2 years of some millions of dollars spent on that effort to investigate the right venue long-term for the business and spent some money with lawyers to work on structure and other good things. So we are on the move there.

Shed some light on the number of acquisitions slowed down.

That's not my position. Just look back 20 years, there's a really clear graph of when we've been able to find good partnerships to join the business. And it's got to be the right people, right values and the right terms, right price, et cetera. And a lot has to come together to do to do the right type of a partnership deal. So feel pretty relaxed about that.

At what company performance would you reinstate dividends?

Great question. Probably none, Lynn. If we ran out of places to earn the sorts of ROICs that we're generating, then we might sell the company as opposed to pay dividends, Ken. But while ever our returns are miles beyond our weighted average cost of capital, then there's no plan to pay dividends at any point.

Should there be a change of listing venue, it's quite likely that we would fund out the very large franking credit balance that we have -- and if we were to do that, that would go out as a special dividend. But that's the only thought I've had of line of dividends. I don't mind the idea of having a base level dividend like Constellation has had, but the opportunities to grow have been so substantial over the last 5 years that we have thought that internally funding that was better for all shareholders than paying dividends.

You made a comment in the presentation earlier, U.S. is not as profitable as you would like. Is that because the inherent economics are lower or it's taking longer to get to maturity than compared to Aussie?

I think that profitability probably looks a lot like Australia did in the early years. We need a consistent effort into those businesses. And it just takes time to build a relationship and we've just completed a new office in Woodland Hills, which is amazing, and that will change everything about that business. We're building a new office for our large Florida firm that will be finished by 1 January. Again, that will dramatically impact that business. And it's just a step-by-step process that you can do in 6 weeks, but often when you don't have the relationships that we would in Australia, it might take 18 months to 2 years.

Again, we feel unanxious about that because we can see clearly in the P&L where the opportunity is. And we actually think that that's an understanding that isn't in this market generally. So we actually see a very, very big opportunity in this market as a result of sorts of margins that we're seeing in firms that we look to bring into the group. That's actually quite an interesting opportunity.

And that might be the last question that's in that list. How do you intend to scale the acquisition engine in the event that you're able to raise some debt?

It's a great question, Patrick. It would be a matter of scaling the teams in various markets. And so we really like businesses like McDonald's who have sort of 5 global markets. I can see us having teams in each of those markets. So North America, U.K., Australia, Pacific, potentially into Asia and Africa and Middle East, so Middle East and Africa and Asia. And this is a 20-year view rather than a 20-minute view, but there's no question we could scale teams into those places and grow those businesses dramatically.

We're getting a lot of inbound from private equity groups who have bought into groups and now have had 10 firms and are like what do we do with this thing. There's not an obvious public market exit and a lot of these groups are not obvious targets for the very, very large consolidators.

So when I started, I was excellent and became excellent at getting an individual client or person that own an excellent business to come across to the business. And then I saw the opportunity in just bringing an entire firm into the group, which was just more efficient. Frankly, it took the same amount of time.

What I see today is this whole groups that have been consolidated, multi-location businesses that are like, well, where do we go? We don't really want to go to a big private equity group and we're sort of too big to be small, but too small to be massive. And so where can we go? And what I'm trying to set us up for is to be the consolidator of those consolidators. There's a global posture, the listed HoldCo that can bring many of those groups into the business.

I don't want to say too much more than that. It's a different thing to a degree to what we've been doing. But I think we'll see that come to shape over the next 5 years and I think in quite an exciting way.

If you could share your thoughts about long-term debenture.

If we could bring that together, we can do that as a rights issue to existing shareholders if there's appetite, and that would be the best way to give a shareholder a dividend-like return. So Mark Leonard at Constellation designed a 15-year debenture with inflation plus 6.5% and the total return was basically designed to mimic the 30-year historical return of equities on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

So we are contemplating and have designed an instrument that would allow shareholders to get a dividend-like return, income like return from a business that they understand that would also strengthen our ability to grow the equity value of their equity investment. And for anyone deeply curious about that, study what Constellation have done and how they've done it and imagine what KPG would look like if we can make that happen.

I'm also curious about your thoughts on any buyback.

there isn't the capital in the business today to do a meaningful buyback. And should we go to the market as we have, as you can imagine, over the last number of months, looking for that alternative capital, typically debt to fund a very large buyback. Those debt providers then typically start to try and encourage us to take the entire business private. And we keep the conversation that, no, give us a very large debt facility at the right prices, so we can buy a meaningful amount of stock back. It doesn't really move the dial if we buy $5 million worth of stock back. But if we had the capital, we would buy a very, very large chunk of this business back and cancel those shares. And we have a very strong preference to be a public company. So we intend to scale the acquisition engine in the event that you're able to raise.

So there's a question as to has the acquisition engine been unable to scale so far?

No, I wouldn't suggest that. I think a 2-decade 30% revenue CAGR performance is without essentially issuing additional shares is probably okay. And if you throw that performance on for another 20 years, as a shareholder and you hang around long enough, you might be pretty happy with what happens.

Is AI giving any noticeable benefits?

What I'll say to that is very strongly, yes. But what I won't do is tell you how or why or anything else. I'll let the other accountants try and work that out. And what we're not going to do from this point is run the sort of education service for other firms in our industry and other consolidators.

How is the acquisition price in the U.S.A. affected by competition from private equity?

I must say there really isn't any impact on the part of the market that we are looking at. There's a real sort of bifurcation private equity into very large firms. And there are some sort of now popping up sort of AI-led HoldCo consolidator style dot-com favored things that might want to buy small things. It's not affecting us. We have very much a proprietary deal flow line of 20 years where people know who we are. They know what we stand for, the difference that we can make, and we've got a proven track record and dozens and dozens of people that have partnered with us who can stand behind what we say that we will do with you in your business.

So I think we're in a very, very unique place. This is permanent capital relationship-based with decade-long view versus flighted PE capital with a transactional emphasis with a 3- to 5-minute attention span, in and out in 3 to 5 years. So I feel very, very confident that we're in an extremely strong position at this point. And I can't -- I must say I haven't been involved in the business at a time when the business was stronger. And so that I'm very, very excited about where we are.

Has the equity raise made through partners $11 and change led to any morale problems with the partners who bought at that price and subsequently saw the price drop $0.60?

Frankly, that's -- it's been a good education for our partners. I think I owned our equity for many years. And during COVID, we saw 60%, 70% price drops. During COVID, our share price dropped to $0.60. We issued at $1. There was never going to be a situation where any government contemplated not collecting tax even for a second. And so I'm very confident that the intrinsic value of the business is the focus of our partners. They've all made typically 10-year commitments to the business. And when they bought into the business, I explained to them buying into the business with a 20-year view, and I think you'll do okay. So I'm not concerned about that at all. If you're a short-term person, our firm and our stock is not a place for you.

What are your thoughts on recent acquisition of CBIZ by Grant Thornton at current depressed price? Do you see KPG as a potential acquisition target?

I think that CBIZ acquisition is instructive. I think it leaves a hole for our type of business to be listed on a U.S. exchange or a Toronto Exchange or a London Exchange. There's billions of dollars worth of invested capital in that business is going to be looking for a home and our returns have always been 3x on any major metric -- 3x better on any major metric than CBIZ's. So I think it's great that CBIZ has been or will go private with Grant Thornton. And I think that that frankly just presents an enormous opportunity for our business. I think our business today is by far the best performing publicly traded accounting group in the world.

If you look at 10 years, what do you think is the biggest constraint on KPG becoming a much larger business available acquisition target partner group capital?

If we can get the structure right, Warren Buffett, I think, wrote the best one page letter ever in the history of business when he wrote about Charlie Munger on his death and said Munger's contribution to Berkshire was the architecture of Berkshire. If we can duplicate that architecture to set us up to be able to compound for many decades from here, then I think I feel very, very excited about the future of the business. So structure kind of is everything. We've got a very settled strategy. And after structure, it's availability of flexible capital on the right terms, that's very long dated.

Do you need to change the stock market listing venue in order to raise the debenture debt?

We thought we did. We're getting some feedback that that might not be the case. And we are working with Stifel in Canada on that matter, and we can publicly share that. So we'll tell you more when we've got more news.

From Brendan Harrington. Brendan, great to see you. Brett and Ken, I hope you are both very well. Congratulations on 20 years, a phenomenal personal achievement. Phenomenal achievement in and of itself. So to do in a patient, principled and platform-building way of KPG, is something you should be especially proud of. Can you please speak more of the rationale and performance to date of the WrkPod acquisition?

Yes. The WrkPod acquisition is sort of sleeper business based in the Philippines, more than 1,000 seats that we are now -- we are using I'll say a little bit more. It's a very, very good question, Brendan. So we did a shareholders meeting in London. We had 35 investors there, including -- and I won't mention who it was, but a gentleman came up to me and said, "Look, I run the family office of this family. We have more than GBP 20 million investable capital in our HoldCo. I saw you speak in Sweden at the Serial Acquirers Conference earlier in the year, and I wanted to ask you one question." And he wanted to do that privately, so we did it before the meeting.

He said, "Will you take your Partner-Owner-Driver model over time and apply it to other verticals?" And I said, "Well, look, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates when asked what's the #1 thing you can do in business, answered simultaneously focus. So we will stay focused on the accounting sector." But at the same time, when WrkPod came along that can provide team members to our firms and to our 25,000 clients, the alignment and the fact that it was -- that has been built from scratch by one of our clients. So the values alignment and the business alignment was so strong. I saw this as an opportunity to apply our Partner-Owner-Driver model in this niche.

Now what we're doing under that effectively WrkPod, HoldCo is identifying niches where we can build these types of virtual teams that gym operators need, health care operators need, and I won't spend any more than that. But there's a dozen niches that we've identified that really need excellent people. And what WrkPod does is it doesn't just find random people. It actually finds great people and then train them, documents the systems of the business looking to work with them and then it trains those people.

So Brendan, what the opportunity there is, is to take that from 1,000 seats to 10,000 seats. And based on today's market cap, that business would be more valuable than KPG if we can execute that plan and by a significant number. Now I believe KPG will continue to grow. I think today's market cap just doesn't matter. It doesn't reflect the intrinsic value of the business. But I want everyone to be aware that we believe that the #1 asset of KPG is our Partner-Owner-Driver model that we invented, designed and refined over nearly 100 partnerships and transactions all apart.

And so as we find partners that want to take that model and really apply it with our expertise in coaching and guidance, I'm very, very keen to scale the use of that intellectual property across those vehicles.

Now longer-term shareholders will know that we attempted to do that in Texas here in the United States as a startup in the accounting industry, and we didn't have a partner that was able to execute and it wasn't all his fault, it wasn't all our fault and all of that. But one of the insights was that if we had somebody who had an established decent sized business and was more closely aligned in various ways, then we thought that might actually work very, very well.

So I'd just say that WrkPod is performing very well, and I believe we'll continue to outperformance sector and be a very, very valuable contributor to our business, contributor to our clients' business and our set of the group.

Another question, Jim, what are your observations post partnership with Hello AI on AI adoption and embedment by KPG?

We are doing well with the initiatives that we are running in the AI space. I would point you and everyone to Jim Collins' amazing book "Good to Great." He has a 6-part framework, and it talks about great leadership, great people, great thinking and then great execution, discipline. And the last step is technology as an enabler. What -- whether it's a dot-com boom or now in AI, it's very easy to turn that framework, and I'm seeing it in our industry to rather than start here to start here and say, AI will save me, AI will make me better. AI is going to be awesome, which it is awesome. But it's a technology and in a change program that Collins described and the flywheel that results from it, it has to happen in the right place at the right time.

And the way to think about it, in my view, is if we go and get the latest and greatest machine gun and we give it to 6-year-olds who aren't trained or even 36-year-olds that aren't disciplined, then the return on that machine is going to be very low, you've got to have great leaders of excellent soldiers with the right thinking, right strategy, right structure. And then that disciplined force needs to take that technology, whatever it is into the theater of war, if you like. So that's the way we think. And if you get that right, you get this flywheel.

The reason I'm so confident about our business' ability to extract enormous value from any technology and in particular, from AI is that we all operate on a consistent technology network, which is very, very unusual across accounting firms anywhere in the world. We have at least 80% commonality in our software stack which again is very, very unusual across any accounting groups that you'll see anywhere near our size. And that's because we have a 51-49 ownership situation where the HoldCo has control of certain things.

And one of those things is that the IT network and the software stack, and it's always been like that. And we've always done the work to do that change program to do that actual hard yards of operational efforts. And it is very, very hard work. It's much easier to buy something than to fix it.

And then because of the alignment created by our Partner-Owner-Driver model, we've got leaders and soldiers who are more like the SAS or SEAL teams than general armies. Most firms our size have huge audit practices. Our audit practice is less than 5% of revenue. So they have masses of people, and they don't have a 51-49 structure where there's any agreement on real governance, let alone who's responsible for what. And so our ability to move and move fast and implement technology, whatever that technology is, is miles in advance in the average group.

Now when private equity come in and think that they have power because they bought 100%, in professional services, just because you own 100%, it doesn't mean you have 100% of the hearts and minds. We have more than 100 partners who, on average, have signed agreements that say they're committed to the group for at least 10 years. That's 1,000 years of people commitment to our business. That's unheard of. And it's that commitment when s*** gets hard, which change, in particular around technology adoption is very hard.

When it gets hard, it's that commitment from the leadership and the fantastic people in the group that drives change through the business. So we are not a top-down organization. We have services from the bottom up with unusual alignment and partners who are driving this change who are saying, Brett, how can we go faster? How do we do this? We want to use that. Our services team serves those people.

And the dynamic and frankly, the high-performance culture that that has built in the team is unbelievably exciting. So I get most excited by the quality of our people, their alignment, their commitment to what we're doing, and that's a commitment to their people and our clients and communities. And so it's that area that I'm excited about.

Now I'm holding myself back giving you anything specific that we're doing. But I've said enough, if you go and you look at our -- my presentation in Sweden in March, which is the most I'm ever going to say about it, and you use your AI to look at everything I've ever said on any podcast or anywhere else and ask me the questions, you'll have a very good conversation with me based on what we've already shared. And I hope that makes some sense. What you will see is our continual strength of billings per person and revenue growth, which tells you a little bit.

Ken, did I leave anything out, my friend? If you've got anything you'd like to share? And certainly, to answer any other questions, we're right here. I've got time. I'm in Los Angeles today at 6:04 p.m. So I have nowhere to, sort of, rush off to a particular, other than dinner at 7:00. So I do have a bit of time for people.

There's a few more questions, Brett, in the review.

In the review. Okay. Recent news of Big 4 accounting firms, recently KPMG undergoing erosion of corporate trust, do you think it creates an opportunity for KPG?

I have had the view and started the group in 2006 because I thought there was an opportunity if you look at the Bain book "Founder's Mentality" to create a scaled insurgent. Big 4 are here. I've often said, I think they're cancer-ridden given their values and that their future looks like this, that their structure is not right today, et cetera, let alone tomorrow. I think those businesses have got a bit of a drift. I think there's an opportunity for us to scale. This is the industry. This is us.

The second tier will pick up some of that work. I think we are the best placed firm globally to be a specialist provider of very, very high quality, what we call a First Choice Accountants to private business-owning families going somewhere. I think we do own that space today and can own that space globally, and I don't fear the Big 4 or anyone else with respect to that. We are focused. So there's no big audit group. We're not doing public companies. We're not getting distracted with consulting businesses or ag businesses or whatever. So I feel pretty good about that.

What takeaways do you have other firms that recently listed globally, Andersen in the U.S. and MHA in the U.K.

So just very brief -- it's a very good question, Tristan, very brief comments. Andersen structure is incredibly complicated, and that business' history is interesting. So it's doing well. It's a good business, and we'll see. MHA in the U.K., for example, both of these have had successful listings and KPG has mentioned in both of their investor packs, et cetera. So MHA in the U.K. has, for example, I think, a 4-year partner commitment. And just jump in, ask your favorite AI to sort of compare the 3 of us and throw CBIZ in there in the mix, and I think KPG looks pretty good.

Patrick has asked a question. Nonrecurring expenses have a habit of becoming recurring. Can you shed some light on the nonrecurring expenses at the parent level?

Patrick, I think there's -- I've probably spent half my life telling people that if we keep running an acquisition-led strategy, we will continue to incur these nonrecurring expenses, and I don't think we could do a better job at stepping them out very, very clearly for any investor. But the best way for us to prove that nonrecurring would be to do no deals for a year and you wouldn't see any, but it's probably better if we do.

Any book recommendations, please?

So favorite books at the moment, Barry Diller, his book is exceptionally good. And John Malone, his book read back-to-back is very good. I think both of them are just very, very, very interesting gentleman. Their books, I think, have a number of lessons for sort of everyone, which is really cool.

Any other questions?

Tristan, just one comment on Andersen and MHA. When we went to list KPG, investors pretty much spat in our faces. The whole idea of a listed accounting firm was sort of an anathema to people. I think that you can see in the shareholders letter I published today, a list of private equity investment into the group, more than [ USD 10 billion ] in a very short period of time in these 2 listings, and I expect there will be more to come.

So I think our investment thesis is validated. I think our operational track record is good or better than anything that I've seen private or public. And really from here, it's a question of getting the structure right and the capital to deploy much, much, much more capital at high rates of return.

A very excellent mentor to me who's built one of the world's best compounders said to me, "Brett, look, if you could deploy some billions at 25% compounding, it would be better than deploying some millions, and that's an obvious observation, but he was very adamant, get your structure right, get the right access to the right capital at scale and get with deploying this model globally." So I'm excited by the more acceptance of what we're doing. I think our model is very proven and well respected. And I think the opportunity for the group is frankly gigantic.

Brett, I just want to chime in on Patrick's questions on the nonrecurring expenses. In that, if you look at the reconciliation table, there are actually 2 components there. That's in actual fact, they're just noncash accounting entries that don't really mean anything. So the first one being we are required by the accounting standard to record the present value, i.e., a discounted value of the contingent consideration. And every year, there's this unwinding of this interest into the books to get it to the current value. So that's one of the noncash adjustment, which -- sorry to be technical, but that's what it is. The second one is...

And it's very important -- like Ken, that's very, very important. Like guys, that's a huge number. There's no question that it's not real. It's just something we're required to do. And there's no question that we're not losing clients at anywhere near that number. So we don't -- I'd like to think that's not particularly controversial.

No, it isn't. And then, Patrick, the second one is this impact of this accounting standard that came in many years ago where the rent is actually capitalized. Therefore, it creates a noncash difference between kind of the depreciation of the right-of-use asset and the repayment of the lease liability. Again, this is so technical, but it's, again, all noncash that's been added back.

So those 2 components there, that's part of the nonrecurring expenses. That's always going to be there because that's simply an accounting noncash adjustment that doesn't really make a lot of sense. And that's why that's been added back. And the others, as Brett has alluded to, it's the cost of -- the one-off cost of us completing the acquisitions.

And various other things that happen from time-to-time. But it's a good one -- like today, with the use of AI, you can take our half year year-end accounts since IPO, throw them in there, ask it to give you a good explanation and see if it lines up with what makes sense for you. And I'm very, very confident that that will look okay for you. Thank you, Patrick. See any more questions here, Ken? We're losing a few people.

No.

All right. Well, going once, going twice. I appreciate all the answers. Thank you both. Thank you, Patrick. I appreciate everyone's attendance today. We always aim to give you clear information that is very, very transparent and hopefully helpful to you. If you've got any questions, please, at any stage, drop Ken and I an e-mail, and we'll always do our best to give you a swift and clear answer, even if it's just a reference to where we might have answered that before.

And as I love to say, thank you, Kenny, and to our entire team for what's been a huge year again and to Joyce for setting up today's meeting and for all of those people quietly doing incredible things within our businesses and within our group. It's always a great day to be an accountant. So have a great day. Thanks so much.

Can you hear me, Brett?

I can hear you. Can you hear me?

Yes. Yes, I can. We're live, Brett. So we're good to go.

Yes, that's cool. It just says my microphone is muted. That's all. But look, if we're live.

Good day, and welcome to our First Half 2026 Results for Kelly Partners Group Holdings Limited. My name is Brett Kelly, the Founder and CEO, and I'm joined by my colleague, Kenneth Ko, our Chief Financial Officer.

It's really terrific to meet with everyone today, and we'll have a short presentation, which was published this morning and we'll take largely as having been read, and then we'll move to some questions.

We like to have this front page that makes a quick clear summary. The team has grown strongly, while maintaining the revenue per person. We've grown our number of partners and businesses and are now operating in a new country, Ireland that's performing well.

Revenue has grown by 17%, revenue run rate has grown by 22% and shares have increased 0.8% over the period, which is still below the number of shares at IPO in 2017.

Our free cash flow per share has grown by 10% and our return on invested capital plus organic growth continues to remain strong.

Next page, Kenneth, thanks. We'll go through the highlights about us and capital allocation. But the big rocks that we wanted to share to understand, where the firm is and where it's going are these big themes, which are -- we are trying to build a global firm, an Australian global firm for private business owners, who we describe as people that want to go somewhere, so those active business owners. And we are now in a position, where we have a global team.

We have people generating revenue 24 hours a day, essentially 7 days a week all across the globe, which is frankly, tremendous, and we are delivering on this prospect of growing a global business from Australia through the U.S. and now into Ireland through our 51% ownership in the Kudos network that has 60 firms in 48 countries. We believe many of those firms will become Kelly Partners firms over time. with an emphasis on the expression over time.

In terms of M&A, we have a programmatic acquisition playbook that is well practiced and very well proven, and we are implementing that in the territories that we're seeking to play with our focus remaining on Australia, where we are obviously very advantaged.

We are building and have quietly been building a suite of software applications for our firms that are unique and different and give us a way of differentiating for our people and clients. And we are working on our data consistency and our ultimate implementation of AI broadly and specific tools to continue to make Kelly Partners the best place to work for talented young accountants that really want to help clients and build their careers.

We've outlined in some slides in simple terms what that all looks like, but we can see clearly that we are growing our revenue outside Australia, and that is developing a more differentiated posture and reality for the business.

We're very excited to see that the huge engagement of private equity over the last 5 years, we think will provide real opportunities for Kelly Partners. In the recent AI-driven rerating of businesses like ourselves and CBIZ that's listed in the U.S. we believe that many of these PE-backed investments are going to struggle to exit at valuations that their investments assumed. We believe that, that will create more opportunity for Kelly Partners as a listed permanent capital holdco at likely lower valuations.

It will mean, I think, that AI will drive fear into vendors, meaning that they will increasingly look to exit their businesses with their pending retirements. I think there'll be more dead PE deals that will provide acquisition opportunities over the next 5, up to 10 years. And I think there's a separation of the leadership-driven tech-enabled firms from the rest.

I think attitude and age to a degree are going to very much matter for the ability of a firm to adopt AI and apply it effectively. But AI will be adopted in every piece of software we use and platforms we play on by our clients and by ourselves. And so, I think it will just become ubiquitous and frankly, quite helpful for our teams.

Implementation in terms of acquisitions is the hard work, and it really matters and KP has a playbook and a track record that makes us very confident in our ongoing ability to win in that way.

In terms of software, since 2021, we've been building internal software development capability supplemented by external capability. And we've been building tools like a single point of truth for our directors that sits over the top of our other systems and gives us a unique view of how we're playing the game.

We've built applications for our teams, clients, client niche, and we're building an order platform for our Kudos firms. We just call that out because it's a quiet key part of our business that we've been investing in, and we will continue to double down in that space.

In terms of how AI will disrupt the accounting industry, I don't think anyone knows all of the ways that AI will impact, but technology has always impacted our industry, and it will continue to, I think, add value to our firm more than it actually destroys value.

The principal advantage our firm has is the quality of our people and their alignment to our purpose. When you take very smart people and give them new and better tools, I believe that we will be uniquely placed to find ways to create and deliver value with AI or any future technology.

Our clients' needs remain very similar. And in particular, our core product is our trusted advice, which we believe in a world of more information and easier computation will frankly become more valued.

While there is a commoditization of accounting generally that's been going on for some decades, certainly since my involvement in accounting 30 years ago, what's always remained true is that the people that have trusted relationships and really deep expertise at solving complex problems are best placed to prosper in a -- and navigate a changing environment, which our industry has always been.

So very interestingly, one thing to look at is the age of our workforce and our team are young, highly qualified professionals. And I think that this profile of our people and our partners, the average age of our partners is about 42 is very, very different from the industry.

The average age of partnerships in private client firms of the nature that we seek to acquire is typically over 60. We don't believe that cohort is going to be very good at taking on the new technology that is confronting the industry and creating opportunities for the industry.

We've popped a slide in there to show the sort of indiscriminate impact of recent share price movements with KPG is down 49.51% in the last 12 months and Constellation Software is down 49.94% that I'm feeling comfortable that this is a broader sell-off, Xero is down 52%, Salesforce down 40%.

We think the markets done what it is done. And what we will continue to do is focus on our business and let the market do whatever it does. It's Mr. Market is having a crazy day, and that's okay.

By the way, we've been here before during the pandemic, I think people will note that our share price fell well more than 50% and the world didn't end either. So we will seek to take advantage of the recent share price change through buybacks, using our employee share scheme to give our team long-term exposure to the upside of the stock. I'm very confident that we will very much benefit all shareholders by this momentary opportunity.

So calling out some quick highlights, we've got this KPG in 10 seconds. revenue growth of 17% in the half. Margin remains very, very strong. Parent NPATA is growing. Our returns on equity are strong, gearing is strong, cash flow and the efficiency of our cash conversion is strong. So we feel very good about the way the business is operating.

We speak to the long consistent business model and flywheel that we operate and its ability to generate consistent results. and remain very confident that, that model and our flywheel remains very strongly placed. I'm particularly pleased that we've had 6 firm join us in the last 6 months and the demand to join the group has never been stronger.

I'll leave these slides to read in your own time if you haven't read them yet, but revenue growth, EBITDA, programmatic acquisition, cash conversion, return on invested capital, return on equity are all in very, very strong places.

We've always looked at the progress of the firm in 5-year period. We said in 2020, 2021 that we would look to accelerate our growth, and we're pleased that over the 5 years since there, we've nearly tripled our revenue from $48.9 million to $135 million last June.

Our run rate is at $165 million. And so, we are in that acceleration phase that's requiring some investment, but we feel very good about our ability to foresee and deliver on the business plan.

We shared this slide on the earning power of the business and the sense of our numbers just for shareholders to have some clarity, and that's for you to review in your own time. So profitability right across all of the firms, EBITDA margins have improved, and they remain as strong as anyone I'm aware of at our scale in the industry globally.

In terms of capital allocation, this is a slide that we've shared consistently over the years, and we'll leave that there for your review. So we aim to build per share intrinsic value over time. And you can see the strong performance of our compounding of book value at a CAGR of 34.9% for nearly 19 years. It will be 20 years in June, and we're very pleased with that progress. We believe that it demonstrates that there's a systematic way and a flywheel to what we're doing.

Our mindset is as investors operating a holding company that experts at the specific small circle of competence that we understand, which is the $2 million to $10 million revenue accounting firms. And we think that's proven out in our track record over nearly 20 years. I'll leave this for you to review in your own time, but it just shows our emphasis and our focus on a return per share that is on issue for all shareholders.

EPS and free cash flow per share continue to grow. And again, emphasis on per share returns. And you'll notice from 2021 to '26, that returns nearly doubled in line with the revenue growth.

In terms of locations, we're pleased to be into Ireland with a fantastic firm and partner. It's a 55-year-old firm grown by father and son. And now with Stefan Asple operating, it's a great story. We're into India, Hong Kong and Philippines, strong in Australia and growing in the United States.

We are the only firm to my knowledge, from Australia that's ever had an equity interest in a U.S.-based firm. And we believe that the U.S., Australian and U.S. Ireland, niche cross-border private company and their family growth opportunity is very differentiated and very outside the realms of AI to disrupt ever.

In terms of the platform, the platform is very strong and very differentiated in our view. I'll leave that for you to review in your own time.

So our strategy to become a top 10 accounting firm in Australia is well and truly on its way. In our mind, we exclude the big 4 and other firms that are not pure-play accounting and tax firms. And we've really taken our place with names that have been around for 50 to 100 years longer than us in Australia.

We consider our position in the Australian market to be very strong with profitability far beyond our typical competitive firms and less exposure to AI impact on things like audit services, where our audit services are 5% of our revenue or less.

Most of these comparable firms are 25% to 40% of their revenue in the audit space. So we expect to continue to grow very, very strongly in Australia and to be able to maintain our profitability, our profitable margins in the sectors that we operate.

Now in terms of going global, that plan is proceeding and frankly, better than expected. It's an ambitious and difficult challenge to take on board. When you're trying to do something that other people haven't done before, no one would expect it would be easy. And it hasn't proven easy, but we are, as we always do, just working through to make that happen.

I really couldn't be more pleased with the progress we've made with the quality of our team, our partners and our impact in these markets. And the demand, frankly, is overwhelming and exciting.

So where I was hopeful and thought well considered in this approach 3 years ago when we started today, I'm certain that we can build a strong global presence for Kelly Partners as Australia's global accounting firm for private business owners that want to go somewhere more so than they ever have been. It's extremely exciting.

If you consider today, the business that we own by revenue outside Australia after 3 years is the same size as the business that we listed on the ASX in 2017. And that was in terms of our ASX listing after 11 years of building the group from the foundation. It's taken us 3 years to duplicate that size in each market. So it's a great effort by all of the team, and there's a lot to do to really build that business to its full capacity.

But it should be certain that the addressable market outside Australia is something like 10x the addressable market that exists within Australia. We will continue to drive our advantaged position in Australia, while gently proceeding to grow our private business in an intelligent and capital-light manner.

In terms of partnerships, this is how many we've done and sort of what the pipeline looks like. And we have a process, we have a great pipeline.

Great. I might hand over to Kenny to talk about capital allocation, which remains very strong and take us through the financials.

Okay. We've got one more slide here, Brett, on the additional investment and then just the financials, Brett.

Great. Well, I was a little bit early there, Kenny. Additional investment, we often get asked, could we get the full walk-through earnings or the full earnings through to KPG without additional investment.

We make really clear here how we've driven this investment over time and -- we've always got a return on this additional investment. It's really just a choice as to either pay dividends, retain cash or invest in the internal capacity of the business. We've chosen to invest in the internal capacity of the business and grow that business, and that has worked out really well. So we'll continue to do that.

We're looking for shareholders that are long term in their orientation in the way that we are as owners and that partnership has proven to be very, very effective over time. We're not -- while we will be very diligent about this investment, we're not running the business for short-term cash profits in terms of NPAT. We're looking at continuing to grow the capacity of the firm to drive these types of growth numbers.

I think that the return on the capital that we're investing is sensational, frankly, we're keeping it at strong ROICs. And so, I'm keen to deploy the capital available to that use.

Great. Thanks, Brett. So great to see everyone again.

Any time, Kenny. Any time.

Great to see everyone again present the financial results and highlights for the half year ended 31st of December 2025. I will start off with this slide that shows the key financial metrics for the group and the parent.

Starting off with the highlight for the year in an increase in group revenue from $64.9 million to $76 million being a 17% growth on prior year and the underlying EBITDA for our operating business is growing 15.2% to $21 million. The margins are comparable to last year. Our underlying NPATA for the parent has increased 12.8% to $5.6 million on $4.9 million last year, and we continue to generate great cash flows and strong balance sheet, as you can see below, and great return on equity and invested capital metrics.

On the income statement, as I alluded to just now, revenue increased 17% to $76 million. Our run rate currently is $164.2 million. The revenue growth is driven by organic growth of 4.2% and acquired revenue growth of 12.8%, noting that, as Brett said earlier, we completed 6 acquisitions this year, all of them throughout the year. So those acquisitions really contributed partly into the half year numbers.

Out of the 6 acquisitions, 2 we completed in August, 2 we completed in October and another 2 we completed in December. So really, those acquired businesses only contributed a few months of revenues and profits to the results.

Our Australian operating business EBITDA margin is at 31.3% and our group operating business EBITDA margin of 27.6%. I just wanted to bring everyone back to the profitability slide that Brett shared before, showing that the EBITDA margins for all of our cohorts has increased for the half, and it shows our efforts to increase those margins across all our businesses.

On the right there in the table, our underlying EBITDA increased 15.2% for our operating businesses and 10.8% after taking into account the parent additional investments. Underlying NPATA, as I said just now, attributable to shareholders, increased 12.8% to $5.6 million.

We continue to present our numbers pre-AASB, so including the rent expense because we think that makes sense and that's how we've shown numbers throughout the years.

In terms of the balance sheet, our net debt to underlying EBITDA is 1.79x compared to 1.42x in 30th of June 2025. And again, due to the debt we've taken out to complete the EMEA acquisitions that I just mentioned.

Return on equity metrics remain strong for both the group at 38.1% and the parent at 32.6%, respectively. Very pleased to see our lockup days decreased to 49.8 days, and it shows the discipline of which our business managed their working capital, and it's quite a bit of reduction from the prior periods.

In terms of debt and liquidity, our net debt increased $18.6 million to $77.1 million since 30th of June 2025, again, mainly to fund our India acquisitions and other funding requirements such as partner buy in loans. And I note that during the year, we completed those 6 acquisitions had revenues of $18 million to $22 million, so aligned to the net debt increase.

One thing to note for our key large shareholders, if you compare the working capital debt against the prior period, you will see a substantial increase of $8 million from $7.7 million to $15.2 million. And that's because at 31 December 2025, our bank, Westpac gave us temporary overdrafts to complete the 2 acquisitions in the half, and they were in the process of being refinanced to long-term debt. Both of them have been converted to long-term debt as of today. So those so-called working capital debts would be reclassed as long-term debts.

Our principal debt repayments for the half is $7 million. So annualizing that, that represents annual debt repayments of $14 million, and it's in line with the 5-year amortization of the loans. If you look at our acquisition term debt there of $60 million, that equates to around 4x to 5x the -- that annual repayment of $14 million. We continue to maintain a healthy cash and facility headroom. And that's the debt and liquidity slide.

On the next slide, the cash flows. Cash from operations increased 6.4% in the half. Our scheduled debt reductions increased from $5.4 million to $6.2 million due to the increase in debt, obviously.

And as I mentioned there, you would see that -- during the half, we repaid scheduled debt reductions of $6.2 million, plus an additional debt repayment of $0.8 million annualizing to a $14 million debt repayment.

Our growth CapEx there relates to a major fit-out of our Griffith office, which is a very well-performing business within the group. And again, our cash conversion is high at 101.1% for the half compared to 103% in the prior half and is consistent with our expected 85% to 100% conversion ratios.

Parent and NCI waterfall, I won't go through this in detail, but this provides us with a reconciliation of the 51% to 49% interest in the parent and NCI to the statutory profits shown in the financials.

And as you can see there, there are various parent attributed costs such as parent tax, interest and depreciation. They're comparable to what we've done in the prior half. And obviously, the additional investments and some non-recurring expenses. Those all contribute to the difference in the proportion between the parent and NCI earnings.

And that's it for me, Brett.

Good man, Kenny. Thank you very much. Why don't we go to questions? That's probably enough from us and really keen to -- we've got a great showing of shareholders today. So very pleased if you drop your questions in the Q&A chat. I'll get to work trying to answer them with Kenny.

So current share price, notwithstanding what has changed in the last 6 months that impacts the decision between investing capital and acquisitions versus buybacks.

Nothing has changed other than the change in the share price. Acquisitions are still our first and best place to invest, and you'll continue to see that. We think share prices just move around, and we've never run the business with a short-term focus on the share price.

Second question, can you explain the slowdown in revenue growth from 24% to 17%?

Yes, I'll take that.

Yes. I would -- I throw that to you, Kenny. But frankly, I wouldn't see it as a slowdown. Over to you, Kenny.

So on that question, so if one looks at the run rate revenue of $164.2 million and you compare that revenue to our FY '25 revenue of $134.6 million, the increase is 22%. And as I explained earlier in the presentation, because of the timing when we did those 6 acquisitions, we did 2 in August, 2 in late October and 2 in December. really, they really didn't really contribute that much to the acquired growth. Hence, there's that timing difference in having that full acquired growth reflected in the numbers. I hope that answers your question.

Just looking for any other questions? I can't see any other questions.

I think, Brett, you have to click on the new post and it generates the new question.

There we go. I'll just open it again. So Brett, during an interview with compounding quality in October '24, you mentioned that Kelly Partners was investing in AI through a joint venture with a 51-49 partnership to develop AI-specific tools since then there's a little public communication on this initiative. Can you provide an update?

We have looked at that joint venture and a number of others and we've decided instead of doing those joint ventures to continue to work with our own software development and partners within the business.

The terms and pricing of those proposed joint ventures didn't make any sense to us. And we believe that we had more to contribute than was being recognized. So we just continue to push on ourselves with our own initiatives, and we feel very comfortable with that approach.

There's a lot of developments going on in AI that is just application-specific that we think might be useful in the short term, but we don't see them having any particular enduring value and getting duplicated very quickly. So we're being constantly asked to invest either time or capital in these joint ventures, always been -- been careful, where we involve ourselves.

And next question, you've have been very positive about the impact of AI on the profession, given the significant efficiency gain AI could unlock combined with the structural supply-demand imbalance. You previously noted that accounts currently perform roughly 8 tasks out of the 80 task clients require. When would you expect those efficiency to translate into higher organic growth for the group?

I don't expect higher organic growth. If we have organic growth of typically, we think about 6%. It comes out at about 4% after we continue to acquire firms and get rid of some of the poorly performing clients that typically impacts our reported organic growth. I'm pretty happy with 5% organic growth. And if those tools deliver more organic growth, that would be nice, but not necessarily a focus for us.

How would you currently -- next question, how would you currently describe the M&A pipeline? Has the market softened?

There's never been any impact of our share price on our M&A pipeline, certainly not a negative one. People really sell because they're ready to take on a partner that can add value and/or retire. We've got a very, very strong pipeline, as strong as it's ever been. It continues to improve every year. And we just don't see any particular negative impact at all.

Next question, group has made substantial additional investors. which have impacted NPATA and EBITDA margins, when should investors expect to see the returns on these investments, improved profitability and operating efficiencies.

If you look at overall organic -- sorry, overall growth in revenue, if we're growing at 30%, it takes us longer to get margins up to the levels that we would like because we just have less time to focus on each of those businesses that join us.

But frankly, we're really matching our effort with the ability of a firm that joins us to take on our effort to get those margin improvements. I'm comfortable with where the margins are at the moment, and I expect them to continue to remain very strong.

Next question for us uneducated Americans, can you translate the term debtor days?

Debtor days are receivable days and lockup days are work in progress days plus receivables days. basically the working capital being absorbed by our business.

Can we get an update on any potential IPO?

We are working to make sure that we've got the debt that we need to continue to grow the business. And when we've got the resolution of our debt structuring sorted out, it is our intention to pursue a listing on an appropriate market other than the ASX. And that's about as much as we can say about that legally at this time.

And you built strong -- next question, you built strong momentum through programmatic acquisitions, Philippines BPO platform is now material to group capacity. How do you balance accelerating that offshore leverage with preserving partner economics?

The Philippines BPO is not focused on providing team members to Kelly Partners. It's a business that provides team members to all sorts of businesses. Out of its 1,150 team members, less than 20 of those would be with Kelly Partners. But that number can grow over time, and that will help us to have the right number of people right across all of our firms all throughout the world, as well as maintain and improve partner economics.

Next question, back in July 2025, KPG sent out a shareholder survey about potential future investments. Any update about that survey?

No update at this point.

Next question is the recent internal capital raising to still be used for the reasons stated at the associated meeting.

Yes. Yes, it is. We are going to continue to deliver on all of the undertakings that we have made.

A question about -- can you talk more about Kelly Partners Investment Office. We can't buy KPG shares by a KPIO, as far as I understand with the rules, the independent trustee rules that relate to that vehicle.

We can check that. It would certainly make sense.

And at what share price would you consider buybacks over acquisitions?

I've always said that when I think about investing in a business, I wouldn't buy one share in a business if I wasn't prepared to buy all of the shares of that business. Certainly, at the price that -- at the current share price, I would be more than happy to own all of the shares of our business.

That said, our current posture is to continue to partner with firms in their growth, and we see a huge pipeline of that opportunity. We see that as our core competency, as our real tiny but valuable circle of competence, and we expect to continue to do that and do a lot more of that.

That said, we are a holding company. We have investment expertise. We found this pocket of opportunity in the accounting industry 20 years ago. If we were of the view that we found another pocket of opportunity, then we would seek to develop that opportunity as well.

We've spoken, I think, comprehensively on AI and there's plenty of information in the pack. There's a question there around, is it an opportunity, I think we've spoken to. Can you please talk more about the fortress balance sheet initiative that you're kind of working on and that we referred to during the full year presentation.

Yes, we have the view that we should keep gearing low as we have. I think Kenny, net debt to EBITDA.

1.79x -- 1.79x.

Yes, 1.79x, we think is very conservative given the 6 deals we've done in the last 6 months. We typically see that sort of contract strongly. We don't see any particular pressure on our balance sheet at all. And we will look -- the way that Berkshire Hathaway has over 60 years as a public company, we're always trying to run the business like a battleship that can perform in all circumstances.

And we traded strongly through the global financial crisis in 2007 and '08, and we traded very strongly through the pandemic, and we continue to trade very, very strongly. I'm very confident about the business' positioning relative to what we see in the industry in particular.

I think we shared as much as we want to share about what our software developers are up to. We run -- we try to run a balance between being very transparent and being very careful not to share the trade secrets of KPG. You can see the results, most of the -- most businesses that are achieving outstanding results in their industries are doing that largely through trade secrets.

And so, we wanted to let shareholders know that we, for a long time now, have been working on our software development capability, which definitely entails thinking about automation, AI and these types of areas.

We hadn't previously disclosed the dollars that we've been investing. We wanted to just reassure people that we are not asleep to these issues, while we're not sharing the specific things that we're doing that might give our competitors a heads up to what we're up to.

Can you give an update on increasing the size of acquisitions team?

Yes, it's really just 3 of us doing it. We keep looking for talented people to join the acquisition team. But when they turn up, they are expecting salaries of up to USD 0.5 million, that's a proposal we can resist at this point. So we'd like to increase the size of that team, but I'm not sure that -- at that type of pricing haven't been able to convince myself at. That makes sense as of now. That might change.

And you've got us here. If there are any other questions, I'm just seeing that there's another one. Please lock them in. We're going to be out of time soon. Not a question, just a comment. I hope that you and the businesses have come back stronger from the recent California fires and Florida hurricane events.

Thanks. Thank you for your comment. And yes, we're doing our best. It's been -- last year was a terrible year, and so I'm very happy to be in 2026 away from that.

Where do we see the business in 10 years, 20 years?

We're trying to build an enduringly valuable holdco that has as its principal business, the Kelly Partners accounting business that will be Australia's global accounting firm for private business owners, who want to go somewhere.

Over a 20-year period, we see ourselves as being a globally respected listed holding company with a reputation for compounding per share value as well as anyone ever has as well as finding unique pockets of opportunity to drive those returns.

Not a question, but thank you for the shareholder letter about the stock price performance earlier today.

Happy to get that out. We don't spend a huge amount of time on Investor Relations, not because we don't respect our investors and our shareholding partners, but rather, we know that the best thing that we can do for you as shareholder partners is to focus on the business to keep our eye on the ball.

Share price is just a scoreboard, interesting, but we can't do anything about the scoreboard by staring at it. We have to keep our eye on the ball of the business and delivering on the business plan and the long-term value creation vision of the business. which you can be assured we are doing very strongly.

Any book recommendations, recently required big ideas on nuggets and wisdom.

I just saw that Jim Collins, a shareholder of mine, has literally just texted me before this meeting and shared that Jim Collins, who's one of my favorite authors, has a book coming out called What to Make of a Life. And the subtitle is Cliffs, Fog, Fire and the Self-Knowledge Imperative. I'm really excited about that book coming out. I think that will be quite cool.

I've loved reading Brad Jacobs, How To Make A Few Billion and How To Make A Few More Billion. In particular, the piece I like about that book is Brad talks a lot about mindset. If you read the book by the founders of 3G Capital talks about thinking big. You read the first chapter of Steve Schwarzman's book talks about the importance of thinking big. Certainly, both of those gentlemen have challenged me to think much bigger about what's possible for the group.

But what Brad Jacobs has done is encourage me to focus on the role of mindset, and he talks a lot about cognitive behavioral therapy and meditation and ways to think to keep yourself centered and grounded amid the pressures of life and also how to expand your sense of what's possible.

I love his little obligation that is his little observation that he says, you've got to bring a love vibe to your business. People have to feel really cared about and that they're on a mission with you. And I just love that idea. I just think it's very nicely expressed and very much aligns with my values and the values here at Kelly Partners. So really, really like that book.

Now I have a bad books at any one time going. And -- and I'm excited to share that I have written a new book called Progress, which is 75 big ideas for life and business, which you'll see come out this year ahead of our 20th anniversary on June 12th. That's a book that I've pulled together. It's the first time I've written anything that's not an interview book.

I also published this year a book called Political Wisdom, which is interviews that I've done with 6 Australian Prime Ministers. It's part of a wisdom series I've been writing since 1998, one every 7 years, which is nearly the 30th -- 30-year anniversary, which is cool.

And I pulled together a book of 14 interviews from our Be Better Off Show podcast that we'll publish this year as well. So keep your eye out for those. We always got some book recommendations. So great question. Happy to chat about them.

In terms of nuggets of wisdom, I must comment that I love the letter that Warren Buffett wrote for Thanksgiving. I love the way that he handled his transition. I thought the last Berkshire meeting was not only hugely informative, but very, very moving.

And the most impactful part of that meeting was when Buffett was asked why had he been able to continue for 60 years in his role. He mentioned that he just liked working for his shareholders, who many of he knew personally, and he loved delivering for those people. I thought that was profound and moving and certainly share that mindset. I highly recommend anyone to watch that 2 or 3 times over. There's just acres of wisdom in that particular meeting and it was really any sharpest.

Where can you purchase books? All will be on Amazon. And if you can't find them, let me know, and I'll find a copy for you.

Well, going once, going twice, I really appreciate everyone joining us today. I think we've got through about 30 questions. I hope our responses have been useful. I'm incredibly excited about where the business is, the opportunities we have in front of us, the value that we're delivering to our people and our clients and the positive impact we're making in our communities.

When we started the business in 2006, we hope that we could make the accounting industry better for its people and clients and communities, and we know that we're doing that.

I want to thank all of our team members from our most junior through to our most senior, all of our partners, all of our shareholders and all of our clients and the communities that encourage us in and allow us to prosper within them.

We're in the business to make a positive difference. We have a flywheel of positive outcomes, as we put in more effort, we get great positive feedback, and that encourages us to frankly do more. And so, I feel incredibly blessed and privileged to lead our organization of people that I just could not speak more hardly of or be more proud of.

The most consistent feedback I get on Kelly Partners is when I send people to meet our people and they come back to me and they say, it's the most incredible privilege of my role, the feedback that I received from all over the world saying I cannot believe Brett, the quality of your people, of their work and their care for their people and he or she is a client it is really, really very, very special.

So I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today on the 10th of February 2026. For me here anyway, Kenneth in -- I'm here in California. Ken's in Hong Kong, we probably should have mentioned and for all of you in Sydney and around the world that have joined us today.

If there's anything that we've missed, please reach out to us with an e-mail, and we'll certainly come straight back to you. I appreciate your time. And as I like to say, thank you, Kenny, and have a great day.

[Technical Difficulty] 2025 AGM for Kelly Partners Group Holdings Limited.

I am Brett Kelly, Founder and CEO of KPG. It is now 9:02 a.m. Sydney time, and there being a quorum present, I declare the meeting open for business. I confirm that the meeting has been properly constituted. The company considers it appropriate to hold the 2025 AGM as a virtual meeting in a manner that is consistent with the Corporations Act 2001 and the company's constitution.

In opening the 2025 AGM, I would like to introduce the Board of Kelly Partners Group Holdings Limited and other individuals who are in attendance: Mr. Stephen Rouvray, Non-Executive Director; Mr. Ryan Macnamee, Non-Executive Director; Mr. Paul Kuchta, Executive Director; Ms. Ada Poon, Executive Director; Mr. Kenneth Ko, CFO; Mr. Jeshan Velupillai, Partner of BDO; Mr. Ron van Driel, Director of BDO; and Mr. Tim Aman, Partner of BDO. There are no apologies for today's meeting.

Being a virtual meeting, I would like to thank you for joining us via the Zoom webinar platform. You will see at the bottom of your screens that the Zoom webinar contains a Q&A function. The function can be used to submit questions or comments. When you submit a question or comment, please start with which resolution it relates to so that it can be addressed at the appropriate time. Questions which relate to the general business of the company will be collated and addressed after the close of the formal business of the meeting.

The agenda for today's meeting will be as follows: Kenneth Ko and myself will provide a corporate presentation update, after which we'll proceed to the formal matters to be considered at today's AGM with opportunity for questions relating to the formal business. And finally, there will be an opportunity for questions and discussions, including on the corporate presentation.

Well, great to see everybody, and we have prepared a very quick update presentation that we are pleased to share with you this morning. The business continues to prosecute its mission, values and vision, its strategy and in a clear and settled structure with much vigor and energy, and I'm incredibly humbled by and pleased with our teams across all offices for their massive efforts in moving forward clients and making a positive impact in their communities.

The business again this year has grown its revenue by 25%, as you can see on that front slide, which is consistent with an average revenue CAGR of approximately 30% over the 19-year history of the firm since 2006. We're very pleased that the free cash flow per share and the return on invested capital continues to be very strong and in line with our long-standing approach to what we're doing.

To Slide 2, we shared with you for clarity why we exist, which is to help our people, private business owners and the communities we work in be better off. Be better off means healthier, wealthier and wiser. Our values, we want the best for others. We do what we say, and we work as one team looking for the best way to do what we do. In terms of vision, we want to be the first choice employer for great talented people in the industry and we want to be the first choice firm that founders who've built tremendous firms think of when they're thinking about the succession and the future of their business. For our clients, we want to be their first choice accountant to business owners -- to private business owners in any market within which we operate.

In terms of our strategy, we've shared consistently that in Australia, we're looking to be a top 10 firm, and the 2024 results will be out soon enough -- or 2025 results will be out soon enough in The Australian Financial Review that will indicate that we are close to or may well have achieved that target. We are not looking to pursue size for its own benefit or for its own sake, and we never have. What we are seeking to do is continue to grow the opportunities within the business for our best people, and it's that motivation that drives us to continue to grow the firm.

In terms of globally, we want to see our Partner-Owner-Driver system working across the U.S., U.K. and Ireland to deliver outcomes for young professionals and all professionals that want to be better off in those markets. And we are making some great progress towards that end as we speak. The advantages that the business really operates from is business -- our group business model, our Partner-Owner-Driver system and our central progress team. This is all a system that's been refined in a critical activity network over nearly 20 years. And I'm very pleased to see the growing strength and self-reinforcing in a flywheel sense of those advantages.

Our structure is worth understanding. Any business may have a strategy to do things. But unless it's got a structure to capture those efforts, it really is not going to be as effective as it otherwise would be. I'm often asked anywhere we go, what's the difference between our Partner-Owner-Driver model and a traditional roll-up. I think we explained that very well in this slide, and I'll leave that to people to consider.

In the middle of that is our progress pyramid, which is the way that we think through the core operations of an accounting group or accounting firm, local firm. In terms of locations, we have 35 businesses located across Australia, the United States, Philippines, Hong Kong, India, U.K. and Ireland. And to think that our small 4-person team started in June 2006 has been able to continue to grow in this way to a team of 700 people across these locations is gratifying, but we haven't finished yet and we're not easily satisfied souls. So, we're very excited about where we are and what lies ahead.

On the next slide, we're emphasizing that we're becoming a leading partnership platform. It's not hard to be a leader in an exercise other people aren't pursuing. It's one thing to be a platform. It's another thing to be a platform that seeks to develop partnerships. We think the lost art of relationship building and partnership building is really where we're strong, and we know that our Partner-Owner-Driver model is particularly unique in aligning the interest of all stakeholders right through our organization.

In terms of team members, office locations, partnerships, our Great Place to Work score, all of these good numbers, ultimately, they are numbers that we should feel very pleased with. But what I'm most pleased with is the quality of our people that drive these results. Specifically for our shareholders today, there's now 25,000 active client groups with 95% tax and accounting that's recurring income streams with strong 4.7%. We're targeting 5% organic growth. Our historic average growth rate is 4.7%, and a very strong NPS. For shareholders, there's been 29.8% revenue growth per annum since 2007. Current return on equity at 30.5%, a strong 5-year average. Cash conversion is nearly 100% at 99.8%, and more than 1,000% TSR since IPO.

On Page 7, for your reading pleasure when you get a moment is KPG in 10 seconds. I think, again, lots of good information. On Slide 8, what we're emphasizing is that the business is a business system that has a flywheel and knows how to grow. It's doubled -- the business has doubled 6 times in a row on average every 3 years. And it's not a straight line, although we've used a straight line there. That's what's available in PowerPoint. But really, the business grows and then it consolidates and it grows again and it consolidates, but there's a rhythm to the growth of the business that can only exist in the presence of a business system. And so it's exciting to see where that goes from here.

On Slide 9, we've shown the progress over 5-year periods. We early on showed people a start-up phase, a foundation, a build phase and an accelerant. We're really at the end of that 5 years come June 2025 of that acceleration phase, and we're pushing into this next 5 years. Now, we haven't shared this slide before on Slide 5, and I emphasize that these are estimates, they are projections, they're not a forecast or guidance, but there's a logical continuation of the growth of the business over the last 19 years, what will be 20 years in June. If we can continue to operate within the system that we've developed and with the rhythm that that our flywheel has been pushing forward at, then certainly, what I look forward to seeing happen is a continuing compounding of that growth.

This slide is really as much for our teams internally and all our stakeholders to understand that if we just continue to prosecute the argument in a gentle but vigorous energetic way that we believe that we can build a global organization for Australian private business owners that want to go somewhere that we aspire to. And to be the type of business that we want to be, we're looking to grow to this type of size, which, if it is size that is giving great opportunities to our best people, then it's a legitimate activity to pursue. So, unless we continue to prosecute our clear mission and values, then I'm very excited about what I think Kelly Partners can become, which is Australia's global accounting firm.

Now again, the best place to compete is a place where no one else is playing. There is no other Australian firm that's been grown since inception that can lay claim or seeks to lay claim to being a global business. We are populated in an industry in Australia with firms that carry the labels of foreign-owned firms. And so as somebody born in Australia, passionate about Australia and its future, I'm excited that our teams are building really key and core infrastructure for the future of Australia, our kids and their kids.

Australia needs a global accounting firm. It needs a global bank, and it needs a global law firm. We can't do anything about those other 2 things, but we can play where we play, and that is to build a global Australian accounting firm and that's pretty exciting. Anywhere I look in the U.S., there are Australians leading all sorts of institutions and organizations across every industry. That's the same in all parts of the world. And so I'm excited to see Kelly Partners take its place amongst those people that are pursuing things that I think really are in the national interest.

On Page 11, performance, again, a bunch of numbers, revenue growth, EBITDA growth, successful programmatic acquisition strategy. You'll hear me, I get embarrassed talking about our own good stuff, but try to just quietly keep banging away doing it. But you can see that we have a programmatic acquisition strategy and more than a strategy, we have nearly 20 years of consistently delivering based on our systematic approach in that space. Strong return on equity, strong return on invested capital and really great cash conversion, which speaks to the discipline and energy of our people.

In terms of performance, it is a secret goal of mine to have a compounded annual gain in book value of 35% for 20 years. We're at 35.4% after 19 years, and I'm confident that we'll get to June next year at more than 35%. The reason I think that's interesting is, if you imagine that we over the next 20 years on a per annum basis, and the business will become a significant and institutionalized organization. Now, I have no intention of doing half as well. I'm hoping we can do even better. But the efforts continue, and they continue in exactly the same ethos and practices they have since inception, which makes me confident that we can do okay over time.

On the next slide, Kenny has whipped up the adjusted book value versus KPG, ASX and ASX 300. This is kind of worth a read. But most importantly, you'll see the amount of shares we bought back, the valuations at which we bought them back and how well we've done from that exercise. What we're trying to show here is that we've grown the business with $18 million of external/internal capital. In U.S. dollars, it's, say, $12 million. That's a microscopic amount of capital, and it shows a lot about the discipline with which that capital has been deployed and the effectiveness of our system to get a return on capital.

On Page 14, you'll note that since the IPO where we had, I think, 45,400 shares, the total share count has decreased since the IPO, while we've grown revenue by 4.5x. And that isn't always apparent to people, but what I think is worth understanding. In terms of capital allocation, we shared this slide to demonstrate that we understand what capital allocation is and how to do it. and do it effectively. And we think that it's a scorecard for our shareholders to really understand and think through. You'll see us that consistent with this understanding over the long term.

What I would say is in 4b, where we've made an occasional large acquisition and we've defined that as over $5 million in revenue, that number now is probably much larger than $5 million and you will see us do more of these larger acquisitions, not because we seek to, but we are being approached by more and more larger firms, which is interesting in and of itself.

On Slide 16, it just demonstrates this consistent pattern of programmatic acquisition. The value of those firms over that period of time, not only have we increased the number of deals we're doing on average each year, but the size of those deals is also -- dollar value of those deals is also increasing.

On 17, 28% of our firms now qualify, that 7 out of our 25 firms as top 100 firms in their own right. The #100 firm in Australia is AUD 7 million last year. Recently, we updated our annual brand study. We wanted to demonstrate the brand impact in Australia, how strong the brand is at this point. We are some 38 years on average, younger than our top 20 competitor firms, but our brand is very materially stronger with our target client base, which is really helping the business in every sense.

On Slide 20, as our return on invested capital remains very strong, from '21, we continue to make additional investments now. I am asked from time to time, hey, Brett, how much more are you going to invest beyond the 9%? We're really leaning into using our internal capital to grow the business. It's the cheapest form of capital and the returns on making additional acquisitions and growing the business are our highest source of return.

We have more than $300 million of potential partnership opportunities in our lead database currently. And we are doing everything we can to grow our team and to deploy our internal capital to take full advantage of the position that we find ourselves in. We're not squeamish on that at all. You've seen over time, it's grown and we've squeezed it back. But we are in a very, very large global market where we are very advantaged, and we are looking to take full advantage of our position at this time.

So, I'm going to hand over now to our Chief Financial Officer, Kenneth Ko, who's been doing a great job running around Australia and the world, helping us move the business forward.

Over to you, Kenny, to share the financials.

Thanks, Brett.

Just going through these slides, which were presented in the FY '25 results presentation. So, I'll really quickly just flip through them. And any shareholders can also refer to the results call for a more detailed version of these slides.

So, these are the financial highlights for the FY '25 results. As Brett indicated, our revenue of $135 million for the year increased 24.5% on the prior year. Our margins of the operating business at 28.3%, and our underlying NPATA for the parent at $9.1 million, representing a 13% increase on the prior year.

In terms of income statement, as I've covered before, I just wanted to highlight there that our Australian businesses are generating operating EBITDA margins of 30.8% and those other items I've covered previously. This slide is very good in presenting the different EBITDA margins of the different cohorts in the established and growth and subscale accounting businesses as well as our other complementary businesses and our global businesses, which are -- we obviously just recently have partnered with those businesses in those global markets and are working with them to improve the margins of those businesses.

In terms of our balance sheet, very strong. And again, our lockup is maintained at 58 days with a very low amount of WIP days of 7.7 as of 30th of June 2025.

Kenny?

Yes?

Kenny, just on that, just to add some color, we're seeing in the U.S. market, competitor groups are geared on a net debt to underlying EBITDA at 4.5 to 6.5x. So the business is very conservatively positioned from a balance sheet debt perspective. But we could do quite a lot more to dramatically grow the business from here. There's a lot of balance sheet firepower versus our peers.

Yes. Thanks, Brett. That's right. And as Brett said, our net debt to underlying EBITDA as of 30th of June was 1.42x, which increased slightly on the prior year due to the debt we used to complete the in-year acquisitions. As Brett indicated, strong return of equity measures there for the group of 38.8% and 31.9% for the parent. And that's that.

The debt and equity liquidity slide shows as at 30th of June 2025, we still hold significant headroom in terms of our debt facilities as well as cash on balance sheet. And on the right there, there's a table showing the movement of the debt across the period and primarily, again, relates to us taking debt out to complete the 6 acquisitions that we completed during the year.

In terms of cash flow, cash flow increased by 23.3%. Our free cash flow increased 7.2% because of an increase in the scheduled debt reductions. As I previously indicated, we're paying debt down at a 5-year period from drawdown. So the debt repayment increased as we put on debt, but we like the accelerated debt repayments and keeps us disciplined in managing our cash flows. And our cash flow conversion for the period 2025 is 99.8% and consistent with our 85% to 100% conversion ratio.

And the last slide here is the parent and NCI waterfall, just showing the proportion of the NCI and parent net profit before tax and how it reconciles to the parent net profit after tax in the financials. And I'll leave everyone to look at that.

That's it for me, Brett. You're on mute, Brett. I think it might be the resolution slide, slides next.

Great. Thank you, Ken.

I really like this photo. It was from our shareholder briefing in Omaha 2 years ago, I think, now. And it's a fun photo at fun times.

Now moving on to -- I think I now hand over to Steve Rouvray, our Non-Executive Director, to move to the formal business as set out in the notice of meeting.

Thanks, Brett, and good morning, everyone.

The notice of meeting was distributed to all registered members on the 24th of October 2025 and is to be taken as read. Voting on all resolutions will be conducted by poll. For the purposes of the poll, I appoint Nigel Bulling of Computershare Investor Services for the company's share register, who have examined and prepared the summaries of proxy forms received to act as returning officer and to conduct the poll.

Shareholders in attendance via Zoom that have already submitted a vote by proxy should note that your votes will already be counted towards the poll. You do not need to lodge another vote unless you wish to change your proxy instructions. Shareholders in attendance that have not submitted a vote by proxy and wish to vote on the resolutions being put to the meeting today can do so by following the instructions provided in the letter to shareholders.

On your screen, there are instructions for how to log into Computershare's online voting portal. Please note that the online voting portal is now open and will remain open until the poll is declared closed. If you are eligible to vote at this meeting, a vote icon will appear on the voting platform. Selecting this icon will bring up a list of resolutions and present you with voting options. To cast your vote, simply select one of the options. There is no need to press a submit or enter button as the vote is automatically recorded.

Your votes must be submitted prior to the poll being closed for them to count. All undirected proxies or open votes that have nominated the Chair of the meeting as their proxy will be cast in favor of each resolution in the Notice of Annual General Meeting. Your Board strongly recommends that you vote in favor of all resolutions.

Are there any questions on the voting process?

Okay. I don't think there are any questions. So, proxies have been inspected and all those validly lodged have been accepted. We will now proceed to the resolutions set out in the Notice of Annual General Meeting.

The first item of business is to receive the company's annual financial report for the year ended 30 June, 2025. The financial report and the reports of the Directors and the Auditors are now laid before the meeting. There will be no vote on this item and is a discussion item only. The company's auditor for the 2025 financial year is BDO, represented by Jeshan Velupillai and Tim Aman of BDO, and they are present to take questions relevant to the conduct of the audit and the preparation and content of the internal auditor's report.

So, I'll ask if there are any questions or comments on the financial report or reports of the Directors and Auditors or any questions or comments on the management of the company or any questions relevant to the conduct of the audit and the preparation and content of the auditor's report to be put to the Auditor? I don't believe we have any questions in relation to those things at present.

So, we will move to Resolution 1, the adoption of the remuneration report. Resolution 1 is as follows: to consider and if thought fit, to pass, with or without amendment, Resolution 1, adoption of the remuneration report as an ordinary resolution: that for the purposes of Section 250R(2) of the Corporations Act and for all other purposes, approval is given for the adoption of the remuneration report as contained in the company's annual financial report for the financial year ended 30 June, 2025.

If you wish to discuss this resolution, please submit your questions via the Q&A. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are shown on the screen. And I now put the motion to vote. Shareholders can vote via the Computershare online portal. I don't think we have any questions in relation to that.

So, I will just hand back to Brett to put Resolution 2 to the meeting. Brett, could you put Resolution 2 to the meeting, please?

Yes. I'm just trying to see it. There it is. To consider and if thought fit, to pass, with or without amendment the following resolution as an ordinary resolution: that for the purposes of clause 13.3 of the constitution and for all other purposes, Mr. Stephen Rouvray be reelected as a Director of the company.

Brett, if you could just put the resolution to a vote then.

I've got the long script. Shareholders in attendance that have not submitted a vote by proxy, have you done all of that already, Steve?

Yes. Now, we're on Resolution 2.

Not that clear on my script, my friends, but I'll put that Resolution 2 to a vote.

Are there any questions for the Q&A?

I don't believe.

No question on this resolution?

No.

Okay. We'll move on to the Resolution 3 then. Resolution 3 is as follows: to consider and if thought fit, to pass, with or without amendment Resolution 3, the reelection of Mr. Paul Kuchta as Director as an ordinary resolution: that for the purpose of Clause 13.3 of the Constitution and for all other purposes, Mr. Paul Kuchta be reelected a Director of the company. If you wish to discuss this resolution, please submit your questions via Q&A.

Steve, we do have a question from a shareholder on this resolution.

Okay. Yes, I did see that. Sorry, which -- okay. Yes.

It's the fourth question.

Yes, I've got it now. It's from [ Stephen Mayne ]. Thank you for disclosing the proxy position to the ASX along with the formal addresses. The only minor protest vote was 7.6% against the reelection of Paul Kuchta. Do you know what caused this and why some shareholders voted against it? Is it an independence question? Did any of the proxy advisors issue a report ahead of this AGM, given that we are now capitalized at around $400 million and are attracting more institutional investors to the register?

Brett?

No, we don't. We have no insight into any of the voting. We have virtually no institutional shareholders, and we don't have any proxy advisors issuing a report. We find the voting, if you look back over the last 7 years to various resolutions, completely mysterious. We wouldn't be able to know who voted for what, let alone why. But we do take the point that the business is growing and it may attract more institutional investors to the register and they may advise us or others may advise us as to how they vote. But as for now, we have no insight into that. Yes, that's about it.

I also saw another question. Do we want to share that question around Resolution 4? No, I'd just come to that after the next resolution.

Right. We can come to that when we put the Resolution 3 to motion first.

Perfect.

Right. Thanks, Brett. The proxies received to this resolution are listed on the screen. I now put this motion to vote. Shareholders can vote via the Computershare online portal.

Right. We'll move on to Resolution 4, which is as follows: to consider and if thought fit, to pass, with or without amendment, Resolution 4, ratification of prior issue of placement shares under Listing Rule 7.4 as an ordinary resolution: that for the purposes of ASX Listing Rule 7.4 and for all other purposes, shareholders ratify the issue of 374,957 shares on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory statement.

If you wish to discuss this resolution, please submit your questions via Q&A. So, there is a question there, Brett, if you would like to address that.

The shareholder asked a question, why are you bothering to refresh the 15% placement capacity for such a small amount of shares? Please don't bring back similar resolutions in future years as it sends a message that you're planning a big selective placement when pro rata raisings are the fairest way to raise capital. What is our history in terms of doing selective placements? And do we always follow them up with a share purchase plan for retail investor to participate on the same terms?

Any thoughts on that, Ken?

We have not raised any capital since our IPO other than the most recent one we did in June, which was an internal capital raise with our partners for $4 million. We have refreshed that 15% placement capacity to allow us the maximum flexibility to pursue such raisings if we wish. It doesn't mean that we will or we won't. And that's why we've refreshed the 50% placement capacity.

That makes sense. Just for clarity for that shareholder, if they're not aware of the history, we've raised $4 million since the IPO in 2017, and that was a placement to equity partners or firms that have joined us in the last sort of 7 years that hadn't had a chance or couldn't get a decent sizing on market. But I think that any examination of the way that opportunities have been made available to all investors would make any shareholder very pleased with the conduct of the business.

Okay. Thanks, Brett. The proxies received on the resolution are shown on the screen. I now put this motion to a vote. Shareholders can vote via the Computershare online portal.

Now that concludes the resolutions to be voted today. As noted, we are conducting a poll on all 4 resolutions using Computershare's online voting portal.

Can all shareholders please now ensure that they have submitted their votes. I will allow another minute before the poll is closed. If you have any questions in relation to the submission of online votes, please send them through right now.

Should we move to the Q&A, Steve?

Yes. I don't believe that we have any questions. So I declare the poll closed and formally charge Nigel Bulling as a returning officer to count the votes for the poll. The results of the poll will be announced to the ASX and displayed on the company's website once they're available.

We'll move to other business. Is there any other business that can lawfully brought forward, bearing in mind that once we close the formal meeting, there will be a chance for people to ask questions relating to the company and its business.

If there's no further questions, I'd like to thank all shareholders for their attendance today, and we'll now end the formal part of the meeting. I declare the formal meeting closed. As advised earlier, the results of the poll will be announced to the ASX once they are available.

We will now ask if there are any other general questions that shareholders would like to ask. If you wish to raise a question or make a comment, please submit your questions via the Q&A.

I think we have one question from a shareholder that has been lodged prior, Brett, and I'll address it to you, which -- with the recent share price volatility, has the company bought back any shares? And if so, at what price?

So the company hasn't bought back any shares recently. We are quite constrained currently with the capital that we have available to take on the opportunities to bring firms into the group that want to join us. So our first and best use of our very limited capital is to buy into firms and partner with them where that opportunity exists. And we are frankly overwhelmed with opportunity at the moment. So we haven't undertaken any buybacks.

If we were to do that, these are the sorts of -- the company is trading at a share price today, that if we had excess capital, we would certainly be buying our shares back, and we would do that with a great deal of enthusiasm in that large scale. But unfortunately, we're not in a position to do both at the moment. And so that's an opportunity for someone else.

Thanks, Brett. There are some other questions in the Q&A there.

Yes, I can take those. So there's a question, best practice governance is to have an independent Non-Executive Chair. Have we given this consideration in order to improve our governance ratings and attract more institutional shareholders to the register. Also because Brett Kelly is Executive Chair, it is not good practice for him to use the exemption from election for CEOs under Australian law. Has Brett ever been elected to this Board? And will he agree to subject himself for election at the 2026 AGM?

Have I ever been elected to this Board? No. And will I subject myself to election in 2026 AGM? No. Best practice Non-Executive Chair, it is true. At IPO, we were told we must have an independent Non-Executive Chair. But we chose to ignore that, and I expect to continue to do that. Attract more institutional shareholders. Well, we frankly think institutional shareholders have not taken up the opportunity that KPG presented to their clients.

We've, I think, performed well and given an excellent return to our high-quality shareholders. And whether those shareholders are individuals, family offices, institutions, we're happy to provide an excellent return to whoever is interested in availing themselves of that. There was another question from the same shareholder, which was how many full-time equivalent staff do we currently have? Approximately 700.

And is this likely to fall over the coming 12 months with the rapid rollout of AI? Definitely not. It is -- over the last decade, there's been about a 50% decrease in the number of people studying accounting. It is very, very difficult to find high-quality people who have started accounting and want to be accountants in public practice. So the supply of accountants is very, very restricted and has been for many years now. And so we would hire every high-quality person we could, frankly, get our hands on.

Are we rapidly rolling out AI? Yes, we are. Right across the business, we have 5 people internally as software developers, and we are strongly and very energetically bringing technology to bear across every part of our client-facing businesses as well as our internal services operations. I would struggle to think that an organization of our nature could be more energetic in that pursuit while doing it in a way that's profitable.

Another question here. Can you please speak to the rationale behind the shared services acquisition in terms of how it fits the core strategic intent and what benefits it offers the incumbent business and whether this type of operation will continue to be an acquisition focus?

So the recent organization Workpod that joined us in the Philippines. The Philippines is a great hub for high-quality talented people that can work in Kelly Partners businesses globally as well as in client businesses. There's about 1,150 people within that business at the moment.

We think that we can grow that number over the next 5 years to 10,000 people and that, that business has tremendous opportunity to help us grow our core business at Kelly Partners and also to assist our clients and is another thing that we can do for clients and others will struggle to do. In and of itself, the terms that we have invested at and the nature of that partnership on a 51-49 Partner-Owner-Driver style model, we're very confident we'll add a huge amount of value to the Group.

On that earlier question about AI, it's still very difficult to get high-quality people. And so our view is that the future is a global workforce and whether they're located in the Philippines, the U.S., Australia, we're just looking for people that share our values and have the skills and energy to want to be part of what we're doing, and we're very, very excited about that opportunity.

Will it continue to be an acquisition focus? That organization was a client of the firm. And so we knew the principles and we knew the numbers and we knew the values and mentality of the people involved. And when they brought that opportunity to us to ask us to get involved, we were very, very excited about that.

The same shareholders ask, can you speak to the people, capital opportunities, deal flow and broader resources that are required to reach $500 million of run rate by 2031? We need to grow our team and our internal team, in particular, in the M&A space. So in the partnership space, we do need help in that area. We've recently appointed and looked to appoint another senior person in the people team in the legal M&A space and in the IT space around data and AI. But yes, it will take a growing services team to build that business. Today, we've got about 42 people in the team. If the business is 3x the size, I'd expect we'll have 3x as many people in the internal team.

On capital, we are looking at the moment to close a large debt capital raising on terms that we think are very, very favorable to the Group. And we continue to pursue that with energy to try and bring that to a conclusion. And when it is finalized, we'll be able to share more details.

We would be open to raising equity capital at the right price on the right terms, but not urgent and not critical. It is our view that along the -- in the same way that Constellation Capital or Constellation Software is used, these debentures and bond style long-term debt arrangements that the nature of the businesses that we are partners in is best suited to long-term, long-dated debt facilities. And I think we can attract the right debt capital at the right price to facilitate that.

In terms of opportunities and deal flow, I mentioned earlier, there's more than AUD 300 million of revenue in the pipeline, and we are not -- we're moderately active in terms of building that deal flow. We could do a lot more to be a lot more active, and we could close a lot more situations. If we thought that the organization itself could handle it and integrate in an intelligent way more than 25% annual growth, we don't want to see years where we do dramatic levels of growth that we don't very professionally integrate. So we're here for a long time, not a short time, and we want to see a compound situation for a very long time from here.

I think the final part of that was the broader resources that are required. Well, we all need to get more intelligent and more thoughtful and to know more about what we're doing, which we work on every day. And hopefully, by 2031, we'll be a bit more of all of those things that with good health and continued blessing, okay. What is the impact of AI likely to be on KPG? How are you positioning yourself?

We think AI is essentially, I think, as Steve Jobs describe the computer as a bicycle for the mind. AI will be like a bicycle for accountants. It is fantastic technology that is helping us enormously. There's 82 things that an accountant should do as a minimum for a private business owning complex family group. And our study demonstrates that on average, an accountant in Sydney does about 8 of those things. So accountants do about 10% of really what the client would want. And that means that there's a huge amount of additional service that clients would take on happily. If they were offered it, and AI is going to allow us to do that. I'm very excited about the technology and feel very good about how well positioned we are.

Frankly, smaller businesses, I don't know how they would equip themselves or equip or equip themselves with the AI situation. It takes real organization of your software stack and your team, your software stack, how your data goes in such that you can get it out and then some real thinking about how to actually use these tools in an intelligent way, not to just make things faster, but to actually create value and an economically positive impact on the business for firms doing under $10 million. I don't know how they're going to deal with it. And certainly, what's coming through our deal pipeline is firms saying, we think that looking at these types of issues with you together is going to be much easier and much better, and we're going to be much better resourced than if we try to handle this ourselves.

If they go and join very large mega organizations, they're worried, they just get swamped and they're not going to create value. So I feel like we're very nicely placed to deal with AI in the context of the firms that we're experts in, firms $2 million to $10 million, increasingly $5 million to $15 million. And I think, ultimately, it's going to push a lot of people towards the group, which is cool.

A lot of talk about group EBITDA being 30%, but relevant EBITDA for the shareholder group is close to 7%, if businesses [ change ] a shareholder profit of 8%. [indiscernible] 51%, the large discrepancy. Am I missing something? Yes, Benjamin, you probably are. And if you e-mail our CFO, Kenneth Ko, he'll give you a detailed explanation of what you're missing and can take you through those numbers. Kenny, if you've got a screen that you want to share?

I do. I do.

Do you want to take this shareholder, I can see his name here in this question.

Yes, very quickly. So if we published these quality shareholders' letters on our kellypartnersgroup.com.au website. And approximately 1.5 years ago, we published Quality Shareholder Letter #13, how we think about earnings. Now within this shareholder letter, you will see the reconciliation essentially between for $1 of earnings, how that flows through our operating business into the parent entity and reconciles to that percentage of revenue that you're looking for. So I recommend you to have a look at this shareholder letter, which will give you an explanation on that question you asked.

Beautiful. Thank you, Ken. Do we have -- do you have share performance-based Constellation has for their employees and management. The answer is no, but we will do something about that.

Also, are you planning on increasing the size of your acquisitions team apart from just you and Ken? And the answer to that is yes. We are planning to, in a significant way, grow the team in that space to take the load off Kenny and I and to dramatically increase the amount of work that we can do with the opportunities that are in that pipeline to try and better understand those opportunities and more swiftly bring them into the Group.

Can you please speak to the geographic spread of acquisition opportunities, what this means for acquired investment to acquisition integration, shared services resources on a global basis? Yes, we are most advantaged in Australia, and we'll continue to focus on opportunities in Australia. That said, there are obviously huge opportunities in the U.S. We now have more than 8% of McDonald's franchised stores as clients in our U.S. firms. In fact, we've got more McDonald's stores than exist in Australia, which is really exciting.

We're now at a core sites in the U.S. where the business has its own flywheel and can start to grow on itself and compound. We're larger in the U.S. today than we were when we IPO-ed the business in 2017. That said, we're more advantaged in Australia than we are in the U.S. We're into Ireland, and we're seeking to be in the U.K. We own 51% of Kudos Network, which has 60 firms in 48 countries, and we believe we're the preferred partner for many of those firms, one of which I met with this morning again, and we are just working through those 60 firms to see who wants to become a Kelly Partners firm.

So as I've always said, I don't really care where a firm is located. If they share our values and we believe we can really help them, then I'm excited about that. We are working with our Australian team and our U.S. services team to do the integration and shared services on a global basis, and we'll continue to invest our 9% a little bit more to do that. But we don't expect that, that's too burdensome. We're building it up in those geographies in the way that we built up Australia, which is kind of a step at a time.

Another question there. Is there a concentration risk on McDonald's?

No, there's a narrow market entry strategy, which was to partner with firms where we had real expertise and they did too that was shared. And McDonald's is part of that. If McDonald's struggles to do well, McDonald's a pretty good business. That's a risk I'm prepared to take at this point. But again, the business will grow and that concentration like it has in Australia at different times where we've had a concentration will be mitigated over time.

Just looking at the questions to see if there are any more. Is the U.S. listing still a priority?

Under U.S. securities law, we can't say much about any intention or otherwise that we may have to list on the U.S. Exchange, be that New York or NASDAQ or in fact, in Canada. But it remains a priority to maximize the long-term value per share of our shareholders. And if we think that a listing in a different market would assist that priority and that clear objective, then we'll definitely pursue that. And like everything we do, we'll pursue it with a lot of gusto and effort having done the requisite diligence. So we continue to consider everything that would advantage shareholders on a per share value for the long term every day, and that's certainly one of those things that has been and continues to be considered.

How you control for potential dilution of discipline when we have dedicated M&A staff along with the potential for more difficult integration is [ lower to earth ]?

Yes, great question, Brendan. So we're not intending to allow M&A to be sort of distributed to numerous people to do deals that make no sense. If you look at the growth curve that we think is achievable and the historic growth rate of the Group, it implies a number of deals that we can certainly manage. If we wanted to grow 25% a year, 5% organic, 20% by acquisition on $150 million, that's $30 million -- $20 million of that is $30 million at $5 million deal at 6 deals, a little bit less it's 10 deals. These are not numbers that as a CEO and as a CFO, we can't and ensure that all of the elements that are critical to the successful application of our Partner-Owner-Driver model success are present to maximize the chance of success.

So there shouldn't be anyone sitting there thinking, well, we're going to be doing 100 deals a year next year, and we're going to lose control, and we just won't be able to understand what we're doing to prosecute the sort of trajectory that we hope to deliver it's not a huge number. If we had $400 million of revenue today, and we wanted to grow 20% by acquisition, it would be $80 million. And at $5 million a deal, it would be 16 deals. And if it was a little bit less, it might be 20 deals, but I might have lost my hair and I might be getting older, but I can still manage to convince myself to get excited enough about what we're doing to look carefully at whether on 20 deals, the things that are essential are present.

So I wouldn't be concerned about that at all. Now if deals get larger and materially larger, and we are being shown deals that are materially larger, some gigantic and some just a bit larger. So AUD 10 million, AUD 15 million, AUD 20 million. Yes, we -- they're not going to be done 5 steps removed from me or Ken or our Board or anyone else that's senior and significant in the business that has for a long time, looked at these deals. While I will publicly mention that Kenny and I work on these things, there's a bunch of our senior people, including our Board and our senior partners who've got involved and assist in these things for many years. So I'm confident that we've got the discipline and the smarts within the Group to do a good job of what we've been doing and some larger deals.

Well, thank you, [ Brett ] and Kenny and Board have a fantastic Christmas and New Year. Cheers. Thank you. Now we might have exhausted everyone by droning on about our wonderful adventure at Kelly Partners. To all our quality shareholders, thank you for your long-term partnering in the business. We're excited to partner with our people, clients, communities and shareholders. And we're very excited to deliver day in and day out for all of you.

I want to thank our team, our clients, our Board and our shareholders for another tremendous year. I've frankly never been more excited about the business, more pleased with the development of our people and more excited about the future. So thank you. And as I love to say, have a great day. I think in more formal speak, we should conclude the question part. Thank you for no further questions. I'd like to thank all shareholders and Happy Christmas.

Thanks, again. Thank you, Board. Thank you, Kenny. Thank you, linesman. A good day was had by all. Thanks, Ada. Thanks, Ryan. Thanks, Steve.