Manolete Partners Plc

Good morning and welcome to the Manele Partners Plc Investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged and they can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I would now like to hand you over to Mina Holton, CEO. Good morning to you.

Good morning everyone and thank you for attending this presentation of our 2026 annual results. For those of you that don't know me, I'm Nina Halton, CEO. I joined Manilay in 2014. At that time, I was the only Manilay in-house solicitor. The in-house legal team has now grown to 17. I was appointed to the board in 2022 as managing director and was appointed CEO in August of last year. I'm delighted to be accompanied today by our CFO, Will Sawyer, who joined the business in December and he's made a real impact with his significant public markets experience as we have sought to bring greater clarity and transparency on how we plan to grow our business and deliver returns for our shareholders. As a management team, we recognise it has been a difficult year for investors in our business, and like you, we are disappointed with where the share price is. As we've come on to talk about, under the refreshed leadership of myself and Will, we are wholly focused on delivering for shareholders. And I hope today we can provide some insight into how we do that going forward with a business that remains the clear market leader and has exciting growth opportunities ahead. There will be an opportunity to submit questions at the end for those who haven't done so already. If we don't manage to get through all the questions or if you would like to speak privately, please do reach out to myself or Will over email. With that, I'll hand over to Will to introduce himself and I'll then provide a quick recap of the Manolet model and what sets us apart. I'll give an overview of the FY2026 headlines before handing over Will to take you through the numbers in detail. I'll then finish on strategy and outlook, including the launch today of our new medium term growth targets. Will.

Thanks Meena. So I'm Will and I joined Manolet at the end of 2025. I have over 25 years of finance leadership experience and also previous capital markets experience as CFO of Zinc Media Group. And I helped grow it significantly over a seven year period. And I've joined Manilay as I see it as a fantastic business model and with lots of opportunity for growth over the coming years.

Thanks Will. At Manale we have a very simple and very effective business model. We purchase and monetise insolvency claims. What sets us apart is that we actively manage the claims we purchase in-house. That means we have full control over litigation strategy, cost management and settlement decisions. This approach has underpinned the track record we have built over the past 17 years and across almost 1500 completed cases. And across those cases we have unlocked recoveries for creditors who would otherwise have received nothing. HMRC is often a major creditor in addition to trade creditors who have provided goods and services and not been paid. Our highly experienced in-house legal team draws on a nationwide network referral of insolvency practitioners and insolvency lawyers. sourcing and assessing as well as managing the claims. And this helps us to continue building the book of cases we buy and we're working through as we seek to continue to increase our 5% share of an insolvency claims market estimated to be worth in the region of 500 million in gross settlement value in a year. Let me explain how the process works through an illustrative example. When a company enters into an insolvency process, there will be typically claims against the former directors or third parties, but the liquidator or administrator has no fighting fund to pursue those claims. The coffers are empty, a state of affairs often brought about by the directors themselves. An insolvency practitioner has a duty to realise assets for the benefit of creditors. A claim or cause of action is an asset of the company, just as the stock or plant and machinery. And it's only an insolvency that a cause of action can be sold, and this gives rise to the Manolet opportunity. Having identified a claim, but being without the means to bring the claim, the IP refers the claim to Manolet. Claims typically involve misconduct by the directors in breach of duty, monies due under a director's loan account or antecedent transactions such as preferences or transactions at undervalue where a creditor has been paid ahead of the general body of creditors or company assets are being transferred without value being received. There could also be claims against unconnected third parties such as banks or auditors. We carry out strict due diligence on both recoverability and legal merits and recoverability is key. We have an in-house team dedicated to investigating and reporting on the proposed target's ability to pay. If we are satisfied on the asset position, the legal merits are considered. Because of our in-house legal expertise, we are not dependent on external legal advice, which enables us to make swift and well-informed investment decisions, and we are experts in assessing and pricing risk. When a claim is purchased, external solicitors are instructed to conduct the litigation process, but they are closely managed by the Manolet in-house legal team, which has the knowledge and expertise to ensure the optimum litigation strategy is adopted and costs are strictly controlled. The skill of a good litigation lawyer is in negotiated settlement rather than trial, and over 90% of our claims are concluded by agreed settlement. Once a claim is assigned to Manolet, the defendant and those advising him know the claim will not go away, that proceedings will be issued, and that we will proceed to trial absent settlement. In most cases, the defendant will engage in ADR, usually mediation, and a settlement is agreed. To ensure the maximum settlement sum, we typically allow the defendant some time to pay. The average time to complete a case is 14 months. with an average of 12 months to collect on a settlement sum. Bringing this to life, here is a great example of a claim we settled in December. This was a claim in order to professional negligence, an area in which we have expertise and can really add value. The IP had identified claims, but our in-house analysis enabled us to identify a higher quantum The claim was further strengthened by obtaining an expert report. We advanced the claim in correspondence following all the pre-action protocols, whilst inviting mediation in accordance with our usual practice. As this was an insured claim, we were dealing with the professional indemnity insurers and their lawyers, who can be challenging opponents. However, they recognised the litigation risk they faced and Manolet's commitment to the claim, and they agreed to mediate. Having purchased the claim in November, 2023 for a nominal sum, we successfully negotiated a settlement of almost 2 million pounds two years later. Being an insured claim, the settlement was paid within two weeks. We recouped our initial investment and costs, our net proceeds being 855,000. Will is now going to explain how our model works from a cashflow perspective.

So this is the cash flow on an illustrative case and one that settles for 100 grand. So going from left to right on here, we've paid two grand to purchase the case. And then we have incurred 24 grand of legal costs, external legal costs in running the case up to completion. So in total, we've invested 26 grand of capital upfront. We then settle for 100. That is our gross proceeds, or from a P&L point of view, that is our realized revenue. We then deduct the 26 grand of capital that's invested, and that gives us the net proceeds of 74. Net proceeds are typically split 50-50 between the IP and Manale and so we make 37 grand in net proceeds and from a P&L point of view that is our gross realized profit. So hopefully that's helpful just in terms of giving an example of how it comes through in cash as well as the P&L. If we now move on to the performance in 2026

Against that backdrop, I'm proud of the strength of our H2 performance to deliver realised revenues in line with expectations and increased our gross cash receipts. Moreover, the progress we have made on our strategy and building our forward book gives us confidence in our growth prospects for this financial year and beyond. This underpins the launch of our medium term targets with these results as we have sought to more clearly map out where we want to take the business and how we will do that. Over to Will to take you through the FY26 numbers in more detail.

So Meena and I have focused the business on four things. Realised Revenue and Realised Profit Realised Revenue and Realised Profit As an aside, we also recognize unrealized profit, which relates to the estimated value of ongoing cases. But this is not our focus from a P&L perspective. So the focus is on realized revenue, realized profit. The third thing is cash generated in the period. And the fourth thing is the forward book. The forward book is our primary indicator of future performance. And the forward book represents management's estimate of future realized revenue from ongoing cases. So in FY26 realized revenue was almost 28 million and that was slightly down year on year due to one case completion a significant one moving into FY27 and that was a strategic decision as we expect to settle that case at a higher value by taking a little longer over it. adjusted realized PBT was 100 grand that was impacted by a 1.8 million specific bad debt provision that is where we've got two debtor payments that were delayed and the net exposure to those two debtors is 4.7 million and we've made a provision of 1.8 against that 4.7 If you were to exclude that provision, adjusted realised PVT was 1.9 million in the year compared to 800 grand the year before. Gross cash receipts were 1 million or 4% up year on year and the forward book saw an 18 million or 37% increase in value and that's really what provides confidence for increased revenue and profits in the coming years. So onto the income statement. The presentation of the income statement has been revised so that profit attributable to unrealized cases, i.e. estimated profit on ongoing cases, that that unrealized profit is recognized only within gross profit rather than being reflected within both gross profit and gross revenue as had previously been the case. And we think that that helps enhance the transparency of our performance with the focus being on realized revenue. So a couple of things to note on the income statement, gross margins were up five percentage points, which I'll come on to. and there were 700 grand of savings in overheads and finance costs excluding one-off and non-cash items. The overhead cost savings relate in a large part to the restructure of the leadership team and finance costs have reduced by half a million pounds due to agreeing a new RCF facility at the end of the prior year with a reduced interest charge and then we've also seen interest rates having fallen during the year as well. And it's worth pointing out that overhead cost savings were achieved in addition to further investment being made in scaling the platform with three new legal team hires. And of course, there's a lag between this investment in new lawyers and realized revenue and profit coming through in future years. On here, you can see that despite a small reduction in realized revenue compared to FY25, realized revenue in FY26 was still considerably higher than in previous years. And that reduction in revenue was more than offset by improved gross margins. So 37% versus 32% the year before. And that improvement in gross margins was driven by the cartel settlement in the first half of the year as an increase in the number of higher value higher margin case completions in the second half. Moving on to the balance sheet, net debt increased slightly to 11 and a half million and we've got an RCF debt facility with HSBC with a limit of 17 and a half. We saw a renewed focus on cash collections. So despite the two debtor payments not being received as anticipated, overdue debtors fell by 18% to 12.3 million. We also saw current debtors within term increasing from 57% to 62% of total debtors. Investment in cases are shown at fair value and that's based on the company's estimate of future realized profit plus prepaid capitalized costs. And the investment value is increased by almost 5 million to 46 million due to an increase in signed prep cases. Also due to an increase in the value of signed case of cases signed in previous years and an increase in work in progress related to ongoing cases. and that increase in the value of investments has helped to drive a 3% increase in net asset value. I will come on to explain the cash flow now. So gross cash receipts of 26.6 million were 1 million higher than the previous year. And that was due to a good level of completions in the year, but also this focus on cash collection related to completions in previous years. So how does that then flow through to net cash flow? So we saw a small net cash outflow of 200 grand in the year, and we've managed to increase investment in future growth despite one-off cash impacts. So the improved gross cash generation is the 26.6 million that's on the left hand side of the chart. And that has enabled increased investment in the case portfolio as part of the strategy to drive future growth. You can see the investment in new cases and ongoing cases was 7.2 million, the third bar along. And that investment in new and ongoing cases was up 5% year on year. We've also continued to invest in the legal team with these three new hires. As I say, the return on that investment will then be seen in FY27 and beyond. There was also a one-off impact of restructuring costs that related to the board of 800 grand and also these delayed receipts from two large debtors, which moved 2.7 million of net cash receipts out of the year. So Meena's now gonna talk you through the strategic and operational highlights.

We made good strategic and operational progress during the year. Firstly, that meant continuing to do what we do best, building on our track record and maintaining our market leading reputation with our chambers ranking. As announced this morning, we were delighted to be awarded the prestigious band one ranking for a sixth year in a row, something no other competitor can claim. We've also made great strides strengthening our growth platform and driving new business momentum. This has been achieved from adding three highly experienced lawyers into our legal team during the year, who bring both significant expertise and network referrals. and also via a proactive program of refreshed targeted business development initiatives, including successful webinar series presentations at national and international industry events and curated presentations to IP firms throughout the UK. This has together helped us drive a record volume of new case referrals and allowed us to selectively purchase new cases across the year that increased the value of the signed cases on our books by 23% compared to last year. The important point here is also that these new cases are slanted towards the higher value claims that whilst they take longer are higher margins We have expertise and a good track record in high value claims such as audited professional negligence, as in the case study I mentioned earlier, quince care claims against banks and claims relating to director misconduct in relation to tax, such as tax avoidance, PAYE fraud and BAT fraud. All higher value claims where we're building on our expertise and our strong track record. This leads nicely onto the strategic framework which we have presented for the first time today. We regularly speak to our shareholders and the lack of clarity on our growth strategy and transparency of our performance has been a regular topic in our discussions. Our focus, as Will has said, is on generating realised revenues and realised profits that become cash that we can use to support our ongoing growth and in the medium term be used also to return capital directly to shareholders. Building on our market leadership position, we have identified three key focus areas that will enable the business to grow and achieve the medium term targets set out at the bottom of this slide. 1. Scaling the business through a combination of continued investment in the business and exploring a number of volume referrals with the public sector 2. Improving our portfolio quality this means increasing the proportion of high value higher margin cases in our book that we've talked about already while still maintaining a portfolio diversified in size so we continue to provide a full service to the insolvency profession and three, doubling down on operational efficiency in our business to drive economies of scale and operational leverage. This will be achieved through both increasing productivity across our larger legal team by balancing casework and new business development priorities according to the strengths of each individual. We're also investing in a CRM system to further bolster our new business opportunities by ensuring our BD is targeted and coordinated and it will identify opportunities to increase our market share.

So this is the path to the medium term growth and the medium term as we see it is three to five years. So the principal drivers to achieving substantial growth in revenue and PBT and cash are firstly higher case values. So as we said, the strategy is to maintain a wide portfolio of claims, but with a focus on higher value cases. And these cases typically take longer, but are also higher margin. As Mina said, we highlight our expertise in certain case types, which are typically higher value claims. And as a result, we think it's achievable to increase the average realized revenue per completed case from 93 grand in FY26 to 150 grand. Why do we think that's achievable? Well, the critical reason is that the average revenue per case in the forward book is already over 150 grand. And on top of that, we've started FY27 very well with the signing of four cases, each having over half a million pounds in expected revenue value. The second principal driver to achieving this growth is operational leverage that's demonstrated by the increased average realized revenue per lawyer going from 1.9 million in FY26 to 2.3 million. and our legal teams becoming more efficient and able to work a higher case volume through economies of scale as the legal team grows. And that enlarged team enables the lawyers to focus on an optimum balance between legal work and business development that helps to drive increased profitability. then in addition we're investing in a CRM system that Mina mentioned to support further operational efficiencies which will help increase the average revenue per lawyer in terms of capital allocation priorities our primary priority remains investment in new and ongoing cases particularly the higher value claims and and we are continuing to invest in our legal team in business development and these operational efficiencies to drive operational gearing. We consider that leverage with net debt under 50% of gross cash receipts to be appropriate to support growth and also to manage that working capital that's required between case investment and cash realisation. and in assessing balance sheet capacity we think that gross cash receipts are the most relevant measure of debt serviceability. Shareholder returns are expected to form a recurring element of capital allocation in the medium term and they'll be delivered through dividends, share buybacks or a combination of both. We just note that we're not planning any share buybacks right now, given the current debt level and given our strategy to invest in cases and the platform in order to scale the business. Moving on to the outlook now, and as I've said, the most significant indicator of future performance is our forward book. and that has increased materially to 67 million and that's excluding the cartel cases. This is the highest the forward book has ever been by a considerable margin. Large cases with a forecast revenue value of at least half a million now comprise 32 million of the forward book and that is up substantially from 21 million at the prior year end. Then you can see that the average claim value in the forward book has risen from 124 grand at the end of FY25 to 158 at the end of FY26. So this supports improving portfolio quality, scale, earnings visibility, and this is what underpins our confidence in increasing revenue and profits going forward.

cartel claims. So the cartel cases fall outside our core business in that they are concerned with competition law. We have the opportunity to purchase a number of claims from companies that had leased or purchased trucks and paid higher prices due to unlawful collusion over pricing by the truck manufacturers. And although the cartel claims are non-core, we aim to negotiate settlement wherever possible, just as we do on our standard insolvency claims. And we were very pleased to settle with one defendant truck manufacturer during FY26. We recognise that capital is tied up on the balance sheet with the claims against the remaining defendants, and we remain hopeful there will be further positive updates to come. So looking further ahead, we believe there is lots more for us to go for in an insolvency claims market estimated to be worth £500 million per annum in gross settlement value. The UK insolvency market, which underpins our market, remains at elevated levels, having risen 63% in the past decade, providing confidence that there will remain significant market opportunity for Manolet to grow in the future. So in summary, thank you for your interest in our business and for listening to our presentation. I want to finish by saying that despite the current share price, we believe we have a great business with a proven model and a highly motivated team that is well-placed to return Manolator growth this financial year and to achieve much more in the years ahead. We'll now take questions and run through those already submitted via the IMC So the first question is on Cartel. cartel cases are tying up precious capital and need to be settled what's next in the process on the cartel cases and do you think you can settle them this year or next year and if so why um yeah we we recognize the capital tied up um and that this inevitably is a is a focus for investors um as i mentioned we're really pleased to settle uh with one manufacturer in the current in FY26. These are not our typical cases, they do take longer. But the strategy remains settlement as it does with our core business. And we remain confident they will they will be settled. The next question is, can you detail what levers you have available to effect recovery of the two large outstanding unpaid debts which underpin your confidence in eventual repayment? This happens, generally our debtors do pay but occasionally they don't and then we have to take enforcement action. So with these two larger delayed debts we are taking enforcement action just as we would on any other unpaid debt and I can assure you we are vigorously pursuing recovery of those debts. Next one, how has the company changed under new management? What do you think previous management got wrong? Well, we're focused on driving the business based on financial metrics, as we've outlined in the medium term targets we've set out today. whereas previously the focus was predominantly on non-financial KPIs. And the revised presentation of the accounts as Will has explained is another way in which we've sought to bring greater clarity and transparency for investors to assess and understand our performance. So we do hope that today's presentation has been helpful. Next one. Are management going to buy shares and why aren't they doing so at current discounted levels? Possibly one for you, Will?

I'd say as you appreciate you know I can't tell you when management will buy shares and we've been in a closed period until yesterday since the trading update in April so we haven't been able to do so during that period and as and when a director buys it will be announced to the market at that time we can't say a lot a lot more on that I'm afraid

Okay, next question. Yeah, you do that one Will.

The asset cover covenant under the HSBC RCF was relaxed for six months from 28th of March 2025. That period expired in September 2025. There has been no follow-up R&S clarifying covenant status. Is the covenant now at the original level? Has it been further relaxed or has the loan facility been amended? so the asset covenant was relaxed just for that period as expected and as announced and then it returned to the original level I can see that there is Another covenant related question, which I'll cover off at the same time. What are the key components on the debt? So there's three covenants. First of all, interest cover, which looks at the ratio between net operating cash flow and finance charges. Secondly, is asset cover, which is ratio of trade debtors to net debt and thirdly there's a case recoveries test which looks at realized income from completed cases and compares it to the previous unrealized income that been attributed to those cases which we're forecasting accurately so that is Covenant Are the management incentives based on statutory or adjusted EPS? Given Manolet's accounting, what is to stop management creating any required profit by writing up case values for 2028?

Shall I take that one? Well, they're based on statutory EPS, which is based on audited accounts. and as their auditors management are not able to artificially inflate base values. It doesn't work like that.

There's at least two, if not three very similar questions around. Can you rule out delisting? And I can just say it is absolutely something that we're not. It's not something that we are considering. What are your plans regarding hiring more lawyers? If the capacity is 30 to 40 cases per lawyer then don't you have substantial excess capacity? Looking from outside the business appears far from robust.

Well, our focus is to generate returns from the current forward book, which as we refer to is, you know, it's higher than it's ever been. So we will monetize that forward book with the current team and will increase operational leverage as we've described. This is expected to result in adding a small number of new lawyers over the next few years. We're expecting the average revenue per lawyer to rise from 1.9 to 2.3 million as Will outlined and the total number of cases isn't expected to remain flat. We can expect that to continue to rise and average case values are rising and operational leverage

increases so we continue to recruit in a in a in a in a controlled sustainable um fashion as as as as needed but the the legal team is the is the driver of the business okay um what is your internal financing planning horizon eg one two or three years does the plan assume any further external financing is required either debt or equity So our plan over the next three years and indeed to reach the medium term targets doesn't assume any further external financing. I would say we'll absolutely keeping that under review as we want to balance case completions and signing new cases and the working capital needed between signing a case and then collecting the cash. And what we don't want to do is to turn away good quality cases. So we would consider further external financing to enable accelerated growth if that situation arose further down the path. Can you provide an alternative summary five-year P&L and balance sheet history without fair value accounting and with the cartel cases separated? So what we're trying to do is to simplify how we're presenting the information and we don't want to overly complicate it by producing accounts on different bases. But as I say, what we have done is present the financial statements in a more transparent and hopefully easier to understand way. and our focus is on realised revenue, realised profit from a P&L point of view. And that is the P&L without unrealised gains that arise from fair value accounting. So on the P&L, I'd also note that I've removed unrealised gains from revenue so that the only element reported in revenue relates to completed cases, i.e. realised revenue. and also worth noting that in FY26 there was a significant unrealized gain and realized profit of 2.7 million due to the increase in the forward book but we haven't focused on that you know it's very positive but we haven't focused on that in our report of the results because we're focused on realized profit then of course on the balance sheet the investment value of cases is is shown and we think that accounting on a fair value basis but providing the transparency we have and the focus on realised profits provides the best balance because it also means that investors can see the investment value of cases reflected on the balance sheet, which otherwise wouldn't be the case without the fair value accounting. Hopefully that makes sense. What are the plans to unlock value for shareholders? trading at such a discount, a quarter of forward book value. Can you please explain why you will not opportunistically buy back shares? The implication is that the forward book value is not accurate. If it is accurate, it seems like mismanagement to not buy one pound of forward book value for 25p. And I think that a very similar, Question at roughly 0.4 times NAV, a buyback retires close to £2.40 per book for every pound spent and lifts NAV per share. Once the forward book converts and the shares re-rate, the opportunity is gone. Does the board agree this is among the highest return uses of capital available? I have to return use of capital available today and would consider buybacks at these levels a higher priority than accelerating debt pay down rather than deferring them to as the portfolio matures. As a shareholder, congratulations, I am proud of the work being done. to answer both of those um you know as i've said we we're not planning share buybacks right now given where the current debt level is and the strategy to invest in cases and the platform to scale the business i certainly don't see the implication that the forward book value is not accurate if the company doesn't buy back shares ultimately it is a question of priorities and whilst it may be beneficial to buy back shares particularly in the near term I don't think it's the right thing right now as we need to consider what will increase shareholder value over the medium and long term and we think the best way to allot that value for shareholders is to allocate the capital we have available to unlock the value in the current forward book as well as in investing in new cases to grow the business. We've been through the capital allocation priorities in the presentation. I think that actually links to another question about opportunities and risks and certainly there are opportunities with a forward book and getting cases completed of course and some high value ones within that. There's an opportunity with the cartel cases to settle those and then there's an opportunity to collect This overdue debt and all of those things can materially enhance the balance sheet and provide the headroom to be able to consider share buybacks.

There's a question here asking if there's been any increase in competition for new cases that we're seeing any change to pricing or IP share of cases well the short answer to that is that there are competitors but we are the clear market leader uh we've just won the the chambers found one ranking for for the sixth year in a row but we do carefully monitor um our offers and acceptance rates to make sure that we are we are pricing our offering accordingly um and and the majority of our offers are accepted um so we're confident that we are pricing our offers accordingly and there are competitors, but we are confident of our share and our position as market leaders. So we have no undue concerns in terms of competitors, nor in terms of the terms we offer into the IPs. We offer very, very fair terms and I think the market recognises that. And then there's another one, Can you explain the market for potential cases? Is there greater competition for higher value claims? Well, the market is IPs or insolvency lawyers on their behalf, and we have deep penetration into that market throughout the UK with our network of in-house lawyers. Generally speaking, the higher value claims will be from administrations or HMRC-led compulsory liquidations. Compulsory liquidations where HMRC is the position of creditor will be obliged to the higher value claims I mentioned in relation to tax misconduct, tax avoidance, VAT fraud, VAT fraud, VAT, IE fraud, etc. So they are the market for those potential claims. The competition for the high value claims is no different from the claims across the board. And again, we're very well positioned to deal with those claims as the market leader. And because we have a good track record, we have lots of case studies we can talk about. And we do publish those in our newsletter. So we capitalize on our success. So we are well known. for dealing with high value claims. So yeah, we continue to target them as part of our portfolio of claims across the board, but as we mentioned with a slightly greater emphasis on the higher value ones because of the increased margins, albeit taking slightly longer to complete.

There's a few questions related to the to the expected credit losses. Please discuss the expected credit loss of 3.6 million. How sizeable is the largest party, top three parties? How should we think about the future level of expected credit losses? And does this high level of expected credit loss impact your case assessment process? And also similar one, total ECL charge was 3.6 million, but only 1.8 million relates to two name debtors. Where did the other 1.8 million of provisions and 3 million of write-offs come from? Is this a broader pattern of non-payment across the book or a one-off conservative recalibration? So what I'd say about those is that there's 3.6 million ECL charge in the year, so 1.8 that related to these two specific debtors and 1.8 These two debtors that have been provided for are our two biggest debtors. and they are the outliers in that sense. The 1.8 of ECL charge against the rest of the portfolio, that is broadly in line with previous years and there hasn't been an elevated level. As I said, when we look at the amount of debt that is overdue, it is it is reduced so we think that we're keeping debtors generally under control but of course we're in a business that you know relies on people people paying there are there is of course some inherent risk in that we think that's well managed but of course such as on these two big cases that can be a you know they can be non-payment but on these two they There is absolutely a willingness to pay and that's why we remain confident in recovering all or most of it. And we've made a judgment to provide for 1.8 out of 4.7 of net exposure. We feel at this stage that that is relatively prudent and we are, you know, there's ongoing conversations about recovering the, you know, catching up on those on those debtor payments.

There's one here about AI. Is AI an opportunity for you to increase the productivity of your legal team? Does the insolvency claims procedure lend themselves well to some degree of AI automation? Well, there's no doubt that the law firms are using AI. They have some very sophisticated packages out there. I think it's probably best used for summarizing and collating large volumes of documents, large volumes of data or information. So that may have an impact on us in terms of the external legal costs being lower because it's involving less chargeable time. In terms of the Manalate in-house legal team, we are experimenting with some AI with one team member to see how it goes. But really at the moment, short of assisting in collating and summarizing large volumes of information, I don't think it's going to play a large part in the immediate future. Because what we're carrying out is not just a legal analysis, it's also a commercial analysis. And it's also really sometimes you you have a feeling for a case, you think you can get a result and we have a pretty good feeling for that and I don't think AI can replicate that at the moment in terms of court procedures I mean that is for the external lawyers rather than us and you do have to be terribly careful it was in the press recently a very well-known law firm came severely unstuck and subject to very very serious judicial criticism for sending AI generated correspondence to a judge which was clearly wrong and even when the judge said I think this is wrong they carried on replying with AI generated responses which were still wrong so it's out there it has a place it has a use but we're adopting a fairly a fairly cautious approach at the moment but obviously we will keep it under review.

Can you explain what the board restructuring involved leading to the 800 grand cost well that was the changes relating to the former CEO and CFO In the remuneration note they are set out in the accounts Can you walk us through the bridge from the opening forward book of £49 million to the closing £67 million? How much of the £80 million increases new signings, net of completed cases leaving the book, versus with revision of cases already in the book? I ask because the simple arithmetic leaves roughly £14 million unexplained. Note 13 shows the fair value of existing non-cartel cases was broadly flat this year. yeah good question and it's uh so of that um 18 um four million was the increase in uh case signings net of completions in the year um sorry it was um i have to be slightly careful i don't want to um the the the sensitive number is the cartel um the cartel settlement amount which is confidential and these numbers the forward book numbers 49 and 67 are excluding cartel so I think I can answer it by saying there's a broadly even split between that £18 million increase relating to new signings, net of completions in the year and upward valuations of cases that have been signed in previous years.

There's one here, the outlook is much improved with the higher proportion of higher value claims. Is this a temporary phenomenon or can you assure investors that this trend can be maintained into future periods? I have no reason to doubt that the higher value claims will continue to come through. We've got the expanded legal team, the expanded network, We're increasing our portfolio of track record cases we can refer back to on completed high value claims. We've just been ranked band one in Chambers again. We get a lot of feedback from Chambers because their guides are a research base and the researchers have gone out into the insolvency community IPs, insolvency lawyers and ask them to say on an anonymised basis, what do you think of Manolet? So that is an opportunity to say exactly what they think of us and the feedback is incredible. We're very, very well regarded. So yes, I fully expect that we will continue to receive higher value claims

got through a lot of a lot of these and try and see if there's any others that we haven't got to.

Look guys, I'm just going to jump in there and say thank you. You have covered a lot of questions there and of course the team will be able to review all those questions and we will submit them where appropriate on the platform. But Mina, before we direct investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments? Thank you.

Yes, I'd just like to thank everyone for attending today and thank you for your in particular for your questions, which I think show that you really, really have got under the bonnet of the business and our finances and our accounting, which is, you know, it is a bit different. But, you know, thank you for your interest. Thank you for your questions. We are very well placed for the year ahead. I hope the wills slightly different presentation of the results and are setting out our targets and our growth strategy and how we aim to achieve all that, setting all that out. I hope that's helpful, but please do follow up if you've got any questions after the session. So thank you.

Fantastic. Meena, Will, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation and good morning to you all.