Softcat plc

Hello everyone and welcome to the Softcat full year results call. My name is Seb and I'll be the operator for your call today. If you would like to ask a question on today's call you may do so by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad or press star 2 to withdraw your question. I will now hand the floor to Graham Charlton, CEO, to begin the call. Please go ahead.

Thank you Seb and good morning everyone and welcome to the Softcat results call for the year-ended 31st of July, 2023. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us. We really appreciate your interest in the company. I'm Graham Charlton, the company chief exec, and I'm joined today on the call by Katie Mecklenburg, who's our CFO, and you'll hear from her shortly. But as a brief reminder, this is my first results call as chief exec, having taken over the reins from Graham Watt in August. And that's following my nearly nine years with the company, previously as CFO. And Katie joined the team in June and is settling brilliantly into Softcat life. But as usual, we'll start, and if we can turn on to slide two, please, with a brief overview of who we, Softcat, are for those of you who might be less familiar with the company. And we are the largest provider of cybersecurity cloud and IT infrastructure solutions in the UK with a tremendously broad and well-diversified offering across cybersecurity, cloud, but also data center, networking, and workplace technology to name just some. The vast majority of our 2,300 people are based in the UK and Ireland, but we do now have a growing base in the US just outside of Washington as well. which today comprises nine people and two people out in the Far East, too. We also have branches in Australia and in mainland Europe. Our gross income was 2.6 billion last year, and we have more than 10,000 recurring customers now. And reflecting our broad and diverse offering, we work with in excess of 400 technology manufacturers, which includes top-level accreditations with all of the major players, A few examples of which you can see in the logos on the screen there. Our advisory and architecture teams are able to support customers in navigating the huge array of complex options available to them. And the industry is in a very exciting moment with a number of disruptive new technologies coming to market, not least of which is the application of AI in its various different guises. And we'll come back to this later, but it means that customers have never, in our view, been more in need of the breadth of the expertise that we can offer them. And in addition to our advisory and design functions, we also have a very strong service offering across assessments, implementation and management, and again, covering all parts of our customer's estate, from security to networking and devices, all the way from the cloud to the edge. But with that, we'll turn on to slide three, please, and the results for last financial year. And I won't read out all of the detail on this slide here, as I know many of you will already have looked at the figures and Katie will dive into some more detail on some of them shortly too. But overall, our results for the year were ahead of the expectations we set 12 months ago. And we're very pleased that despite lapping very strong performance in FY22, we once again delivered a comfortably double digit increase in gross profit. And that remains by far and away our key measure of income. GP growth just over 14% came from a 2% increase in the customer base and 12% growth in average GP per customer. And that shows that we once again made progress on both of the key aims of our strategy. As we expected and flagged on entry to the period, operating profit growth, whilst also ahead of expectations, was slower than GP growth due to the full-year effect of pre-pandemic cost return, and the significant wage increases, especially across the sales force that we announced 12 months ago. And we also said that those impacts would not slow our rate of investment in future growth. And true to that, our headcount closed up 21% as we invested across all parts of the business. We also maintained a very strong balance sheet, delivering very healthy cash conversion, and we're therefore in a position to recommend a healthy ordinary dividend and another special dividend too. So if we turn on again, please, to slide four, we'll look at some of the highlights behind those numbers. And while gross profit is our key income measure, I know many of you are interested in gross income and the mix of business behind what is driving the GP number, what we're seeing from different customer segments and across different areas of technology. And I'm pleased to report that it was another year of broad-based growth. While GII looks a little bit challenged in the SMB segment, especially once a couple of individual impacts are taken into account, you'll see how healthy the underlying business is across all areas. So firstly, on a reported basis, the SMB decline of 6% in GII reflects the impact of reduced income from last year's major customers. And adjusting for that single customer shows that growth from the rest of the SMB customer base was otherwise comfortably in double digits. Public sector gross income growth of 4% was also slower than the rest of the business. However, GP growth from public sector was around about 20%. So reflecting a shift in mix away from client devices, which were very challenged in H2 and across all segments and the broader market during the year, So a shift away from client devices towards higher margin solution deals in the public sector. So again, we're very happy with the progress that we made in our public sector customer base during the year. And both of those impacts are also evident in the 24% decline that you can see in hardware GII. But again, if you adjust for both of those, then hardware growth would otherwise also be in double digit rates. As well as the challenging PC market, it was clear that customers became slightly more constrained with budgets in some cases after the turn of the year, and we saw an increasing incidence of large solutions deals being delayed as a result. Notwithstanding that, however, we were able to maintain double-digit GP growth during the second half of the year as well. So we therefore continued with our investment in new capacity and capability, indicating the confidence and excitement that we have about the future opportunity in our industry. Our headcount growth reflected recruitment across all functions, building further scale in Salesforce, but also expanding and deepening our technical and service capabilities as well. In addition to that, we're also investing in our own operating model, and we drive forward with our internal data and digital strategies at pace, and I'll say a bit more about that later in the call. Before I do, though, if we turn on again, please, to slide five. This will allow me just to illustrate a bit further the diversity of our business and those income streams. While there will always be some acute peaks and troughs in our portfolio, such as we've seen recently with client devices, it's the breadth and comprehensive nature of our business that we think is a key strength, especially when I come on to the opportunity presented by AI later. So the charts on this page show the sources of our gross income by customer segment and between software, hardware and services and split by technology areas too. And each chart shows the proportion of GII coming from each segment, but also the factor by which it has grown in absolute terms since 2015. And the key takeaway is that whichever way you cut it, we're incredibly well diversified and each area is showing very healthy growth over the long term. We often get questions about which areas are driving growth or which areas we're most focused on. And our consistent answer is all of them. And that's not to say that we don't recognize certain areas are hotter than others or that there's tactical focus that can be helpfully applied from time to time depending on customer needs. But by continuing to build a broad and contemporary proposition relevant to a wide range of verticals, we not only give ourselves the best chance of persistent growth over the very long term, but we also ensure that we remain relevant in a never changing technology landscape. And I'll come back to the strength of this diversity later with particular reference to the AI opportunity that we're seeing. But before we do that, we'll turn this slide again to number six, please, and look at the progress across some of the key areas of our strategy. And as we said before, despite the transition in leadership we've recently been through, there will not be a significant change to our strategy. Graham Watt is continuing as our chairman. And of course, I've been with the company for nearly nine years, as I mentioned at the start of the call. So there is a lot of continuity in our thinking. And the structure of this slide, therefore, reflects the ongoing focus that we have. both on winning new customers and selling more to existing customers as well. Those aims continue to be underpinned by the same key enablers as they always have, so by our people and culture first and foremost, but also being easy to do business with and the desire to maintain our relevance and expand the addressable market opportunity. As I've already mentioned, we did achieve growth in both the customer base and our GP for customer during last financial year, both of those strands continue to have massive opportunity for further progress in the years ahead too. Our estimation is continuing to be that we have around about 20% to 25% share of each of those axes and therefore around 5% overall share of the value in the UK market. So we'll continue in FY24 to recruit new salespeople and as always, those new recruits will drive the expansion of our customer base and service offerings will enable us to displace the competition within those customer accounts and take an ever greater share of the IT budgets of those customers. IT budgets which we think are set to continue to grow despite some challenges for the broader economy. And while we naturally talk a lot about expansion and new capabilities on a results call like this, please make no mistake about it that our key differentiator remains very much rooted in our culture, the attitude of our people and the customer service that that delivers. We were delighted to win more awards during the year from the Great Places to Work Institute, and especially to see an increase in our employee MPS score from 52 up to 63. Our people fed back very favorably on the approach we've taken to flexible working, for example, And I've personally been very pleased indeed to see how the flexibility that we've embraced has nevertheless led to a return of real vibrance and energy in the soft cap offices post the pandemic. We've also invested in expanding our development and inclusivity programs. And again, these were called out in the latest round of feedback from employees. In particular, we've extended the allyship program we piloted around 18 months ago, And our various communities, such as the Women in Business Group, our EDN network and so on, are thriving and driving positive change, both within SoftCap, but also across the wider industry too. Our customer NPS also increased up from 55 to 62, as well as reflecting the quality and attitude of our people and the service they deliver. We've modernized our operating systems, developed our customer portal too, And this includes integration with cloud and marketplace distribution platforms and increasingly the use of data and analytics to improve reporting to accelerate our sales engine opportunities. And the final enabling pillar that we've got has also undergone a slight change of description this year. This last one used to simply be about expanding the addressable market, but we've tweaked it this year to include maintaining relevance as well. And that recognizes the potentially disruptive nature of some of the changes that we're seeing in our industry. Now, there's so much overlap here with the work on integrating our systems with new cloud and marketplace distribution platforms that I just mentioned. We could easily put that under either one of these banners. But as well as that, we've continued to build our multinational fulfillment offering, investing in a larger team over in the US. And we're looking to expand that branch network that we have in Europe in the year ahead, potentially, too. We're also investing further in new service offerings, especially around hybrid cloud architecture, implementation and management. And we've been expanding our security services offering. As I mentioned before, we're integrating the Sentinel platform from Microsoft into our managed scene and MDR offering. And on the cloud side, we've been granted Azure Expert MSP status. And we're building as well our portfolio of AWS services. And we've added migration and DevOps competencies recently there. In addition to all of that, we've also become the largest transactor of business via the AWS marketplace in the UK. And we're really excited as well by the wave of innovation that AI will bring. In fact, it's already bringing to our industry, but I will come back, as I mentioned before, to that in more detail towards the end of the presentation, because it will be a significant focus and opportunity for us in FY24, but in the years beyond that as well. And so finally, before I hand to Katie to talk through the financial results, we'll turn the slide again, please, to number seven, and I'll leave you with a view of some of the awards that we received last year from our vendors. There's too many to go through in detail, but hopefully you can scan the list there and you'll see the progress we're making with both the large additional players, but also some of the newer names to technology. Also, the portfolio that we have of over 400 vendors enables us to support customers across the entirety of their digital estate. And it's always pleasing to see our people get the recognition for the work they do for those partners. And all of those efforts, of course, ultimately deliver value to our end user customers in our being able to offer them the greatest choice and support across solutions, across the solutions offering that is genuinely whole of market. I'd like to draw attention as well to the number of awards that we've got across the EMEA region and how this is speaking to our growing ability to operate effectively on an international basis. But with that, I will hand you now to Katie, who will delve into some more detail on the FY23 numbers.

Thank you, Graham, and hello, everyone. I'm delighted to be here this morning to present my first ever set of soft cap results, and I'm pleased to be able to report another year of top and bottom line growth. So if we could turn to slide nine, please. Growth profit, our primary metric of income, grew 14.2% in FY23, in line with expectations and despite the challenging FY22-based period. Second half growth profit grew by 11%, following an extremely strong half growth of 18%. Half to double-digit growth was particularly pleasing in the context of a more challenging market, where we noted customers owning some discretionary spend, and tighter procurement processes delaying some larger projects coming to market. As we disclosed last year end, in FY22, a mid-market customer accounted for slightly more than 10% of our gross income for the year, primarily driven by one-off, low-margin data center hardware sales. If we exclude these transactions, gross profit grew double-digit across hardware, software, and services, and across all customer segments and technology areas. These transactions also impacted gross income and revenue growth, and were the key drivers of the decline in hardware gross income and revenue. Excluding these transactions, hardware gross income increased marginally year on year, with a decline in client devices offset by growth in networking and data centers, while software and services both performed strongly. with gross income growth of 13 and 21 cents respectively. Gross profit is a percentage of gross income increased by roughly 150 bits year on year, with about half of the increase due to the low-margin one-off transactions in the base period, and the other half due to a positive mixed impact from higher-margin data center, networking, and security solution sales, and a reduction in lower-margin client devices. Crossing costs increased by circa 22% year on year, in line with expectations, with roughly half the increase due to people costs, with average headcount up 20% across the full year, with investments in all areas of the business to make sure that we are well resourced to support future growth. The balance of the increase was due to commissions, which increased behind gross profit growth, IT, and travel and entertainment costs, which returned to pre-pandemic levels for the full 12 months. Operating profit increased by 3.5% ahead of our expectations at the beginning of the year, driven by overperformance in H1 and delivering in line with expectations in H2. Operating profit as a percentage of gross profit declined as expected behind the significant investment in costs to support future growth. And lastly, our effective tax rates increased to 21% from 19% in FY22, behind the increase in UK corporation tax, which came into effect in April this year. So if we could move to slide 10, please. This is our standard chart showing the strong relationship between gross profit and the cumulative years of experience of our account managers, which also underpins our consistent investment in incremental headcount. The line becomes steeper over time for several reasons. Firstly, the efficiencies from selling deeper into existing customers, which is demonstrated by the increase in gross profit per customer over time, which I'll show on the next slide. And secondly, as we scale, we've invested in both technical specialists and support functions, which sit behind the account managers and enable them to sell more effectively. If we can change the slide to slide 11, please. In FY23, we have again... in line with our strategy, from both number of customers, shown on the purple bar, and gross profit per customer, shown on the blue line. Customers have exceeded 10,000 for the first time, an increase of 1.9% year-on-year, and gross profit per customer has increased from 33,000 pounds in FY22 to 37,000 pounds in FY23, an increase of just over 12%. We estimate, on average, Softcat only has circa 20% to 25% share of Orbit with our existing customer base. Thus, there is still significant headroom to keep growing with our existing customers, and at roughly 20% penetration of UK accounts, we also have significant growth opportunities for new customer acquisition. If we couple these with the expected growth in the market, the headroom to continue growing the business is considerable. Now, moving on to cash on slide 12. Plays in cash was $122.6 million, an increase of $25.3 million from last year end. This was a result of operating cash conversion of 93% in the period, at the top of our guided range of 85-95%, and a return to normal after year-end receivables were impacted by the implementation of a new finance system in FY22. The new finance system and data warehouse came into use at the end of FY22, and this is a key driver of several of the numbers on the slide. Firstly, the reduction in capex, which is lower year on year due to the completion of this project. Secondly, the higher amortization, which reflects the first full year of amortization of the system. And thirdly, net working capital, which was a small outflow in the period, reflecting both the normalization of cash collection, following the disruption from the implementation of the system, at the end of FY22, offset by an improvement in average payment days and also the phasing of both receivables and payables over the period. And finally, we returned 74 million of cash to shareholders during the year, a slight decline year on year due to a reduction in the FY22 special dividend, which was paid in FY23. So if we can change to slide 13, this brings us to the proposed dividend for this coming December. Our approach to allocating capital has consistently been to prioritise investment in future organic growth, followed by maintaining a progressive ordinary dividend policy with any excess capital then either allocated to strategic investments or returned to shareholders. As you can see here, the interim dividend for the year has already paid back in April with 8p. Today, we're proposing a final ordinary dividend of 17p And this reflects our normal policy of paying out between 40 and 50 percent of profit after tax and gives us a total ordinary dividend for the year of 25p, an increase of 5 percent on FY22. In addition to that, we're also proposing a special dividend of 12.60. This has been calculated to clear down cash in December to around 75 million pounds. Previously, we were operating at a cash flow of 60 million, and this adjustment is just to reflect the continued growth of the business. Both the final ordinary and the special dividends will be paid on the 19th of December, and the shares will trade ex-dividend from the 9th of November. Those payments will bring the total cash that we've returned to shareholders since our IPO to just over 470 million pounds. This means that if you had invested in Softcat shares at the IPO eight years ago and held the shares, you have now received your cash investment back in full, while the value of your shareholding has increased nearly sixfold. Moving to the next slide, slide 14. To finish the financial section, I'll quickly run through the outlook. As we start FY24, the company is well positioned to continue to deliver double-digit gross profit growth and market share gains. We expect to deliver full-year FY24 operating profit in line with market expectations and the year's start as well, with operating profit growth second-half weighted and modest growth in the first half of the year. This reflects a number of short-term factors. A strong gross profit performance in the comparative period in the first half, and the continued impact of the macro environment consistent with what we saw in H2FY23. We remain excited about the future potential of our market and plan to continue to invest in headcount, data, and systems to make sure we capitalize on this significant opportunity. If we move to slide 15, we now want to spend a few minutes updating you on our approach to inclusion and sustainability at SoftCap, which Graham and I will share between us. If we could move on to slide 16, please. I'll kick off with an update on environmental sustainability. I've taken over executive responsibility for our plans and progress from Brian, but the sustainability leadership team, which includes another member of our senior leadership team alongside me and other members of our management team, is the same. This team sets and reviews our progress against our action plan, which is delivered day-to-day by our aptly named sustainability delivery group. The governance section of the outline shows you how we have board oversight linked all the way through to our local green team initiatives that are driven within each of our offices. Our targets aren't new, and we continue to make great progress against them. We became carbon neutral for scope one and two in FY21, a year ahead of targets, and we are now using 100% renewable energy for the first time Again, achieving our goal a year early. But our ultimate goal is to have a net zero value circle by 2014. This is an aspirational goal and requires us to take a thought leadership and influence the role across our industry. And we are pleased our near and long-term plan has been approved by SBTI, which is a start-based target initiative. This year, we're nearing completion of our solar energy project as our Marlowe head office. And we've now replaced all of our pool car fleet with electric vehicles. But most importantly, we continue to engage and collaborate with major vendors and suppliers to drive change across the industry, which this year included supporting a project to improve sustainable product data availability and thus customer choice, being part of industry-wide advisory panels and trialing new circular economy options. We're using our internally developed emissions platform in EXO to help our customers and partners measure and evaluate their emissions, And we are pleased the role that we are playing is being recognised by our vendors and partners, as you can see from the awards mentioned on the slide. Whilst we are committed and passionate about sustainability, we also recognise the business opportunity that it presents. Helping our customers achieve their own net zero goals is another way Softcap will be able to differentiate our offering and increase customer penetration. And on that note, I'll hand back to Graham, who will take you through inclusion.

Thank you, Katie. So, yeah, if we can turn on to slide 17 in the presentation, please. And as Katie mentioned, environmental sustainability is just one part of the holistic view that we take across our corporate and social responsibilities. And together with our internal communities and partnerships with charities and other external groups, these activities are really just a natural extension of the values that we have at the core of the soft cap business as well. And it's great to have so many active community groups within Softcat and across all of our offices that you can see illustrated on the slide here, supporting each other in different areas and different ways. The leadership team is both directly involved in these groups, but also very grateful indeed to the many people in the company from right across the full spectrum of seniority who are passionate about and contributing very actively to building a more inclusive physical And I'm delighted that these efforts have been recognised again as such by leading industry bodies this year. And we won the best overall workplace in tech from the Great Places to Work Institute and the best company to work for from CRN. And earlier this month, we had five soft cap women recognised by CRN in their annual diversity in channel awards for the tremendous work that they do, not just for us, but within CRN. the IT channel more broadly and driving change in our industry. So we'll draw to a close in a minute and make way for questions, but a few points in summary first. So if we can turn on to slide 19, please. So FY23 has been another year of profitable organic growth And we made good progress as well against our key strategic aims and continue to invest in the future health of our team and the propositions that they can take to market. We increased our NPS ratings significantly, both with customers and our employees in the year. And the position that we have in the market is one that I believe is of incredible strength. But there's no room for complacency either, and we'll continue to develop the new offerings needed by our customers and continue to invest in our own systems. Both of these things are needed in order for us to fully capitalize on the terrific opportunity that we have ahead. There have typically been new drivers of that opportunity each year, whether it's been GDPR, Windows refresh cycles, proliferation of security threats, the move to cloud and remote working boom accelerated by the pandemic. And while digital transformation and implementation of hybrid cloud estates will continue to fuel our growth in the year ahead, we also now have the advent of AI and how that in its different forms is beginning to transform IT applications. So if we can turn the slide again, please, to number 20, the final slide. I will illustrate some of the key ways that I think this will impact us and our industry. So firstly, in our own operations, the AI revolution is perfectly timed. We've talked over the past few years of the implementation of our new finance system. And as part of that, we've also had an extensive technical scope of work that's laid down new data architecture and integration layers for our internal systems. This means that we've got a contemporary data storage and governance in our own estate. And these are the very prerequisites for powering AI applications. The potential opportunities of using AI technology in our own model are then quite easy to spot. So, for example, our salespeople have a huge, sometimes bewildering array of technology and services that they can sell to our customers. And that can be hard to navigate, especially for the younger graduates in their earlier years with the companies. And AI has the potential for us to make this much easier if, for example, we could apply it across a database of our offering and our people and their skills. And in addition to that, we can integrate resource management tools with such applications and use generative AI to start to create tender and bid responses, for example. And that's just naming a few possibilities. And of course, all of our customers will be having similar thoughts too. And that then brings us on to the income opportunity. We're already seeing really strong demand from customers for workshops and seminars to explore the art of the possible. And AI applications require modern systems and clean data to work from. So there's much to be done on their infrastructure in terms of that readiness as well. And this is not just in the data center where powerful GPUs and low latency storage and connectivity will be key. Some AI workloads will need to be executed at the edge and this will involve a review and refresh of client devices states and possibly IoT devices as well. Microsoft Copilot goes live in early access on the 1st of November. That requires Windows to be updated to Windows 11 in order for it to operate and so you can begin to see quite easily how far and wide this AI revolution will impact and how strongly this plays into our core proposition And in particular, how, especially for us, with the depth and breadth of that offering, how well positioned we are to support customers in that journey, whatever the user cases may end up being for their particular organization. And I've heard AI referred to as additional infrastructure, but quite frankly, it's much more exciting than that. And we intend to embrace that opportunity to its fullest extent. And indeed, this kind of rate of change is exactly the sort of innovation that we've been so determinedly building the breadth of our portfolio for over the last five to 10 years. So with that, I think we're at the end of our prepared remarks. So we'll pause and hand back to the operator and get ready to take some questions. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Graham. So once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind and wish to withdraw your question, please press start to. The first question today comes from Rahul Chopra from HSBC. Please go ahead.

Hello, yes, good morning. I have two questions about me. The first question is that you alluded to investment in distribution and new convention models. Do you mind just giving some more heads up on basically what these investments are and how are you seeing the competitive landscape around online marketplaces with this new distribution channel? That's the first one.

Sorry to interrupt, but the line's bad and I'm afraid we can't make out the questions. I wonder if we could Maybe move on to the next one and come back to that if we can get that line. I'm sorry, we just couldn't hear it well enough.

Of course. So our next question is from Katinka de Kuiper from UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. A couple for me, please. Maybe to start, your software growth invoice income seems to have slowed quite significantly in the second half. Can you just comment on what was driving that and how we should think of growth going forward in 2024? Secondly, how much of the growth was driven by price increases? And can you just comment on the pricing trends that you're currently seeing in the market? And then finally, just on the visibility into 2024, can you comment on that and what gives you the confidence that your growth is going to accelerate in the second half? Thank you.

Okay, thanks. Good thing for all of them. try and cover all of those briefly, and then maybe Katie will chip in around the GII growth on software perhaps as well. But yeah, so software growth on GII slowed in the second half. So what we mentioned in the results and that we did see in the market was some pockets of customers with a backdrop of economic conditions being what they were and the high interest rates. Some of those customers started to be bit more thoughtful and introduce some additional procurement layers, particularly with large and complex solutions. So we did see a slowdown in some of those larger deals and across our software proposition is across all different parts of the IT estate. So certainly in the data center and networking space as well. So some slowdown there. We also see some peaks and troughs in very large public sector licensing deals, which carry very, very thin to no margins at time. And we sort of don't get involved in all of those deals. So sometimes GII growth can be driven by large, low margin public sector deals. And we had a very low volume of those in the second half as well. So that didn't support growth that we sometimes see. Visibility into next year on software, very, very positive about software for the year ahead again. because the proposition is so well diversified, whether it's AI or other things catalyzing that growth, we're seeing still strong demand for customers to move their IT infrastructure forwards. And so we're very positive about the prospects for software growth in the year ahead. In terms of how much growth is being driven by price increases, it's impossible for us to fully quantify that. Price increases with where the currencies has been, continued to be a factor. I think the majority of our growth continues to come from us winning new customers and taking market share. But the impact of price increases is a helpful tailwind as well, as it has been though for a number of years now as well. But I think the majority of our growth is coming from underlying market share. And then finally, FY24 visibility. I mean, we delivered double-digit growth in the second half on gross profit. The new year has started well. We've got a broader customer base than ever before, over 10,000. We continue to see typically more than 95% of our income and gross profit come from those existing customers. And as I say, we continue to see strong demand. So we're very positive about the year ahead and the visibility that we have As you know, Katinka, we don't have a ton of contracted recurring revenue, but the strength of that customer base and what we see typically, as I say, more than 95% of our income coming from that existing customer base. We're very positive about FY24 and have made a good start.

Brilliant. Thank you very much.

Our next question comes from Charlie Brennan at Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, guys. Just a couple of questions from me. Firstly, there's a lot of focus here on AI. I'm just wondering if you can give us some insight into how you're thinking about it. Do you think it's going to lead to an increase in the absolute budget for customers, or do you think customers will just fund AI investments from other areas of IT such that the overall spend doesn't necessarily increase? And then just in terms of timeline, do you think this is more of a 2024 issue for you or do you think it's going to end up being more of a 2025 accelerator? And then secondly, on your famous slide 10 and the cumulative GP and sales tenure chart, you obviously increased headcount over 20% last year. I guess they're going to contribute to the tenure in the current year. Based on your budget, do you think 2024 is going to be a data point below the line? And are you totally confident that that's just the impact of macro? Or do you think that there's any change in the marginal cost of growth, i.e. are we getting to the stage where you need to add incremental sales to drive incremental percentage points of growth?

Thanks, Charlie. I'll talk about AI first, obviously, and then I'll share a few of my thoughts on the productivity side of things. And Katie might share some of hers as well. But on AI, do I think it will drive an increase in absolute budgets or just draw from other areas? I think it'll be different to different customers. I think it depends on their operation, their industry and how well they're doing. But I certainly think for a lot of customers, it will increase absolute budgets. Kind of related to your second question, what will the timeline be? I don't think this is something that will be over and done within 24 or 25. I think it's going to be a long and continuous trend as the different kinds of AI application take root and get embraced at different times. So I think it's a very positive driver of growth in our industry over a very long period of time. And I think it will build as the years go by. So I think there'll be a lot of design thinking consultancy in 2024, but we are already seeing activity in data centres and readiness as well. And that's both within organisations on their own spend, but it's also things like private equity money coming into building AI ready data centres against the need that they know will arise and applications and workloads not in them yet, but then being built in readiness and anticipation of that. think for some customers it will just be moving the deck chairs but for many it will be an increase in absolute spend. I think it will grow slowly and steadily over time so I think it will be a positive impact in 2024 but an even more positive impact probably in 2025 and beyond that. In terms of our headcount and productivity I mean we don't really predict where this productivity will go. We want to see continuing increasing that account manager productivity as they sell deeper and take advantage of the proposition that we're investing in and expanding behind them that they can take to market. And we're very positive about prospects for the year ahead. So we're expecting double digit GP growth again in both halves of the year. I think our rate of recruitment, you can expect to see it slow. There's peaks and troughs of these things. We've had a couple of years now of 20% headcount growth. We typically target headcount growth in the range of 10 to 15%. We've seen really strong conditions for recruitment and retention in the last sort of 12 to 18 months. And we're really, really pleased with how we've been able to build the team as a result. But I think you can expect to see that headcount growth moderate in the year ahead, probably to the sort of the middle to the lower end of that 10 to 15% range. So I'm really pleased with how that GP per customer growth figure continues to trend. And that is the point of investing in the proposition behind the frontline Salesforce. I think it's true to say that, you know, people have never had a broader set of opportunities to sell into that customer base. And there's a huge amount of latent opportunity that they now have with the customer relationships we've got to continue to drive growth off the back of that. And Katie, I don't know anything further to add.

No, as you say, we expect the overall period to increase and indeed the productivity, given the investments we're making. In technical and support specialists, we would expect the trend to continue.

Perfect. Thank you.

Our next question is from James Zaremba at Barclays. Please go ahead.

Three questions, please. Two perhaps for Graham. Firstly, what is harder and what is easier about running SoftCap today versus, I guess, when you did eight or nine years ago? Secondly, what are the key similarities and differences you've observed between the US and UK market when looking at potential acquisitions? And then, Katie, what has surprised you positively upon joining SoftCap and what areas do you have your eye on to improve? Thanks.

Brilliant. Thanks, James. Really good questions. Thank you for those. So what's harder and what's easier now running Softcap compared to nine years ago? It's harder to remember everyone's name because there's so many of them. I think when I joined them, we were about 800 people and we're heading beyond 2,300 to 2,500 this year. So Standing up on stage when we do our annual kickoff in front of that many people is even more daunting as well. But we've just done our annual kickoff event and got 2,000 people in a room. And the positivity that generates is terrific. So there's tons of upside from that as well. Getting around the offices, there's 10 or 11 of them now. And we used to have, I think, four when I joined. So a bit more mileage. But again, there's getting out and seeing our people and spending time with them and meeting their customers and seeing our vendors in those offices is a massive upside. So being able to go over to Ireland and do that and visit our team in the US is a huge privilege and it's great to see how the business has grown. IT has become more complex. There's two sides to that coin. It means our proposition has got to be broader and how you digest that and distill it for Our account managers, particularly the new graduates, as I mentioned, to take that to market is harder. So we need to be thoughtful around the tools and opportunities. But that's why I'm so positive about the data capability we've developed and the AI opportunity around that, because you think how the tools that we can put in our people's hands to make it easier for them to take that uniquely broad and deep proposition to market. That's really, really exciting as well. You know, we often get questions about culture because of the growth that we've had and how do you maintain the culture in a bigger business? Well, that is and always will be the thing that occupies most of our thoughts. But there's a challenge with it being bigger and more disparate. But the big strength that we have is the hundreds of people in SOFCAT who care so much about that culture and the emphasis that we put on choosing the people for positions of management and leadership who represent and nurture and value that culture. And so as we grow the team that's leading it out, in some ways it gets easier to maintain it as well because you've got more people who are helping you with that challenge. And it's certainly not something that any one or two people or even the senior leadership team can do on their own. So we're very lucky to have such a big group of people doing such a good job of that. So honestly, I think it's probably... the best job in the UK. And I know I'm biased because I love the company, but it's such a privilege to be in this position. And nine years on, and I said this to the team at the kickoff event recently, there is every reason why the next 30 years for Softcat can be even more exciting than the first 30 years because we've got about 5% market share. It's a terrific industry to be in. There isn't an industry I'd rather be in. And so we've got every reason to think that we can do it all again even better over the next 30 years. So that's great. Coming on to the US versus the UK market and what we've noticed, well, there's an awful lot of similarities. The way that the value chain works over there with manufacturers working through distributors and resellers into the end user is very similar. If anything, there's maybe a little bit higher hardware mint in the US, and there's probably a greater bifurcation between those resellers who are addressing enterprise and those that are addressing mid-market, and probably you do one or the other, whereas I think in the UK we've managed to do both of those things and the public sector really, really well. You see some of the resellers over in the US looking and getting more involved with the application layer and moving a little bit beyond infrastructure in some cases, and that's something that we're thoughtful about from from time to time. But overall, I think it's pretty similar. It's about relationships, it's about customer service, and it's about having the right technology services and capabilities. But very, very fragmented, just like it is here as well. So probably more similarities than differences. So hopefully that's helpful, and I'll let Katie tell you what she's been positively spiked about.

I guess in terms of positive surprises, the experience of the culture and clearly we talk about it an awful lot, but having experience now, I think it is pretty unique and it's the passion and the focus from practically every employee and the focus from management as well. Again, I think until you experience it, it's difficult to bring it to life, but that's been really amazing. The other thing that I've been really impressed about, and again, through the organisation, is the focus on not becoming complacent. So despite the fantastic growth and the future potential, there's still that mindset of continuous improvement, really making sure that we're always really watchful of both opportunities and any threats as well, which I think is a real strength. In terms of negatives, To be honest, not many. I think one thing that's already in progress before I arrived is that we can do more in systems. We've clearly just invested in the finance system and the data warehouse, which gives us the really strong backbone now to be able to do more. And I think, you know, along with the systems and automations and utilising AI in terms of both back office and even account managers being more effective is a real opportunity for us as well. But what we can definitely do a little bit more on.

Perfect. Thank you both.

Our next question comes from Andrew Ripper at Liberum. Please go ahead.

Yeah, morning, Graham. Morning, Katie. Got a couple, please. First of all, for Graham, slide 20, your AI slide, you referenced Copilot on that. I'm just wondering what your perception is of how big a game changer that could be. Do you have any customers that have been trialing it? Give us a sense, please, of what their reaction has been, if you have. And I wonder if you can just give us some context in terms of materiality on Microsoft. Maybe give us a sense of how many seats you're licensing. for this Office Stroke 365 products in the UK. That would be useful. Thanks. I've got a second question after that one.

Okay. Thanks, Andrew. So, Cronopilot, how big could it be? I mean, it's really hard to quantify that. We know it would be positive. And I think the question then is just how positive over what timeframe and how long does it take to play out? And sort of touched on that before with the question from from Charlie at Jefferies. We do have customers with it in trial already. The early release program is really targeted at larger customers and it's quite a significant investment as well. So the cost to the customers to get involved at this early stage is not insignificant. So as you'd expect, many are hanging back and waiting and perhaps waiting to see what some of the best practice user cases that others find are. And apart from not knowing how they'll drive value from those license costs yet. They're also maybe not ready. So looking at their data center or looking at their client estate and refreshing that and getting ready to trial it later. So very hard to answer how big and scared of materiality. As you know, Microsoft is about 20 to 25% of our income, depending on how it's measured and which year we take. And I think that the uplift in price on the typical E5 license is about 70% for copilot. Now, I think the pricing will change and develop over time because Microsoft will be looking at how expensive is this then for them to run and host as well. So they'll be on a journey with what it costs them to run and host it. And I think pricing might change over time. But that 70% uplift on E5 pricing gives you a sense of the scale of the fees then that we can earn from that as well, because the structures will be linear with the resellers. Margin opportunity on that, I think, largely. And again, it will depend upon how that plays out as they move it across the different licensing schemes. So there's no real dependency that we've baked into our expectations for 2024 on this, because as I say, I think it'll be a gradual and slow burn but I think it'll be a positive impact and a real opportunity for us. So hopefully that's helpful. It's hard to be too definitive at this stage.

Yeah, understood. Thanks, Graham. And then I just wanted to go back to a question that I was going to ask that the first questioner asked from UBS just in terms of the second half performance on software. And, you know, they were asking about the GII growth, I think, which was 5% year on year in the second half. And you gave a good explanation for it. Just wanted to just finish that off. If I look at the revenue, and I appreciate it's not the best metric, but the year-on-year growth in the second half was still 26%. Can you just finish off the explanation of, you know, in relation to that, the difference between the GII and the revenue for software second half on second half?

Sure, let me pick that one up because it's the joys of IFRS. So software, as I'm sure you know, is reported net. So effectively, you're reporting gross profit. As gross margin has gone up, that means that it's tailwind to revenue that you don't see in GII. So it's the margin expansion that means that revenue grows ahead of GII.

Understood. Can you explain why that happened, though?

So, again, I think it goes back to Graham's explanation a little bit that we've done fewer low-margin deals, particularly in the public sector, and that's been impacted in H2 and H1.

Yeah, I understand. As you know, Andrew, GP is really what we focus on.

Yeah, yeah. I'm just covering it off. No, no, no.

Just to say, though, just for the colour, GP Growth and Microsoft was double digits, both half. And we did see we do a lot of software across the data centre and networking space, too. The first half was, remember, there was a dearth of supply on the networking side and some of that pent up demand, which is mainly hardware came through in the first half. But there's a software attached to that as well in the first half, which is then also went away. But we're very pleased with that.

software performance overall and the cadence that we carry into the new year on that side yeah thank you thanks for and just just finally just in terms of the the cadence of reporting historically you've done a sort of a q3 and q1 really sort of skinny one paragraph releases i don't know what your whether you've got a different view katie going forward you still plan to do q1 and q3 updates you do so no plans to change anything at the moment andrew Okay, thanks.

Our next question is from Harry Reid at Redburn Atlantic. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, both. Just following on with that question on the deacceleration in software, GII in the second half. Obviously, there's been a couple of months of trading since then. Do you see the growth rate accelerating? And then throughout the first half into the second half, When do the comps peak and when do they start to get a little bit easier off that de-acceleration? That's the first one. The second question is, I think this year and last, you said the share of wallets staying between 20% and 25%. That was upgraded from 20% the year before. With that 20% to 25% this year and last, are you moving up in that bracket or is it broadly stable? That's the second question. And then the third question is just on license renewals. is there any period over the next three years where you expect there is kind of a concentration of license that will be renewed and you could put through pricing increases and benefit from that pass-through?

Okay, thanks, Harry. So the first two months of new financial year are some of our smallest. It kind of ramps as we go through half one and really the year as well. So January and December are key months for us in the first half. So The performance we've seen so far this year has been good, and that's good across all lines. The software's doing well so far this year, and it's in double-digit rates in terms of growth. But again, it's not that I would read and extrapolate too much from that as well, but we're off to a very good start, which I think hopefully deals with the first one. The second question was about share of wallet, and I think you're sort of saying we called out that it was 20%, then 20% to 25%, and we're saying it's 20% to 25%. So is it moving or is it stagnating? It's not stagnating. It's definitely moving on. GP growth of 12% across all customers. And remember, that's being diluted as well by new customers coming in because that's across the entire customer base. We know that the market isn't growing at that rate. So we are definitely continuing to take share of Wallet with our customers. And remember the very large customer that we worked with the prior year, and that's dropped away. That's included in those numbers as well. And if you'd rip that out, it would give you an even stronger underlying view. So we are, without doubt, I think, we've got a lot of evidence there to say that we're continuing to take wallet share and market share. License renewals, concentration? No, not really, because software licensing, it comes in different guises. You can have three-year deals, but there's an annual... transaction with those three years deals. There's then annual in advance, annual in arrears, monthly consumption models. So they concentrate annually and not on a different basis to that. And so I don't expect us to see a glut of renewals or higher prices that will drive a spike or a challenge going the other way. I think it'd be much more gradual and steady than that.

Okay, great. Thank you. Can I squeeze one more in? Go for it. Just to benchmark on cloud marketplaces, what kind of percentage of GII is being run through the hyperscale marketplaces at the moment, just so we can benchmark this going forward in the proportions?

So it's very low percentages. So it's growing at rapid rates, but it's still a very small percentage of GII. marketplace but it's a very low base at this stage and I'd be guessing at the number I'd have to look it up but it's low single digit proportion of our overall transactions probably less than 1% of all the transactions that we're doing in terms of value at the moment.

Okay brilliant thank you.

Our next question comes from Tintin Stormont from Numis. Please go ahead.

A lot of questions already asked, but in terms of the half one, half two gross profit growth, plus 18 and plus 11, is there any way you could have a stab at quantifying some of the delays and what impact that might have been in the second half? And then secondly, headcount growth, Graham, you're talking about maybe 10, 15, maybe midpoint of that. How should we think about average salary costs relative to the 7.5% increase you saw this year? And then finally on AI, you've touched on Microsoft already, but can we talk about are there other vendors particularly active and driving sort of propositions with you in terms of the AI opportunity?

Great, thanks Tintin. So 18% growth first half GP, 11% second half. On that 11% in the second half, if we adjust for, take out the effect of the major customer, that 11% grows to plus 13%. And then if you remove client devices from both years as well, that grows again to 16%. So kind of excluding the major customer and excluding client devices, we grew GP by 16% in half too. So quantifying the slowdown, yeah, it's impossible to do. I don't think it's a, it's certainly a trend that we've been observing and it is an impact, but to put a number on it, I really couldn't. But I still think that that 16% growth with those two factors removed showed you that the majority of our customer base continue to show strong demand and appetite for all the services and the products that we offer. On the average salary costs, growth of 7.5% last year reflects the new people that we're bringing in as well. So it's a mixed effect because we recruited a lot into the sales force. The average pay award actually last year was just over 11%, which I think we mentioned in the half one reporting because we made structural changes across the sales force to those low starting salaries And so our pay awards this year are much more moderate than that. I think the average pay award for this year is between 5% and 6%. And so we can expect cost growth year on year to moderate and be lower in the year ahead as a result of that, which I think hopefully answers your second question. And then other vendors in AI, lots of security solutions have been incorporating AI for a while now, as I think I mentioned. So not to get into too much detail, but there's lots of security software that already monitors what the state is seeing and learns to respond to different patterns of behavior and traffic flowing through things like firewalls and so on. So I think that kind of innovation will continue and accelerate. calling out other particular vendors therefore is hard to do because it's a factor in many but you then see the likes of HP and Dell getting very thoughtful around what does it mean for the laptops and so on they'll be putting into the market how they are powered and so lots of interest around not just NVIDIA but AMD and partnerships with those chip manufacturers and the changing nature of chip manufacturers as a result so there isn't really a vendor I talk to at the moment where that doesn't come up early in the conversation in a very positive fashion.

Great. Thanks, guys.

Our next question is from Damanu Jayawira from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.

Thanks. I just had two quick questions, really. One was Graham mentioned the Azure services and the Sentinel managed services. Just wanted to ask, are these going to be reselling of third-party services or are you building up internal capacity? And if that's the case, I know it's a very early days then, do we need to think of that internally provided services fee slightly different to the rest of the business? That's my question number one. Question number two is public sector deals. I mean, you did mention there are very large deals out there with next to no margin. Are you tactically going to stay away from those deals or will you take a view that actually take those deals on and maybe you can make some money later on on upgrades, AI-related upgrades or that sort of thing? If I could just lastly, could I ask you one more question, please? You mentioned data center upgrades. You mentioned private equity-related data center upgrades. What exactly are you talking about in terms of Softcat's opportunity? Thanks.

Okay, thanks, Damindi. So on the services side, the ones I mentioned sort of Azure and using Microsoft within our SOC and our managed security offering and the AWS stuff as well. So that's internal capability and service provision, but it overflows into our partner network as well because a lot of the things we've mentioned before, our service offering will always carry strong element of partner collaboration too because we can't cover all of the areas that our customers need help on and there's some areas that don't make sense for us because we would never build it at scale and so it always makes sense for us to work with partners on that. So it's definitely being led in those cases by internal capability, internal offering but it will also be supplemented by some external partnerships too. So don't expect it to It won't wildly change the mix of our income towards services. We've been making these kind of investments for many years now. And again, as I think we've always said, when we create new services like this that drive relevance, it develops a very healthy pipeline for product resale, so software and hardware resale as well. So any growth in the service number usually then gets overtaken by growth in the product number that it supports as well. Public sector deals, no margin. Look, there's always a trade-off here. There's always a view of, can you make money off the licensing? But if it's really thin margins on the licensing, what does it do for the relationship and your future opportunity? And so, yes, we'll continue to look at being competitive in those deals that give us that opportunity, and it's a case-by-case basis. So definitely something that we'll look at. Data centre upgrades. So You've stretched the limits of my technology knowledge a bit here if we go too far on this, but I know enough around how AI applications work to know that they're particularly suited to the graphics processing units, and therefore the balance of CPU versus GPU in data centers will shift in the years ahead towards GPU. That's why, obviously, the NVIDIA share price is spiking. And so... not just private entity, but other players will see the opportunity to create that AI enabled data center space because they know the application workloads will come. And so there is a race for that GPU supply and building data centers that can then aggregate and support the demands from the different applications that will be created. So we're seeing New organizations and new money come into this area, but we're also seeing existing customers who develop their own applications starting to talk to us about when they next look at their data center, how do they future-proof it against the need for this as well. So lots of conversations happening around how data centers need to be kitted out in the years ahead.

Very clear. Thank you, Graham.

The next question is from Rahul Chopra from HSBC. Please go ahead.

Is my line clear before I begin?

Hello? Yeah, we can hear you, Rahul. Just go ahead. It's slightly quiet.

Cool. Thanks. Okay. Cool. So a couple of questions, quick questions from my side. One, could you explain your thread of thought in the U.S. between organic investments versus M&A investments? Just want to understand that, especially given the headcount increase you're talking about, first one. Second, given the project delays and longer lead times, and obviously you have 20% headcount increase, you're talking about 10% to 15% headcount increase next year as well. So given the project delays and macro slowdown, just wanted to understand what's driving that and what's underpinning your confidence for those headcount investments, please. Thank you.

Okay, thanks, Rahul. Amin. I think I got most of that. The first question was about how do we think about organic growth versus M&A? I think with particular reference to the US, did you say? Yes, regarding US, please. So our expansion or development of the team in the US is entirely related to our organic business, our existing customers in the UK who have operations and needs in the US. So our expansion there right now is entirely organic, both in terms of the cost build and the revenue. And that's how I'd expect it to continue to be certainly in the short term. Now, because there is demand out there, and as we've mentioned before, we are looking at, have been looking at, will continue to look at the US reseller landscape because there could be an opportunity for us to accelerate that build inorganically. But we don't need to do that and it would be a very high bar for us to meet in order for us to take advantage of that acceleration. So by looking, we learn how the market works and that informs the way that we'll build the team and our relationships with the vendors out there. So the likelihood is that we'll continue to build organically in the US and we do not need to do any M&A to continue to support our UK. keep under review. Longer lead times and how that affects headcount growth. We've always said that when times get tougher in the market, we would continue to invest because the long-term opportunity is so compelling and that in slightly tougher times, it's easier to get good talent. So that's exactly what you've seen us do. over the past year, and that's why we're continuing to plan to grow our headcount and invest in the business at double digit rates going forward. Now, of course, we've had two years of really strong headcount growth, and we've got a ton of capability and capacity in the business now. So we're in a great position for the year ahead. And as a result of that, we can moderate what we need to do with headcount for the next 12 months. But equally, growing the team in double digit rates for the year ahead allows us to keep moving the skill set on, evolving what we can do for customers, embracing and building things like AI advisory capabilities. So we're very, very happy with the team we've got and excited about having a chance to keep building it in the year ahead. And we'll certainly keep that under review and see how the business develops and look for opportunities to to accelerate that if performance is above expectations. For example, it's very easy for us to throttle our headcount one way or another, depending on what we're seeing in the market.

Thank you very much.

Our next question is from Balaji Tirupati from Citi. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you for taking my questions. Two from my side, if I may. Firstly, could you kindly provide color on the fiscal 24 outlook for double-digit cross-profit growth through the year? Of course, you have mentioned a tougher comp in first half and a slower start potentially after second half of 23. And still you're expecting a double-digit growth and a ramp-up in higher growth in potentially second half of 24. So are you... kind of indicating gross profit growth more in low teens percentage for the fiscal 24. And in the reply, when you said you are looking at headcount growth and are flexible depending on how the business evolves, based on the shared view of double-digit growth through the year, Would it be fair to assume that the headcount addition would be closer to 10% of the 10% to 15% range in 2024? Thank you.

Let me try on gross profit. I can help on that in the FY24 phasing. So you are right. We said that we would do double digit throughout the year. But clearly, because of that harder comp in H1, the growth would be lower in H1. not too dissimilar to the H2SY23 growth rate, but then increasing as we go into H2 again because of the lower base that we see then. Cost phasing, we'd expect in terms of growth rates cost to be pretty equal between H1 and H2, including what we said in terms of the operating profits is we expect it to be in line with market expectations, but H2-weighted with modest growth in H1. But that's because of that growth profit growth rate, not the cost base, if that makes sense. Does that help and answer your question?

Yes. Yes, please. And maybe if I can add on there, in terms of gross inverse income mix in 2024, The second half was impacted because of lower volume in public sector. Going forward in 2024, should we expect inline growth in gross to inverse income versus gross profit, or there could be further difference between gross to inverse income and gross profit?

So we really focus our forecasting on gross profit. So three things, as we said, impacted the GII growth in FY23. One was that major transaction in the last year, which was low margins, had a much bigger impact on gross invoiced income versus gross profit. Secondly, was that client devices, which again has got a lower margin, so that was weaker and had a bigger impact on gross invoiced income. And lastly, those are the fewer lower margin deals. So those are sort of the three things. In terms of we look forward, I think we are predicting particularly that one-off transactions, we won't see that impact in FY24. So we're expecting them to be more in line. But as I say, I guess underpinned with impact that we really focus on gross profit and much less so on what that GII growth will be.

Thank you. Just to talk about the headcount side of things. So we have a very agile approach to how we do this. So obviously we set a plan and a budget for the year ahead. The plan that we have assumes low double-digit headcount growth for this year, but we literally review our hiring plans on a weekly basis because apart from anything else and responding to what's happening in the market and going above or below that, depending on how trading is, The positions that we set out to hire and the skills and capabilities that we need, we don't stick rigidly to a plan on that for 12 months. We look at it and flex it on a monthly basis. And we've got a very slick, agile process around the authorization for that. So it really is, we have a ton of ability to keep moving now. So we set out today with a plan for load-up digit growth in headcount, but we can move it up or down in a very agile way.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

So this concludes the Q&A session on today's call. I'll now hand back to Graham to wrap up.

Thanks, Seb, and thanks again, everybody, for tuning in. Really appreciate your interest in the company. Just to reiterate, delighted with the performance that we've had in FY23, really positive position in the market for the year ahead. We'll look forward to letting you know how we get on with that with the Q1 results training update, and then the half-year results to follow as well. But thank you all for joining today.