Public Policy Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
March 23, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: PPHC reported a strong FY2025, with revenue up 25% to about $187 million, adjusted EBITDA of $45 million, and adjusted EPS of $1.39. Management also highlighted record free cash flow of $37 million.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company said its business remains highly recurring, with roughly 90% of revenue from retainers/subscriptions and client revenue retention around 80%–85%. Management emphasized this gives the company strong visibility and lowers dependence on political cycles.
  • Positive Sentiment: Growth was broad-based across segments: government relations grew 4% organically, corporate communications/public affairs grew 9%, and compliance and insight services grew 22%. Management said this supports its long-term goal of roughly 5% organic growth, supplemented by acquisitions.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company continued to expand through M&A, completing acquisitions of Trailrunner International and Pine Cove Strategies in 2025 and announcing the purchase of WPI Strategy in London. Management said the pipeline remains active, with more than 50 firms under consideration and a focus on tuck-ins plus larger strategic deals.
  • Neutral Sentiment: PPHC said it ended 2025 with net debt of $27 million, but that position has since shifted to net cash after the January 2026 Nasdaq IPO raised about $46 million in gross proceeds. Management also said GAAP profits likely won’t appear until fiscal 2027 because of non-cash stock compensation and acquisition-related charges.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Public Policy Q4 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 9 speakers on the call.

Speaker 2

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the PPHC fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker for today, Matthew Mazzanti. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator. I'm here today with Stewart Hall, CEO of PPHC, Roel Smits, CFO, and Thomas Gensemer, Chief Strategy Officer. A press release detailing our full year 2025 results was released recently and is available on the investor relations section of our website. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that during this call, management will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties are detailed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. In addition, during this call, we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures.

Speaker 1

A reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in our earnings press release, which can be found on the investors section of our website. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Stewart Hall.

Speaker 7

Thank you, Matthew. Good afternoon to everyone who's joined us. My name is Stewart Hall. I'm one of the co-founders and current CEO of PPHC, or Public Policy Holding Company. I'm joined here today, as Matthew noted, by Roel Smits, our CFO, and Thomas Gensemer, our Chief Strategy Officer. I'd like to start off by saying this is an important milestone for PPHC. This is our first earnings call as a Nasdaq-listed company, and I want to welcome all of our audience who's joining us and many of you who are joining us for the first time. We are pleased with the response from the U.S. investment community. Being public on Nasdaq gives us access to the capital markets that match our scale and our growth ambitions, particularly on the M&A side, which Thomas and Roel will cover shortly.

Speaker 7

It's also worth stepping back to explain why we built the company in the first place, because the context is important for investors hearing from us for the first time. Why did we build PPHC? From day one, our mission has been largely unchanged. That was to be the preeminent global strategic communications provider, uniting a diverse group of specialists around the world for the collective success of our clients, employees, and shareholders. We started with a foundation in government relations and public affairs. That was our common experience amongst the founders. We recognized early on that the marketplace was changing in ways that demanded a different kind of platform. A few dynamics in particular stood out, but I will run through three that we found and still find are the most significant factors that affect the marketplace that we're addressing.

Speaker 7

First, policy complexity and its impact on business has been intensifying for a number of years. For over 40 years, government has come into every aspect of the economy. When public companies identify key risk factors today, regulatory and legislative risk is consistently among the top concerns of public and private companies. That complexity is no longer just federal. In the state level, in the international level, it's a multi-jurisdictional challenge. Our clients are often dealing with the same issues in Washington, Sacramento, Brussels, and London simultaneously. Second, reputation and policy have been converging. In a digital world driven by social media, political problems become instant reputational problems, and reputation problems become instant political problems. Companies can no longer separate government relations from corporate communications. They need both, and they have to work together in tandem.

Speaker 7

Third, clients need integrated specialist advice, not generalists, but the deep specialists who can work across jurisdictions and disciplines as one team. The large marketing holding companies tried to build this, but their attempts often faltered, whether it be wrong cultural fit, fragmented acquisitions, or lack of real integration. That opened the door to a different kind of model, the PPHC model, and that's what we've built and continue to build. These dynamics are exactly why we have constructed PPHC the way we have, and they continue to drive our growth and our differentiation in the market today. Where do we stand today? We operate a complementary portfolio of strategic communications advisory firms across government relations, corporate communications, and public affairs, compliance, and insights. Our firms operate in the high-end, high-margin segment of the market. These aren't commoditized consumer-oriented marketing services.

Speaker 7

They're trusted advisory relationships driven by C-suite adjacent budgets, existential corporate budgets, so to speak, just like legal, accountancy, et cetera. Professional services that companies have to have in their budgets year in and year out. As such, we service over 1,400 clients, including nearly half the Fortune 100. Approximately 90% of our revenues come from retainers or subscriptions. Client revenue retention runs around 80%-85% on a dollar basis, and we're not politically cyclically dependent. We don't do campaigns and elections work. We relish policy opportunity regardless of which side of the spectrum it comes from, because that's what drives our clients' needs and drives our profitability. The opportunity for scale is enormous in our market. Policy and strategic communications industry is highly fragmented with a total addressable market of approximately $20 billion.

Speaker 7

Our recent expansion into corporate communications has significantly broadened that TAM. We're just getting started. Just a few highlights from 2025. 2025 was a strong year for PPHC. Revenue grew 25% to $186.5 million. Organic growth was 6%. Just a side note, that not a single year in PPHC's history have we ever not had positive organic growth. Our adjusted EBITDA margins came in around 25%. On the M&A side, we completed two acquisitions during the year. Trailrunner International joined in the second quarter. This brought 80 professionals across eight offices globally and marked a massive leap forward into the complementary corporate communications space, as I mentioned earlier. They're a perfect example of the convergence of some of the trends we've talked about. They serve major corporations at their most critical moments and at a premium price point.

Speaker 7

In August, we added Pine Cove Strategies in Austin, led by former Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, giving us a third state-level government relations operation alongside California and Massachusetts, in addition to our 50-state coverage we already provided through MultiState. On the people side, we brought in John Green as the Chief Client Officer. He's already driving more referrals between our firms and a sharper focus on joint pitches for broader mandates. We strengthened our board, announcing two new independent directors, Kathleen Casey and Charles D. Brown. We're very proud to have them with us. Our headcount is now across 450 employees through 2025. Our firms continue to be recognized. Seven Letter, a public affairs firm based in Washington, D.C., was named one of PRWeek's Best Places to Work for the third consecutive year.

Speaker 7

Forbes Tate and Seven Letter were both named the PR News' Agency Elite Top 120, also for the third straight year. Many of our people have been recognized for various impressive industry awards. On a consolidated basis, our three government relations brands remain in the top 25 federal lobbying properties in the U.S. by disclosed revenue. Finally, of course, we completed the Nasdaq listing, raising approximately $46 million in gross proceeds. Looking at the year ahead, I think the operating environment for our business is extremely favorable. Starting with the macro picture, federal lobbying spending hit a record $5 billion in 2025. The number of organizations engaged in lobbying itself rose by 12%. That's the core market that we started in, and we continue to serve, and it continues to grow. Congress has a full plate.

Speaker 7

There are major debates and pending policy developments in energy, transportation, healthcare, and of course, artificial intelligence. From the executive branch, companies are navigating extraordinary pace of change. Since January of last year, there have been more than 240 executive orders issued, touching everything from trade to housing to cybersecurity. At the state level, the complexity is only compounded further. State legislatures introduced more than 135,000 bills last year. In just the first six weeks of 2026, over 300 data center bills were filed across 30 states. More than 250 AI-related bills are in play in the states. Healthcare, energy, financial services, states are filling the gap where federal policy remains uncertain or undefined, and our clients have to be engaged at both levels simultaneously. In November, 36 governors' races are up. Every one of those debates becomes amplified as a result.

Speaker 7

All in all, in our core business, we see a really positive environment for the coming year, and all of that will, in one way or another, filter into our corporate and strategic communications practice through the natural interconnectivity with our policy practices. We've been clear from the outset that we intend to deploy the capital we raised at IPO in a disciplined and accretive way. We take a long view of these transactions. Roel walking through the actual structure of our general deals, but the key point is that we're not looking for quick flips. We're building a platform for the long term, and our acquisition approach reflects that. Today, we announced the acquisition of WPI Strategy, adding to our London subsidiary, Pagefield. WPI is a U.K.-based public affairs and economics consultancy, research-driven advocacy and economic modeling being their core.

Speaker 7

It deepens our presence in London, and combined with our Pagefield platform, it now has over 60 client-facing professionals, and the transaction is immediately earnings accretive. It's exactly the kind of complementary deal that builds on our set of tools that we deploy for our clients. More broadly, our M&A pipeline remains very active. More than 50 firms under consideration by us at any given stage. It's a really interesting time in the market. We're looking at a mix of deepening specific states and specialty offerings here in the U.S. and broadening set of European, Middle Eastern, and Asian targets, driven by where our clients are and where they need to be. Think data centers, AI, and financial services as downstream of these potential acquisitions that we're looking at. A few words on AI. Our business is fundamentally about relationships, both in client service execution and business development.

Speaker 7

Deep relationships, experience, and expertise. That's not something that technology is going to replace. We also are investing meaningfully in AI across the platform to make our people more effective. We've begun deploying tools that automate legislative and regulatory monitoring across all 50 states, the federal government, and over 100 international jurisdictions, surfacing changes in real time. Better tools for our practitioners, not to replace the advisory relationships at the heart of what we do, but again, enabling our practitioners to be more efficient and serve clients better. Goal straightforward. Free our people from the mechanical parts of the work so they can spend more time on strategic counsel and relationships that our clients value and pay us for. We're not using AI to replace advisory. We don't think that's possible. We're using it to, again, make our advisors sharper and faster and better for our clients.

Speaker 7

As far as people, I think it's very important to note that employee ownership is a cornerstone of how we constructed PPHC from its inception 11 years ago. It's something I and all of our people feel extremely strongly about. Our people are 100% the key to our success. They're our number one asset. We have to keep those people and attract new talent, and we have to approach that a bit differently than some of our peers. We believe deeply in the equity story as a retention, recruitment, and M&A tool. We have more than 135 employee shareholders out of our employee base of 450 people. Beyond that, there are an additional 200 people across the group that have some form of equity instrument.

Speaker 7

Employee ownership has led to the retention of culture, creation of tangible ownership, and a stable means for the transition of leadership in these businesses over time, which is so extremely critical. We use equity provision across our portfolio of brands to deepen both employee loyalty and therefore client loyalty. We're continuing to broaden that base as we anticipate headcount growth via acquisitions, and we're committed to getting more equity in more employees' hands over that time. With that, I want to hand it over to Roel Smits, again, our CFO, who can dive deeper into the financial details for 2025. Roel?

Speaker 4

Thank you, Stewart. My name is Roel Smits, let me start with the key highlights for a year, then I'll also take you through the numbers in a bit more detail. As Stewart already indicated, we were really pleased with the way that 2025 turned out financially. For the FY 2025, revenue increased 25% to $187 million. Of that 25%, organic growth contributed 6%, which was a really strong result. Adjusted EBITDA was a record $45 million, up 18% year-over-year at a margin of 34.3%. Adjusted net income increased 32% to $37 million. This adjusted net income number provides the foundation for our adjusted EPS calculation and our dividend decisions. To the left bottom corner of this chart, we had a very strong free cash flow year, delivered $37 million of free cash flow.

Speaker 4

Moving to the EPS results, while our GAAP EPS was still negative, I'll talk about that on the next chart, our adjusted and fully diluted EPS was $1.39, up 25% from the prior year. We proposed a final dividend of $0.24 per share, which brings the total dividend for the full year 2025 to $0.355 per share, and that reflects a payout ratio of approximately 30%. On the balance sheet, to close off this chart, we ended the year with a net debt of $27 million. As we noted in the earnings release following the completion of our U.S. IPO and Nasdaq dual listing in January 2026, debt has by now reverted into a net cash position. Okay, now let's take a step back.

Speaker 4

What I think this new chart shows is clearly that we continue to combine strong top-line growth with a consistently good level of profitability. As we already mentioned, the revenue in 2025 was up 25%, of which 6% was organic. That extended really a 12-year-long record of always reporting positive organic growth, especially in recent years, supplemented by contributions from M&A. Below, you see the profit trend, in that trend, you see that the adjusted EBITDA increased to $45 million, up from the $39 million last year. Margin coming in at 24%. This margin is slightly below the 26% that we reported in 2024, still very close to the level of 35% that we've historically targeted. Primary items explaining the difference between the adjusted EBITDA and the adjusted free cash flow are three things.

Speaker 4

It's interest, it's taxes, and a little bit of working capital investment. CapEx, on the other hand, is effectively zero in our business. Therefore, the conversion from EBITDA to free cash flow has traditionally been really strong, and we've seen on average a level of 63% in prior years. In 2025, it was as high as 82%. That strong result was really driven by very attentive working capital management, lower tax payments, and the timing of our accretive acquisitions. Let's look at the organic growth by segment, because I think organic growth is one of the encouraging parts of our 2025 story and, of course, a key way how we add value. On the left, first in red, you find our overall organic growth picture. To the right, you can see how this broke down in the three segments that we're active in.

Speaker 4

First, in government relations, which by the way, is our largest segment, so representing 58% of our business, organic growth in 2025 was 4% for the year. That is a very steady performance in this anchor segment and really in line with prior years, as you can see there. In Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, that segment has been growing to 35%. Well, organic growth was 9%, really good outcome, and it also reflected a significant rebound and a much stronger performance after a somewhat softer 2024, which was directly tied to the typical cycle that we see around the U.S. presidential election. Finally, in Compliance and Insight Services, net organic growth was 22%, truly spectacular performance again. That segment represents 7% of our portfolio. It continues really its multi-year double-digit growth streak, and this business has really attractive recurring characteristics, continuing to exceed our expectations.

Speaker 4

When we put it all together, what you see is that all three segments delivered organic growth in 2025, and that's what underpins the group's overall organic growth rate of 6% per year. Let me go on this side to segment profitability in a bit more detail. We already looked at government relations and that it generated $108 million of revenue in 2025, up 6% from the 2024 result. The segment profit levels depicted in this table are at a level that is pre-bonus and pre-corporate overhead. When talking about government relations, you see that the margin remains very stable at approximately 45%. That's a very strong and stable segment for us, high margins, high client retention. In corporate communications and public affairs, revenues increased to $65 million, which really represents a very strong growth of 79%.

Speaker 4

Obviously, a large part of that is M&A and most prominently the addition of Trailrunner. The margin of this segment increased significantly in 2025, going from 21% to 29%, and that was really helped by a recovery in the volume that we saw already in the organic growth measure. Then compliance and insight services, truly spectacular performance again. Not only did it grow its top line by 22%, but it also increased its margin from 48% to 55%, helped by this technology that's supporting this line of business. Tying this segment performance now to the adjusted EBITDA that we looked at before. At the bottom of the table, we report two remaining extent items. Both these cost items increased in size in 2025. First, we restored our bonus pool to regular levels as a percentage of profit after we had a thinner bonus pool in 2024.

Speaker 4

Secondly, we increased our corporate costs by 13%, which really reflects the investments we've made in our platform and also wanted to be ready to be a U.S. pub co in 2026. At the group level, when you take the segment profits and deduct the bonus and corporate costs, you arrive at the $45.4 million of adjusted EBITDA that I mentioned earlier. Now let's turn to cash flow, because how does all this EBITDA convert to cash? That's an area where we are particularly pleased with the outcome. Adjusted free cash flow increased to $37 million in 2025, up from $22 million in 2024. Primary items explaining the difference between the adjusted EBITDA and the adjusted free cash flow are three things. It's interest, it's taxes, and a little bit of working capital investment. CapEx, on the other hand, is effectively zero in our business.

Speaker 4

Therefore, the conversion from EBITDA to free cash flow has traditionally been really strong, and we've seen on average a level of 63% in prior years. In 2025, it was as high as 82%. That strong result was really driven by very attentive working capital management, lower tax payments, and the timing of our accrued vacations. As we also note in the release, the cash generation by PPHC is typically weighted towards the second half of the year because annual bonuses are paid in the first half. The 2025 cash flow result is strong and also consistent with the profile that we've seen in prior years. With all this cash generated, let's look at the impact on our balance sheet. On December 31, 2025, our total debt was $47 million.

Speaker 4

At the same time, cash and cash equivalents were $20 million, that resulted in a net debt position of $27 million. If you compare that against our EBITDA, well, that's just a bit more than half a turn EBITDA. We're not really heavily leveraged by any standards. Not reflected here, because not part of our 2025 results, but also still good to point out is that we raised approximately $46 million in gross proceeds during our IPO early in 2026, this net debt position that I just talked about has now turned into a net cash position. On dividends, as I mentioned earlier, we proposed a final dividend of $0.24 per share. Together with the interim dividend that we already paid in the fall of 2025 of $0.115, that brings the total dividends for 2025 to $0.355 per share.

Speaker 4

In dollar terms, absolute terms, the dividends paid in 2025 will be $9.7 million, down from the $11.4 million that we paid in 2024, and that really reflects the dividend policy change that we announced early in 2025. I think a combination of good cash flow generation, moderate leverage, and the capital raise completed in January gives us a very solid financial base to support our next phase of growth. I want to go into a little bit more detail going to this P&L. This chart that you see now depicts our more granular view on our P&L. The top side of the table reflects many numbers that I've already quoted, and that's how we as management look at our business, which as you have seen, it's a very profitable business, and allowing us to build a track record of dividend payments.

Speaker 4

I do want to also take a moment to reflect on our GAAP results, particularly for investors reviewing PPHC for the first time. At the very bottom of this chart, you'll find a bridge connecting our management P&L to the GAAP reported loss. Yes, on a GAAP basis, we do report a net loss, and that's entirely driven by non-cash charges. The most important, and chief amongst them all, is this share-based compensation charge of approximately $30 million. That stems from equity awards at the time of our 2021 London IPO, and this will continue to be part of our P&L until 2026. After 2026, this will have fully amortized, so it will no longer be part of our P&L. The second most important item in these non-cash charges are post-combination compensation charges, which are a real direct result from how we structure our M&A deals.

Speaker 4

We made significant proportion of the purchase price payments subject to continued employment of the recipients, we had to take those purchase price payments through the P&L. Hence, we don't account for them in our balance sheet, but we take them through our P&L in this post-combination compensation line. Besides those two large components, we also account for the changes in fair value of our contingent consideration. There's Long-Term Incentive Plan charges, amortization of acquired intangibles, and in 2025, we took an impairment charge from one of our prior acquisitions. That led to a GAAP loss. The most important thing I can tell you about these charges is the following.

Speaker 4

The $30 million of the annual share-based compensation from our AIM listing, that will have fully vested by the end of fiscal year 2026, when that rolls off, it removes $30 million expense out of our P&L. We therefore expect to start reporting GAAP profits beginning as of the fiscal year 2027. Let me finish the financial review with the overall cash flow picture. Adjusted free cash flow, as I mentioned, of $37 million. Against that, we deployed $34 million from cash payments for acquisitions during the year, which was up from last year. That includes both upfront payments as well as earn out payments. On the financing side, we drew additional debt early on in 2025 to support our acquisitions.

Speaker 4

Then on the equity side, you'll see we paid dividends during the year, albeit at a structurally lower level than what we used to do up until 2024. Altogether, our net cash position for the year increased by $5 million. Overall, the business continues to generate strong cash flow whilst we are funding dividends, doing acquisitions, and servicing our debt. Okay. Before I move to the outlook, let me spend a couple of minutes on our historical M&A, because I think that remains a very important differentiator in how we've built PPHC, and then Thomas will talk more about future M&A. Let's look at this chart that depicts our track record since the London IPO in 2021. This slide shows six major acquisitions that we've done in the period 2022 through 2025.

Speaker 4

I would say we have been disciplined, adding approximately one to two companies each year, very much in line with our growth strategy of geographic and functional strategic sourcing that Thomas will talk about further. Overall, we typically see the companies that join us enjoy an increase in their revenue growth in year one and two, really benefiting from the network effect being part of PPHC. Also we do see an improvement in their margins stemming from three sources. From the earlier mentioned benefit to the top line from the network effect. Second, from stronger financial planning capability. Third, from some savings in the back office costs because we will, as a holding company, take over some of those back office duties.

Speaker 4

Let me take a moment to explain how we structure our acquisitions, because we're doing it in a very intentional way, having learned from what is really decades of experience between the three of us. There are similarities to how the large holding companies have traditionally structured their transactions. Also some really clear differences. Typically, as is typical for professional services, we do use an earn-out structure. An upfront payment today in combination with one or two earn-out payments payable after a period of time. In our structures, that's typically a five-year earn-out deal. The way we structure our earn-outs is that earn-out payments will only materialize if the company grows its profit after the point of acquisition. Therefore, if the company were to remain flat after acquisition, well then no earn-out payment will be due. Here's where we're really different.

Speaker 4

First, we do not only pay in cash, but we pay in a mix of cash and shares. Always a mix. Second, we do want the sellers on the cap table to share some of those earn-out payments with next generation management. That's a very important element to us because at the time those payments are being made, then that next generation management will also become a significant shareholder in PPHC. As a third difference, we make each payment that's made as part of the earn-out conditional upon continued employment. Yes, that creates significant accounting complexity, but we're really happy to take that because we believe it's really the right thing to do from a commercial point of view.

Speaker 4

When you add it all up, a typical transaction has a length of 7-9 years, with really a five-year earn-out structure plus on top of that, a four-year vesting tail on the final payment. That long deal duration is not for everybody, and some sellers may opt to go for a quick buck, for example, by accepting a PE offer. There are certain entrepreneurs for whom this type of deal structure works really well because they're able to crystallize value from their company while continuing to grow it as part of a bigger platform. Across our acquired businesses, typically we've seen on average a 30% uptick in their EBITDA post-acquisition as a result. One question we often get is, well, with all these acquisitions and earn-outs, what's your total expected earn-out obligation? Well, that's a good question.

Speaker 4

We need to reflect it in our balance sheet. We also always present the table that you see here at the right bottom. At year-end, based on latest forecasts of the companies under earn-out, we anticipate making approximately $78 million in future earn-out payments. Of that, $45 million is in cash and the remainder in stock. Please also note that the stock portion will be priced at the share price at the time of payment. This table we report every quarter as part of the earnings release. Good. Looking ahead, the way we think about our business remains consistent with what we have reported in our life as a public company in London since 2021. In general, we expect to continue growing revenue at an average organic rate of approximately 5%. That growth number will be supplemented by acquisitions.

Speaker 4

On the profit side, we generally anticipate our adjusted EBITDA margin to come in around 25%. Although in 2026, we will experience the impact of U.S. public company costs and certain technology investments we've made. Our focus remains on client retention, new business generation, continued cross-selling across the group's member companies. With the recent capital raise on Nasdaq uplisting now completed, we believe that we enter this next phase of growth from a position of strength with a balance sheet flexibility for earnings accretive acquisitions and strong cash flow to continue investing in the business. Now that you've seen the financial profile, I'd like to hand it over to Thomas Gensemer, our Chief Strategy Officer, to walk you through how this platform generates its results and where we see growth from here. Thomas?

Speaker 8

Thanks, Roel. You've seen the numbers. Now let me briefly take you inside on how we produce them. As you see, we operate a complementary portfolio of advisory firms, and we focused our M&A agenda from the start on deepening specialization and broadening our geographic reach. Here on the next slide, we explain in simple terms how these specializations work together to address our clients' most urgent and complicated issues. As mentioned earlier in Stewart's comments, the successful deployment of a lobbying more and more requires the careful coordination of communications and stakeholder engagements from across the spectrum, across geographies, jurisdictions. Versus our competitors, which include names you may be more familiar with, like FGS, FTI, Teneo, Brunswick, some others. We've been very deliberate in our multi-branded strategy.

Speaker 8

There's several reasons for this, and it ties back to our shared experiences, particularly that Stewart and I both sold businesses into big holding companies in previous chapters of our respective careers. The first reason here is about client conflict. Uniquely in the government relations and lobbying segment, every quarter we file activity reports on behalf of our clients. Every person making contact with government authorities and agencies on behalf of that client's behalf, and every dollar charged. Maintaining separate brands with appropriate divisions allows us to manage different sides of issues, handle competitive brands, and ultimately allows us to serve the broader set of clients than a single entity really could. Second, and this is the capstone, the keystone of our founding thesis now over a decade ago, we retain our key leaders and employees. That sounds obvious, but here you see a picture of about 100 of them.

Speaker 8

Client retention goes hand-in-hand with talent retention. If we don't retain our teams, that 85% annual retention of clients just wouldn't be possible. On this chart, you see many of the key leaders. These are some of the best client advisors and issue experts in the world. As Stewart reported earlier, ownership runs deep and broad, with nearly a third of our employees being active shareholders and more than another third having been introduced to the equity instrument through LTIPs and options grants and other things over the years that we've been public in London. To our knowledge, we're unique in this sector for having this depth of employee ownership so core to the model. Essentially, our model offers the best of both worlds, global scale and sophistication with the workplace culture and client connectivity of a more boutique advisory.

Speaker 8

As Roel broke out in the financials minutes ago, we report three clear segments, and you can see them here. Government relations is our anchor. We like to call it our moat. This is federal lobbying, state lobbying, so the issue advocacy across jurisdictions. If you were speaking to us at the time of our London IPO, late 2021, this was nearly 75% of the business. This was our bread and butter. This was our core, where many of our founders began. It's now 58% of the business. That's not because it's shrunk. It grows healthy year on year, but we've built the capabilities around it, both to make the lobbying more successful, as we described earlier, and to just broaden the wallet opportunity for the client. Government relations remains our most profitable division and enjoys the highest degree of client longevity and corporate connectivity.

Speaker 8

None of our other competitors, as I mentioned before, are nearly as deep in this sector, neither the breadth, the bipartisan issue depth, et cetera. They are trying to catch up. Next, you see corporate communications and public affairs. This includes everything from earned media, digital social campaigning, crisis, financial communications, internal comms, all the things that are non-marketing communications. We're not advertisers. The integration of these specializations are absolutely critical to the success of the policy work that was our foundation. Last, we have the compliance and insight services. It's our third segment. It includes regulatory tracking, lobbying compliance services at the state and federal levels. These are largely subscription-based contracts. They're highly technology-supported, independent products. It's our highest growth segment, and it's the place where AI is showing an immediate positive impact.

Speaker 8

There's other aspects that we'll get into, as Stewart mentioned, with AI, but this is one that is very close and immediate, just given the nature of the business. Next slide, you'll see the client roster speaks for itself. You see some of the biggest brands in the world. There are more than 1,400 clients across the portfolio. Also noted along the right column is the breadth of the issue expertise, the sectors we play in. Obviously, the top five or six are dominant, but this represents the U.S. and even global economy. This is an incredibly stable portfolio. Speaking of stability, we carefully track spending by client, and we're always working to add new services and new geographies to the scope whenever possible. Here, you can see the strong upward trajectory of our clients spending more than $100,000 and now more than $250,000 a year. Very healthy gains.

Speaker 8

That's been a concerted effort as both the geography and capabilities grow. Importantly, this is very enviable from our competitors, no single client in the portfolio represents more than 2% of the business. This lack of industry and client concentration is truly unique to what we're building at PPHC. Lastly, perhaps most enviably to our competitors, 90% of our work is retainer-based. You see here our clients renew at nearly 85%. That's right. We start January 1 knowing where that much of the business is coming from. It's a huge advantage towards other parts of our competitive sector, again, that deals more with procurement, marketing tied budgets, project-based work, and far lower renewal rates. Stewart mentioned our large total addressable market in his opening remarks. We've seen estimates far higher, up to five times as high, I've recently seen. We like to stay conservative on this front.

Speaker 8

Moving from left to right on the estimates, U.S. federal and state lobbying are reported figures due to the disclosure laws I've described. That $6.5 billion-$7 billion is quite exact, but it's highly fragmented. Thousands of individual firms register and disclose their clients. Last year, 2,400 firms filed each quarter in the federal space. Moving left to right again, trade estimates for global corporate communications, that's the non-marketing spend that I mentioned. Global public affairs is basically the equivalent to what our lobbyists in Washington do, but they don't use the vernacular. In many capitals, it's not nearly as transparent or disclosed and defined as it is in the federal space that was our start. In other words, there's a lot of room here for PPHC to grow. Grow we have. Here, you've seen the revenue history, both organic and acquired.

Speaker 8

We're proud that we've always driven organic growth, even in periods where the market has not been up or our competitors have not been as fortunate. You see at the bottom how we've added capabilities and geographies by M&A, and at a pretty deliberate pace, always focusing on the integration, both on client side and talent side, and picking the geographies that our clients need us most. California, for example, was the first thing outside of Washington, D.C. years ago. Finally, just a few comments on our 2026 growth strategy. As we've described here today, it's all been a virtuous circle. By careful design, our growth strategy is premised on the commitment to our people, investing in the platform, working with our entrepreneurs and founders on succession planning, refreshing and building their organizations for the longer term.

Speaker 8

From the very start of PPHC, back when the first two lobbying firms merged, we've maintained a referral bonus of 10% for the life of the contract on all internal referrals. You'd be surprised at how unique and powerful this simple program is. More recently, we've created the role of Chief Client Officer early last year to better coordinate referrals, to pursue joint pitches as an integrated group, and to deepen the industry expertise globally. In Q3 last year, for example, we launched cross-company practice groups to pursue group-wide business in energy, AI, healthcare, media, transportation. You'll be seeing more about that in our communications in the months to come. Finally, there's M&A. Simply put, we've never bought revenue for revenue's sake. We buy for strategic fit, quality of leadership, and to enhance the geographic reach of our offer.

Speaker 8

As Stewart and Roel both discussed, we enjoy a very active pipeline of M&A prospects from around the world. While our recent Nasdaq listing has helped raise the profile and creates more inbounds, we've long found the best place to find new targets is through our clients, through our people. It's a small world in the work that we do. Beyond platform-level acquisitions, we also make investments into our existing firms, adding capabilities, deepening specializations, and expanding adjacent markets. What we're doing in London now with the addition of WPI Strategy is very much to deepen the team there and to also add a new specialization to the group. As Roel pointed out, we've seen significant average uplift in EBITDA across our acquired businesses over the years. That's just table stakes, though.

Speaker 8

More importantly, we've successfully brought newly acquired teams into an expanding set of international markets into the PPHC growth story for the years to come. With that, I'll hand it back to Stewart to close. Thank you.

Speaker 7

Thanks, Thomas. Let me bring it together with what we really think makes PPHC such a compelling story. First, it's stability. We operate a growing market, a steady growing market, low political dependency, low client concentration, high retention, and approximately 90% of our revenue remains retainer-based. We're advisors. As such, our clients pay us largely on retainer, and as such they stay. That makes for a highly predictable, highly recurring business with great visibility into future performance. Second, profitability. We operate on the high margin end of the world that we live in. We've consistently delivered around 25% adjusted EBITDA. We're a capital light organization. We have very little in CapEx. It's really our people that we invest in, and that results in strong free cash flow conversion.

Speaker 7

Our largest single non-cash charge rolls off at the end of this year, putting us on a clear path to GAAP profitability in 2027. Third, growth. We have a proven disciplined M&A engine. More than 50 firms are in our pipeline. Our balance sheet has a significant capacity. On top of that, consistent and mid-single digit organic growth in a market where our clients are facing more complexity, not less. Our clients are asking for breadth and simplicity. One platform to rely on, and we're building that platform. Fourth, our people. More than 135 employee shareholders, as we noted earlier, more than 200 with equity instruments on top of that, and a growing team that's committed to the long-term success of the company. Being a public company allows us to bring people into the equity story in a way that will keep them here.

Speaker 7

Keeping our people is how we keep our clients. We're excited about where PPHC is headed. We've built something differentiated in, again, a fragmented market and a large addressable market. We have a scaled platform with the stability of a recurring advisory business and a growth dynamic of a great M&A engine. We appreciate your time today and your interest in our company, and we'll take your questions. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. You'll hear the automated message advise when your hand is raised. We also ask that you please wait for your name and company to be announced before proceeding with your question. One moment while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question today will be coming from the line of Jason Tilton of Canaccord. Your line is open.

Operator

Great. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question, and I really appreciate all the helpful color in the prepared remarks. One thing I wanted to talk about was the commentary around growth expectations, and I believe you said you expect mid-single-digit organic growth over the next few years. I'm wondering how we should be thinking about some of the various building blocks to achieving this in terms of new client growth, more spend at existing clients, increases in retainer values and some of the other factors. Specifically as it relates to 2026, can you talk about some of the key puts and takes that may drive upside or downside relative to those targets? Thank you very much.

Speaker 7

Thanks, Jason. Appreciate you joining us today. I think you started out with a point on organic growth and expectations going forward too on pricing. I'm going to hand that to Roel and let him start off.

Speaker 4

Yep. Thanks, Jason. Good question. Listen, from a growth expectation perspective, first of all, we have a bottom, let's say, of what we call market growth. That really provides a nice bottom in our growth. On top of that, we like to grow a tad faster than the market, just because we believe that our efforts on creating cross-collaboration between our companies allows us to grow one, perhaps 2 points faster than the market. When you look at it from a client perspective, I think, Jason, we've always worked on a mix of upselling and adding clients, there will be no change on that going forward. The actual mix between increase in revenue per client and new clients varies a bit, roughly, I think you could generally say 50/50.

Speaker 4

All of that always changes once we add a new acquisition because a new acquisition will add a new profile and sometimes they work with smaller clients, larger clients, more client concentration, less client concentration. Therefore, we typically stop disclosing those numbers because it's very hard to extrapolate them with all this M&A going on. I hope that gives you some color on how we continue to target 5% organic growth in the near term.

Operator

Thanks.

Operator

Absolutely. Just one quick follow-up from me. In terms of the acquisition you announced today, seems like obviously more of a tuck-in acquisition of specific capabilities. Maybe you should talk us through the balance between a deal like that and as you're looking at what is closest to execution within the pipeline that you are consistently managing through, how to balance that between those sort of smaller type of deals where you're adding a specific capability in a certain area versus a larger deal maybe like a Trailrunner that is more sort of across sectors, across geographies. Thank you.

Speaker 8

Great. It's Thomas here, Jason. Thanks for the question. They're a nice tuck-in from a geographic standpoint, one thing for scale in London, Interestingly this economic consultancy cuts across the horizontal as well. We're already seeing sort of appetite for their work for some of the public affairs work we do in California. It was, yes, a specialization, Also a play for better scale there. As we look at the next handful of deals, it'll be that careful mix. We have a couple of larger things. Still keep in mind Pagefield is not that big of a business in the grand scheme, We have a really healthy range of call it that, $4 million or $5 million up to $25 million in the portfolio, in the pipeline as we see it now.

Operator

Great. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2

Thank you. One moment for the next question. Our next question will be coming from the line of Scott Schneeberger of Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Thanks very much. Congrats all on your first quarter reporting after becoming publicly listed on the Nasdaq. I guess to start off, I'll follow on Jason's question, specifically on WPI Strategy. Why this one now? You guys did a nice job addressing the pipeline, but curious on, and Thomas, I think on your comment on horizontal, maybe a little discussion of the cross-sell potential here. Thanks.

Speaker 8

Yeah. They have a net specific for what they offer. They can work in any geography and they have some really high-credentialed economists. What was a public affairs business in London has sort of grown this specification. As to why now, it was in conversations over recent months. It wasn't the big deal that could've come out of a Nasdaq listing, but we're just going along with the game plan. We'll have more to come on it, big, small, and otherwise. I think what's unique about them again is their profitability for a London market sort of is aligned with Pagefield. Their sort of shared bipartisan bench that came out of some similar partisan. It's just a nice tuck-in for Pagefield. Again, we'll have the added value of extending the European presence and cross-selling from California and beyond.

Speaker 7

Scott, let me add just quickly. This is Stewart. That as we look and why economic research? It goes back to the principle we talked about with the interplay again between strategic corporate communications, frankly, and public affairs communications and even lobbying. That is that frequently, more often than not, we're finding that people with economic interests with those are actually companies that are looking to deploy assets, do projects, et cetera, locate in certain places, et cetera, feel the need to obviously evaluate the political risk and opportunity and influence of political institutions on their economic prospects of the investment. We're finding everything, and we've seen this for a while, from private funds to public entities to banking institutions, et cetera, along with, again, actual corporates are doing deeper and deeper due diligence on these matters.

Speaker 7

Again, it all works with the same interplay and the cross-sell as Thomas noted. Also again, it just shows again the coming together of frankly of economic interest with again the need for the management of political risk and opportunity.

Speaker 6

Great. Thanks. Appreciate that both. Stewart, probably next one for you. It's a two-parter. It's two separate things along the same theme, but I was impressed with, you mentioned I think 300 data center bills, 250 AI bills and then in November, 36 governor races up for grabs. That's just a lot at the state level. If you could just speak to what you all are doing to position around such opportunities. Also just maybe clarification for all. You highlight you don't work on campaign elections. Maybe a little bit more elaboration on the work that you do do with regard to the policy. Thank you.

Speaker 7

Sure. Scott, in short, we don't do campaign elections work because frankly, there's a number of reasons. It's lumpy financially, also it tends to breed a certain level, I think, of sometimes animus and things that we don't want to absorb as a company. More importantly, we pay close attention, obviously, to election cycles, at least again, in our core PA and lobbying businesses. The reason for that is obviously our view is that policy and policy production creates obviously opportunity for us and challenges for our clients. As a result, as we look out on the landscape, what drives things, AI just being an example, but it's not just the economic and social disruptions that are resulting from the mass deployment of the technologies that exist today, but energy infrastructure, et cetera, the things that are needed to power this transition.

Speaker 7

Again, we pay close attention, and as was mentioned earlier, that what we find is that often issues don't live in the Washington ecosphere exclusively, and that's why we pay a lot of attention to states and pay a lot of attention to international. Hence our continuing investments in London and other areas of the world. Frankly we know that no matter what happens in an election, depending on where you stand politically, there will be some level of activity. Red state, blue state, European capital, again international hubs in the Middle East, other places. Again, we stay heavily attuned to that. The good news is, again, in our actual, what you call, again, lobbying and PA assets, they're thoroughly bipartisan. We really don't worry about the outcome of elections.

Speaker 7

We worry instead about making sure that, again, we're economically positioned to deal with those issues we know our clients are already facing and are going to face even more intensely in many cases. When you get down to the micro weeds of how we address that, it was mentioned that our CCO efforts we think are really paying dividends while our company's always paid attention to these things individually. What we now have established really are issue-based working groups across company lines that collaborate regularly and are now looking at these problems from a global and a local perspective. We continue to put a lot of effort in being ahead of that curve. Again, it's just in some sense, it's the lifeblood of our business.

Speaker 6

Thanks. Great answer. Appreciate that. The last question I was alluding to, kind of AI themed. I like that you all addressed here that early on, Stuart, in your remarks, the investors are looking these days, is AI a disruptor to a company or is it an enabler? I think clearly an enabler in your situation, and you did a nice job outlining that and adding that to the slide deck. It segues into, you alluded to maybe, Roel, this is for you, technology investments in 2026, and then, of course, new U.S. public company costs. Can you talk about what the technology investments are and maybe what type of impact we should be considering with regard to OpEx of the public company and the technology investments? Thank you.

Speaker 7

Go ahead, Thomas.

Speaker 8

I'll start with it on the strategy side. Most of that is just some data sets and things to fuel some of the initial AI efforts that we've put from internal development. We've done a couple of contracts with data providers. We're also deepening our offer in investor services, and this gets a bit to your question about the states and the crowded policy environment in states. There's a lot of area doing sort of risk scoring for capital investments against public policy, and we have this golden asset in MultiState, which has boots on the ground in every state. More and more of these disruptions are coming, be it for tech, healthcare, energy, AI, at the state level. We really have an unpolished jewel in the work that we can provide for investor services against the state level.

Speaker 8

A bit of a combo of your answers, but from a data side of the investment, it's not a major impact at all. We're talking about $200,000.

Speaker 7

Correct.

Speaker 6

Great. Understood. Thank you all. Appreciate the very colorful answers. Very helpful.

Speaker 7

Thanks, Scott.

Speaker 2

Thank you. One moment for the next question. Our next question will be coming from the line of Rajiv Sharma of Texas Capital Bank. Your line is open.

Speaker 3

Hi, thank you for taking my questions. Again, congratulations on your first public call.

Speaker 7

Thanks, Raj. Appreciate it.

Speaker 3

Yeah. I wanted to touch upon the, you have new money. With the new money, what pace of acquisitions could we expect this year and sort of ongoing? I know you've talked a lot about it. Any particular segment or geographic focus? You just said WPI is small. Will the size of the acquisition be hard to predict? I'm presuming you will acquire what you've come across and what looks good. Can you just kind of talk about the size?

Speaker 7

Well, Rajiv Sharma, I think the one thing is that we all huddled up shortly after the listing, and I think we agreed that as Roel Smits outlined and Thomas Gensemer outlined, our M&A strategy to date has proved very, very sound. In building the company, both from a complementary portfolio standpoint, but also the long-term stability of the acquisitions.

Speaker 7

I think on pace of deployment, if it fits, we're interested. We continue to organically dig some of these opportunities up ourselves. Some are brought to us obviously from sell-side bankers, et cetera. Size will often depend on the intake there. You look at, again, at WPI, incredibly nice small investment, easily affordable that we could do to continue to grow our beachhead in London. You look at a Trailrunner International from last year, a sell-side opportunity that came to us that we thought again was a great fit, and we were certainly more aggressive about trying to see if we could find a way to get them in the family. I think, we don't model in or look at changing our M&A pace per se. The size could definitely vary.

Speaker 7

Again, I think every time you hear about something we've done going forward, it's always going to fit that overall puzzle. Does it add geography? Does it add opportunity to provide new services to our clients? And is there a distinct cross-sell possibility amongst the family? Ro, you want to add something?

Speaker 4

Yes. No, indeed. We'll be disciplined strategically, but we'll also continue to be disciplined financially. I mean, you wouldn't expect to hear anything else from me as CFO. It is true. We have a model I laid out what typically components are that make up our acquisition structure, and we will continue to abide by it. That's what I think you want to say also about us having them soon after the IPO was completed. That, hey, yes, we have money on the balance sheet now, but we're not going to change the parameters suddenly of what we're going to pay for companies.

Speaker 7

Exactly. I think we've long previewed that we might go, if you look at the pace over the past five years, that we're sort of two up to three to four is something that you could plan on, right? We're going to broaden our appetite and geographies, but we're not going crazy.

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker 7

The sweet spot of things that we're seeing is in that sort of $5 million-$20 million revenue. What's really important for us, keeping these sort of mid-20s% margin profile is it's got to be profitably added to the portfolio and play in a piece of the client wallet that shares the regularity, consistency, and sort of deep advisory kind of moat that we enjoy. Great. I think that's super helpful. Thank you for providing color. Just wanted to get a sense of given your acquisition strategy, do you foresee needing external capital again, or do you plan on sort of funding this with your really high internal cash flow, the pace of acquisitions?

Speaker 4

We should be able to a large extent to fund this with our internally generated cash plus what we have on the balance sheet. If, let's say, in the future, we might have a sudden cash need because there's a sequence of acquisitions to be done, then we will probably go back to our debt instruments that we've also been successfully deploying over the past few years. Which has tended to be highly flexible because when we acquire some debt, it will help us to get an acquisition done, but we'll immediately start repaying that debt maybe the month after we've acquired it.

Speaker 7

Got it. Just lastly, for me, with the first quarter is almost over. How have your government and public affairs and corporate sort of business trends, are they holding up given the recent heightened geopolitical volatility?

Speaker 4

Yes. I think that our Q1 has started sort of in line with expectations, and we'll talk more about that in a future release. Right now, I think that's all we can say about it, right?

Speaker 7

Great. Thank you again, and congratulations again on your fantastic debut in the U.S.

Speaker 4

Appreciate it. Thanks.

Speaker 7

Thank you, Roel.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Speaker 7

Bye. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Our final question of the day will be coming from the line of Samuel Bendall of Stifel. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Hi, guys. Congratulations on the results.

Speaker 7

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Sam.

Speaker 5

Two questions from me, please. Firstly, on very good increase in number of clients spending more than $100,000 to $150,000 in a year. Just wondering how cross-selling is going, particularly with Trailrunner, given you went out for about a year now on that significantly increased your corporate communications capability. Secondly, just more broader question. In terms of your experience and as you expand the number of operating companies, do you think there's an optimal number of operating companies to have, and does it get too big at some future point, or how are you going to sort of manage that? Thank you.

Speaker 4

Okay. Let me take number one, Sam. Number of clients indeed are spending more than 100 or even more than $250K has indeed been increasing. I would say for two reasons, Trail Runner has had a good influence on that. First of all, they're an amazing business machine, and they have a very new business driving culture that actually you can see is contagious. John Green has been happily using that to be out that cross-company integration, that clustering of more doing together that we've been talking about, and that's sort of shining through in the numbers already. The second component that Trail Runner brings is generally their clients are pretty big. When they bring in a new client

Speaker 7

Very often those clients would come in at a monthly rate, for instance, of $50K or $75K, sometimes even $100K. Those are big numbers. That is another component why our number of clients paying more than $100K a year is going up.

Speaker 7

On the second question, even in showing WPI is moving into bolster scale at Pagefield, we realize there's a limited number. Part of this is going to be done in succession planning of founders that are coming out of the business. We're just not rushing it because of the health of their existing businesses that we're buying. These working groups across the issue sets, and then, as Roel Smits said, the broadening of the capabilities has really brought teams together, even while they live within and are retained within their brands. There's a lot happening behind the scenes on the development of specializations that doesn't show through on our now 12 brands. Is the magic number going to be 20? It really depends. Because succession planning sort of starts from day one after the transaction, some of that is in merging brands too.

Speaker 7

It's a bit wait to be seen. We just know our model seems to be working a lot better than others.

Speaker 7

Yeah. Sam, I'd add to that, Stewart, I would add to that too. It's just as a punctuation, our ability to invest further in our existing brands, whether that be through key talent intake, whether especially those that might bring clients or client goodwill with them, obviously we like that. Again, I don't know the right number, as Thomas said, but certainly, you're going to continue to see us make ongoing commitments either to talented teams or again, tuck-in acquisitions into our existing companies, obviously to grow their ability to, again, offer greater services to clients.

Speaker 2

That's great. Thank you very much.

Speaker 7

Thanks, Sam.

Speaker 2

Thank you. I would like to now turn the call back over to Stewart Hall, CEO, for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Thanks. I think we've covered the waterfront today. We appreciate all of your time. We know the setup was a little bit long, probably longer than you'll hear in the future, obviously. We felt for the first call that was important that we give some really complete background on the company. We appreciate everyone's time and attention today, and we look forward to seeing you all regularly as we go forward. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thank you all for attending today's conference. You may now disconnect.

Powered by Quartr