Alfa Financial Software H1 2026 Earnings Report

Alfa Financial Software EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 4.55
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Alfa Financial Software Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Alfa Financial Software Announcement Details

• Quarter: H1 2026
• Date: 9/3/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, September 3, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 10:00AM ET

Alfa has been delivering leading-edge technology to the global asset finance and leasing industry since 1990. Our specialised expertise enables us to deliver the most challenging systems transformation projects successfully. Alfa Systems, our class-leading SaaS platform, is at the heart of the world's largest and most progressive asset finance operations. Supporting all types of automotive, equipment and wholesale finance, Alfa Systems is proven at volume and across borders, and trusted by leading brands to manage complex portfolios, drive efficiency and sustainability, and enhance the customer experience. With full functionality for originations, servicing and collections, Alfa Systems is live in 37 countries, representing an integrated point solution, a rapid off-the-shelf implementation, or an end-to-end platform for the complex global enterprise. Alfa Systems 6, a breakthrough iteration of our software platform, was launched in 2024. Alfa maintains exceptional customer satisfaction through an impeccable track record, with our experience and performance unrivalled in the industry. Our customers stick with us for the long term, because we deliver value that lasts for decades. Alfa has offices all over Europe, Australasia and the Americas. For more information, visit us at alfasystems.com or on LinkedIn.

Alfa Financial Software H1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Subscription momentum remained strong: subscription revenue grew 14%, ARR rose 17% to £48.5 million, net revenue retention was 110%, and subscription revenue reached 37% of total revenue.
• Positive Sentiment: Total contract value increased 17% to £247 million, supported by two new wins and a late-stage pipeline of nine prospects. Management said customer implementations provide substantial visibility into future subscription growth, although project timing remains a risk.
• Positive Sentiment: Alfa is using AI to accelerate software development and simplify implementations, including a reported 75% reduction in data-transformation development effort in one example. New markets such as U.S. auto originations, fleet, and commercial finance are also expanding the addressable opportunity.
• Negative Sentiment: Revenue growth slowed to 4% at actual exchange rates, while operating profit fell 15% and operating margin was 28.3%, impacted by £1.6 million of severance costs, adverse FX hedge movements, and lower software engineering revenue.
• Neutral Sentiment: Management maintained full-year expectations, forecasting slightly stronger subscription growth in the second half and overall growth broadly in line with prior expectations. Cash conversion is still expected at 80%–90% for the year despite 76% in the first half, and excess cash will temporarily be retained rather than returned through special dividends or buybacks.

Presentation

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

Hello everyone, and welcome to Alfa Financial Software's 2026 half year results presentation. As always, I am joined by Matthew White, Alfa's COO, and in his final results performance before retirement, Duncan Magrath, Alfa's CFO. For the first time by Andrew Dickson, Alfa's incoming CFO. Duncan will take you through the financial review, Matt will cover operational delivery, and I will return later to talk about the business, our sales progress, and our outlook before we summarize and open for questions. Stepping back and looking at the first half as a whole, we are pleased with the progress we have made. Subscription revenue grew by 14%, subscription total contract value by 22%, ARR grew by 17%, and net revenue retention remained strong at 110%. Subscription revenues now account for 37% of total revenue, which reflects the continued evolution of Alfa towards a larger recurring revenue business.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

Sales activity has also remained encouraging. We secured two wins during the first half, and total contract value increased by 17% to GBP 247 million. We continue to see good activity across both the late stage and early stage pipelines. We are already working with three of the nine prospects in our late-stage pipeline, which gives us confidence in our future opportunities. We have continued to invest in our product and delivery capability. During the period, we invested GBP 19.6 million in software, particularly in originations, fleet, commercial finance, and our AI capabilities. We also achieved two go lives during the half, which is an important validation of both our product and delivery approach. Looking ahead, we remain confident in our full year expectations. We see artificial intelligence as an exciting opportunity to enhance our product, accelerate development, and simplify delivery, while continuing to create value for our customers.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

Turning to the key financial highlights. Revenue was GBP 65.1 million, representing growth of 5% at constant currency. Total contract value increased 17% to GBP 247 million, and ARR increased 17% to GBP 48.5 million. Subscription revenue grew 14%, while net revenue retention remained very strong at 110%. Operating profit was GBP 18.4 million, and operating margin was 28%. Excluding the impact of severance costs and FX hedges, operating profit was ahead of last year by 2%, with operating margin only slightly down on last year. Duncan will cover this later. Cash conversion for the first half was 76%. That was influenced by the timing of customer receipts between the second half of last year and the first half of this year. Duncan will discuss that also in more detail shortly.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

Overall, these results reflect continued growth in our subscription business, ongoing investment in the product, and good momentum across both the sales pipeline and delivery organization. Before handing over to Duncan for the financial review, as usual, I would like to welcome Andrew Dickson, who recently joined us as CFO and who will formally succeed Duncan on the board on the 16th of September. Andrew, perhaps you would like to introduce yourself.

[Andrew Dickson, Incoming CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Thank you very much. Since joining Alfa a couple of months ago, I have got to know people both in EMEA and the U.S. I have been hugely encouraged by what I have seen, and I am really looking forward to taking over from Duncan when he steps down the board in a couple of weeks' time.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Thanks, Andrew. The first half of 2026 was a solid financial performance against last year, which was always going to be a tough comparator. Revenue was up 4% at actual rates or 5% at constant currency, with growth in subscription and delivery revenues partially offset by a lower level of software engineering revenue than the very strong first half of 2025. The gross margin percentage was down 400 basis points. Two things to note here. Firstly, last year we had a very high level of chargeable software engineering revenues, and secondly, the margin in this period is weighed down by severance costs. Operating profit was down 15%, delivering an operating margin of 28.3%, although very much impacted by severance costs and FX hedges. Excluding these, operating profit was actually ahead by 2%, with the operating margin only slightly down on last year.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

The effective tax rate of 26.0% was in line with 2025. Turning now to the cost lines in a little more detail. Cost of sales was up 16% and SG&A up 12%, but both lines are distorted by the severance costs and FX hedges. In the first half, we incurred GBP 1.6 million of severance costs, including the associated legal fees, and this was split GBP 1.2 million into cost of sales and GBP 0.4 million into SG&A. In relation to FX, we had a GBP 1.7 million gain on the U.S. dollar hedges in 2025, compared with a GBP 0.3 million loss on the hedges in 2026. The year-on-year swing on that line alone is GBP 2.0 million. Strip both of these out and the picture is much more measured. Cost of sales increased 10% and SG&A was up just 2%.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Within SG&A, profit share is down GBP 0.5 million or 19%, simply reflecting lower profits with share-based payments also being down. Depreciation and amortization was as expected up GBP 0.6 million or 39%, and I will come back to the trajectory of amortization under modeling guidance. Other operating costs were up 6%, driven by the growth in headcount and the costs of expanding into new markets and territories. Turning now to TCV. Total TCV grew 17% to GBP 247 million, up from GBP 211 million this time last year. Looking at the revenue streams, subscription TCV and delivery TCV were both up 22%, with software engineering down 29%. The software engineering reduction reflects a lower level of chargeable development work needed for new customers. As the profile of new customers changes, so will TCV. Next 12 months TCV was up 12% to GBP 101 million from GBP 90 million last year.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Again, with growth in subscription and delivery partially offset by the reduction in software engineering. As I flagged up last year, we now supplement the TCV disclosure with ARR and NRR. I will turn to these next. Annual recurring revenue was up 17% at 30th of June 2026 to GBP 48.5 million from GBP 41.6 million. As a reminder, we calculate this by taking the average subscription revenues over the last six months and annualizing them. We exclude any revenues which we do not expect to last 12 months at the point of origin. That 17% growth is very much in line with the underlying growth in subscription revenues. Net revenue retention was 110%. To help understand this, I have included a breakdown in the table. We are, in effect, a zero churn business for Modern Alfa Systems. I have started the table at the base of 100%.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

We then have a 3% drag from one specific terminating V4 customer who gave notice back in 2018 and has not yet fully transitioned away from Alfa. We grew 6% from net upsell across the existing customer base and grew 7% from new customers not yet live. It is the impact of new customers not yet live that I will return to in a minute because I am not sure that this future growth is sufficiently understood by everyone. Looking now at overall subscription revenues. Subscription revenues were up 14% on last year to GBP 24.1 million. Looking at the breakdown, 73% came from customers already live on V5 or Alfa Systems 6, 20% from new customers currently implementing AS6, 4% from customers upgrading from V4, and the remaining 3% from V4 customers who have not yet upgraded.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Subscription TCV was up 22% on last year, driven by growth from both new customer wins and the existing customer base, which underpins our confidence that this revenue stream will continue to grow strongly. We now have 44 customers contributing to subscription revenues up from 41. Within that, Alfa Cloud customers on V5 or AS6 have increased from 23 to 24, with a further three in the late-stage pipeline up from one last year. We have 15 customers on private cloud and two remaining V4 customers. As I have said before, we do not expect to convert every private cloud customer, but we would expect to convert many of these over time, and that remains a potential incremental source of growth for the next few years. Staying with subscription, I want to dive a bit more into the growth from customers not yet live on Alfa. I have shown this slide before.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

It shows the history of our V5 and AS6 customer base. I previously used it to make the point that there has been zero competitive churn. I am showing it again, but wanted you to focus on the customers and implementation at the top. We currently have 15 customers in implementation, of which two are V4 upgrades. There are 13 new customers who will drive future subscription growth once they go live and reach their full run rate revenues. All the customers in implementation started from 2023 onwards. I will show on the next slide how the customers in implementation who we started work with in 2023, 2024, and 2025 will strongly contribute to the future growth in subscription revenues. Many of you will be familiar with the illustrative graph I produced a few years ago showing the typical life cycle of a contract.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

I have shown a small copy of this at the top of this slide as a reminder and repeated the full slide in the appendix. This time, rather than using illustrative figures, I will be demonstrating with actual and internal forecast data. The previous slide showed all V5 customers and was organized by when we started working with them. I have taken the 2023, 2024, and 2025 cohorts and excluded any of those which are customers upgrading from V4, so only including new customers. The 2023 cohort is deep orange with five customers in it. The 2024 cohort is medium orange with six customers in it, and the 2025 cohort is the light orange with two customers in it. It shows revenue by half years with actual data from H1 2023 up to and including H1 2026. It then shows internal forecast data for the periods after that.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

You can see how the revenues build as customers move through implementation to go live. It is important to note that this only shows revenue from customers we started working with in those years, and so it is not total subscription revenues. It is intended to show how the new customers and implementation are a significant contributor to overall growth in subscription revenues. The overall percentage growth rates will be lower than this once you add existing live customers into the figures. You can see that the growth in revenues from the 2023 cohort starts to flatten off in 2027 and 2028 as those customers reach go live and hit their full run rate. If you compare the revenue for these three cohorts in 2026 to 2028, you will see that the revenue more than doubles over that period.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

These are revenues from customers we are working with today, and there is no contribution here from customers we are not yet working with. We can be pretty certain that unless the projects stop, this growth will come through into our subscription revenues. There is some risk over timing, so it takes longer to get projects to go live than we expect. The ramp-up in revenues will be later. But at the moment, this is our best view of the likely outcome for these cohorts. It is this growth in subscription revenues as customers reach go live, which gives us confidence in the strength of subscription revenue growth over the medium term. Turning now to software engineering revenues. Software engineering revenues were down 17% from a very strong first half last year, although 43% higher than the year before.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Within this, chargeable development work for new subscription customers decreased by GBP 2.7 million, with development work for existing customers down GBP 0.5 million. Offsetting this customized license revenue is up GBP 1.7 million to GBP 2.8 million, reflecting the completion of the accounting on our last significant perpetual license sale. We are now into the perpetual license tail. We have GBP 4.8 million on the balance sheet at the half year, which will be GBP 3.9 million by year-end. This will steadily unwind with GBP 1.7 million recognized in 2027, GBP 1.1 million in 2028, with the balance declining through to and finishing in 2031. There was no one-off license revenue recognized in H1 2026. TCV is down 29% on June 25, reflecting that lower level of future chargeable development work for new customers. I would note, though, that while TCV is down from December, our visibility of future work has improved since then.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

That work is not yet in TCV, and it is an area where we could do better than current expectations if client approvals come through more quickly. Turning to our final revenue stream, delivery. Delivery revenues were up 5% year-on-year. 54% of delivery revenue relates to new customers in definition or implementation, up from 40% last year, which again speaks to the volume of new customers moving through the pipeline towards go live. Partner days were 8% of our total delivery days, slightly higher than the 7% last year. TCV is up 22% on June 25, primarily driven by two new customer wins, and you can see the improvement in coverage across both the next 12 months, but particularly in the period after 12 months. We are looking to recruit more people into delivery for 2027.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

As looking at TCV on our late-stage pipeline, we need to increase the people to deliver the growth we expect. We have 44 customers contributing to delivery revenues up from 43. Within that, Live V5 and AS6 customers have increased from 26 to 28, and we have 13 new customers, not yet live, up from 11. Turning now to cash flow. Cash conversion was 76% for the half year. This is lower than our normal level, but as a result of the very high conversion of 108% in the second half of 2025, which included GBP 2.8 million of accelerated receipts in December. This is a timing effect between the halves rather than any change in the underlying quality of our cash generation. I have included the cash flow performance by half in the appendix to demonstrate this. Our modeling guidance for cash flow remains unchanged.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Capital expenditure remains in line with the prior year. Net tax payments increased to GBP 4.7 million. Last year benefited from cash received on R&D claims, and we have had none of that so far in 2026. We paid GBP 13.7 million of dividends in the period, made up of the GBP 4.5 million ordinary dividend and the GBP 9.2 million special declared with the full year results.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Now some words on capital allocation. Alfa remains a strongly cash generative business, and our approach to capital allocation remains disciplined. We continue to generate excess cash even after allowing for the investment we are making in the business. For the last five years, we have paid an ordinary dividend and then returned excess cash to shareholders through special dividends and buybacks. Having reviewed current market conditions, we have decided to retain the excess cash for the time being to provide us with optionality over how we use it.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

If in due course we conclude that we have no use for it, we will return it to shareholders. Our policy of paying an ordinary progressive dividend remains unchanged, and the amount to be paid for 2026 will be announced with the full year results. Next, a brief update on modeling guidance. Starting with the outlook for 2026, we expect continued growth in subscription revenues. Delivery revenues will grow more slowly than we originally expected, but we expect that to be offset by improved software engineering revenues, so that overall growth is broadly as we anticipated. Capitalized development costs are expected to continue at similar levels to 2025. As the capitalization of internally generated intangibles has grown and those assets come into use, amortization will increase to a similar level as capitalization.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Cash conversion is expected to be 80%-90% for 2026 as a whole, which is unchanged from what I said in March, notwithstanding the 76% in the first half. The effective tax rate is expected to be around 26%, slightly higher than the U.K. corporate tax rate, reflecting the overseas territories we now operate in. On currency, the sensitivity shown are for a full 12 months and unchanged from previously disclosed and ignore the impact of hedges. For profit, we are fully hedged on U.S. dollars, so any movement in the U.S. dollar exchange rate will have no impact on profit. We do not hedge account, so revenue is unaffected by our hedges, and so a one-cent movement in the average exchange rate for the second half would have half the full-year effect, i.e., GBP 250,000 impact on revenue.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

I will now hand over to Matthew for an operational update.

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

Thank you, Duncan, and hello, everyone. I am going to start, as I always do, with a reminder of our strategy, and it is a reminder, it is not an update. Our strategy is stable, and it is consistent, and we see that as a very good thing. I think that the reminder is important because the most important thing to understand about Alfa is the context in which we operate, and that is the market that we serve is extremely complex, highly regulated, infinitely demanding and ever-changing. Our opportunity is huge. We are the leading player in a massive market, and we currently have only a small market share. Our strategy for creating long-term sustainable business value is designed to maximize and enable us to grasp that opportunity.

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

That strategy is to strengthen, to grow our differentiation by investing in our three key differentiators: our smart, diverse team, our product, and our delivery methodology and tooling. Secondly, to sell. To enable profitable growth by focusing on building our community of single-tenant SaaS customers, increasing our subscription revenue, and enabling incremental sales. To scale, to increase our capacity for developing and delivering Alfa Systems and to extend our reach. Finally, to simplify. To enable more concurrent Alfa Systems implementations more efficiently. I am going to focus in a little more on this final aspect of our strategy, simplification, this morning. Reducing friction in the implementation of Alfa Systems has been a key element of our strategy for a long time. Doing so will lower the cost of delivery, shorten the time before customers go live, and allow subscription revenue to begin flowing sooner.

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

Just as importantly, it improves the economics of projects for customers. We are, and we have always been, the premium provider in our industry. By reducing delivery costs, we will enable prospects that may previously have been too small or too cost-sensitive to justify an Alfa implementation to afford an Alfa, the premium offering. To repeat, our market share is actually very small, so the amount to go after is huge. We expect reduced cost per implementation to result in us being able to reach significantly more customers. AI provides fantastic tooling for increasing the efficiency of the implementation process. The technology is improving quickly, and we are seeing real benefits. Data migration provides a great example use case. In one example, we have seen the effort required for development of data transformation code reduced by 75%, and AI provides a fantastic tool for reconciling the migration output as well.

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

Our AI-enabled Alfa Recon tool is one of our biggest incremental sales opportunities. Importantly, most of the work carried out as part of an implementation of Alfa Systems is done not by the Alfa team, but by customers or by implementation partners. The role of the Alfa team is generally to provide expert assistance in implementation tasks, and our implementation partners are also investing in AI as a simplification technology, and they are competing with each other to find the most impressive efficiency gains. Again, the result of this is reduced implementation cost and increased addressable market. Moving on to our product and our market. As I said when presenting our FY 2025 results, we see AI amplifying the value of Alfa's product. Alfa Systems value has never simply been the code base.

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

It is the combination of decades of domain experience embedded within a SaaS platform built for one of the most complex vertical markets in enterprise software. We provide a governing control plane for the world's largest and most complex finance organizations. At its core sits a robust ledger and system of record for auto, equipment, and commercial finance, providing a vast, well-structured data framework. Around that are deterministic transaction processing, configurable workflows, embedded authority models, security, resilience, integration capabilities, scalability, performance, and extensibility. The embedded and configurable workflows are standardized, they are auditable, they are repeatable, reversible, and integrated. These are not just technical features. They form a trusted operational platform for highly regulated businesses. Customers can rely on us to evolve with the pace of technological change, allowing them to focus on enabling investment in the economies that they serve, rather than being distracted by fast-moving technology.

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

Alongside all of that, there is Alfa Cloud's SaaS delivery and implementation track record. Those provide huge competitive advantage. While we expect AI to enable efficiencies, including headcount reductions for our customers, Alfa Systems is priced based on the number of asset finance contracts managed on Alfa rather than per user. So our revenue model is not impacted by increasing customer efficiency. Next, a few words on Alfa Systems AI functionality. Our Alfa Systems AI products now live under one umbrella brand, Theia. Theia Core is the layer within Alfa Systems that allows Alfa innovations to communicate safely and efficiently with AI, regardless of the underlying service. Importantly, this is only available for Alfa Cloud customers, providing a compelling case for upgrade for customers not yet using our SaaS offering. An example of a quality-of-life feature built on Theia Core is Theia Notes.

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

This provides a summary of notepad entries for an agreement, which is hugely powerful for many of our customers. Theia Lens provides intelligent document processing functionality. Alfa can already work with third-party IDP solutions, and we are now working on our own functionality in this area, powered by Theia Core. Theia Connect provides a Model Context Protocol, or MCP, server. This has not yet been launched as part of our marketing agenda, but it is available for example use cases. An MCP is an emerging standard for connecting AI assistants to business systems, and it is now firmly part of conversations with our customers and with prospects. Theia Connect is likely to be key in allowing customers to plug AI tooling directly into Alfa processes. Moving on from AI, we have progressed with our key market expansion exercises in fleet, commercial finance, and U.S. auto originations.

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

All three are progressing with customers, which is our preferred methodology for investment. U.S. auto originations is exciting because of the scale of the opportunity. Every U.S. auto finance provider requires originations functionality, and this is a new addition to our offering. The value is substantial. Fleet is exciting because it opens up the European auto finance market, where auto fleet management often sits alongside retail finance. Our first implementation of our fleet functionality is progressing well. Commercial finance is an adjacent market which will, in time, increase our TAM, and we are stepping up our marketing efforts within the commercial finance world. We are also investing in our portal for customer and dealer access, again with customer partnership. We have completed a pilot accelerating software development using AI tooling. We have had some excellent results. We found many compelling use cases, and we are now moving into a BAU phase.

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

We expect our usage of this exciting tooling to continue to increase the pace at which we can deliver new features for customers. We continually assess the shape of the team required in order to deliver efficiently for customers. We have seen reduced demand for customer-led enhancement of our software, and we have reshaped the team in response. In the first half, this has resulted in 31 non-voluntary departures from Alfa, mainly from product engineering. We have continued to recruit where demand is stronger, including into cloud hosting operations and into delivery, with both graduate and experienced hire recruitment. We have refreshed our new hire induction material, and we are now rolling this out in all regions. The new approach enables new hires to be onboarded more efficiently and more effectively.

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

Our cross-company program of AI literacy ensures that all areas of the business have the resources that they need to maximize opportunities for efficiency. For example, every business area has AI champions as points of contact to roll out and adapt learning and development materials for their group. We have a fantastic team and a culture of delivery and of growth, all focused on building this special company together. 2026 people initiatives include our culture playbook, ensuring that we maintain and grow our culture as we scale our team internationally. Our unrivaled track record of delivery continues, and it is this ongoing delivery that layers new subscription revenues onto our model. In the first half, we achieved two go lives for new Alfa Systems 6 customers. The first was for an existing Alfa Systems 4 customer, which upgraded onto Alfa Systems 6.

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

The go-live involved migrating portfolios in two different countries onto a single segregated instance of Alfa Cloud. The upgrade allowed our customer to simplify their internal systems infrastructure, as well as to access the product benefits of the latest version of Alfa. The second new customer go-live was for a limited new business pilot. With a ramp-up in new business volumes expected over the coming months, and with migrations of the existing finance book expected to follow, in due course, the result will be our largest Alfa Cloud implementation. We expect this customer to be an important part of our growth in the coming years. We have also sold a new subscription upgrade product to our first customer. This is a win for our customer as well as for Alfa. For our customer, access to upgrades on a subscription basis makes costs predictable and upgrades easier to access.

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

For Alfa, the new model increases subscription revenue and assigns to us the benefits of increasing efficiency, and we are confident of further sales of this product in the future. We have the leading product, an outstanding team, and a clear track record of delivery in a complex vertical where competitors frequently fail. Our market opportunity is huge. Our simplification agenda, accelerated by advances in AI tooling, will enable us to reach more customers and layer high-value recurring subscription revenue onto our model more efficiently. Investment in our product is expanding our opportunity. We are really excited about the future. I will hand over to Andrew Denton for an update on the prospects for future customers.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

Thanks, Matt. I will continue with the business and the sales update. We are pleased with the progress we have made in the pipeline since our full-year results. During the first half, we converted two prospects into wins, demonstrating the continued demand for Alfa Systems and the effectiveness of our sales strategy. At the same time, we maintained a strong late-stage pipeline of nine prospects spanning multiple geographies, customer types, and industry segments. Importantly, several opportunities have continued to advance through workshops and contracting activities, and we are already undertaking paid work with some of these prospects. This remains a key indicator of commitment and provides a strong foundation for future conversions. The pipeline is geographically diverse across the Americas, Europe, the U.K., and broader international markets.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

We continue to see particular interest in our investments in originations, fleet, and commercial finance, reinforcing our belief that expanding the product's capabilities increases our addressable and serviceable markets and strengthens Alfa's competitive position. We have been particularly pleased with the level of incremental sales driven by our new commercial finance modules. Looking forward, demand for asset and automotive finance software remains strong. What continues to differentiate Alfa is the combination of our people, our product, and our delivery track record. These advantages have underpinned our success to date and remain central to our long-term strategy. Artificial intelligence is creating exciting opportunities across our business. As Matthew explained, we are using AI to accelerate software development, simplify implementations, improve internal efficiency, and create practical functionality for our customers within trusted Alfa workflows. We are particularly pleased with the progress of our Theia AI product group.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

We continue to invest in market expansions through originations, fleet, and commercial finance, and we believe these investments will continue to support future growth in both delivery and subscription revenues. While foreign exchange remains a headwind, given the success of our North American business, our expectations for the full year remain unchanged, and we continue to see a significant opportunity ahead of us. To summarize, the first half of 2026 has seen continued progress across the business. Subscription revenues grew 14%, subscription TCV increased 22%, ARR grew 17%, and net revenue retention remains strong at 110%. Subscription revenues now represent 37% of total revenue, demonstrating the ongoing transition of Alfa towards a business with a larger recurring revenue base. Sales performance was encouraging, with two new wins, growth in total contract value to GBP 247 million, and a healthy late-stage pipeline of nine prospects.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

We continue to see strong interest across the markets we serve and good activity in the earlier stages of our pipeline. We continue to invest in our product, in our people, and in delivery capability. Investment in originations, fleet, commercial finance, and AI is expanding our addressable market and strengthening our competitive differentiation, while AI is helping us simplify delivery and accelerate development. Most importantly, we remain confident in our future prospects. The combination of a growing subscription base, a strong pipeline, expanding market opportunity, and continued product innovation positions Alfa well for the remainder of 2026 and far beyond. Thank you for listening.

[Operator]

Thank you for the presentation. We have had a number of questions pre-submitted and submitted live. Just as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please type them into the Q&A box situated on the right-hand side of your screen. We are now moving on to our first question. Revenue only up 4%. That's a big step down from where we're used to see Alfa. Is this the new normal, or does H2 pick back up?

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Okay. It's Duncan Magrath here. I'll take this one. I think the best way of thinking about this is to think of the three different components of our business, so the three revenue streams. If you think about delivery business being roughly 50% of the business, if you think of subscription being 35%-40% of the business, and software engineering being 10%-15% of the business, if you've got those blocks in your mind, we've got very different growth characteristics of each of those blocks. So, if you look at the first half, if you look at those blocks, as we've talked about, subscription was up 14%, delivery was up 5%, and software engineering down 17%. So the 4% is very much a combination of those three different parts of the business.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

So if I deal with it in two bits, one is, does the second half pick back up? In terms of the profile of each of those pieces of the business, I am expecting subscription revenue to be slightly stronger growth in the second half, and delivery and software engineering to be similar. So we should see growth being slightly higher than the first half, but not dramatically higher. So overall, for the year as a whole, the analysts have us on about 6% growth for the second half. That gets us to sort of nearly 5% growth for the year as a whole. The question also says, is this a new normal? I think if you, again, look at those blocks of the business, again, start with the biggest one, delivery, half the business at the moment.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

We still expect delivery typically to be somewhere between mid-single digit to high single-digit growth. So let us call it 5%-8% type growth per annum is not a bad sort of medium-term indicator for that business. If that is driving half the business, then you have 2-4 percentage points of growth for the whole company coming from that part of the business. Subscription, 35%-40% of the business, mid to high teens growth, is where we would be expecting that business. So you can see that we would be getting 5-6 percentage points growth from subscription for the whole of the business. So before software engineering, we are about anywhere between an 8%-10% growth business.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Software engineering is the one that is much more difficult to predict because it really much depends on what is coming through the pipeline, the nature of the customers, et cetera. So I think no, it is not the new normal. I think if you are modeling something, I have said it before, modeling software engineering as a sort of flat part of the business wouldn't be a bad place to start. It will be sometimes much better than that, and sometimes it will be below that, which we have seen this year. So not a new normal. I think the important part is strategically, we are trying to grow the subscription part of the business as a proportion that will grow as a whole, and the growth in that part of the business is the fastest-growing part of the business.

[Operator]

Thank you. We have two now for TCV. The first question, TCV up 17%, but revenue barely moving. What is the lag time on all the contracted work actually converting? The second question is, how confident are you that the current TCV growth will translate into sustainable growth earnings? Thank you.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Yeah. I'll take that one as well. I think if you think of those individual building blocks, it's important to think about it that way again. TCV was up 17% year-on-year. A lot of that growth came from subscription. So GBP 31 million of the overall GBP 36 million of growth in TCV came from subscription, as I said, the fastest-growing part of our business. GBP 11 million of growth came from delivery, and actually software engineering was a reduction of GBP 6 million. So it's the same picture as revenue that I just walked through. In terms of the lag, it's very much we will see the growth percentages I just talked about coming through, and it's more the makeup of the TCV and how that plays out is the important thing.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

The big growth driver will be the movement. The biggest growth driver is obviously subscription revenues. That's the fastest growth. In terms of confidence, the second part of the question, which is translating to sustainable earnings growth, I covered on one of my slides why we're confident in that subscription mid to high teens growth, going forwards. Because as customers go through implementation, get to go live, the number of contracts on the system increase, and our subscription revenues increase. So we are confident in that subscription growth number. We're confident also in the delivery because of the late-stage pipeline.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Again, I'll come back to the fact that software engineering is a little more difficult to predict because it very much depends precisely on what new customers might need for changes to the software. But we've always looked ourselves at a sort of Rule of 40 type business over any sort of medium term timeframe, and that's always been around a sort of 30% type margin business with a 10%-12% overall growth rate, and we still believe that's the shape of the business that we are today.

[Operator]

Brilliant. Thank you. The next question is about software engineering. Software engineering revenue is down 17% year-on-year. Is that just normalizing after last year's bumpy year or is client work drying up?

[Andrew Dickson, Incoming CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Let me have a go at answering that. It's Andrew Dickson here. As Duncan said, it's actually quite difficult to accurately forecast software engineering revenue. This is partly because it's very closely linked to the timing of new customer wins and also customer requirements. If we actually look at the figures, the GBP 8.6 million that we reported in the first half of this year, whilst it was down against H1 2025, it was still up significantly against the first half of 2024, where we reported GBP 6 million worth of software engineering revenue. To some degree it is really a function of timing. However, I think at the same time, it is worth noting that the first half of this year did include GBP 2.8 million of customized license revenue, which is expected to be slightly lower in future periods.

[Andrew Dickson, Incoming CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

I think that's the best explanation I can give for that.

[Operator]

Brilliant. Thank you. Moving on to our next question. Do clients ever build this stuff in-house instead of buying Alfa Systems? Is this still a competitive threat or has that basically gone away?

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

Hi, it's Andrew Denton here. I'll have a go at that one. It definitely used to be more of an option. If we look at our total addressable market of just over $3 billion per year annual spend, about $1 billion of that is spent on self-build systems. Things certainly seem to have changed. We're in a position now, I think, where large institutions are more inclined to do what we call stick to the knitting and concentrate on being large institutions. And why is that? Well, there are a number of problems with self-build. One of them is what does good look like? People are investing in these large technology-led transformations in order to make their businesses better, and there is a real risk that what you end up doing is pouring concrete around your existing business processes, whether they're good or bad. There's the risk.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

We've had 36 years of refining our system. If you're building your own right now, you have to get it right first time. There's the fact that it might fit you like a glove right now, but nobody knows what the future will bring, and you've got a better chance of retaining the flexibility you need to be future competitive by buying a package. Then finally, all of the regulatory change is on you going forward. Whereas you buy something like Alfa and we will take care of it. We'll also take care of what the regulatory change looks like. Pretty compelling reasons not to do it, I think, which is what these organizations are seeing. It's why they're not, on the whole, doing it. There might be a question within the question around AI.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

We're often asked about the threat of AI creating a situation where people build these systems. We're very certain that nobody is going to Vibe code or Claude code an Alfa. AI, as we're finding internally with our use of the likes of Claude, definitely speeds up development. But speeding up development doesn't actually solve for any of the risks I just outlined.

[Operator]

Brilliant. Thank you. Let's tip on to the next question. Share price was over 200 pence earlier in the year, and now it sits just at 167 pence. A reasonable performance today, but why do you think the market keeps marking this down when the underlying numbers still look decent?

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

I'm going to take this one again. I might go as far as to say today's been a good day. I'm looking at 173, but you're right. I think that the market doesn't quite get it. Why is that? I think some of it is within the material that Duncan outlined around the general market not quite understanding that I use rather more folksy language and say that a lot of that revenue is in the oven, it's just not fully cooked, which Duncan did a far more scientific job of explaining. But either way, we are very certain that the ramp-up in subscription revenue from the projects that we're working on is around the corner for us, and I don't think that's appreciated. I also think sometimes the financial markets do paint with a very broad brush.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

When people worry about AI, I think they worry about all technology, and I think that enterprise technology, such as the market that we are in, is somewhat more impervious to the threat of AI. Then finally, it also feels somewhat like we have been caught up in what some people call SaaSpocalypse, and that was the concern, I think, that AI making businesses more efficient would be deleterious of revenue for those businesses that licensed on a per seat basis.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

We have never done that. We have always licensed on volume because even before AI, Alfa made these businesses more efficient. A combination, I think, still of not quite understanding the business and where we are going and what our future looks like, and also us being swept up in larger market tropes and movements. I agree with the questioner or the implicit question there, that we are somewhat undervalued and under-understood.

[Operator]

Thank you. To the next question. The big question seems to be whether Alfa can convert the strong ARR and TCV growth into earnings. What should investors expect from operating margins over the medium term?

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Yeah, and I think we will perhaps deal with the other question as well. Perhaps you read the next question out, and then I will deal with both of them together, if that is possible.

[Operator]

Yes, absolutely. The next question is how much operating leverage is there in the model if subscription revenue continues growing in mid to high teens, where could margins ultimately settle?

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Great, thanks. The simple answer to the question is, we do expect margins to improve over the medium term. Let me go into a bit more detail about leverage and why we would say that. Again, I'm going to break this business down into three pieces. Very much our delivery part of the business, the largest part of the business, it's basically a time and materials part of the business. We charge the number of days that we work to the clients. If we want to grow that business and do more days, we would need more people. We have a partnering program as well. Without diving into that, you can see that business is largely driven by, the biggest element of that component is headcount and salary cost. So there's not a lot of leverage in that business. To grow that business, we would employ more people.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

On the software engineering side of the business, it's slightly different. There is more leverage on software engineering because the people within what we call our product engineering team are doing three different things. They're doing chargeable development work for customers. They're doing our own investment into the product, and they're also doing bug fixing. We can move those people around depending on what's happening at any point in time. If more chargeable work comes in, which is a possibility, for instance, in the second half of this year, then we would potentially divert resource away from, for instance, own investment and delay some of that and do the chargeable work for customers. You can see in that scenario, we've got no increase in cost because it's the same people, but our revenue's gone up, and therefore we've got good leverage.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Obviously, leverage can work the other way. We've seen a drop in software engineering, the chargeable work in the first half of this year, and obviously that's dropped through to the bottom line and impacted margins. So there is definitely leverage within the software engineering part of the business. If you look at subscription, you've got three components. You've got hosting, where we do have effectively costs of the hosting of Alfa Cloud. We use AWS. As the hosting revenues grow, our costs grow, and we do get a little leverage on people because we've automated an awful lot of the toolings. So we don't necessarily have to grow the hosting team in line with revenue. Maintenance, we would get some leverage. Maintaining more clients won't necessarily require the same increase in the number of people.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Licenses is fully leveraged, i.e., additional license revenue will just drop straight through the bottom line. So there is operating leverage. There is not a big overall fixed cost base. All of the costs I have just talked about ultimately are somewhat variable. Our fixed costs are relatively small. They are a small number of offices in terms of fixed costs. Looking forwards, to answer the question, we would expect margins to improve over the medium term, particularly as the license and subscription revenues grow. Therefore that will flow through into improved margins. The one thing I think I would just caution about is that we do make all parts of our business have good gross margins. Some businesses operate perhaps with a very, very high software part or subscription part of the business with very low margin on the professional services business.

[Duncan Magrath, CFO at Alfa Financial Software]

Ours is much closer, a much narrower spread. We will not necessarily see dramatic increases in margins over the short term, but over the long term, gradually, incrementally, that will improve.

[Operator]

Brilliant. Thank you, Duncan. On to the next question. What has given the confidence to keep investing in the U.S. at this point?

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

To best answer this question, it is Andrew Denton again. I will try a little bit to guess the motivation behind the question, and perhaps the motivation is around understanding the effect that local and macroeconomics have on demand for our product. Clearly the U.S. is an interesting place today. De Nederlandsche Bank or the Central Bank of the Netherlands has just taken a load of gold away because they are concerned about another collapsed U.S.-Canadian trade deal.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

We are often asked about this kind of thing, the effect that interest rates, bond yields, political instability, what that has on demand for our product. If the listeners will forgive me, I will talk a little bit about the reasons why people take that leap and spend a lot of money on a large enterprise software system, and why we believe that our end market, including the U.S., is largely acyclical. We talk about push and pull factors, and perhaps some of the pull factors are wrapped up a little bit in what you might call local business confidence. Pull factors would be we want to sell different and more products, we want to be more efficient, perhaps even we want to make use of AI. There is a degree of optionality around those. We are super interested in push factors.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

Push factors will be those in-house systems that I talked about earlier on, where GBP 1 billion a year is spent on maintaining them. What happens when they are on a mainframe and IBM decide they do not want to support it anymore? Or they are only accessible through Internet Explorer 1995 or something, which is a bit of an information security problem. Or indeed, regulatory change, which I also touched on in a previous question. Those push factors mean that you do not have a choice but to try to invest in implementing a new system. That is important for us and for demand from our end market because that demand is somewhat above local economic and political conditions. That brings us to the U.S.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

The U.S., for us, in terms of our success there, whilst we enjoy having the number one and number two player on in equipment finance, a large part of our success there has been in automotive finance. A large part of that success has involved what we will call captives, automotive finance businesses that are owned by automotive manufacturers. The stark reality for an auto manufacturer is you do not really buy cars with cash anymore. If you do not have a finance division, then you are not really going to sell any cars or combine harvesters. The same applies through.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

The combination of the fact that there are reasons that are not about local economic confidence that are bringing people to market, and the fact that they have to be able to support their finance arms, mean that in the U.S., and indeed in other target markets, we are very confident that demand will carry on, and we are happy to invest in them.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. So moving on to the next question. With only nine customers still on V5, are we nearing the end of the major upgrade opportunity?

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

I will answer this one. It is Matthew White here. I will attempt, with one eye on the clock, to give a quick overview of the evolving versions of Alfa Systems. Alfa Systems V5 was launched in 2010 and was a technical rewrite, a re-platforming of Alfa Systems V4. Alfa Systems V5 was fully Java front to back, and we maintained the database structure, which enabled us to ensure that we were able to make that upgrade as painless as possible for our existing customers. We are very pleased with the number of customers. In fact, almost all customers have, at some point over the intervening period, upgraded from Alfa Systems V4 to V5. But it was a technical upgrade, and it required a considerable amount of effort from us and from our customers.

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

We now have only one customer who is yet to start an upgrade, and we have two customers upgrading from Alfa Systems V4 to the latest versions of Alfa Systems. The market has at times seen that version 4 to the latest versions of Alfa, seen that as a major upgrade opportunity. It is true that it gives us an opportunity to move customers onto our cloud hosting operation. But actually, there has always been a license fee drag in terms of that upgrade because Alfa Systems version 4 customers all had perpetual licenses. Alfa Systems version 6, AS6, was launched a couple of years ago. After many years of technical and functional investment in Alfa Systems version 5, I think the phrase we used was that we felt we could no longer call it Alfa Systems version 5. We had to start referring to AS6.

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

However, the move from version 5, the final release of version 5 to the first release of AS6 was simply a single time box, and the upgrade from version 5 to AS6 for our customers is frictionless and certainly not an opportunity or an engagement along the same lines as the V4 to V5 upgrade.

[Operator]

Brilliant. Thank you. On to the next question. Do you envisage any material decrease in delivery revenues in the short to midterm?

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

Matthew White again. I will answer the question, but perhaps attempt to get to the sense of the question as well. No, we do not envisage any material decrease in delivery revenues. In fact, as I think Duncan was describing earlier, we see delivery revenues continuing to grow. Perhaps the reason for the question is around the efficiencies that we are adding to the implementation process, and therefore, per Alfa Systems implementation, we might expect a like-for-like implementation to take a little less effort. That is a process that has been ongoing for many years. It has, for many years, been our strategy to simplify the implementations of Alfa Systems and therefore to ensure that a like-for-like implementation requires less effort. And that has been ongoing for many years as well.

[Matthew White, COO at Alfa Financial Software]

We do see AI providing additional opportunities for that simplification process, but because of the size of the opportunity, we see it enabling us to take on additional implementations and thereby to layer on additional subscription revenue more efficiently, more effectively, and to continue to grow our business.

[Operator]

Brilliant. Thank you. We have come to our final two questions here. The next question: Thank you for the presentation. Could you kindly elaborate on the growth you expect from the SAM expansion new markets over the midterm?

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

Absolutely. Andrew Denton again. I will take the last couple of questions to bring us to the close. I find myself unusually sat across from two CFOs for the first time in these kind of questions, so I will be very careful not to give guidance that we have not done before. As the questioner, I am sure, fully understands, we are looking at fleet and commercial lending as expanding our TAM, our target addressable market, and originations expanding our SAM or serviceable addressable market. In terms of the timing of effect, that is relatively easy with fleet because one of the customer wins that we have announced within the half is a very well-known auto manufacturer who is doing fleet with us for their U.K. subsidiary, and we are very excited about that. That is already in our revenues, so that is relatively straightforward.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

Probably in terms of timing and quantum, I would say originations is next. Why is that? As an expansion of a serviceable addressable market, it is a market that we are already in and understand very well. People like us will often talk about GTM or go-to-market approach with U.S. auto originations, which is where the major opportunity lies. That is straightforward because we knock on the door of everybody who has bought a servicing system from us, and we say, "Would you like to buy an origination system?" We think that the market is somewhat underserved, and therefore, we have a great opportunity. The third in terms of timing, but then I will contradict myself slightly, is commercial lending, because commercial lending really is a very new market for us.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

We are already going to trade shows and spreading the word, and we are getting ourselves known there, but it is very much a new market. That degree of difference also drives large opportunity because we think the target addressable market for commercial lending is several times the size that it is for our core and home asset finance market. So it is a big opportunity, but we have got a little bit of work in terms of making a mark there. Although we did note that one of the opportunities in the pipeline involves some commercial lending. The bit where I contradict myself is, as I said in the presentation, commercial lending, some of the functionality that we are building is also usable within asset finance market. The big commercial lending prize might perhaps be a little bit down the road, but driving incremental sales for us, well, that is today.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

Hopefully, that has given a flavor to the question.

[Operator]

Brilliant. Thank you. We are now moving on to our final question. If you have any further questions, please email the team who will respond to any questions that were not covered today. So our final question: With subscription revenue becoming an increasingly large portion of the business, should investors expect Alfa's earnings to become more predictable and less dependent on the timing of implementation products?

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

I am guessing that the person who asked the question was hoping for a little more than yes, but the main answer there is yes. I suppose we should think about why, and why it is such a huge part of our strategy. One of the things that we have been working on over the past five, six, seven years, actually, is resiliency within our business. We want to create a situation where we are less dependent on those projects starting. That is a tale of two KPIs, if you like. One of them, we feel we have really done a great job in making progress on to the extent that we talk about it less these days, and that is customer concentration. The percentage of our revenue that comes from our top five customers is very much markedly different to the way it used to be.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

Subscription, we are still growing, and we really feel that we can get to a point where subscription as a percentage of our revenues is far higher. There is a reason why the financial markets are very keen on committed annually recurring revenue because of exactly how the questioner characterized the question. It does make earnings a whole lot more stable, particularly when you add in the fact that from our perspective, in Alfa Systems 6 and Alfa version 5, we do not have any competitive churn. So a zero churn business with a high percentage subscription revenue is very stable and very predictable, and we are working hard to make it even more stable and more predictable by increasing that percentage of subscription revenue.

[Operator]

Brilliant. Thank you. We currently have no more further questions. I will hand back to the management team for any closing remarks.

[Andrew Denton, CEO at Alfa Financial Software]

No massive remarks from us apart from to hope that it was helpful to those people who took the time out of their busy days to dial in, and of course, to thank you for doing that. See you on the next one.

Participants

Executives

• Andrew Denton, CEO
• Andrew Dickson, Incoming CFO
• Duncan Magrath, CFO
• Matthew White, COO