Saralis: Strong six months for law firm
Listed group NAHL has announced strong growth in profitability and cash generation for the first six months of 2025, while also reducing net debt to a 10-year low.
It also revealed to Legal Futures tentative moves to expand its law firm, National Accident Law (NAL), into more serious injury cases.
NAHL is made up predominantly of NAL, lead generator National Accident Helpline and its law firm panel, Law Together – a joint venture alternative business structure with HCC Solicitors – and critical care division Bush & Co.
At £19.2m, group revenue for the six months to 30 June was down marginally on the same period last year, but profit before tax increased by 289% to £1.9m, mostly due to the personal injury business.
Thanks to strong cash generation, net debt – once an area of concern for investors – continued to fall, from a high of £21m in 2019 to £5.6m.
NAHL has previously reported that Google’s launch of ‘AI Overviews’ had a significant impact on the organic search results across the sector, meaning more investment in paid search, which raised the cost of it for all.
Chief executive James Saralis said yesterday that “a more targeted” approach to Google search, as well as increasing investment in organic search and developing more partnerships have helped return enquiry acquisition costs to historical levels.
In total, National Accident Helpline generated 6,552 enquiries in the six months – 58% of the level of the same period in 2024. A third of these were passed to NAL for processing, an ever-higher proportion.
The panel had reduced demand, which affected lead generation activities – 2,742 enquiries were distributed to member firms – while 1,610 went into Law Together.
Using the panel and Law Together allows NAHL to generate more immediate cash and profit than the cases it runs through NAL.
Mr Saralis told Legal Futures: “Over the longer term, we’d love to drive more work into NAL and still satisfy the panel demand, but we’ve got to balance the working capital investment with our need to make a profit and generate cash flow across the business. So that’s why the inquiries have gone down.”
NAL had “a strong six months”, Mr Saralis reported. It settled 1,648 claims and generated £5.3m of cash.
“The business has been actively growing the number of cases it litigates to drive higher settlements for our clients, and higher revenues for the firm. This has contributed to a 57% increase in the average value of claims settled compared to last year.”
But the combination of a high number of settlements and lower number of new enquiries meant NAL ended the period processing fewer enquiries than it started with. Mr Saralis said.
This continued a trend also seen in 2024 and he explained that, “ultimately if we want the law firm to reach its full potential over the medium term, then we need to invest more”.
Mr Saralis said he saw NAHL playing its part in consolidating the personal injury market, while just this month it has brought together the serious injury specialists “scattered” across NAL to create a “small” team.
“We don’t get a lot of high-value catastrophic work within NAL because of the nature of our marketing. And we don’t invest heavily like some of our competitors do in some of the partnerships that you need to generate that work.
“But we do get in work just through our normal marketing and we want to provide an excellent service for our customers in that. And we’ve got the expertise internally”.
Clinical negligence was another area of possible interest: “You can see growth in clinical negligence, whereas other parts of the PI market are consistently contracting. It’s something that I find quite exciting.
“It’s one for the future, but we’re tentatively dipping our toe in that market at the moment.”
Bush & Co was responsible for £8.2m of revenue. It saw a high demand for expert witness services but a reduction in case management revenues. A new initiative was the introduction of Bush & Co Kids, delivering child-centred support for clients.
Mr Saralis said: “The turnaround in our personal injury business, and stabilisation of our lead generation, has been particularly pleasing to witness.
“However, whilst good progress is being made and the business has returned to profitability, NAL would require higher levels of investment in new enquiries and case processing in order to reach its medium-term potential.”
He added that the first two months of the second half had seen new enquiries 12% higher and at a lower acquisition cost.
NAHL’s share price dropped 4% yesterday to 55.25p. It started the year at 72p but went as low as 42p in July.