RM plc (LON:RM) Chief Executive Officer Mark Cook caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss the company’s strong FY25 performance, driven by assessment growth, the launch of RM Ava, and the strategic direction for 2026.
Q1: Mark, could you just give our viewers a quick introduction to RM plc?
A1: RM, formerly known as Research Machines, is a global EdTech company. It’s been in operation for over 50 years and has a vision to enable the improvement of education when it comes around the world. This involves learners through the complete life cycle of education, so from early years all the way through to higher education and into adult life as professional qualifications.
We’ve got three businesses that operate through three lenses, divisions, as we’re organised. The first of those is assessment so we help customers move from paper-based exams to what we call hybrid or fully digital assessments, and that’s marked on our own world-leading platform. We then have a technology business which delivers IT and IT services that make learning environments more exciting, inclusive, and safe. We then have a business that’s branded TTS and this creates our own products, educational resources. We supply these into support effective teaching globally.
While our three divisions are fairly different in each of their lenses, we still have one common purpose and that’s to enrich the lives of learners.
Q2: Can you tell us more about the global EdTech market and why it’s such an exciting space to be in?
A2: So, the global EdTech market is forecast to increase annually by about 16% over the next five years. A key driver of this market shift is the digital education so this is a shift from paper through to hybrid through to fully digital assessment, and this provides a big opportunity for RM. We are already a leader in this space. We have long-term contracts with long-standing customers. For example, we’ve won contracts with the International Baccalaureate and Cambridge University Press and Assessment, and we deliver their transition to fully digital assessments using our platform over the coming years.
In 2025, our assessment platform revenue was up by 17% and 98% of our assessment revenue that was up for renewal was successfully renewed. We see the benefits as huge. It makes assessment more adaptable and relevant, and it gives the learner the chance to show their full potential through a more flexible and personalised experience.
It’s really a hugely exciting space for RM as we continue to build our sort of high growth, high margin assessment business, where we see our margins increasing through to the fully digital exam as that unfolds over time.
Q3: 2025 was a transformational year, can you just talk us through some of the highlights?
A3: 2025, we see as a year of momentum, and I would say forward momentum. Quite often in business and life, you take one step back and two steps forward but certainly gave us momentum.
One of the most exciting milestones achieved last year was the launch of RM Ava and this is our new adaptive virtual accreditation platform. So, RM Ava is a single sign-on, it’s a cloud-based platform that supports the full assessment lifecycle and that’s from content creation through to online learning testing through to digital marking and feedback. This addresses a key customer need, which is a single platform that spans this full assessment lifecycle and it’s a key adoption for many of our customers who are accreditors.
RM Ava can support any type of assessment and that’s from general qualifications through to professional qualifications and licensing, and from in-class assessment and mock tests through to high-stakes national exams. There’s no restriction to the number of customers we can bring onto the platform, we are able to scale globally, which is a key element of our development build.
We’ve introduced AI as a proof of concept to be taken in conjunction with our platform, and this gives our customers the opportunity to run pilots, to explore how AI marking compares with human markers across a range of subjects. Our platform will allow customers to choose the level of AI involvement they’re comfortable with. That could be absolutely none to start with, it could be a toe in the water through to a more fully hybrid human and AI model going forward.
Also, in ‘25, we progressed our plans to simplify the business. As you can imagine, we’re a 50-plus year company so we have a mismatch of systems and processes and legacy IT. We want to simplify these, unpick them, allow each division to run in a way that best supports their own growth potential. At the same time, disposing of non-core assets that sit within our estate.
We made a significant milestone in ‘25. We did an equity raise on the markets in Q4 and that brought in £13.5 million of gross cash into the business. That really helps us, putting us in a strong position to accelerate the strategy as we move into this year into ‘26.
Q4: Just looking back on 2025, what achievements were you most proud of?
A4: I think the achievements we were most proud of is to continue this journey. We have a management team capable of completing a transformation. We wanted to make sure that we could gain momentum. We wanted to renew the customer base that we had. We wanted to introduce Ava, the adaptable virtual accreditation platform, as a concept and continue on that journey, really.
So, they’re the key things that we were most proud of last year and I think setting up ‘26 for a year of continual momentum and into growth as well.
Q5: As we do move into 2026, what goals do you have?
A5: So, in this new year, ‘26, want to continue to grow our assessment platform revenue. I mentioned last year it was 17% growth, so continue with that momentum. We want to accelerate the development of RM Ava, and we want to build the roadmap collaboratively with our accreditation customers and to ensure that it meets the needs of their learners and delivers a brilliant candidate experience. So, looking through that lens all the way through from what we build and develop all the way through to the individual learner in each of our accreditation customer schools.
We want to report in ‘26 another meaningful increase in our profitability year on year. Profit and cash generation is important when reinvesting that cash into the development of our platform, which should see completion at the end of 2027. As we grow, so does our impact. The growth will help us continually improve, we hope, educational outcomes around the world.
We want to align our values, our mission statements with that of our customers, which is our accreditation customers.
