Okay. Well, now we've got Matt with us, and all the way from the north of England, but this is a truly international show. Some are coming in from Singapore and all over. Good to see you, Matt.
Thank you, David. Good afternoon, and good to see you.
Yeah. You're gonna tell us all about Fintel and how things are going there. Obviously.
Yeah, absolutely. We're gonna share the Fintel interim results presentation with your audience, if that's okay.
Great. Excellent.
Super. Shall I take it away or? Perfect. Thank you, David. Good afternoon to everyone watching. I'm Matt Timmins, the joint CEO of Fintel, and I'm joined today by my CFO, David Thompson. Over the course of the next 20 minutes, we're gonna take you through our interim results presentation, and then we'll make sure we've got plenty of time for Q&A afterwards. First of all, for those of you who are new to the business, Fintel operates in the retail financial services sector. We have three primary customer groups. We provide services to product manufacturers. These are the insurance companies, asset managers, banks, building societies, et cetera. The financial intermediaries, those are IFAs, mortgage brokers, wealth managers, and discretionary managers, and then finally to consumers.
Our role essentially is to help intermediaries to run a compliant and successful business, and we do that through the provision of regulatory and compliance support to help product manufacturers to reach and distribute their products to those intermediaries, and to help product manufacturers to design and build better products. For consumers, our role is to help consumers make better-informed financial decisions. We do that primarily through two key brands that operate within Fintel. We have SimplyBiz, which is the largest support services company in the U.K. for directly authorized advisors. We also have Defaqto, which is a product research, ratings, and fintech business. SimplyBiz, as I said, is the largest of its kind in the sector.
All of our customers join us through a membership program, so we don't provide any services as a kind of one-off or on an ad hoc basis. All of our clients are members. They pay monthly subscriptions. SimplyBiz is an award-winning business. We have won the Professional Adviser Awards for best support service company five years in a row. We have a highly engaged and highly satisfied customer base, with the average tenure of a client being six and half years, and the NPS score at 47 being way above industry norms. In terms of Defaqto has a great brand out there in the marketplace. It has 75% prompted awareness amongst consumers and 98% awareness amongst financial intermediaries.
Defaqto operates a huge database of financial products, covering around 40,000 products in the UK, and its fintech software is used by thousands of advisors. On a rolling 12 month basis, the value of recommendations placed through the software is around GBP 42 billion. Two strong brands in the marketplace with good levels of engagement and satisfaction. In summary, in as a quick overview for the results for the H1 of the year, we have delivered strong trading with 9% revenue growth, and we've delivered that revenue at a 30% EBITDA margin with a 124% cash flow conversion. Our CFO, David Thompson, will come on in a few minutes' time and take you through the results in a bit more detail.
We are fortunate to operate a business with a very diversified customer base, which in fairly difficult times as we are in at the moment, is a real strength and advantage for the business. We have thousands of individual businesses paying us monthly subscriptions for services, and we consider in the main those services to be relatively non-discretionary. If you run a regulated firm, even in a difficult time in a market downturn, the last thing that you're gonna get rid of essentially is your provider of compliance and regulatory support. It's fundamental to what you do as a business. We consider in the main that most of the services we provide are non-discretionary in nature. As I said before, we are sector leaders in both the provision of compliance support and also in terms of product research and ratings.
As we look forward, we have a confident outlook for the rest of the year. Yes, we understand the market in which we're operating in. We understand all those difficulties. We have around two-thirds of all revenue in the core business coming through as a result of SaaS and subscriptions, so real high-quality revenues. We have GBP 7.6 million in cash. We've completely de-levered the business following the acquisition of Defaqto in 2019. We believe that we also have very strong drivers for growth. Regulation is continuing to increase, and the demand out there from intermediary firms for more digital and technology services is also increasing. Coupled with that GBP 7.6 million in cash, we have an RCF facility of around GBP 45 million, which gives us the firepower to go out and acquire businesses that we like.
In terms of business performance, we have communicated to this audience certainly, and to our investors in the past about our medium-term objectives. This is a 20-year-old business, so we're not a new fintech startup. We've been providing services and technology for 20 years. We expect to continue to grow at around about 5%-7% revenue growth and step those margins out between 35%-40%. We expect to do so with a high quality level of recurring income between 70%-80%. How are we doing against those objectives? Well, currently our growth is just at 9%, so it's higher than the top-end expectation.
We think given the rest of the outlook for the rest of the year, we'll probably finish the year with around about 7% top line growth in the core business. We are delivering 66% of all revenues as a part as SaaS and subscriptions, so we're a whisker away from our target at 70%. The margin is solid at 30%, and we expect incremental margin for the sale of new products and new technologies to help us get towards that 35%-40% target. In terms of the business performance, we thought it'd be helpful to show you how we've performed benchmarked over the last couple of years because as I said, we've been going for 20 years. This isn't the first downturn that we've seen and traded well through.
You know, throughout the last couple of years, we've had the COVID pandemic. We've also divested a couple of non-core businesses, and throughout that period of time we've continued to grow both core revenues and EBITDA. Quick canter through the divisional performance and then I'll hand over to David, who will take you through the finances in a bit more detail. We operate three divisions within the business. Intermediary services is the first one, and in intermediary services, I guess it, that's what it says on the tin. It's all about the provision of services to intermediary customers. So these are IFAs, mortgage brokers and wealth managers. In this division we've increased gross profits by 15%. We've increased the growth in software license income by 6.5%.
We've stepped out our average revenue per customer, which is a key metric within the business. We've done so with an NPS score of 47, giving us a highly engaged and satisfied membership. Good growth in the intermediary division. In the distribution division, this division is about servicing product manufacturers. Those are banks, building societies, life insurance companies and asset managers. The challenge within this division was to change the nature of revenues from annual repeatable contracts to long-term multi-year contracts with a monthly fee attached to those. We've converted around 60% of the revenue from that type of activity within the last 18 months. We expect to convert around 80% by the end of next year and probably around 90% in total.
The vast majority of revenue now for that particular service coming through as a result of a distribution as a service contract. We've moved our huge events program, our 340 physical events program, to a hybrid program so that we can deliver events in a digital way as well as a physical way. This shores up the business so that if we have another repeat of the COVID pandemic or something similar, then we know we can continue to deliver services and receive revenue for those services by switching quickly to the digital method. We have increased the number of applications for mortgages and applications to proceed completions by normally three or four months' time. Our mortgage business is growing, and it's growing in the H1 of the year by 24%.
Probably there will be a slight slowdown, we think, in terms of new house purchases between now and the end of the year, maybe. Although we do have the sort of stamp duty wind to carry us through. Nevertheless, we're also expecting an increase in remortgages. We think the mortgage business is solid and will stay solid for the rest of the year and beyond. Then the final division is our fintech and research division. This division is essentially the Defaqto business that we acquired, and we've increased revenues by 22% in that division. Growing primarily through 24% growth in software revenue and coupled with an increase of 12% in the product ratings revenue. We've also seen more and more customers use our fintech and the growth in recommendations through that fintech is up by 15%.
Hopefully what you've seen there is growth in all three divisions and not only top line revenue growth but also EBITDA growth and improving the quality of revenues and converting as much of the revenues from annual repeatable contracts into monthly recurring revenues, really shoring up the quality of those. With that in mind, I'll hand over to David, who will take you through the finances in a bit more detail. Over to you, David.
Okay. Thank you, Matt. Nice to get to speak to the male audience again. On the next slide, Matt, if you would. What we do here is we'll break down the income stream so that you can see the relative quality of the revenue we have. Again, it was really interesting listening to David from Amati talking about free cash flow yield, cash positive balance sheet strong, and ability to invest and grow and currently sitting in quite a defensive position at the moment. I'd like to think we were a company that ticked a lot of those boxes. If you look at HY '22, you can see GBP 32.2 million of revenue.
The top section, the gray, that's what we deem our non-core business. Now, there's 14 acquisitions been made over the 20-year history of the business, and as it strategically evolves, we've focused on the core of retail financial services. The reason for that is the circular virtuous cycle of adding to the data that we have, 'cause data is really one of the main thrusts for future growth. We had two businesses, one an employee benefits software platform and the other one that we sold in the H2 of last year. The other is a property surveying business that we have that complements our mortgage business.
It's not scalable in a digital sense because you need a qualified surveyor to go out and attend at a premises. That's why we don't deem that as core because it's not integral to retail financial services. If we focus on the green and the black sections there, you'll see growth period-on-period of up to GBP 17.8 million and up to GBP 9.3 million. GBP 17.8 million is SaaS and subscription mechanically. It's software licensing, it's membership subscriptions, and that's the highest quality of revenue. It's long-term contracts, it's monthly direct debit predominantly, and that gives us a terrific cash flow conversion rate that we'll come on to see.
The middle section, the black section there, that's mortgage commission-based is around half of that. Again, while that's transactional in nature and I can't call it SaaS and subscription, you know, it's from hundreds of members being part of a large mortgage club. We do a lot of work in the background around categorizing mortgage products, which is particularly prevalent at the moment to make sure that despite the plethora of products on offer that our IFA and mortgage broker members are able to advise on the best deal. It's a very sticky membership and a very sticky revenue stream, despite it not being SaaS and subs. The other major part of that is the Defaqto ratings product.
They simply have an annual vintage. Each product's rated at the start of a rating year, and it only lasts one year. Most people that have a four or a five-star Defaqto rated product tend to be with us for a lot longer period of time. Again, while it's not mechanically SaaS and subs because it's annually renewable, we also think it's a very sticky revenue stream. We like to think that whole core revenue of GBP 27.1 million is significantly higher quality than, say, a retail environment that relies on footfall. Again, just to echo the quality of the revenue streams throughout our business.
Over on the next slide, if we cut the revenue a slightly different way, you'll see it falls into our three segments and you'll see that in the RNS for the half year results. Top line there is core revenue, and you'll see growth across all parts of the business, which again is pleasing to see. Also in terms of cash generation, very high margin. The intermediary services is a 40% + margin business. You'll see last year we sold the employee benefits software platform, making that intermediary services segment all core now. You can see that it was a you know 900 basis points almost increase in margin from divesting of that non-core business. We'd like to think in round terms, the intermediary services is a 40% + business.
Distribution channels is a 60%+ business at its core. Fintech and research, similarly, a 60%+ gross margin business. Fintech and research performed really well, and you can see the 23% increase that's largely driven by software license revenue. The great part about that is it's nearly a 100% flow through margin. Not only have we got high margin businesses as it stands, the ability to grow revenue and margin through digitization, capturing distribution or rolling out software and data and insights, it's adding margin at a higher level still. We'd like to think we've got visibility to grow the revenue in each of the three segments, but also grow margin in each of the three segments. There's multi-levels of expansion here. The biggest cost base we have is people.
It's a people and premises style business. In the third bullet point down, infrastructure and support costs are up 11% to GBP 6 million for the half year. Again, that's largely inflationary wage increases that we've put through to support all the team. We've got nearly 500 people in the business, and we've looked after them well, we think, during the current time. That manifests in, we've went in for the Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For survey, and we ended up at our initial two-star outstanding rating. Again, that's a confidential staff filled out survey and it's a true reflection of what the staff think. It was a very high participation rate, so we're delighted that the staff agree that we've been looking after them.
A solid, safe, secure, high margin, high cash flow conversion business with hopefully you see opportunities to grow revenue and margin in each of our segments as we continue to digitize the business. Over onto the next slide, you'll see how that translates into cash flow conversion. We've got three measures there. Rather than just have, as you can see on the right-hand side, a number that looks good on the face of it, we actually take the decision to break it down for you. Full disclosure, here's the metrics we use and here's how we work them out. If you prefer to draw the line at a different level, then you can do so. We use operating profit to operating cash flow internally.
I don't want the divisional MDs focusing on central events like tax payments and interest payments and IFRS 16 leasing, et cetera. That's, you know, we want the divisional segment teams to worry about cost control, growth and efficient working capital management. That's why we draw the line internally at the green bar you see there in terms of op profit to op cash flow. Now it's 124% is a higher number, but you can see that it's on the due to the benefit of working capital inflows. Some of the products we sell, we do it annually in advance, so the H1 of the year does have a higher weighting of debtors collection, if you like. That you'll see a higher conversion.
We also show adjusted EBITDA to operating cash flow, it's 101%, and then adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow to equity is 81%. Again, that's clearly spurred on by the H1 working capital inflow. On a full year run rate basis, we would expect those three metrics retrospectively to be around about 100% for operating profit conversion, 90% for adjusted EBITDA conversion, and about 70% for EBITDA to free cash flow conversion.
Again, building on the really strong, enviable position we have in the market, our market share, our market reach, and the fact that as Matt said in the previous slide, we've got a low churn and a high degree of stickiness to the membership base with an average of six and a half years tenure. We've got the bow wave of that consistent cash coming through month on month. What that does on the next slide, Matt, is it puts us in a position where we've got net cash of GBP 7.6 million. We've got no debt. We've got a fully undrawn GBP 45 million revolving credit facility at our disposal.
Accounting for working capital, normalized run rate in the business, that gives us GBP 50 million of cash dry powder for future investment, either organically or acquisition. You can see that over the last three years, we took out a significant amount of debt, taking us to over 2.5x the leverage to fund the Defaqto acquisition. That had an EBITDA of circa GBP 5 million, and we've grown that to just under GBP 9 million in three years. We've shown that we can buy a business with debt, efficient use of capital, pay it off quickly in a three and half year payback, and also scale that business that we acquired at the same time.
I think that's a real ringing endorsement of the flexibility and the consistency of the business model. In terms of investment, we can. What we do with that GBP 50 million, you ask. We've got three ways we can invest that. We can digitize, so we can get in some regulatory technology, take some of the administrative element of the review tasks and compliance, and free up the time of all the talented compliance team that we have to serve more customers and get more market penetration. That's digitize. Distribution, we can acquire a partner JV with others in the market to help distribute our products to a greater range of IFAs and increase membership. The biggest example of that is Tatton Asset Management.
We went into a strategic partnership with them just under a year ago, and that opened up us. We sold up. We had a funds business called Verbatim Funds, and we've come out of that market and sold that to Tatton. In turn, Tatton have pointed their 2,500 Paradigm adviser members to us to distribute our Defaqto Engage software to them. That was a really strong partnership for increased distribution.
The third one's data and insights, where we can, you know, we've got a lot of data, as you saw in Matt's slide previously, GBP 42 billion of advisory flows through Defaqto Engage, which if you imagine an IFA opening up their laptop, that's the actual software tool they would use to capture your risk appetite, capture age, pension arrangements, et cetera, and ultimately advise on suitable, investment portfolio. Because we run the engine behind that, we get to capture all those keystrokes and all that data. Clearly we curate that, we store it, we archive it, we index it. You know, we would never release it in anything other than an aggregated basis, obviously. Data and insight will help us monetize that as opposed to just selling the data on, we can sell insight.
Hopefully you can see a business, if we go into the next slide, Matt, in summary. You know, we've got a scalable digital platform. You know, a huge amount of reach into the market. An unrivaled market position in terms of having, you know, particularly the de facto brands get a massive amount of customer awareness. You know, we've got a diversified customer base so that it's very sticky. We're not reliant on any one customer at all. There's thousands of customers in the business, mostly paying us by recurring direct debit. Get a huge amount of financial agility in terms of that GBP 50 million dry powder war chest. You know, and the cash generative business model with that underlying cash flow conversion.
Two-thirds of the business being SaaS and subscription-based, but the other third, hopefully you'll see is similarly sticky and certainly annually repeating. I again, in summary, going back to David Stevenson's presentation earlier. We think we tick a lot of the resilient defensive, anti-cyclical sticky boxes that represent a solid investment. I think with that, we'll open up to some Q&A. David.
Excellent. Thank you, David, and thank you, Matt. Certainly, we've got quite.
Thank you.
Quite a few questions in already. A reminder, do put them in the Q&A box, and we'll ask them for you. Now, Richard asks, "Thank you for the update. Seems very positive, so well done for the continued success. Given market conditions and news around mortgage offers being withdrawn, how much of a threat do you think the current state of the economy is, and what advantages or opportunities does Fintel hope to explore?
Thanks, Richard. Yeah, very weighty question. Okay, mortgages specifically. Products are being withdrawn at the moment because the swap rate is bouncing around all over the place. Once we get some certainty on that, these products will come back into the market. I think the withdrawal of products is temporary. Certainly, the lenders will honor applications already in situ, and I think the withdrawal is relatively temporary. What I think we'll see in terms of structural change in the housing market is a lot more remortgages taking place. A hell of a lot more than has been over the last couple of years, so I think that's what we will see in the marketplace.
In terms of the overall economy, I mean, clearly it doesn't help us or any other business in the same situation. As David said before, we've got no risk to currency fluctuations or anything like that, so the biggest issue facing our business is wage inflation. Can we match that with increasing our prices to our customers at the same time to make sure that there's no material effect on the business. Hopefully that answers it, Richard, I think.
Great. Martin asks, "On the revenue growth targets, have you factored in inflation into the targets and expectations?
Well, we set those nearly two years ago now, so no is the honest answer to that question. We'll have to go back and have a look at that. Absolutely.
Okay. Clive asks, "What would you say have been the primary growth drivers for the last few years?
Yeah, again, really good insightful question. The primary growth drivers are, the vast majority of intermediary firms, the result of the survey into the vast majority of intermediary firms shows they use around seven or eight individual technology solutions to be able to give advice to clients. Seven or eight different point solutions. We offer the ability through two systems that we have within the business to cut through most of that, and therefore, I think firms looking for a simpler technology solution have joined us and appreciated that, and we've seen the growth in the technology licenses. I think changes in regulation and things like Consumer Duty coming around the corner. Every time regulation changes or gets tougher, it seems to act as a real tailwind for people to join our business.
I think those are the main two. David, anything else you want to add on to that?
No, I mean, I think that's absolutely right. The core of that would be, I think we're very well positioned for further growth now as the business continues to digitize 'cause we've earned our stripes of having a great distribution base and built up a significant cost base in the business in terms of the fixed cost platform to offer operational leverage and, you know, we're developing new products all the time and I would like to think there was a lot more in the growth story.
Thanks.
Now, Peter asks, "Your costs of goods sold is extremely high. What measures do you plan to take to reduce that?
It's definitely one for the CFO.
I was gonna say. Well, almost as if I couldn't make it up there, I think the very last sentence I said there is, we've been building a direct service cost base, so we're highly operationally leveraged, absolutely. That's only an issue if you're going backwards. What we've done is we've built the infrastructure to digitally grow through software license that's got a 100% incremental margin. You know, I would probably turn that the other way and say, we've put in a significant investment into the operating costs of the business, and it's now incumbent on us to leverage that and bring in higher margin products. You can.
That way of presenting the business segmentally to gross margin rather than EBITDA will let all our investors and interested parties track how we're doing. You can hold us to account every six months as to how that margin is progressing.
Great. Samantha asks, "How would you say the market is impacting the business?
I think a downturn in the market will affect those intermediary firms who are remunerated through asset prices. That's definitely the case that there will be some of our customers out there who are experiencing maybe 10%, 20%, 30% drop in revenue as a result of that. We are not linked to asset prices in that sense, so it's not affecting us as a business. Definitely it will impact on the remuneration of intermediary firms who are remunerated that way. On the flip side of that, when we face tough markets or market downturns, that tends to be the point where clients of intermediaries start phoning them up and asking whether they're on track and what they should do about their portfolio.
It tends to be the time where new clients approach intermediaries and ask them to help them out. I think those two things balance out largely.
Okay. Now, Ian mentions here, congratulations on some good acquisitions and the Tatton deal. However, the share price since you've come to market is not significantly ahead of your IPO. How? What are your feelings on that? Has it been good to be listed or?
Yeah, I mean, I'll give you my opinions and then I'll pass on to David for a more eloquent answer. I think that we couldn't have bought Defaqto in the way we did without being listed. Being listed gave us access to capital, which we raised in around three days. That's a real positive. As to the share price, we're incredibly frustrated by it. We don't understand why the price is as it is, given the qualities of the business and the continued performance of the business. You know, I think, as your previous guest pointed out, things at the moment particularly are being driven by the macro and not the micro and therefore, you know, we are in a similar boat to everyone else.
David, do you want to add anything to that?
Sure thing. I mean, it's very frustrating, and this is the second AIM-listed business that I've been the CFO of, and you know, it doesn't seem to change. You have this permanent dichotomy between sort of fundamentals and sentiment, and I think sentiment's really driving it. Matt and I are shareholders. You know, my entire first year's salary's gone into Fintel shares, and I'm in at GBP 2.10, so it's significantly down for me. There's high conviction in the business, and we continue to invest in it.
You can imagine as PLC directors that were closed for a chunk of the year and you'll see that every results we tend to buy and you know, even sometimes out of cycle. It's very frustrating, absolutely. In terms of those acquisitions that I was talking about, we actively engage with a number of private businesses to acquire them to follow our strategic goals. You do have this sort of quiet moment where people in the private markets are looking for high teens, you know, 20x EBITDA, and I look at my own and I'm 8x EBITDA.
These are kinda ostensibly start-ups or pre-profit, and we've been going for 20 years, and I've got 124% cash conversion. There's definitely a dislocation. That again, David, that Matteo has said that already. It. For us, it's a case of you can control what you can control, and we'll get the head down and keep trying to deliver for our shareholders and do the right thing. The price is largely driven by other things.
Yeah.
I think you can sense the calm frustration there, David.
Yes.
Perhaps we better not continue that or me and David will be booking ourselves in for a therapy session.
Anyway, we have come to the end, and it's been really good to I think for investors and current shareholders to know that it's you know not just us that feel it, you're feeling it. Things will turn, you know. There will be light at the end of the tunnel, as they say, and I'm sure you'll be right at the forefront when we get there. Thank you very much for joining us, and good to see you again.
Thank you for having us on.
Hope to see you at CISI in real life when everyone gets back together and all the investors are able to shake your hands. That's great.
Absolutely. That'd be perfect. A big thank you to everyone watching as well. Thanks for your time.
Thank you.
Pleasure.
Thank you.
Thank you.