Good morning, everyone, welcome to the Fintel 2022 full year results presentation. My name is Matt Timmins, and I'm the Joint CEO of Fintel. I'm delighted to be joined today by my co-CEO, Neil Stevens, and CFO, David Thompson. Turning to the next slide, you'll see that we've got a clear agenda for the next 40 minutes.
I will start by providing the very brief overview of the business before handing over to David, who will take you through our financial results in a bit more detail. David will hand to Neil, who will review our divisional performance as well as provide an update on current trading. We'll have around 20 minutes or so for questions, so plenty of time and opportunity for you to type in your questions.
Over onto slide 3, we have provided an overview of our business on 1 slide. You can see from this slide that Fintel operates right at the very heart of retail financial services in the UK This is a highly important market, and in the main, it is a market that works extremely well for consumers. Those consumers have access to thousands of products from hundreds of well-capitalized providers at a price and value which is commensurate with the competitive nature of the market.
For everyone else operating in the market, it is a tough and complicated place to be. UK retail financial services is highly regulated, highly complex, and very fragmented, with thousands of intermediary firms operating all across the UK Fintel provides technology and support services through 2 primary brands, Defaqto and SimplyBiz, to 3 key customer groups.
For product providers, we provide technology and data to help them assess the market, to help them build better pro-products, and to distribute these through the fragmented intermediary channel. For financial intermediaries, we provide them with compliance and regulatory support, helping them to run a compliant and successful business, as well as providing them with important financial planning technology to help these firms to give robust and repeatable advice to their clients.
For consumers, we help them to understand the relative quality of the products they're buying through the Defaqto research and rating system. Our business operates in an unrivaled market position with trusted brands that have a real competitive advantage, such as owning the largest product database of research products in the UK . Currently, we cover over 40,000 individual products. On the next slide, we've shown our two brands side by side.
You can see that although they provide very different services, they have a common customer base in financial intermediaries for product providers. They're both award-winning businesses with strong brands and reputations in the market. Defaqto has 75% brand recognition amongst consumers and 98% amongst intermediaries. SimplyBiz, for the 5th consecutive year, won the Professional Adviser Awards for Best Support Service Company.
You can see that both brands have key USPs that set them apart from the competition, and these USPs are very difficult to replicate. They both have strong financial profiles operating at high margins with good levels of recurring income and solid growth engines. On the next slide, you'll see how the two businesses operate in absolute harmony, creating a wonderful network effect where the more intermediaries who use the Defaqto FinTech create a richer data set which benefits the product providers.
Also, the larger the intermediary customer base, the more valuable the distribution strategies, and so on. This flywheel effect is fundamental to the future success of the group, and it is one of the primary reasons why we acquired the Defaqto business back in 2019. On the next slide, you can see the landscape that Fintel operates in.
We are the only business of scale to operate in all four quadrants, and this gives us multiple revenue streams with little to no concentration of revenues. It also provides for a rich M&A pipeline of potential acquisition opportunities. Turning now to our results highlights on the following slide. You can see that we've delivered 8% revenue growth in our core business at a 33% margin with 118% cash flow conversion.
Alongside that, we've invested into our core compliance offering and our proprietary technology, as well as continuing to drive results in the conversion of annual income into monthly Distribution as a Service product. We look forward, we do so with absolute confidence, backed up by a high visibility of contracted and recurring revenues.
We've got nearly GBP 13 million of cash in the bank and an undrawn RCF facility of GBP 80 million, which is provided by a trio of High Street banks. There are really strong tailwinds supporting further growth in the form of increased regulation and the strong demand for technology and data.
Finally, on the next slide, looking back over the last 3 years, you can see that even through times of tough market conditions and even taking into account the 2 strategic disposals in Zest and Verbatim, we have continued to deliver both revenue growth and EBITDA growth. I'll now hand over to David, who will take you through our financial results in a bit more detail. Over to you, David.
Thanks, Matt. The next couple of slides provide a summary of our growth, profitability, and subsequent ability to convert that into cash. On slide 10, you can see statutory revenues increased 4% to GBP 66.5 million, and that converted to GBP 19.4 million of EBITDA, which is a margin of 29.1%.
You can see that flows through to earnings via a 13% increase in PBT to GBP 15.9 million. On the next slide, 11, you can see an increase in earnings per share from 10.5 to 12.2 pence. The main thing here is that operating profit to cash conversion remains strong at 118%. You can see that the operating cash flows increased to GBP 19.3 million.
The key point being that correlates very highly with the GBP 19.4 million EBITDA generated by the business. A near 100% EBITDA cash conversion. Again, overall, another strong performance by the business, and most importantly, converting that profitability to steady and predictable cash flow. Over on to slide 12, we can see how the statutory revenues are stratified into 3 distinct income categories.
The top gray segment is what we call our non-core business. Essentially that's represents the property surveying business that we have. That's a great high-quality business. However, we deem it non-core as it stands adjacent to, but isn't directly a part of core retail financial services that we're focusing on as our real key value drivers.
The remainder of the stack is core revenues, and you can see the bottom section, which is green, is our SaaS and subscription revenue. Growing well on the year, 7% to GBP 36.8 million. The middle darker section, so whilst not SaaS and subscription revenue per se, the characteristics are still highly repeating,
and being in the main, the commissions received in our mortgage business that are driven by a long-standing panel, so that's a significant number of advisors with long tenure and the Defaqto ratings business, and that sees a significant element of repeat business, so that high brand recognition that we're all aware of.
Whilst not mechanically SaaS or subscription generated, it's still high-quality revenue. Continuing the core theme of... Over in slide 13, we focus on the core business. For the first time, we provide a 3-year track record of core only and how it's performed. On the left, you can see that track record and the inherent growth within it. Revenue, profitability, and EBITDA margin all increasing year-over-year and demonstrates the ability of the core business to continue to grow.
It's worth mentioning here that Verbatim Funds is reported in the numbers last year and was sold partway through 2021. On a like-for-like basis, excluding Verbatim, the underlying growth would have been greater still. On the right-hand side, we provide a simple walk across from the statutory and adjusted EBITDA to core EBITDA, just so you can readily see the source of the numbers and reconcile back to the primary financial statements.
Over in slide 14, if we zoom into the core business for the current and prior year and present it segmentally, you'll see the impact of the first full year not being in a COVID environment for the operating segment. Firstly, we come to intermediary services, and that returns a gross margin of circa 40%.
In the previous year, coming through COVID, there was investment in one-off campaigns, more direct sales effort, customer support provided and more investment in technology for service delivery. The margin at the half year to 30th of June grew to 39.3%. You can see the ongoing improvement in the margin in the segment throughout 2022 as we return to more normalized times.
We'd previously guided that the segment gross profit over time for each would be 40% plus in intermediary, 60% plus in distribution, and 65% plus in Fintel and research. You can see that trend starting to play out as the business grows into a post-COVID world. In distribution, this is where the property surveying business sits.
We've taken that out, and you can see for the first time what the core-only element of the segment looks like. When we look at the next slide in a couple of minutes' time, but not yet, you'll see the non-core element added back in. You also recall that 2021 included GBP 1.7 million of revenue from Verbatim Funds. When you remove that, it shows stronger growth in the segment on a like-for-like basis.
Again, we've made some investment into sales effort here. Just as an example, physical events have returned throughout 2022 at a higher cost. That includes a significant partner event that we've pulled in May, where we had a really successful event with over 150 industry partners attending over a two-day business summit, and it was very well attended. Finally, in Fintel and research, that's grown well across all three of its discrete business areas.
Software primarily is up 19%. The integration supporting those sales are up significantly, and product ratings are up 11%. Again, the margins perform consistently. We've continued to invest in the delivery model and support the sales effort as we roll out additional modules to drive software sales further. An example of that is the cash flow planning module.
Over in slide 15, you can see how that comes together. The left-hand side is the previous slide all summed together. In the core business, growing revenue is 8%. Again, I would point out that that includes Verbatim, so on a like-for-like basis, it would be higher. We've got gross profit exceeding GBP 30 million for the first time and a 70 basis points improvement in margin whilst continuing to invest in further growth.
The middle section, you can see the non-core business and then how that combines together to reconcile back to the statutory numbers, importantly, so you can trace it back to the primary financial statements. You know, talking about all that profitability, over in slide 16, you see how that profitability converts to cash. We use operating profit internally to compare to operating cash flows.
That's the best way to measure our direct internal performance and cost control. We strip out any non-cash items or anything that divisionally there's no overt control over. You can see that conversion's consistent at 118%. Our guidance there would typically be between 100%-120% in any given year.
Another way to look at conversion is EBITDA to operating cash flow, that's the middle total. You would expect that to sit between 90%-100%, depending on movements in working capital. As you can see, the conversion's in the range for both current and prior year and sits at 99% currently. Again, very, very high correlation of profitability to cash conversion. At the end, you'll see a proxy for free cash flow to equity.
If you convert EBITA to free cash after tax and debt service costs, that would be in the range of 70%-75%. Clearly, if you've got a 25% tax rate, 75% is about as good as you're going to get. That's also in the range allowing for tax at the prevailing rate. Over in slide 17, you just see the significant effect of that cash generation on the wider business.
Having funded the acquisition of Defaqto with GBP 35 million of debt in 2019, the RCF was fully repaid in June 2022 and remains undrawn. As part of a planned refinance when the revolving credit facility reached 18 months to maturity, that's the ideal time to proactively refinance it.
If you leave it much later then your the banks have got a bit more pricing power over you. The board, as part of a planned refinance exercise, looked at extending that, and we managed to extend it to GBP 80 million and also achieved a reduction in the overall margin at the same time. I think one of the key statistics here is the commitment fee for access to that additional GBP 35 million of liquidity, taking it from GBP 45 to GBP 80. It's only GBP 180,000 a year, so we think that's a really shrewd investment and access to additional liquidity to fund both organic and inorganic growth.
We also added a third bank, Santander, to the banking group. We've got three very supportive banks again for the next 4 years plus in the form of Virgin Money, NatWest and Santander. We're really pleased with that outcome. To tie it all together on slide 18, you can just see how the hallmarks of a recurring SaaS and subscription-based business model come through. You've got robust financial performance, again, increasing revenue quality in the core business again.
That generates strong cash conversion, providing significant financial resources. How does that all return to shareholders? Well, we've got a progressive dividend policy. We increased that slightly to 8% year-on-year, up to 3.25 pence per share in line with the growth and profitability of the business at the EBITA level. Hopefully a clear financial summary of the underlying strengths of the business. I'll now pass over to Neil, and Neil will talk us through our focus on strategic delivery going forward.
Thanks, David. Good morning, everyone. It's a real delight to be reporting such strong progress at this set of results. Of course, it's important what we've delivered, equally so, I believe, how we got there. The fact we've been able to make so much strategic progress with the business is what really excites us and enables us to be very confident about sustaining this good performance.
We're gonna have a quick look through the divisions. Starting on slide 20, you'll see our intermediary services division. This is where we're looking after the financial advisors, wealth managers, mortgage brokers, and giving them the compliant software and services they need to run their business. We've been developing over the last few years to make sure we have a complete service platform.
In combination with that award-winning support, we've been able to continue to grow our customer base and the revenues we generate from this part of our business. You'll see 11% growth in the average revenue per customer as we provide them with new services and more of the things they need to run their business.
An overall growth in membership income of 5.5%. Really strong core growth coming through by upselling customers and some pricing as well as we permeate the services we provide to members. I've mentioned about extending the service. Of course, this year we've got Consumer Duty coming in. That gives us many more opportunities to help the firms that we serve, and we've got some great services launching in the year ahead as well.
In 2022 being the first proper year since the COVID pandemic, we're back to a normalized level of events and engagement with the customers as well. We're doing a good mix of digital and face-to-face events, and I think we've got that balance really just about right. It drives more engagement with the customers and more time spent with them and helps round that service through. Very pleased with the intermediary division, and we'll turn next to the distribution channels.
In this division, we provide the services to the financial institutions, helping them make sure they can connect their products to the market. Again, we've made really good progress in developing the business and converting customers to repeat service incomes, our Distribution as a Service.
We're a little bit ahead of our plan in that 70% of partner revenue has been converted across from repeating revenue into medium term recurring subscription contracts. That's working really well for us. It's also enabled us to put data at the heart of one of the key services we provide.
The balance of what we're paid for is starting to move to become more data, more insights on the market, and that will deliver us fantastic opportunities to upsell in the future as well. The mortgage product line has gone very well. We're taking market share. Mortgage brokers continue to be very resilient.
You know, it's not all plain sailing in the housing market for sure, but the re-relationship that brokers have with their clients is very durable and if they're not moving house, they're doing refinances or product transfers. We've also brought some more specialist product clubs to the market as well. We've got a really good and diverse spread across that mortgage sector, which I think puts us in a very strong position.
The final division to cover is FinTech and research. Again, Matt spoke about the wonderful business of Defaqto and it having the largest financial product database and all this wonderful technology. We've been developing that platform these last few years. That's helped us to grow the FinTech revenues with fantastic growth.
There are more advisors using more of the technology as we go through the GBP 42 billion of recommendations running through our system. Of course, the more advisors that use more of the technology generates more data for us and more audience for our research platform.
As you see with these three divisions, the flywheel effect of value creation, everything we do drives more customers for other areas of our product platform, which drives more data, which drives new products and new innovations. I believe we're seeing now accelerated growth come through as a result of that strategy playing out for us. Really enhancements to the quality of the business and our products, delivering stronger financial results. That's very pleasing, and we are very enthused by it.
On slide 23, we'll talk just a little bit about the technology incubator that we set up last year. We're very focused on our core business and we've got clear priorities to develop our products. That doesn't mean we should be blind to everything else that's happening in the market. Fintel Labs will enable us to take some fairly small positions in some new up-and-coming technologies that could be very important to us in the future.
This will only represent maybe 5% or 10% of our investment capital allocation. So there won't be any big bets. Clearly, if we invest in things that come through successfully and become very useful to our market, we've got the distribution and the take to market to generate real value from our platform.
I think this will be a nice mix for us. We signed our inaugural deal at the start of this year, and we're up and running with that. Something for the future, and something to keep a watch on, I feel. On 24, we'll talk about ESG. It's pretty straightforward for us to engage with ESG because we're a company that does good things in the market.
We help consumers choose the right products, we help product providers design and distribute better products, and we help businesses stay compliant with the regulations. We're very naturally an ESG-focused business. We've got a clear strategy which is set out and in operation in our business to build a better future, a better business, and help contribute towards a better industry.
I'm pleased to report that we're making fantastic progress with all elements of our ESG strategy. We've been nominated for some awards, which I think is great recognition for the team and fundamentally for our shareholders. Everything we do for ESG has direct commercial drivers for the core of our business as well.
Doing the right thing really will pay at Fintel as we help advisors and product providers and consumers understand the ESG market, make the right decisions with their investments, and provide the ratings and the software that helps the industry run. Over on 25, just to touch on people and culture. Part of building a better future is a thriving workforce, and of course, talent is incredibly important at Fintel.
Our people have the knowledge, the experience, and the ideas that creates the IP in our company, and then we digitize it and create software and workflows. We wanna be a great place to work, an inclusive culture where people's talents really come through.
I think we're making a fantastic progress with that. We were delighted to be awarded a 2 Star outstanding to work for workplace last year and in the top 25 Best Companies in financial services. That's a signal of our commitment to make Fintel a very attractive place to be for the real talent. We'll flip over to the current trading and outlook, firstly with page 27. We're really pleased to be making very strong progress with our medium-term objectives.
We set these out to shareholders at the height of the crisis in December 2022. We believed at that time we could see a path to creating sustainable value and to growing quality earnings in this business. We set out with the right intentions, and I believe we've delivered very strong results. Slightly ahead of the top end of our range for organic growth.
As I say, it's about sustainable growth from a quality product platform. We're coming into the zone, and we're very confident of being in that zone of margin in the fullness of the period we talked about. Right now, though, we're gonna prioritize growth over margin.
Not that it will go backwards, but that will be the stronger drive will be to grow faster rather than maximize margin, 'cause I think that will deliver the right results. Of course, the earnings quality. The way that we're growing and the developments we're making are all part of driving that very high percentage of SaaS and subscriptions and the wonderful cash flows that David took you through a couple of moments ago.
On page 28, never plain sailing, but you can see we're confident of the outlook because we believe we're in the right position in a very exciting sector. Regulatory pressures continue to mount, with Consumer Duty one example I've mentioned earlier. We're the right partner to help firms deal with changing regulation and deal with the changing needs of consumers as we move forward as well.
Our technology and data will help people understand what's happening in the industry and help product providers make the right decisions about how they bring products to market. In a market that is consolidating and aggregating and disaggregating, we now have very strong enterprise solutions. As you saw with the Patent deal, we're able to provide a platform that nobody else can match.
Do some really smart things for some of the biggest companies who have big decisions to make right now. I think it positions Fintel as the absolute premium partner in the sector we're in. We started the year well, trading in line with board expectations. Very confident of our continued organic growth. As Matt and David have both touched on, we will be pursuing a very selective M&A pipeline.
We've got the right facilities, the right balance sheet, the right team and the right platform, but we recognize the need to deliver value from acquisitions. So, you can rest assured the team here are very selective when we appraise those. All in all, we think we're very well positioned for sustainable growth. On 29, a summary.
Quite simply, our confidence comes from a very clear and strong strategy, bringing a connected platform to the market with very strong brands and this flywheel of value creation. Everything we do on one part of our platform creates value on another. We've got wonderful customer scale, wonderful market connections, and very clear ambitions we're able to articulate to our shareholders, so that you can track how we're doing. On page 30, you'll just see a summary of the financial delivery, which we're really pleased with. Thank you.