Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I'm Melanie Hill, Head of Investor Relations at Australian Ethical. I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the country on which we work, the Gadigal people, one of the 29 tribes of the Eora Nation, and recognize their continuing connection to the land, waters, and culture. We pay our respects to their elders, past and present. Please note that today's presentation is being recorded, and a recording will be made available on the Australian Ethical website. The slides used in the presentation are also available on our website. There will be an opportunity for Q&A at the end. Questions can be submitted at any time during the presentation via the webcast using the Ask a Question box. We may also have media in attendance this morning.
I'm joined this morning by John McMurdo, our Group CEO and Managing Director, and Mark Simons, our CFO. John, take us through the highlights. Mark will cover off the financials, and then John will provide a short business update. Over to you, John.
Well, thanks, Mel, and good morning, everyone. It's been another really pleasing half year of momentum for us. But before I get into the highlights, I did want to remind you of some important context for understanding our results today, particularly for our newer shareholders. And that is that Australian Ethical is not your standard listed financial services company. In addition to the value we create for shareholders, we deliver customer returns through ethical investing focused on positively influencing outcomes for people, planet, and animals. This dual purpose has been in our constitution for almost 40 years and is in the fabric of our organization. It's why people choose to invest with us and why people want to work for us, because of our true authenticity.
We believe the drivers for and the demand for responsible investing will continue over time, even as political regimes change and rhetoric oscillates, because the existential threat to the planet and the urgency of many, if not all, humans to address these problems will grow. Most of you also know that we've been intentionally scaling the business up over the last four to five years to capture the growing addressable market that's already played out and looks set to continue for our shareholders and broader stakeholder group. We've been growing with a clear, consistent, and disciplined strategy. We are now an acknowledged global role model for responsible investing and have positioned the business to remain at that forefront, poised to take advantage of further opportunity for our stakeholders. Through our advocacy work, we use our collective voice to advocate for a better world.
Of course, we have been building the capability and investing in an array of growth options to further scale the business and enhance the impact of our portfolios in response to the increase in customer demand. We've executed that strategy confident that as we transform Australian Ethical into the bigger, more influential business we are now becoming, that the results of that strategy would continue to crystallize for shareholders. I'm pleased to share this morning that disciplined execution has delivered even further growth and improvement in financial metrics on what was clearly a milestone year FY2024. in the first half of FY2025, underlying profit was up a significant 35% on the first half FY2024 and 14% up on even the strong second half FY2024, delivering on the scale benefits we've realized in recent periods. First half FY2025, NPAT was up 50% to AUD 9.3 million.
Importantly, profit growth has been enabled by a 21% revenue uplift on the prior corresponding period, due substantially to organic growth, but further bolstered by revenues attached to the successful integration of Altius Asset Management. At the same time, cost growth, even allowing for disciplined reinvestment in the growth drivers of the business, has been held at 14%. As we've shared, net flows were disrupted in the period as we changed providers for our superannuation administration. Post that disruption, flows have reverted to stronger levels for both December and January. Investment performance has been above market and very strong in the first half as our team continues to deliver high-quality portfolio performance in most strategies. This has all contributed to fund growth that sees us at a new record high level of AUD 13.26 billion, which is up 27% since the end of June 2024.
Our scale growth, as I've consistently said, has always been with a structural improvement in operating leverage in mind. So it's very pleasing to see further improvement in our underlying cost-to-income ratio at 72% for the first half of FY2025 compared with 75% in the first half FY2024. the temporary pullback in marketing spend during the administration change did lower costs this period, which we do expect to normalize in the second half of FY2025, as Mark will elaborate on in a moment. But we also expect net flows and therefore revenue growth to revert to previously higher levels now that that disruption is behind us. We will also benefit from the full run rate of the cost efficiencies achieved through our recent super administration and custody transitions.
Our financial momentum and the structural enhancement in our profit realization has enabled the board with confidence to confirm a first half dividend of AUD 0.05 per share, which is 67% above the AUD 0.03 dividend declared for the first half FY2024. when we embarked on our growth strategy, we were clear that while our investment in the business might dampen short-term profit growth, that funds under management and revenue capture, if we were successful, would result in stronger medium to longer-term profit growth and a business more capable of capturing further upside beyond that. As I sit here today, the Australian Ethical team continues to deliver on that promise. Fund capture has been strong, predominantly from strong and consistent organic growth. We have built with intention one of the most trusted superannuation brands in the country.
We've now delivered more than 40 consecutive quarters of positive net flows through various economic and political cycles, inflationary environments, and global pandemics, while many other fund managers have at times struggled. We have one of the highest rates of customer retention. We continue to have strong customer experience and satisfaction. We have a broader asset class and product offering with consistent awards for investment excellence and the quality of our people. That organic growth has been augmented by a creative M&A, which has delivered further valuable scale. And in the more recent case of Altius Asset Management, which we completed in late September, both scale and aligned capability that increases the strength and breadth of our economic engine, being investment management margin capture. Revenue growth, even after sharpening our pricing over the four years to intentionally create a better moat for customer retention, has been very, very pleasing.
And that has enabled us now to present five-year underlying profit growth running at 21% compound. For me, even more pleasing than the results we have already delivered is the unquestionably stronger, more diversified, more capable business we now have that positions us strongly for further growth. And to give you more insight into that position, we're now receiving multiple awards across almost every facet of our business for investments and superannuation excellence and performance, responsible investment leadership for growth, for our customer experience and service, our B Corp leadership across Australia and New Zealand. It's a business that has been able to invest for growth, achieve growth, achieve accelerated profit realization, and build a true platform to capture more.
We use that growing scale, credibility, and trusted voice to help deliver on our purpose in boardrooms with CEOs and AGMs, via the media, through sponsoring research, and through submission to industry bodies and government. Not only with businesses and assets we direct capital to, but also in sectors where we don't. Our customers value this immensely, done for a reason of mission, but also instrumental in building our brand trust, and now we have an incredibly talented and capable team with deep experience from the best investment and superannuation houses domestically and internationally, and when you combine capability and authenticity, I do believe that's why we are seen as an employer of choice and rated and regarded by Morningstar and others as one of a very small number of true global leaders in our domain.
Mark, can I ask you to take us through the financial highlights and results, please?
Thank you, John. The first half of FY2025 has indeed produced strong results across all financial metrics as we scale and deliver on our strategy. The many financial highlights include achieving another fund milestone, record half-year underlying profit, record interim dividends, continued solid revenue growth, and delivering key platform initiatives driving cost efficiencies and improved operating leverage. Let me begin with a snapshot of the interim financial results, a set of first-half results that our team are proud of. As John mentioned, our underlying profit was AUD 11.5 million, up 35% compared to the first half last year. The net profit attributable to shareholders of AUD 9.3 million reflects a 50% uplift. Our underlying profit excludes non-business-as-usual costs, as shown on the slide. As the business scales, our operating leverage is improving with the underlying cost-to-income ratio for the period landing at 72%.
This 3% improvement is the result of executing on our growth strategy and disciplined cost management. Operating leverage will continue to be a focus over the medium term. The strength of our business performance is attributable to both the growth of our fund and our disciplined approach to managing our business. At over AUD 13 billion today, our fund has grown threefold since 2020. Over the past half year, fund growth has been generated by both organic and inorganic activity, with the successful completion of the acquisition of Altius Asset Management, adding AUD 1.93 billion of fund, continued positive organic net flows of AUD 211 million, and strong investment performance net of fees of AUD 678 million. Net flows were primarily driven by retail super net flows, as well as some key wins in relatively new values-aligned channel.
We've been investing time and effort in our values-aligned channel, which has contributed a large proportion of the non-institutional investment products net inflows of AUD 75 million. Our superannuation net inflows of AUD 194 million were lower than prior periods, as expected, due to the impact of the seven-week limited service period, which was required for the transition from Mersa to Grow. This limited new joins and rollovers received in this period and also resulted in higher outflows for the first few months post-transition. However, as our member base grows, so are our superannuation guarantee contributions, and we received a record AUD 318 million during this period. SG is a strong stabilizer of our net flows and continues to become an increasing portion of our super inflows. Our fee strategy is a key component of our overall strategy, ensuring our products remain competitive for current and future customers.
On an annual basis, we benchmark our fees against aligned and overall competitor cohorts, and as we scale, we'll continue to balance profitable growth with delivering a competitive offering to our customers. Our ethical leadership and ethics integration into portfolio construction has served us well over the longer term in achieving strong net performance. Our responsible investing does command a premium. As indicated in FY2024 results, our average revenue margin has naturally reduced following the Altius acquisition and the inclusion of lower margin fixed income products within our portfolio. Excluding the impact of Altius Funds, the first half revenue margin was stable at 1.02%. Including these Altius Funds, the first half average revenue margin was 0.96%. At this stage, we anticipate our second half average revenue margin will be approximately 0.9% with the full six months of the Altius products in the mix.
Our revenue continues to see year-on-year solid growth, with being up 21% on prior corresponding period and 13% FY2024 second half. The revenue increase has been driven by higher average FUM of 29% on PCP, consistent positive net flows, positive net investment performance, and the Altius acquisition contributing AUD 1.2 million. At 31st of December 2024, our current annual revenue run rate is AUD 120 million. Now, as part of our strategy, we've been building a scalable institutional-grade business platform. In the last six months, we've achieved a number of key platform milestones, including adding specialist fixed income capability, completed the super administration transition to Grow for our Mercer members in October, we completed the transition of custody and investment administration services to State Street in November, and we are well progressed in upgrading new front and middle office investment systems.
During this period, our operating expenses increased 14% to AUD 41.5 million. The largest expense growth item is employee expenses, which increased by 21%. This included the run rate FY2024 hires, which contributed about half the increase, the inclusion of the Altius team, and replacement hires, inflationary salary increases, plus a small number of new hires during the period. Employee FTE numbers at 31st of December 2024 were 140. And it is important to note this includes 18 FTE working in our dedicated internal contact center focused on customer interactions, engagement, and retention. An investment that is designed to deliver on a compelling client experience pillar is something that some other super funds and fund managers outsource. Our FTE excludes fixed-term contractors working on specific strategic projects. Fund-related expenses increased by 16% in the period, which was pleasingly less than our revenue growth.
This was a result of the transitions of the super admin and custody services and the new scalable rate cards. A portion of the unit cost savings has been reinvested into strengthening our investment platform. Marketing costs decreased 15% compared to the prior corresponding period, primarily due to the scale back of marketing campaigns during the seven-week limited service period. For FY2025 marketing expenses are expected to be slightly higher FY2024. we continue to invest in IT to build a strengthened and resilient operating platform with robust technology infrastructure. As our business grows, our technology platform license costs have increased, including technology needs of the Altius business. Now, we continue to retain a strong balance sheet with excellent cash conversion, no debt, and surplus regulatory capital.
It is worth noting that the first half of 2025 net cash from operating activities reflects the seasonality of payments of annual employee bonuses. Our minimum regulatory capital requirements at 31st of December 2024 is AUD 8.5 million, and AEI currently holds surplus regulatory capital of AUD 8.9 million. Now, this slide is showing very strong growth across our key shareholder metrics over the last five years. The interim dividend of AUD 0.05 per share is an increase of 67% and equates to a 61% payout ratio in line with previous interim dividends. The annual payout ratio remains in the range of 80%-100% per our board dividend policy, which is subject to the future business capital requirements. I now hand over to John to provide a business update.
Thanks, Mark. In terms of business update, we are making very meaningful progress in every element of our strategic execution. We have an expanded investment and ethics capability and team positioning the business more strongly in private markets and, of course, in fixed income on the completion of the Altius acquisition in September. We have a stronger product offering and a more diversified channel offering. Our advocacy is most importantly making a positive difference in the world, but as I said earlier, also building our brand and reputation. The experience we're delivering for customers continues to strengthen from an already strong base as we selectively invest where we see customer acquisition and retention benefits, and as evidenced by the growing numbers of awards we receive.
Our successful transition to the new super administration provider and new custodian will enhance this customer delivery and operational efficiency while delivering valuable unit cost reductions going forward. And clearly, having grown our funds under management from circa AUD 3.9 billion only five years ago to AUD 13.3 billion today, we are a larger, stronger, higher EPS realizing, and more impactful business than ever before.
Our medium-term opportunity is exciting to us. It will be obvious now to most that we've worked hard and as a priority over the last few years to build deep and perpetual capability in the high margin, sticky, high systems growth part of the market being retail superannuation. And believe we're now very strongly positioned with brand trust, investment capability and performance, direct-to-consumer marketing capability, channel breadth, and momentum. It has been our priority, and I'm pleased with the traction, and it will underpin our forward growth.
But while I've spoken about it less, we've also been quietly but systematically building the capability and infrastructure to compete and succeed in the investment or non-superannuation space. We see potential for new revenue capture through the asset class expansion that we've already embarked on in private markets and fixed income and future potential in international equities. The investment talent, product expansion, systems, and process we continue to build and believe we can package in the years ahead combined with our natural reach into the advisor market and now further augmented with resource pointed at the mezzanine or middle market, or as we refer to it, our values-aligned organizations, is we believe deeply prospective for us as well.
We expect the early green shoots of that work to begin to emerge even over the next year or so as we present recent and new product development to market and build what is already a growing pipeline of opportunities with the values-aligned organization channel. Revenue growth, as you see, continues to be a large focus for us. I expect that to continue in FY2025 and beyond, noting that at the end of January, our FUM is already at AUD 13.54 billion, but we also remain intent on driving unit costs down over time, and as we further scale from here, you'll see some benefits of that even in FY2025, having now successfully delivered on operating platform enhancements, including our administration platform consolidation and custody transfer that do deliver immediate run rate cost reductions. Of course, we will continue to invest prudently in the business also.
We are always prepared to invest a dollar to make four, as you've seen in recent years. I'm describing a strategy that sees us start to leverage the optionality and growth platform we've built for revenue growth and will deliberately focus efforts to build and partner for more efficient systems and process and leveraging our buying power to reduce unit costs as we continue to scale over the medium term. We are adamant that we can continue to grow the top line both organically and periodically and organically also, but also move the needle on unit costs and in combination further widen the cost-to-income ratio. What does all that mean? It means market corrections aside, we are very confident of continuing both our upward profit growth and having that underpinned by improving operating leverage. Thanks very much for joining us this morning.
We appreciate, as always, your interest and support of Australian Ethical and look forward to answering any questions you might have. Mel?
Thanks, John. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type your question into the Ask a Question box. So, we've had a few financial questions in already. I'm going to hand to you, Mark, to talk through the timing of the AUD 4 million annualized cost benefit from the Grow transition that you've outlined. Has this been already full run rated in the first half of 2025, or what can we expect the quantum of this to be for the full year? And if you could also elaborate on the reinvestment of these savings and into what growth areas.
Okay. Thank you, Mel, and thanks for the question. It's a great question. And to just preface it, we are very happy with where our operating leverage has landed in the first half. We've landed 3% improvement from the 75% of the prior corresponding period. Now, as the question asked about the run rate in specifics, as I noted, we landed in October the Grow transition for the Mercer cohort. That was about 80% of the total cohort of super members moving to Grow platform. And that, coupled with the State Street transition in November, has meant that at the back end of the half, we have started to see the run rate unit cost savings coming through into the results. That has enabled us to move to 73 or 72%, down 3%.
There are a number of other factors which are coming into looking at our operating leverage over the next six months. That is, as mentioned, marketing expenses are set to increase, but sort of moderately from last year, and we are also focused in on our fixed costs in the business. Where we are reinvesting some of that money is in the investment front office systems. That is the order management systems, the portfolio management systems, and the data management systems within the front office, and that's to institutional grade our business. We are a long way into that implementation project, and that is a substantial portion of that unit cost saving for this year, but in the future years, that will actually come through with improved operating leverage. Thank you.
Thank you, Mark. Another question relating to the super administration transition, which I'll hand to you, Mark. What do you expect the savings to be with the consolidation of the second tranche, the Christian Super members, those that are on MUFG onto Grow? Do you expect further savings there?
As mentioned, 80% has already come through with the member cohort, the Mercer cohort coming into the Grow. The Link or the MUFG cohort, which is another 20%, will be done at the end of the calendar year. And that is an additional portion of unit cost savings. As mentioned last year FY2024, we said that it's circa AUD 3 million cost saving through the rate card. And we're expecting that to fully have landed by the end of the calendar year.
Thank you, Mark. A question for you, John. Are there any comments you can share relating to this week's AFR article regarding the merger acquisition with Future Super?
Oh, look, our existing shareholders, those familiar with us, will know our board doesn't comment on any M&A activity or media speculation for that matter. They are very focused and aware of their continuous disclosure obligations and committed to fulfilling those.
Thank you, John. Another financial question for you, Mark. Can you talk about the approach to marketing spend over the limited service period in the first half and how what might this look for the second half and the full year?
Yeah. Yeah. The limited service period for the transition was a seven-week blackout period, so within that period, we pulled back on our marketing spend, as stated, and you can see that in the financial results half on half, that our current first half of marketing spend has been pulled back, but we have been judicious in thinking about our marketing spend in the second six months. We will be increasing that, and we see it being circa in line with the full year last year, and we expect to have an increase in net flows as we come through, which will be compensated for the marketing spend, so we've got an advertising campaign just hitting the market at the moment, and we believe that we are well received.
Thank you, Mark. Back to you, John. Some interest in what the outlook is for managed fund inflows, and is there anything to consider with Altius Key Relationships later in the year?
Yeah, it's a good question. As I alluded to in the presentation, we've been first and foremost focused on making sure we have a really robust platform and engine for retail superannuation. Underlie as a business where we're at, I think that does underpin our growth, but we're also focused on the non-superannuation opportunity, as I alluded to, and we have been creating, I think, the right capability in terms of talent, in terms of product set system and process to be able to prosper in that part of the market also, so very much in our thinking. I add to that the channel breadth that we've been intentionally creating. Many will be aware as well as sort of a really strong direct-to-consumer marketing capability. In recent years, we've added a meaningful advisor channel, which now contributes more than AUD 2 billion of funds under management for us.
We are active in the employment platform channel. We have increasing demand and requests from employers for the product as well. Even more recently, I refer to what we call the values-aligned organization channel. Think of that as middle market or mezzanine in another description. We have a meaningful pipeline now growing of opportunity there. So I'm not suggesting in the next six months you're going to see a significant uplift in fund, but we're very confident we've put in place the right infrastructure team and capability on a 12-month view and beyond to be successful in that non-superannuation space as well.
Thank you, John. Back to you, Mark, on the financials. Are you able to comment on how the strategic project costs and contractors have been treated in the financials? Do they appear in underlying profit? Are they taken below the line?
There has been a couple of, well, quite a few strategic projects in the first half. The only below the line or UPAT adjusted projects that we have are transformational projects, which is the Grow transition. Any allocated fixed-term contractors that are specific to that particular project, and it has been a large project, have been combined in that transformational project. Other projects that we've referenced, such as the custody transition or the investment management uplift of our front office systems, are actually part of our operating expenses, as we see that as normal recurring business.
Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Another question for you, John, to do with our inorganic strategy. Can you talk through some of the key criteria for mergers and acquisitions from both the financial and strategic perspective? What do we consider important for us?
Yeah, no, good. I've been clear over time, and that continues to be the case. We are interested in the right inorganic opportunities just to further accelerate and punctuate what we're most importantly focused on, which is a great organic engine. So certainly still in our consideration set. We're primarily interested in scale. We think we've built a fabulous business, which has the ability to scale now and a good platform to sort of ingest further funds. So in particular scale, we've been interested, of course, in the right augmentation of capability. Altius is a great example of both of those, bringing scale plus new customer sets, capability. So that's both scale and capability. We're pretty comfortable now at a capability level. So probably our key interest is the right sort of ethically aligned, values-aligned scale through an M&A.
But what we look for, as you know, and I've said, and I'll continue to repeat, we'll be very disciplined about the M&A we do. The beauty of having built a great organic engine is we don't need to be doing that. And so opportunities we'll assess will continue to be with very strong uplift in sort of key economic and shareholder measures in mind in a very disciplined way.
Thank you, John. Another one for you, John. Are you concerned about the rise of the right-wing politics and the anti-work agenda that may impact your business growth?
Yeah, well, it's a different world, isn't it, that we exist in now? I probably have a personal view, but through a business lens, I'm untroubled by this, candidly. We've got a business that's now nearly 40 years old that has done well and succeeded through all sorts of economic cycles, through political cycles. That includes, by the way, the previous Trump administration, where, in fact, the business flourished. Interestingly, the enemy for our business is actually apathy, not polarization. In periods of polarization and crises, we see this play out. Yes, there's no question. There'll be plenty of naysayers. There'll be noise. We accept that. By the same token, that sort of crisis or polarization drives behavior, drives momentum of those who see they need to do something more about that. So that's actually quite a constructive dynamic for us, oddly.
You combine that with investment performance, people are always going to want strong investment performance. We've delivered outstanding performance for decades now. For example, our Australian equities portfolio on a 30-year view now is something like 2% plus up against benchmarks per annum. So there will continue to be motivated investors and individuals in the market for different reasons. Combined with strong investment performance, we feel very comfortable about the sort of address of the market for us going forward, even in a changed sort of world landscape.
Thank you, John, and you did comment on the traction that we're getting, giving the outstanding long-term performance of our funds. Mark, one for you. Given the strength of having the guaranteed super contributions that the business has, are you able to comment on the outlook for where we see our ordinary net flows landing over the next few years?
Good question. As mentioned, the SG contributions are fantastic, and they have been at record levels. In the first six months, we did receive AUD 318 million of net flows from the SG. As we know, the government has structural changes for the SG, and it moves to 12% as at 1 July. So there's a natural tailwind for SG contributions. We'll also be, as we've hit over the 120,000 membership base, and we are focused on acquisitions, that will naturally mean that we've got a greater SG contribution within our net flows. So the 318 gives an indication of where we expect it to be next year. And of course, complementary to the SG contributions is that we will be returning to business as usual when it comes to our marketing efforts, our acquisition trial, and we expect rollovers to resume.
Pleasingly, we've already seen a change and an upshift within December and January. Thank you.
Thank you, Mark. Another one for Mark. Just in relation to the UPAT adjustments that we've seen in the results, do you expect to keep incurring integration and transformation costs, or how long do you expect to keep incurring these costs, which would be adjusted from your underlying results?
Yes. The majority of that UPAT adjusted transformational costs is to do with that large-scale project that we've been incurring over the last year or two. As mentioned, the MUFG, or the final cohort of our membership to transition to Grow, will be completed by the end of the calendar year. So referencing that transformational cost, that is not we're expecting by the end of the year, we will be through the transformation, the implementation, and on an ongoing basis, that particular cost won't be part of our below-the-line costs. Of course, there are always other major transformational projects. If they occur, we'll be appropriate and judicious in explaining what they are to the market.
Thank you, Mark. Well, that brings us to the end of our questions. Thank you, everyone, for your interest. Thank you for attending, and have a great day.