Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the 2025 ASX Investor Forum. My name is Helen Lofthouse, and I'm the Managing Director and CEO of ASX. To begin, I'd like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, who are the traditional custodians of the lands on which I'm speaking today. We recognize their continuing connection to the land on which we're meeting and pay our respects to elders past and present. We extend that respect to any First Nations people joining us today. This is the third year that ASX has held an Investor Forum, and it provides us an opportunity to update you on our strategy and how we're focused on building sustainable shareholder value. We're now two years into our five-year strategy, and I'd like to share the progress that we've made and what we're focused on.
In terms of today's agenda, the first three sessions are designed to deliver a group-wide view of ASX, and I'll outline the key wins that we've had, as well as focus areas for the year ahead. I'll outline the way that we're thinking about revenue growth opportunities. Following my update, our Chief Information Officer, Tim Whiteley, will provide an update on our major technology projects and our technology roadmap. Then you'll hear from our Chief Financial Officer, Andrew Tobin, who'll provide a financial update, including FY26 guidance for total expense growth and capital expenditure, as well as setting out our financial aspirations for the firm. After a short break, we will return to hear from our business leaders on their respective lines of business.
James Posnett, Darren Yip, Clive Triance, and Jamie Crank will each talk to you about some of their recent activities in their businesses, as well as how they're thinking about growth. I'm grateful to have a strong and dedicated team of executives supporting me in delivering our five-year strategy, and you'll have the opportunity to hear from many of them today. At the board level, I'm also pleased to welcome David Clarke as Chair of the ASX Board, whose extensive experience as a listed company chair is an asset to the organization. We also have highly capable and dedicated people across our organization, and I want to acknowledge all of the work that they do every day to serve our customers and achieve our strategic goals. I'll now move to the next section of today's presentation, starting with an update on our five-year strategy.
We have a portfolio of high-quality businesses, and they have great longevity and are supported by long-term structural tailwinds. We operate critical market infrastructure and hold nine licenses, which means that we must make sure that we're operating at the high standards commensurate with this. We understand the importance of getting this right, and it's a priority for our Board and management team. Getting this right also allows us to play an important role through the market life cycle for our customers and markets and drive growth for our shareholders. That is what our strategy is really about. We are now entering the third year of our five-year strategy, and it's fundamentally unchanged, but it has evolved as we've progressed.
The key change to the way we illustrate the strategy is to show that people are foundational to everything that we do, and this is reflected by our one ASX pillar supporting all of the others. We have also sharpened our focus on leadership skills and the cultural attributes that are needed to enable our strategy. Great Fundamentals is about modernizing our technology and uplifting our risk management. This has been the focus of Horizon One of our strategy, and we are making significant investments to support sustainable shareholder value. Customer-driven growth remains the basis for our growth, both in the near term and as we invest in longer-term opportunities. Digital by design is about making it easy for our customers to do business with us. Let us turn to what we have achieved in FY2025 and our focuses for FY2026.
This slide has a lot of information, but the way I'd summarize the last year is that we made great progress in our technology modernization program, where we've done what we said we'd do. In customer engagement, many of our customers have observed a significant uplift in the way that we're listening and partnering with them to make sure that we're offering products and services that they need. We're not where we want to be in terms of operational risk management and resilience, and that's a key part of our Great Fundamentals pillar. You'll have seen this echoed by our regulators, with the RBA downgrading ASX Clear and ASX Settlement's operational risk rating in the financial stability standards assessment in March. We have more to do here, which you'll see on the slide as part of our FY26 actions.
You'll also see several other key actions for FY26, which our business leaders will provide more detail on in their presentations. We run critical market infrastructure, and Australia's financial system depends on us. Doing the fundamentals to a high standard is crucial to our licenses and to sustainable long-term shareholder value. We have launched the Accelerate program to increase the pace of our existing operational risk management uplift. It includes prioritizing business and technology resilience, as well as data management. The Accelerate program will be enabled by our focus on capability and culture, including uplifting our leadership capability, risk culture, and workforce strategy and planning. We recently appointed Dirk McLeish as Chief Risk Officer, who is partnering with our Chief People Officer, Jane Franks, to support me and the rest of the executive team to drive this. Our destination hasn't changed.
It's essential that we achieve this operational risk management and resilience uplift to deliver services which are fundamental to ASX's value chain and to shareholder value. While we have plenty to do, I'm confident that we have the plan and the team in place to achieve our goals in this area. ASX is on a transformation journey. We've made good progress in many areas, and we're embedding uplifts that have been made across the organization. Continuing to invest in our Great Fundamentals remains core to our strategy and is also a key driver of growth for us. It further enhances our value chain, giving us the basis to improve and expand our offering to our customers. We're also making investments in Horizon Two growth opportunities, which are carefully prioritized and aligned with our structural tailwinds. ASX's unique value chain provides us with the platform to drive growth.
A vibrant public market is critical to the Australian economy, powering economic growth, innovation, and wealth creation. It enables access to capital and democratizes investment opportunity, providing liquidity and price transparency. Our ambition is to enhance our position as a world-leading public market, recognized for its efficiency, transparency, and trust. What we do matters. As an exchange, we play an important role in the economy. We power a stronger economic future by enabling a fair and dynamic marketplace for all. We operate critical market infrastructure at the heart of Australia's financial markets. This is a significant responsibility, and one of the key things we're constantly working on is ensuring that we have appropriate settings. As you may already be aware, we've committed to a review process of relevant ASX listing rules as they relate to shareholder approval requirements in transactions.
Today, we've also taken the important step to support the continued development of appropriate corporate governance principles and practices for the Australian listed market. For more than two decades, the ASX Corporate Governance Council has come together to draft the principles and recommendations for listed companies. The Council was expected to agree on a fifth edition of these principles and recommendations earlier this year, but there was not a consensus on the way forward. We recognize the criticality of this framework for establishing ongoing corporate governance principles to have wide acceptance and support in the Australian listed market. We recognize, too, that ASX has a key role to play in supporting the Council, and we've therefore established an independent review panel who can make some recommendations on next steps.
Our customers benefit from our deep liquidity and unmatched connectivity, and how we bring local and global customers together. We operate markets where people can share risk and reward securely, and where everyone can benefit from a level playing field. The efficiency that our value chain provides to our customers is unique in terms of connectivity, risk management tools, and capital allocation. A core strategic focus area for us is to ensure that we respond to the needs of our customers throughout the market life cycle. Doing this will really drive support Horizon Two revenue growth opportunities. I wanted to set out how we're thinking about Horizon Two growth before the business leaders give you more detail about growth drivers for their businesses. Where are we today?
As I've just discussed, we have a strong range of products and services with unrivaled connectivity, which drives value for our customers and the Australian economy. For Horizon Two, we want to drive further value and growth throughout our value chain, as we aim to be the market's choice, inspiring confidence and trust. Our investment in technology modernization lays the foundations for us to improve and expand our offering and capitalize on our three long-term structural tailwinds. We see our technology and data business as a significant driver of Horizon Two growth, as we aim to further leverage our data-rich environment and connectivity to meet ongoing demand. This slide sets out three structural tailwinds and how we plan to leverage them and measure success. First, exchanges are data-rich environments, and our value chain extends throughout the market cycle.
We've seen ongoing demand for data from our customers, who are consuming it in larger quantities and in new ways. We offer our unique connectivity, which allows us to seamlessly meet our customers' demand for data. Australia has the fifth largest pension system in the world, which is projected to grow to AUD 11 trillion within the next 20 years. Our markets are crucial to facilitate the allocation of this capital across asset classes. We want to continue to be a world leader in liquidity and capital raising for domestic and offshore investors. Finally, as an exchange, we have an important role to play in supporting sustainability, including the energy transition, by providing products, connectivity, liquidity, data, and price transparency. There are three main ways that we're looking to drive incremental revenue by enhancing our value chain to capture these structural tailwinds. First is market quality.
This is about listening to our customers to make sure that our offering is fit for purpose. This will drive volume and activity. An example of this is in our markets business, where we've recently delinked bond futures contracts from the spread market during the roll period, which has enhanced the way that our customers use our contracts and driven an increase in volume and revenue going into FY2026. In our listings business, we've commenced a review of elements of the listing rules. We see this as an opportunity to work with our stakeholders and make sure that our market evolves to remain attractive to companies and investors in Australia and other parts of the world. Second is pricing and rebates.
We regularly review our pricing across our businesses, as well as rebate structures in our markets and securities and payments businesses, to ensure that we're delivering value for our customers while recognizing the crucial services that we provide. Our pricing should also reflect the investment that we're making in our offering, particularly technology, as we look to drive product resiliency and efficiency improvements for our customers. As we're currently the only provider of cash market clearing and settlement services, pricing there is subject to additional regulatory settings and oversight, and we will be introducing a new pricing policy for those services next month. Clive Triance, the Group Executive of our Securities and Payments business, will provide some more detail on this shortly.
Listings and technology and data are areas which have seen regular price increases, reflecting our unique offering to customers, and they are regularly benchmarked with other local and global providers. A third is new initiatives. This is where we see significant growth in our technology and data business. Jamie Crank, our Group Executive of Technology and Data, will provide you with more detail on this growth strategy shortly. We have recently added new products too in our markets business, including to our environmental futures portfolio of products, which has the potential for revenue growth in the longer term. We will continue to explore new products and services across our value chain in the years ahead to service our customers and add incremental value. It is not just about adding new things. It is also about prioritizing and streamlining our existing offering.
It is important that we make adjustments when there are activities that are not giving us the right return on the resources allocated. As an example, we are in the process of winding down M funds following a market shift away from this offering towards ETFs. This approach to prioritizing and streamlining also applies to our equity portfolio. Simply, ASX's Property Settlement Joint Venture has made additional reductions to its cost base in the last month due to ongoing uncertainty around the timing of interoperability between e-conveyancing platforms. We continue to review our product offerings and our equity portfolio to consider if they are delivering the right return to our shareholders. Although it is not a current priority for us, we will also consider acquisitions should the right opportunity arise.
It would need to be an opportunity that's aligned with our strategy and our structural tailwinds that would enhance ASX's unique value chain. Our revenue growth ambitions are a driver of the financial measures of success for ASX, and we're targeting EBITDA margin % expansion from the current level over the medium term. Underlying return on equity remains a key metric driving the performance of the organization. We must continue to carefully balance our investment in the ongoing foundational work that I've discussed today with these growth activities. We're aiming to leverage our value chain, and particularly our technology and data business, as well as continuing to invest in technology modernization to capture the opportunities presented by our structural tailwinds. I'll now hand over to Tim to provide an update on our technology modernization program. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks, Helen.
I'm Tim Whiteley, the Chief Information Officer here at ASX. Today, I'll provide you with an update on our technology modernisation roadmap, as well as the technology strategy more broadly at ASX, including how we'll support the fundamentals of our business today and enable ASX's growth opportunities into the future. Technology modernisation is one of ASX's key strategic priorities, which reflects the importance of having modern and resilient platforms to continue to support the markets in which we operate. I'll start by providing an update on the modernisation of our key technology platforms, including the upgrades that we have delivered, the ones currently in progress, and the milestones for the coming year. I'll then provide more detail on the CHESS project, including some of the key steps remaining for release one, as well as an outline of progress on release two.
Let's start with an update on progress on our indicative roadmap for the delivery of tech modernisation. As Helen said earlier, we have delivered what we said we would do. This slide, which we first presented at last year's investor forum, shows that the windows for delivery of projects are broadly consistent, and we have demonstrated a good track record of delivery over the past 12 months. The roadmap has been staged to allow us to build capability and delivery confidence along the way, including a staggered approach to the major releases to manage the impact of changes for ASX and for industry participants. We also have a continued focus on other key systems to make sure they remain well supported and operationally resilient.
Looking first at our trading-related projects, which comprise the cash market trading platform upgrades, the derivatives trading platform replacement, and the upgrade of our private telecommunications networks, which provide participants with access to our trading systems. For cash market trading, we're in the final stages of delivering Service Release 15, which will provide a number of important benefits for participants. This includes moving to a single opening auction and will also introduce a new post-close trading session that will provide the market with additional execution opportunities. The final test for this release is later this month, ahead of a planned go-live on the 23rd of June. Following this important release, we will move to an incremental series of enhancements, including new and improved product offerings, in order to continue to deliver a contemporary and resilient trading platform.
Our derivatives market trading project relates to our ASX 24 platform, where we have completed the delivery of Service Release 4 in March this year. It included a functional change to delink the Bond Futures roll, which has improved market liquidity. This release also delivered a technology upgrade to maintain the resilience of the platform while we work on its replacement. In terms of the replacement of ASX 24, we are in the process of completing analysis and planning for this project. We have indicated a window of delivery for late FY27 to early FY28, and we are continuing to build a more detailed timeline in the lead-up to starting this delivery. Both cash market trading and derivatives market trading are underpinned by our private telecommunications networks, which provide secure and dedicated connectivity for participants to our applications.
We will be replacing and simplifying the trading network infrastructure in parallel with our trading platform upgrades to help our customers manage the change. Once complete, we expect it will improve customer experience and increase network resiliency. Moving to our derivatives clearing project, we successfully and safely delivered the OTC clearing system upgrade last month. This upgrade moved us to a modern technology environment that is sustainable, secure, and resilient, and enables growth in our product offering. Darren will talk to you about how our investment in these technology projects will benefit the markets business in his presentation shortly. Finally, for the CHESS project, we are continuing to deliver the project in line with the planned windows that have previously been communicated.
While we are making good progress on our technology roadmap, this remains a complex set of delivery plans, and we continue to monitor the projects closely. The ongoing risks to the schedule include the normal development and testing risks, and also the risks associated with the outcome of industry consultation and customer readiness. Now, looking at the CHESS project in more detail, we are working closely with the industry as we continue the technology build and undertake testing. The first industry test environment for release one was opened on the 28th of February this year as planned. We've had good levels of engagement with approved market operators, or AMOs, and their specific software providers. The next key milestone is the delivery of the final versions of code into the industry test environment scheduled for next month.
This will support the AMOs to complete their testing and move into the accreditation phase. We continue to target quarter four of FY26 for the go-live of release one, and we are working with the industry to finalize a specific date for the implementation. We are also working closely with the industry to prepare for their readiness activities in the lead-up to the go-live decision. Work on release two continues in parallel to release one. There are a series of code drops for release two, with delivery already underway for the early drops, and we're finalizing the detailed design for the remaining scope. Our program for release two also includes a significant amount of time for the industry to reach readiness ahead of a targeted go-live in 2029.
Our partnerships with TCS and Accenture are working well, with significant progress on the delivery of the business functionality and the capacity and resilience testing of the underlying technology platform. Now, let's focus on our technology strategy. When I spoke at last year's investor forum, we outlined key areas that are important, most important in supporting the execution of our technology modernization program. These are our technology platforms, including how we use digital data and the cloud, and our delivery capability, including project delivery, governance, and the processes and tools that we use. During the past 12 months, we've taken positive steps in these areas. As we have progressed, there are three key pillars that are driving the execution of the technology strategy: reliable delivery, strategic technology partnerships, and engineering for resilience.
Starting with reliable delivery, we have brought in more capability as we've scaled our technology teams in FY25. This has improved our processes and governance for managing large projects and the tooling and automation for building systems, including some early work on AI to support the project processes for requirements through to testing. We have partnerships with a number of technology partners to provide us with the scale, expertise, and technology capability to deliver our projects and the overall technology modernization. The technology partnerships we've established with NASDAQ, TCS, and AWS are bringing global capability and insights to ensure we achieve the best possible outcomes from the investments we are making. We also need strong engineering and testing disciplines to ensure the new and upgraded systems meet the needs of the market. The resilience of key systems at ASX is critical to our role in supporting the financial system.
This includes the engineering, security, and automation to ensure redundant and highly available systems and trading networks. As we make progress with the delivery of our technology modernization, one of the key assets we are building is a modern data platform. We are leveraging the investments we are making in our core system upgrades to deliver comprehensive and high-quality data flows to the new data platform, enabling us to both improve the current data and reporting needs and, as we progress, to support the ongoing data and AI-based innovation. Jamie will provide some more insights into the data plans in his presentation later today. I look forward to taking any questions following the presentations, and I'll now hand over to Andrew for the finance.
Thanks, Tim, and good morning, everyone.
Today, I will speak to you about our guidance for total expense growth and capital expenditure, followed by a recap of the capital management settings for ASX. I will finish by providing a comparison of our key financial metrics with our global exchange peers and set out our key financial aspirations for ASX. Let's begin with total expense growth guidance. This slide outlines our expense profile and provides guidance for FY25 and FY26. At our investor forum last year, we guided to a total expense growth range for FY25 of between 6% and 9% and operating expense growth of between 4% and 7%, excluding depreciation and amortization. We expect to finish FY25 at around the middle of both of the total expense and the operating expense growth ranges.
As we set out our first half results, the higher total expenses in the second half compared to the first half is primarily driven by an increase in technology-related costs and depreciation and amortization. The FY25 guidance also includes costs related to a redundancy program undertaken in the past month as part of our ongoing efficiency program, which I'll cover in more detail shortly. Turning now to FY26, we are guiding to total expense growth of between 8% and 11% compared to FY25. Excluding D&A, we expect operating expense growth of 4%-7%, which is the same growth rate range as FY25. FY26 operating expenses will primarily be driven by a further increase in technology costs due to higher software licensing fees and costs related to technology projects.
The guidance also includes costs associated with the Accelerate program, which Helen talked about earlier, along with ongoing legal costs related to the current ASIC actions. We've recently taken further actions on operating expenses under our ongoing efficiency program. We've recently reduced our non-CapEx-related headcount and reduced other expense categories, which is expected to result in approximately AUD 17 million in annualized savings going into FY26. This program continues the work we've been doing on workforce optimization, the simplification and automation of processes, and strategic procurement, and we are targeting a similar level of savings in FY27. Depreciation and amortization is expected to make a higher contribution to FY26 total expenses, accounting for approximately 4% of the total growth compared to FY25. We expect D&A to increase by a similar dollar amount as FY26 each year for the medium term as more of our major technology projects go live.
However, the ongoing expense efficiency program is expected to partially mitigate the increasing D&A profile. Now, moving to capital expenditure, FY25 capital expenditure is expected to be within a narrowed range of between AUD 170 million and AUD 180 million and remains within the original guidance provided. We have narrowed our guidance range for FY26 to be between AUD 170 million and AUD 180 million and maintained our guidance range of between AUD 160 million and AUD 180 million for FY27. This reflects the multi-year delivery profiles of our major projects, but noting the inherent delivery risks in the technology program may impact this guidance. Our aim is for CapEx to start to reduce after FY27. We also expect the average depreciation and amortization schedule of 5-10 years for these major projects once they go live, noting that the CHESS project is expected to be amortized over 10 years.
Our balance sheet and shareholder return profile give us the capital management flexibility to support ASX's future funding requirements. This includes a dividend payout ratio range of 80%-90% of underlying NPAT and the potential operation of our dividend reinvestment plan. We have an AUD 300 million corporate debt facility available, which is currently undrawn, as well as an AUD 275 million corporate bond, which we raised in February last year. We also have a leasing program of up to AUD 60 million in place to help support our future technology equipment requirements. Underlying ROE remains a key performance metric for the organization, with a medium-term target range of between 13%-14.5%. This metric provides shareholders with a way to assess the performance of ASX over our five-year strategy. I also wanted to highlight net interest income as we go into FY26.
Net interest income earned on ASX group cash has benefited from the RBA cash rate increases during FY 2022 and FY 2023. Any reduction in the RBA cash rate, including the one announced last month, will have an impact on the net interest earned on ASX's group cash. However, in relation to collateral balances, the average investment spread is forecast to be around 15 basis points in the second half of FY 2025, as returns on our portfolio continue to benefit from a small increase in tenor. The FY 2026 spread is also expected to remain around these levels. We regularly compare ourselves against our global peers to help benchmark our operational and financial performance, noting that each exchange has different service offerings as well as resourcing and regulatory requirements.
We consider our most relevant peers to be the Japan Exchange Group and Toronto Stock Exchange, which have recently undergone significant transformations, as well as the Singapore Exchange and Hong Kong Exchange, who are all our main regional peers. Our operating expenses and Capex requirements compared to all of our global peers are reflective of where we are in our five-year strategy. While ASX's employee expenses to revenue ratio and technology expense to revenue ratio are towards the middle of the range with our peers, our Capex to revenue ratio is the highest, reflecting the investment that we are currently making in our technology modernization program. The lower section of the slide shows the comparative EBITDA margins.
Although our EBITDA margin % has reduced from the level prior to the investment requirements of Horizon One of our strategy, it remains at the higher end of the comparison with our peers, reflecting the quality of ASX's businesses. As Helen said earlier, we are targeting an increase in our EBITDA margin % over the medium term from where we are now. If achieved, it would be supported by the revenue growth initiatives discussed today, combined with ongoing discipline around our operating expense growth. This is a key financial ambition for ASX, which sits alongside our underlying ROE target range and illustrates the strength of our portfolio of businesses, market positions, and value chain. We are now scheduled to take a 10-minute break, which will be followed by the first business line presentation where James Posnett will talk to us about the listings business. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.
We'll get started on the next session now. Good morning. My name is James Posnett, and I'm General Manager of Listings at ASX. Today, I'll be discussing what makes ASX an attractive market for listings and capital raising, and how we are proactively collaborating with the capital markets ecosystem to build on our position as a globally recognised listing venue. I'll begin by outlining key market trends, touch on the listings' value proposition, and give a pause check on listings activity. I will then run through some potential opportunities for market improvements and finish with a summary of the growth strategy for the business. Activity levels on ASX have been in focus recently through the lens of both new listings and delistings, particularly given the slower global IPO market. The number of listed entities is often used as a barometer for the health of a public market.
Taking a long-term view, over the last 35 years, ASX has doubled the total number of listed entities from around 1,000 to around 2,000. While this total has remained fairly flat over the last 20 years, it compares favorably with other global exchanges where the number of listings has been in decline, including in the U.K., U.S., and Canada. Of course, this does not paint the whole picture, as the value of the market continues to grow, both in terms of total market cap and equity issuance. As we presented at last year's investor forum, net new capital quoted remains positive. Almost AUD 25 billion in net new capital has been quoted on ASX in FY25, and over AUD 470 billion in the past eight years.
The chart on the right-hand side demonstrates the cyclical nature of the IPO market, and as I will touch upon later, we are now starting to see a more positive outlook for new listings. Importantly, despite challenging macroeconomic conditions over the past two to three years, ASX has continued to support significant levels of funding through secondary capital raisings. Access to capital through follow-on offerings continues to be a strong feature of the ASX value proposition. In 2024, over AUD 22 billion was raised in over 1,200 transactions, ranking ASX first globally by volume of transactions for the seventh consecutive year. There were follow-on offerings across a broad range of sectors, but data centres stood out as the largest beneficiaries, with NextDC raising almost AUD 2 billion, and earlier this year, Goodman Group raised AUD 4 billion, the second largest placement on ASX in over a decade.
The large and growing superannuation pool provides a structural tailwind for ASX-listed companies. Importantly, it also has the highest asset allocation to listed equities of any major pension system, at around 50%, and around half of that is directed to ASX-listed companies. This contrasts with several competing markets where there is less support for domestic listed equities. For example, in Canada, the allocation is only 3%, and in the U.K., 4%. ASX offers access to key benchmark indices at an earlier stage than other major markets. This enhances visibility and liquidity by driving both retail and institutional investment, and it can aid companies in achieving globally competitive valuations. There have been several significant listings in the past 12 months, including the largest-ever addition to the market, Chemist Warehouse, through its reverse merger with Sigma Healthcare.
The final quarter of last year was an active period for IPOs, including Digico, Simmel, and Kuzcal. We've continued to attract dual listings, reinforcing ASX's global relevance as a source of capital and liquidity. NYSE-listed Alcoa joined ASX following its acquisition of Illumina, and Simmel Cross Gold dual-listed on ASX and TSXV. AIM-listed Greatland Resources is expected to dual-list later this month, and NZX-listed Ryman Healthcare has also publicly announced its intention to pursue a dual listing. We look forward to welcoming Virgin Australia back to the boards on the 24th of June. This long-awaited IPO demonstrates strong investor appetite and will provide liquidity for private equity. In summary, this increased activity points to a more positive outlook for new listings going into FY26. The resilience and growth of the Australian listed market reflects the strong value proposition, but we continually review settings and seek to improve.
In March this year, in response to feedback from customers, we revised our approach to monitoring and enforcing continuous disclosure rules regarding the naming of counterparties to material contracts. This can be very helpful for issuers in circumstances where the identity of a counterparty needs to remain confidential. Last year's customer survey provided feedback we can further improve the issuer experience through simplification of listing rules and guidance. The survey also highlighted very positive customer sentiment towards our listed company services, including issuer education and investor access events. In April this year, ASX submitted a response to ASX discussion paper on the dynamics between public and private markets, where we outlined seven opportunities to improve the attractiveness of Australia's listed market. The submission was based on feedback we had sought from capital markets, ecosystem, and listing prospects. I will touch upon four of those here.
One opportunity is to streamline the IPO process by reducing the time between when an IPO is priced and the final prospectus is lodged with ASIC until when a company is quoted and commences trading. We have been advocating and working with the capital markets ecosystem for some time on ways to reduce this on-risk period, and we were pleased to see ASIC's announcement this week regarding regulatory changes to streamline the IPO process. Secondly, we've received feedback regarding the requirement to provide financial forecasts and prospectuses, specifically whether there is a reasonable basis to do so. As also captured in several other submissions, the market and potential issuers could benefit from further clarification on when forecasts are required for new listings. A third opportunity is to reduce the minimum threshold for foreign-exempt listings.
A foreign-exempt listing is available for entities that are listed on an acceptable stock exchange that wish to have a secondary listing on ASX. Entities in this category must comply primarily with rules of their home exchange and meet certain size requirements, a key measure being a minimum market cap of AUD 2 billion. Reducing the minimum size threshold would help attract foreign listings, and we propose this could be achieved while safeguarding the integrity of the market. Fourth, the submission proposed a reduction in the minimum free float for both ASX listing rules and S&P ASX indices, bringing them more in line with competing markets. These four opportunities would require changes and approvals by ASIC, ASX, or both, but would be unlikely to require changes to the Corporations Act. This means they would be quicker to achieve than some other opportunities put forward.
Following a comprehensive response to ASIC's discussion paper, the next steps will be for ASX to work with key stakeholders on prioritizing opportunities to further be considered and implemented. All of this is alongside the review of elements of the listing rules that Helen talked about earlier. ASX's strategy for the listings business is to power economic growth and wealth creation through a world-leading marketplace built on efficiency, transparency, and trust. Growing the listings business starts with having the right rule and policy settings, and as discussed earlier, we continually review and seek to improve them in line with evolving market dynamics. For new listings, our number one focus remains Australia and New Zealand. We want to continue to be the listing venue of choice for ANZ issuers and focus on the technology, healthcare, and resources sectors, including companies engaged in the energy transition.
We executed a targeted international strategy where ASX has a compelling value proposition and a right to win both sole and dual listings. This includes engaging with prospects in the U.S., Canada, and more recently, Singapore. We also engage with private market investors in these jurisdictions because they own assets globally, including in Australia, and can influence the choice of listing venue for those assets. Over the past 12 months, a healthy level of secondary capital raisings demonstrates the listed market is functioning well. Recent new listings activity and a building pipeline indicates a more positive outlook for the listings business going into FY2026. Thank you for listening. I hope that has provided some useful insights. I will now hand over to my colleague, Darren, who will discuss the markets business.
Thank you, James, and good morning, everyone. My name is Darren Yip, and I'm the Group Executive of Markets.
Today, I'll start by highlighting how the recent and upcoming technology enhancements are benefiting our customers and the quality of our markets. Then I'll describe some of the recent trends driving volumes in our cash and interest rate derivative markets. Driving revenue growth in Horizon 2 for the markets division is focused on leveraging the investment in our trading and clearing platforms. Equally important is working with our customers to solve challenges and deliver solutions through improving our existing products, listing new products, and implementing market microstructure changes to support increased participation. The modernisation of our trading and clearing platforms facilitates the simplification of our products and services. It also supports alignment with international standards and encourages the diversity of end-user participation, which promotes liquid and high-quality markets.
A good example of the benefit realisation with technology modernisation was the recent service release on our derivatives market trading platform, which Tim mentioned earlier. As part of that upgrade, we implemented a configuration enhancement in our bond futures products, which delinked the bond futures roll market from the outright market. This improved outright market liquidity, enabling end users to continue trading efficiently in the outright market during the five-day bond roll period. This contributed to record outright volumes in the three-year and the ten-year bond futures during the roll period. In fact, the 12th of March was the largest day for volumes in over five years, with over 3 million sides traded across the interest rate futures complex. Another example is the Service Release 15 update to our cash market trading platform, targeted to go live later this month.
This service release will deliver simplification of trade reporting and introduce industry-standard messaging protocols. In addition, we will be removing the staggered opening process with the implementation of a single opening auction. This enhancement was strongly supported by market participants and brings alignment with our international exchange peers. The removal of the staggered open resolves structural concerns such as ETFs opening before their underlying constituents and volatility from information asymmetry occurring as a result of sector-based stocks opening across a 10-minute window. Another feature will be the introduction of a post-close trading session, which will supplement the existing closing auction. This provides an additional opportunity for investors to execute any residual orders. Our internal analysis estimates that during FY23, there was AUD 21 billion of unexecuted ASX 200 residual orders outstanding from the closing auction.
Our technology roadmap also includes the replacement of our derivatives trading platform with a solution which will deliver industry-standard protocols and reduce complexity. It will introduce new features and improvements such as pre-trade risk management and enhance order execution strategies. This upgrade will provide an opportunity to encourage greater participation in our markets and solve customer challenges. In parallel, we are also upgrading our trading network infrastructure, which will benefit our trading participants with improvements to security and renewed network hardware. In parallel, we are also progressing the program of work to modernize the post-trade clearing systems underpinning our derivatives clearing house. The upgrade of our clearing systems is critical to promote financial stability, resilience, and adapt to the changing needs of participants. This will improve clearing participants' operational processes and encourage ongoing support of their customers who are trading into our derivative markets.
The continued periods of high volume and volatility underscore the importance of robust infrastructure that can support the needs of participants and market reforms. The OTC clearing system upgrade was delivered into production on the 26th of May 2025. The next phase of this program includes the replacement of the futures clearing system and the off-market trade reporting system. Both projects are strongly supported by our customers. Moving now to an update on some of our products. One of our strategic initiatives is the role exchanges play in supporting sustainability. We are uniquely positioned to offer the products, connectivity, and price transparency to support the hedging of transitional price risk. Volumes in our suite of environmental futures have been modest. However, it is pleasing to see all three contracts successfully complete their physical settlement cycle earlier this year.
This provides confidence that the products can support our participants' hedging and compliance obligations. The team are focused on increasing participation in these products through bilateral engagement and the development of a national education series for end users. We continue to develop our integrated suite of products to support the energy transition. This ecosystem includes electricity, gas, carbon, and renewable products. We are working with participants to enhance our gas products, given the important role that gas plays in electricity market stability. We are proposing the introduction of a standardized suite of monthly gas futures in Victoria and New South Wales. This complements our existing monthly Queensland contract. Transitioning to monthly contracts simplifies the product structure, improves market integrity, and ensures alignment with international standards. Lastly, we will enhance our peak electricity futures contracts to provide customers with more effective risk management and trading instruments.
This is in response to the changing market dynamics, where there has been a significant increase in the contribution of solar to the energy grid. Our interest rate futures market is the fourth largest globally and the largest in Asia-Pacific, and is a significant revenue driver for our business. Further development of the interest rate derivative complex remains a focus to support our customers' hedging and trading needs. Our 90-day Bank Bill Futures is an actively traded contract. We recently listed 90-day serial Bank Bill Futures, which provides participants with customised hedging and risk management capabilities. We are proposing the introduction of a new interest rate futures product designed to provide an exchange-traded alternative to OTC Overnight Index Swaps. These swaps are used to manage risk in relation to RBA monetary policy activity. Around $20-30 trillion of notion value is traded every year.
This product will complement our 90-day Bank Bill Futures and can be cross-margin with OTC interest rate swaps, creating further synergies in our interest rate complex. Our product management and distribution teams continue to engage our stakeholders to solve challenges and provide solutions. This generates a product feasibility pipeline that includes initiatives such as Aussie Dollar Bond and Credit Index Futures and the publication of a Sophia Repo Reference Rate, which will provide the market with a risk-free benchmark rate. Moving now to trends that have been driving volume in our markets. For cash market trading, macroeconomic volatility and the geopolitical environment are the key drivers of the increase in volumes year to date, as depicted in the chart on the left. We recently recorded the second highest trading volume day ever following the US tariff announcements.
The only day with a higher trading volume was in March 2020, as the market reacted to the COVID pandemic. It underscores Helen's earlier point regarding the importance of public markets as a provider of capital, liquidity, and risk management tools for investors. We also saw a significant volume around the completion of the Sigma Healthcare and Chemist Warehouse transaction in February this year. This demonstrates the value of our ecosystem, where capital markets activity can drive volumes across ASX's value chain. Turning now to the chart on the right, this highlights the gradual migration of volume from the continuous lit market to other venues. This includes closing auctions, dark, and off-market venues such as Centrepoint and Block Trading. This is a developing trend that is consistent with the migration of liquidity from lit to dark venues in other global developed markets.
Some of the factors driving this trade include the growth of passive index tracking funds that benchmark to the close price set in the auction. There is also the increasing demand for the execution of large off-market block trades with minimal market impact. Lastly, the impact on lit market liquidity by superannuation funds, who tend to be long-term and large holders of cash market free float. In response, we continue to work with market participants to provide solutions such as our Centrepoint venue, and as I mentioned earlier, the upcoming introduction of an additional post-close session. We also plan to further incentivize resting liquidity in both our lit and dark venues via enhancements to order types available to participants. Turning now to the trends in the Australian interest rate landscape.
Our interest rate product suite provides deep liquidity and price transparency to enable our customers to manage risk and present trading opportunities. The interest rate environment was impacted by the uncertainty generated by the high-for-longer theme for interest rates in the first half of this financial year. Subsequently, the focus shifted to the expected timing and pace of interest rate cuts, both in Australia and globally. Global central bank monetary policy and macroeconomic factors influence the domestic interest rate environment, which in turn impacts the activity in our interest rate products. The current level of market volatility is reflected in the chart, where during the financial year, the three-year bond futures traded in a 100 basis point range, and the 10-year bond futures traded in a 90 basis point range.
Now, aside from the brief period of extreme volatility in April, we've seen a stabilization in the interest rate environment following the start of the interest rate cut cycle in February. As a result, market volatility has normalized in response to the current size and pace of monetary policy changes. Importantly, this has not generated extreme conditions and therefore has supported active participation for most of our customer base, including proprietary trading firms, banks, and global hedge funds. Global central bank monetary policy actions in response to economic conditions result in interest rate differentials between major economies. A widely tracked relative value trade is the US 10-year versus the Australian 10-year bond yield spread. Now, despite softening US inflation and rate cuts, the supply-demand imbalance in US Treasuries worsened, resulting in the US 10-year bond yield remaining elevated relative to Australia.
This presents potential spread trading opportunities for domestic and international hedge funds, which is supported by our interest rate products. Moving now to the impact of the current interest rate environment on market volumes. This financial year, as at the end of May, we have seen volumes grow by 25% in Australian interest rate futures compared to the same period last year. Open interest at the end of May was 3.86 million contracts, which is up 7% on PCP. Current market conditions have supported increased activity in open interest during the financial year. There's been a healthy level of volatility, but it has not been extreme enough to cause a decline in open interest or participation. We have seen strong activity in short-term interest rate products, particularly the 90-day Bank Bill Futures, which achieved new volume records in March and April in 2025.
Furthermore, in March, Australian interest rate futures volumes of 20.5 million contracts set the new historic peak for monthly volume. This was up slightly from the COVID-driven March 2020 peak of 20.2 million contracts. Activity was driven by trading in the short end of the curve in response to the interest rate cut cycle that began in February. There was also elevated quarterly roll volumes on the back of higher open interest in the three-year and the 10-year bond futures. Additionally, the implementation of the delinking of the bond roll helped to support higher levels of outright liquidity in volumes during the roll period. The geopolitical environment following the U.S. tariff announcements in April generated a brief period of extreme volatility. During this period, market participants' trading activity resulted in a record month for the 90-day Bank Bill Futures, surpassing the prior record set in March by 14%.
We also reported a record non-roll month volume in the three-year bond futures. Open interest in the three-year bond futures has surpassed 1 million contracts, which is up over 16% this financial year. The state and federal government have issued AUD 91.6 billion in Treasury bonds this year, and this issuance encourages volumes in our interest rate futures products, which are used to price the initial issuance and then as a hedging tool for the secondary bond market. The RBA continues to reduce its government bond holdings acquired during the COVID period when they were actively supporting market liquidity. Their bond holdings have reduced by 13.5% to AUD 216 billion this financial year as they allow their bonds to mature. As new issuance continues, this has resulted in a higher free float of government bonds in the secondary market.
This has generated increased secondary trading, which is actively hedged using our bond futures products. To conclude, we are committed to providing resilient and modern trading and clearing platforms. These platforms aim to support and deliver value to our customers. This means offering high-quality markets, deep liquidity, diverse participation, and modern microstructure. We will continue to evolve our product suite that allows our customers to manage their risk and provide investment opportunities. A focus for FY26 will be the continued delivery of our technology roadmap, which will build upon our strong foundations. Lastly, we remain focused on our stakeholder engagement efforts to ensure we are listening to our customers and accounting for that feedback in the evolution of our products, platforms, and the quality of our markets. Thank you, and I will now hand over to Clive.
Thank you, Darren. Good morning.
I am Clive Triance, Group Executive for Securities and Payments at ASX. Today, I will provide an update on our CHESS platform and provide some detail on our new clearing and settlement and issuer services pricing policy. I will conclude by outlining a few of the growth initiatives that we're currently focused on. Let's start with an update on the current CHESS platform. We have an investment roadmap in place and are committed to investing in and supporting CHESS until 2032, beyond when the replacement platform is currently targeted to go live in two releases in 2026 and 2029, respectively. We had a CHESS batch settlement incident in December last year, which was the first time in 32 years of CHESS operations that we were unable to settle the batch on the day. In response to that incident, we conducted internal and external reviews.
ASX considers that we have sufficient resources in place for CHESS. However, to add further resilience, we have increased resourcing and support available for CHESS, including by extending our existing third-party arrangements. We have also engaged with the industry to receive feedback on our incident management processes and communication protocols. In parallel to this, there is an ongoing investigation by ASIC into the incident, as well as an external expert report underway, which is expected to be released later this year. While we are disappointed that this incident occurred, we are committed to making the necessary investments to ensure the stability of CHESS, given its crucial role in supporting financial system stability. Of course, as Executive Sponsor, I remain fully focused on the project to replace CHESS, which Tim updated you on earlier in his presentation.
Looking forward, we plan to commence a new pricing policy for cash equities clearing and settlement and issuer services businesses from the 1st of July this year. This has followed extensive consultation with the industry as we look to continue to provide transparency regarding pricing for our customers and a reasonable return on the risks we take as a business. This new pricing policy will apply to cash market clearing and settlement captured in our equity post-trade services revenue line together with issuer services, which equates to approximately 18% of ASX's historic group operating revenue. We are currently the only provider of cash market clearing and settlement services in Australia. This pricing policy adopts a similar approach to other infrastructure providers and is known as the building block method.
This method looks at all of the running costs of our services and uses ASX's default capital held in the clearing house, as well as capital expenditure associated for this function, and it includes the cost to replace CHESS as the basis to generate an appropriate return. To determine a reasonable return on capital, ASX applies a target rate of return for each financial year based on the weighted average cost of capital, or WACC. The WACC is composed of three key inputs: the risk-free rate, asset beta, and market risk premium. While the asset beta and market risk premium remain largely fixed, the risk-free rate is tied to the 10-year government bond yield and is subject to annual fluctuations.
A target weighted average cost of capital of 11.5%, which broadly reflects the long-term historic return on our part of the business, is applied to this capital to generate the return for ASX. This WACC figure acts as a cap and a floor and a material differential, which trigger a price consultation and review, which will take place over the subsequent year and with a lead time of up to two years before any potential fee adjustments are realised. We do not expect changes to fee levels in the next two years. The model is based off our actual historic revenue over the last 10 years and reflects approximately 5% revenue growth per year. If the underlying revenue drivers diverge from this average, it could necessitate a fee adjustment either upwards or downwards. In addition, this new pricing policy will replace the prior revenue share arrangements.
I would like to conclude by talking about some of the growth initiatives that we are focused on in securities and payments. AustraClear offers essential settlement and depository services for debt securities and payments for cash transactions in Australia. It has over AUD 3 trillion in deposits, with over 2 million transactions processed each year. Traditionally, AustraClear's focus has been on Australian dollar-denominated securities, but as a result of customer demand, we're now planning to expand its multi-currency capability to support non-Australian dollar issuance and real-time settlement in our time zone. Our initial focus will be to offer additional US dollar capability, targeting a launch in FY2026, subject to regulatory approval, before we potentially consider any additional currencies in future years. This will reduce cost and complexity for Australian issuers looking to issue in alternative currencies, and it has the potential to expand our market and drive revenue.
Moving now to e-statements. We continue to be focused on driving the take-up of CHESS e-statements in place of paper, as it is more efficient for our customers, reduces costs for ASX, and the environmental impact. This is being driven by market participants, and we have set up a working group to work with participants and other key stakeholders to encourage take-up, including fee incentives, proposed operating rule changes to support bulk opt-in of existing investors, and service enhancements. Currently, around 20% of holding statements are delivered electronically, and we are targeting a significant uplift in electronic delivery in FY26, which will lead to a cost saving for our customers and ASX. The digitization of these statements is an important way that we can improve the experience for millions of customers who receive them each year whilst reducing our costs. Thank you, and I'll now hand to Jamie. Thanks, Jamie.
Thanks, Clive, and good morning, everyone. My name is Jamie Crank, and I'm the Group Executive of the Technology and Data Business. I've been in this role for nine months, having spent almost nine years at ASX, most recently as General Manager within our trading area of our markets division. Today, I'm going to provide an update on how the Technology and Data Business is planning to provide revenue growth as part of our Horizon 2 strategy. As Helen said earlier, exchanges are data-rich environments, and the growth in demand for data and connectivity is a structural tailwind for ASX. To this end, we have developed a multi-year growth strategy to drive revenue by leveraging parts of the ASX's value chain to deliver unique data and insights, as well as cutting-edge connectivity services to our customers.
My presentation will set out the market trends and growth themes that are driving this strategy. ASX Technology and Data comprises two business segments. Firstly, information services, which manages the distribution and commercialization of the data generated from ASX's activities. Secondly, technical services, which offers a range of connectivity and hosting solutions that help market participants gain access to Australia's markets, primarily through the Australian Liquidity Data Centre. The success of ASX's markets ensures that we're in a great position to manage and leverage the data we produce and the connectivity we provide, offering solutions to Australian financial markets and participants. This slide shows the macro drivers and enablers for technology and data, which I'll step through during the presentation. The key takeaway is that our business is well placed to leverage many of the emerging technology and trends currently impacting the Australian financial markets.
There are a number of macro drivers supporting the business, which I'll talk about in more detail shortly. It is important to understand that the investments that ASX is making in technology platforms and capability is crucial in providing the Technology and Data Business the ability to grow. As Tim said earlier, our improved data capability will give us the ability to create new data offerings demanded by our customers, whilst ASX's unique value chain and connectivity will allow us to broaden our hosting and access offering to meet our customer needs. Firstly, let's focus on the information services part of the business. It offers data and insights to our customers based upon the core activities of ASX. Our range of pricing, activity, and listed company disclosure data sit at the heart of the decision-making in the Australian financial markets.
It has performed well over the long term, delivering a revenue CAGR of approximately 10% over the last five years. It has continued to adapt to our customer needs, including the more recent trends towards machine consumption of data and shift to passive investment and growing relevance of our data used in benchmark indices. Our strategic goal for this business is to provide high-quality data and unparalleled insights, empowering financial markets to drive efficiency and transparency. To facilitate this, we are planning to leverage our improving data capability to launch new data sets, including in asset classes not previously made available. A recent example of this is the launch of debt market activity data products earlier this year.
With this offering, our customers are now able to track data that has never been available to them before, allowing new insights into this important part of the Australian financial markets. The success of our strategy will be measured by revenue growth generated from improvements we make to our existing data sets, alongside new initiatives and responsiveness to the evolving demands of our customers. We see five market trends that will inform the actions we are going to take to deliver growth. First is the demand for financial market data, which continues to grow strongly, driven by both machine and human-based consumption across financial markets. We continue to see strong appetite from market participants for ASX data, whether that is through our largest revenue line, real-time price data, or from the next layer of product development based upon leveraging new data sets.
Next, the data we produce needs to be usable. Data has become a fundamental factor in the way large international market participants interact with markets around the world. If a market does not have the right data granularity delivered by international standards, participants will prioritize those markets which do. Alongside this, our customers continue to evolve with increasing demand for data from the buy-side community. This is driving significant demand for data sourced directly from exchanges and focuses on the depth and uniqueness of the data ASX owns. The buy-side is typically focused on a longer-term investment horizon and is less concerned with microsecond real-time data feeds. In order to service this client base, ASX is evolving its data analytics and value-add capabilities.
We also need to evolve our licensing as demand for data continues to emerge from new sources, such as the evolution of AI and the use of data in large language models. Easy-to-use and easy-to-consume commercial policy is evolving in parallel with this. We continue to work with our customers to understand how our data can be integrated into new consumption models while staying true to ASX's level playing field principles. Demand for data needs to be satisfied by a number of easy-to-use delivery channels, including data delivered direct from source through global data vendors or, increasingly, by utilizing global cloud provider channels. This is a complex system of direct and indirect consumption models where quality and data lineage remains crucial. There is real value in being the source of data, which, of course, ASX is. How are we capturing these trends to drive growth in information services?
To start with, we are leveraging ASX's investment in technology platforms and data capability. The common architecture underpinning this means that we are well positioned to leverage new data sets in a standardized manner. We're also looking to further expand our activity and reference data offering. This includes the recent launch of products covering the Australian gross short sale reporting alongside bond, money, and repo market activity. We are looking to expand the product suite to provide more insights into previously unseen data sets. We're also looking to enhance our ASX 24 data offering to better serve the market. This will include enhanced activity data relating to market volumes alongside new products that allow participants and vendors more details on the contracts available for trading on ASX 24. Now, Darren has already spoken about how ASX plans to provide services to support sustainability in Australia.
Within technology and data, we have also commenced work to evaluate the proposition to create a client reporting portal to enable listed companies to comply with their climate-related financial disclosure. It is not just about having the data offering that our customers want. It is about the way in which we deliver it to them. It is about making sure that our delivery mechanisms are efficient and automated while maintaining compliance with global standards. Whilst our clients are still looking to receive our data directly from within the ASX data centre, we are increasingly seeing demand from global clients looking to receive data from channels such as global cloud providers. As we mentioned earlier, we plan to leverage ASX's technology modernisation, and as data is increasingly transferred to the cloud, we will make it available to our global customer base. Moving now to technical services.
This part of our business offers a comprehensive suite of solutions which enable our customers to access ASX trading, clearing, and settlement functions, either from within ASX's Australian Liquidity Centre or from a customer's preferred data centre. In addition to enabling access to core ASX capabilities, we facilitate connectivity to a wide array of financial service providers and third-party trading venues within Australia. As such, Australia infrastructure supports brokers, fund managers, market data and software vendors, as well as banks and financial services organisations. Technical services has delivered solid revenue growth over the last five years and is the provider of the data centre of choice for participants and vendors looking to access Australia's financial markets. Our growth strategy is focused on offering boutique data centre infrastructure solutions and seamless connectivity to our ecosystem to meet the demands of our customers.
To achieve this, we need to grow our physical and virtual connectivity to help drive market participation and growth. An example of this can be seen by our recent announcement to launch our new ASX Colo on Demand as a service within ALC, which I will talk about in more detail shortly. This offering will provide additional revenue streams for technical services, whilst also offering a quick route for domestic and international customers to access ASX markets. We will measure our success through customer satisfaction and how we're improving the value of our services for them. If we do this well, it will drive revenue growth for ASX. We see five trends driving the market and informing the actions that we will take. We are experiencing increased demand for both physical and virtual connectivity to our services.
By expanding our virtual connectivity capabilities, we open up our services for customers who prefer not to manage infrastructure and for customers who only require occasional connectivity. Secondly, we expect that trading engine technology will remain reliant on physical infrastructure for at least the next 10 years. This demonstrates the value of physical connectivity solutions, which are supported by high-quality services optimized for financial market participants. We will continue to refine our business model as a specialist in the provision of connectivity services for financial market customers. We expect the longer-term transition to cloud-based trading services will actually present different, but new exciting opportunities for the technical services business. We do recognize the connectivity business is rapidly changing to provide customers with additional choice and scale. We plan to provide our customers with services and solutions which allow them to concentrate on what makes them competitive in their respective markets.
Customers are demanding more from exchange colocation solutions. This includes accessing flexible bandwidth, simplified access solutions, low-cost and flexible testing options, as well as other bespoke requirements. We increasingly find that our focus on financial markets uniquely positions our data centre and connectivity capabilities. Our customer list has traditionally been dominated by sell-side participants. We now see emerging opportunities to address buy-side demand for services both for participants and their suppliers, supporting our initiative to provide flexible connectivity and infrastructure as a service capability. International market participants and intermediaries continue to look for new trading opportunities across the globe with a focus on deep and liquid markets supported by great infrastructure. ASX technical services is increasingly the on-ramp for any activity in the Australian financial markets. A key trend is the change in the way that our customers want to access our services.
To meet this customer demand, we recently launched our offering known as ASX Colo on Demand, which is a fully managed infrastructure as a service solution within the Australian Liquidity Centre. It will enable rapid client onboarding and scalability, creating a seamless solution that allows access to ASX's trading, clearing, and settlement services without the need for on-premises equipment. We're also launching new connectivity services for customers looking to access ASX's ecosystem for low-latency trading, for example, from the international proprietary trading community. We also have an opportunity to leverage the crossover between our information and technical services offerings. Through our investment in our data capability as part of our technology modernization program, we plan to build our connectivity solutions to support our growing data and analytics offering to make accessing our information services products as seamless as possible for all of our customers.
We also want to provide flexible bandwidth connectivity options to build out the ecosystem to create new ways that customers can access our markets by offering a tiered menu of connectivity to ensure we capture as much of the market in terms of participant and liquidity profile. All of these activities are designed to provide our customers with access to Australia's financial markets. Now, this final slide brings together the initiatives which have been delivered so far as part of our growth strategy, along with those that are targeted for launch in the first half of FY2026. You will also see we've included the products and services which are in formal discovery stage, with a view to being validated ahead of a possible launch if they prove to be viable. As you can see, we successfully launched the gross short sale offering in Q3 of FY2025.
We then successfully completed the launch of the debt market activity, repo, bond, and money markets product in Q4. The launch of the ASX Colo on Demand service will take place on the 19th of June, and the ASX 24 daily activity summary in the first half of FY2026. We will continue to develop the pipeline of products and services in the years ahead as part of our growth strategy. To finish, our growth strategy for the technology and data business is about leveraging our existing offering and expanding it further. For information services, we plan to utilise our data-rich environment and investment in technology modernisation to leverage our data sets and launch products in asset classes where the data has previously not been made available.
For technical services, we are launching our Colo on Demand offering and are looking at leveraging our existing capability to expand our latency services. We want to expand our cloud access products with the overall goal of providing our customers with access to Australia's financial markets. We see our technology and data business as a key driver of growth as we believe that we've got the strategy in place to drive revenue growth for ASX. Thank you, and I'll now hand back to Helen.
Thank you very much, Jamie. To conclude, I'd like to remind you of our investment proposition and the key messages that you've heard from us today. ASX has significant strengths. We operate critical market infrastructure at the heart of Australia's financial markets. We have a portfolio of high-quality businesses with diverse revenue streams and a strong position in many of our markets. Our business model and value chain is compelling for customers, and it gives us the ability to play an important role throughout the market life cycle. We have significant structural tailwinds, macro factors that will drive our long-term growth. As an exchange, we're a data-rich environment, and we expect to see further demand for our unique data as a key driver of our horizon to growth.
We are well positioned to benefit from the size and ongoing growth of the Australian capital base to support capital formation and drive activity across our markets. Finally, we will continue to support sustainability, including the energy transition, as part of our key role in financial markets. We have medium-term financial targets in place, which are driven by our revenue growth opportunities and an ongoing focus on expense management as we operate our business and allocate capital efficiently. We are two years into our five-year strategy, and we are making great progress in our technology modernization program, where we have done what we said we would do, and in our customer engagement as well. We are not where we want to be in terms of operational risk management and resilience, but we have the plan and the resources in place to achieve our goals in this area.
We've provided FY26 financial guidance, which reflects our ongoing focus on operating expenses and the investment required in our technology modernization program. This investment in technology, combined with our long-term structural tailwinds, are the key drivers of our horizon to revenue growth. Thank you. This concludes the presentation part of our investor forum, and we'll now switch to the Q&A part of the day. I'll invite some of my fellow presenters up to join the panel. We'll begin with questions in the room, and then we'll take questions from the webcast. Thank you. Fabulous. Okay. Questions in the room, Ed.
Microphone.
Hi.
Yes. I think, oh, sorry. Okay, starting in one place.
Thanks. Freya from Bank of America. Firstly, on CapEx, you said that it was expected to fall away after FY 2027. Any indication of what level seems appropriate to you and appreciative of the benchmarking that you did on slide 21? What sort of level do you see this settling at?
Great. Thanks, Freya. Look, I'm glad the benchmarking was helpful. I think the guidance we've given on CapEx actually already takes us out a long way. At this stage, we're not giving any further guidance on what the post-FY27 numbers look like, other than to, we've obviously reconfirmed our intention that we were aiming for it to drop after the FY27 level of investment. More to come at a later point on that.
I guess another, just to follow up on that, I guess, what do you see as the medium-term technology or investment projects that you would be looking to engage with beyond the current cycle?
Yeah. Look, we're very much a technology-driven business, and you've seen that, right? You've seen from what we've discussed today, these investments in our technology modernization are a key driver of us both running a great business of today, but also the growth for the future. I think what might be useful is just to reflect on why we've this kind of three-year more elevated technology modernization profile. Really, that's driven by a couple of different things. There's this very much the modernization strategy that Tim's talked about in terms of the shift to common platforms and contemporary approaches. Remember, it's also driven by the fact that we're doing the CHESS project at the same time as a set of other projects. Clearly, that's not what we'd normally be expecting to do. Really, those two things are the driver of this kind of heightened period of investment.
You can certainly expect that investment in technology will be an ongoing feature of our organization, as it historically has been because of the nature of what we do. Hopefully, that gives you a sense of why we think it's reasonable to expect that our aim is for it to drop after this elevated period.
Thank you. Another question on the new pricing policy that I think Clive talked about. Does this only apply to issuer services and post-trade services?
Oh, it's cash market clearing and settlements and issuer services. So those are the three business lines covered by the policy.
Okay, great. When you talked about 5% per annum sort of revenue growth, that applies to these sort of lines. When you talk about the consultation period, I think there's no price rises expected up to FY2027. Would your new price rises in the future allow for a catch-up?
Do you want to take that, Andrew?
I'm happy to take that question. Excuse me. There's a number of moving parts that go into that pricing policy. We mentioned on the slide, Clive mentioned the fact that there's no price increases over the next two years. The other things to think about are the inputs that go into the calculation of the WACC, the 11.5%. There's potential changes to the 10-year bond rate. There's also potential changes to the capital allocated and also the expense allocation process. To your point around sort of future growth, that sort of revenue requirement could be met by volume growth or price growth.
I suppose the modeling that we've done shows that over the next five years or so, assuming the current sort of inputs into the model, around about a 5%-6% sort of growth in total would support the reaching or the attainment of that revenue target. Going forward, it may not necessarily mean a price increase. It may be generated through volume increases. If you think about the volume of experience this year, it's above and beyond sort of the longer-term trend that we've seen.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ed Henning from CLSA. Just following on from that question on the cash equity segment and issuer services increase in price, if the policy had changed for this year, would it have changed the revenue outcome from the current policy? I'm just trying to think about with the policy coming in next year, how should we think about the revenue change in 2026?
The key thing to think about, Ed, is effectively no price changes. It will be driven by volume. The other key thing to think about is that the rebates will be removed. We have historically had rebates sitting in there that any sort of revenue increases, there is a percentage that is being shared with our participants. That rebate mechanism will also be removed from July 1.
Just to add on that, we did model this year and backwards, and it wouldn't have made an even two difference this year.
Okay. No, that's very helpful. Thank you. Just a second one, you talked earlier about reflecting price or investment in all your pricing of your product. You talked about some products today. How do you think about that with some of the other products you haven't talked about on the trading side, whether it's futures and equities and things like that? Can you reflect the investment you're making in systems across the board, across all your divisions, not just a couple you've mentioned today?
Yeah. We did actually talk a bit more broadly than that today because I think remember that the pricing is a function both of the headline fee structure, but also the various rebate structures we have in place. We are absolutely actively reviewing both of those components. I think particularly across the markets business in particular, making sure that those incentive structures work really effectively is certainly a key lever.
Thanks. It's Nigel Pittaway from Citi. Question on the costs. I mean, still seems to be quite a lot of noise in the sort of cost guidance that you're giving. Obviously, you've got legal costs, you've got the Accelerate program in that. Just wondering if you can give us a feel for how you think BAU cost increases are tracking and sort of the level of stability within those.
Yeah, Nigel, thank you. I suppose we've called out today sort of the operating expense cost growth, the same as FY25. That's an important takeaway. That's excluding the depreciation and amortization. Included in that base is the Accelerate program, as you mentioned, and also ongoing sort of regulatory costs. In the past, there've been the legal fees that we've incurred in relation to the ASIC proceedings, as well as the expert opinion reports, the special reports that we've conducted. If I think about just the ongoing cost, it's probably around about 2% for that regulatory cost line. If we think about those as being somewhat temporary, we've got a fair way to go through that process going forward. At some point, hopefully, that will come to an end. There are about 2% of the expense base.
That's one way to think about one-off or temporary type items in that expense base.
Okay. Thank you for that. Obviously the redundancy program, it looks like it's about double the size of the prior one. I mean, does that right-size the organization now, or do you think there's potential? Is that it likely for the next few years, or do you think there's further potential to sort of make efficiencies of that type moving forward?
I think the thing to bear in mind about our focus on expense management is it's really a focus on driving an efficient organization, as well as making sure that our prioritization choices are right. What you're seeing there is careful choices about where we're spending time and effort. Obviously, there are some areas where we are increasing our focus and effort and others where we're doing less. Those are careful and deliberate choices, and you can absolutely expect that we will continue to do that. That doesn't necessarily result in redundancies. It can just be redeployment of people into priorities. It doesn't necessarily translate. Certainly, what you're seeing is an increasingly active decision-making and focus on ensuring that we're focusing our effort and our resources into the right areas.
Of course, that includes focus on making sure we've got the right focus and resources on operating all of the critical market infrastructure that we run every day, as well as on driving our strategic priorities. We definitely think there are more efficiencies to be had in the organization, not just people, but a great example is the work that Jane's driven over the last couple of years in looking at how we do recruitment processes. That's actually driven significant reductions into our cost line as we've really developed our own talent teams. That's helped us both in terms of quality of the process, actually, and of the candidates, but also in reducing a lot of costs. That's just one example.
You can expect that we'll continue to have this focus on running an efficient organization and streamlining some of our processes to make it work better. That is really what enables us to free up resources to focus on these kind of key strategic investments.
Thank you for that. Maybe just finally, I mean, obviously, you're targeting the expansion in EBITDA margin. Obviously, with the D&A, the outcome on the EBIT margin is slightly different. Is that sort of flattish, or what do you expect on that type of line?
Yeah. We have not specifically guided on that metric, Nigel, but I would just re-emphasize the fact that we are very focused on the ongoing efficiency program or cost optimization program for the organization. We can clearly see the EBITDA margin expanding as we think about the size of the depreciation coming through over the next couple of years. We have clearly given you some data points around that today as well. That has been our key focus. It really reflects the underlying operating performance of the business, the revenue requirements of the organization, the ongoing cash operating expense management of the organization.
Okay. Thank you.
I think it's fair to say the key sort of metric that then captures everything, because as you say, obviously, DNA is an important element of our financial performance, is really that return on equity target that we've set out as well.
Thank you. Hi. Andrew from Macquarie, just a couple of questions off the back of Nigel's question there on the medium-term EBITDA margin expectations. Just the first one, can you talk to how you define medium term? Does that align with the FY2028 current program for five years, or is medium term for the EBITDA margin further out than 2028? Thanks.
Andrew, the way I think about it is sort of a two- to four-year period. It broadly aligns with our transformation program period of time.
Excellent. The follow-up on that one was, do you expect the EBITDA margin to get worse before it gets better?
I would think about it over the medium term as the way we think about the organization, knowing that there can be ups and downs along the way. In terms of we've seen this year a good example of revenue sort of growth in the organization supported by sort of the global market volatility that we've seen. There are elements that may go up and down along the way, but we're clearly focused on sort of the medium-term target of that expansion.
Over that medium-term timeframe, do you expect that number to be demonstrably higher than what it is now? Do you have a historical number that you would expect to get back to as a long-term average? Thanks.
I think the benchmarking slide that we've put up today shows this position pretty well compared to our global peers. We haven't set a particular benchmark, Andrew, noting that that's our ambition to expand that margin.
Morning, Kieran Chidgey, UBS. Just a couple of follow-up questions. The DNA guidance, Andrew, that you've signaled will continue to step up over the medium term. You're talking about a similar dollar incremental uplift between 2025 and 2026 of maybe AUD 20 million. How many years are you sort of flagging that we should see that sort of increase?
Again, Kieran, we've provided sort of a view today around that building block, and it's approximately the number you've mentioned, $20 million in terms of the step up there, that 4% of the expense category. Effectively, if I think about the CapEx program, we've given you the building blocks around the technology roadmap, the CapEx profile, and sort of the average depreciation period. I think you can model out where that gets to, but we haven't guided beyond sort of that sort of the medium term there.
You're suggesting several years post-FY26?
Yes, that's correct.
Just circling back on the earlier question on CapEx to revenue benchmarks, Helen, is there anything structurally different between the ASX and the peers you've put up that would influence where you should sit within that range, whether it's scale or business mix?
Yeah, look, I think it's really interesting when you look at the global peers because it's a very useful set of comparison points, but also everyone is different. I think that the way to think about ASX in particular is very much as an integrated exchange. So we have, I mentioned today, nine different licensed businesses in the ASX group. So we're very much an integrated, quite comprehensive exchange offering. In that sense, as well as in the sense of significant technology investment, we called out Japan Exchange Group, JPX, and TMX in Canada as sort of comparable type structures. Certainly, there are others in that peer group that have really different businesses. I mean, CME might be an example of that, where obviously CME's core business, like one of the other differentiators here, is what's the economy of scale in the business that you're addressing.
Clearly, our core focus is on the Australian and New Zealand markets, and those are a very different scale from obviously the U.S. market that CME serves. CME sort of has a strong focus. It's got some diversified businesses, but obviously the biggest part of that is the core futures business there. That would be an example of something that's quite a different business model. I hope that sort of helps to sort of draw out some of the sort of extremes of those different types of businesses.
Thanks. Just a final question coming back to the new pricing structure for clearing and settlement. We're still fairly early in the CHESS replacement program from a CapEx point of view, given stage two does not release until 2029. Yeah, if we did see blowout in that CapEx program, do participants end up paying for that? What is the protection?
I'm sorry, can you just, what is the protection for, what did you say?
Basically, if we do see costs and CapEx around the CHESS replacement continue to grow above and beyond what you're currently expecting, would that obviously flow through into higher price requirements for participants? I'm just interested in what the protection mechanism is for market participants.
Yeah. Look, the pricing structure does come up with a sort of target revenue that's based on the capital deployed and the costs. We've obviously been very transparent about our expected costs for the CapEx for CHESS, but you're right, if that changes materially, then that could then feed into a different CapEx number in that pricing model. The pricing model, though, in response to some of the customer feedback we had during what's been a really extensive consultation process, we have introduced an efficiency mechanism that helps to deliver some efficiency incentives, where we share the benefit from efficiency incentives to sort of try and tackle exactly that kind of issue. I think the feedback so far has been that people have felt like that's a good, that's been a good solution to that challenge. Would you want to add something to that?
One thing, yeah. In terms of the heavy lifting and build for CHESS R2, that work for us and the cost associated to that is between now and 2027. Between 2027 and 2029, the market's requested two years to test. Now, there's cost for us there as well, but a lot of the hard work is between now and 2027 for us. The market participants need to test and build to and be ready for go-live two years after that.
Thank you.
Good afternoon. Andrei Stadnik from Morgan Stanley. Can I ask a question around some of the revenue benefits in the sense that you've spoken quite a lot today, maybe a little bit more than previously around new products, new product features, and changes to some of the market infrastructure? What kind of cumulative revenue benefits do you expect from those?
Yeah. You will notice we haven't shared today any of those specific target numbers, but we are very conscious that that's something that everyone is very interested in. We are doing some further thinking about the best way to share some of that in the future. Bear with us a bit on that. Obviously, at the moment, what we've said is we've shared that focus on EBITDA margin expansion over the medium term. That is really feeding in, that is very much a combination of that sort of revenue enhancement focus as well as our managing the business efficiently. We will think further about how to provide some more of that revenue numbers in the future.
My second question, can you summarize cloud usage opportunities across the group? Because it kind of came in and out in various sections today. Can you maybe summarize just in terms of where can it be used near-term versus where we might have to wait at least 10 years?
Do you want to talk about that from a tech strategy?
Sure. Yeah, from the technology side, we're looking at how we leverage the cloud technologies to generally provide efficient services. That applies to just how we run the company, like the ERP system and the customer system and the like. In terms of how we're working on the core systems and the data platform, we're using obviously cloud and AWS there to build a set of capabilities around hosting some of our back-office systems, but also with the clearing systems, but also the data platform and getting that leverage. As Jamie talked to, by having that data and having that access to the data platform in a cloud environment, we then have a set of different new delivery opportunities for delivering that data to customers as well.
Maybe to add to that, I think the key other piece of information you heard is Jamie's point that from a trading technology point of view, our expectation is that that core trading infrastructure stays physical for some time. That is really the compare and contrast, where actually in a lot of the other things that we do, there is actually significant opportunity to leverage cloud. Thanks, Andrei. Any other questions in the room, or are we going to the webcast?
Probably one off the back from Simon, perhaps.
Okay, Simon, over to you.
Hi, Helen. We've got two questions from the webcast. The first one is from Matt Wilson at Jarden. It's a bit of a long one, so bear with me. How do you think the surge in non-fundamental flows is affecting the efficiency and role of the exchange in the formation and allocation of capital? We appear to have lost the price signal. Large-cap stocks, typically one in each sector, are becoming increasingly inelastic as concentration and correlation increase. How is management thinking about this challenge to market operation and structure? Are there any thoughts to act preemptively to emulate some of the policies of ESMA?
Great. Thank you. Thanks for the question, Matt. Look, it is interesting, right? There are some really fascinating market dynamics. I think the first thing I would say is that markets generally function best when there is diversity of different types of participants. That is actually really important. That is really what gives you depth and liquidity, is different types of participants doing different things at different times. That is important for an effective market. Darren did talk about some of the factors that you are seeing in the cash market, Darren, and we did talk about the growth of, say, passive investment, where we are seeing the result of that being, and that would presumably be some of the flows that you are referring to there. We certainly are seeing growth in passive investment and therefore increased use of the closing auction for the closing price there.
I think, Darren, you also talked about some of the work that we're doing to try and incentivize that high-quality liquidity provision, both in the lit market and in the dark market. There is certainly a lot of careful thinking that's going on there to try and make sure that the markets continue to provide depth of liquidity and work well for our customers. Is there anything, Darren, that you'd want to add there? Happy. I got the thumbs up.
Thank you. Next question from the webcast is, could you please expand on the M&A strategy that you mentioned today? I understand that it's not an immediate focus, but perhaps you can give some examples of part of the businesses where it may become a focus in the future.
Look, I can't particularly expand on it because, as I said today, the potential for acquisition is there. It's not a key priority focus for us today. I just wanted to share some of our thinking to give some transparency on if we were to look at those types of opportunities, what would be the kinds of things we'd need to consider. Just to sort of recap over that, not surprisingly, it would be strategic alignments, something that actually adds value into our value chain that aligns with the tailwinds that we've talked about, those structural tailwinds that are driving our business going forward. Those are the kind of criteria that we'd obviously be looking at to evaluate whether any particular opportunity was attractive. Not a lot more detail to give you there at the moment.
As we said, we're very conscious that there's potential opportunities there, not a core focus, but these things tend to be more opportunistic.
Thank you. I have got two more questions. Firstly, could you please break down the drivers of the step-up in depreciation and amortization in FY26?
Yeah, thank you. I'll get that question. I think it's synced up with the technology roadmap. We've laid out our CapEx profile over the next three years. We've seen on the slides that Tim put up some of the deliveries. As those projects start to go live, that effectively moves through to that DNA profile. We've called out also that the average DNA profile is 5-10 years, noting that CHESS is expected to be 10 years. All of these are key inputs into that depreciation profile. The other thing I would call out is effectively there's a property amortization, our right of use asset, which is property leases, if you like, is also part of that DNA profile going forward as well.
Thank you. The last question from the webcast is, what role do you think AI should play in exchanges in the long term?
Yeah, that's a great question and definitely one that we spend some time thinking about. We've mentioned AI in a few places, both as a driver of use of our data, for example, but also as a driver of potential process efficiency for technology. I think it's fair to say that we are, from an ASX use perspective, we're in the sort of active experimentation phase. There's a few different areas where we think that AI has the potential to be useful, mainly in being a support to our expert people. A great example would be the development of software and enhancing the testing processes and automating some of the processes there, or experimenting with supporting our listings compliance team to make sure that they've got quicker access to relevant information as they're making their assessments.
Those are the types of things that we're evaluating. I think certainly we see multiple opportunities.
Thank you. There are no more questions from the webcast.
Great. Okay. With that, oh, sorry, Ed, go. Do we have the microphone again? Lovely. Thanks, Risty.
I just want to follow up with something small, but you mentioned the presentation around simply and obviously been reducing costs, but there was a lot of talk about cost management throughout the presentation. This has obviously been dragging on for some time. Interoperability does not look like happening. They have talked about a practitioner-first model. Can you just explain what you think that means and how long is a piece of string here when you will continue to kind of optimize your costs here and potentially move on, or how long until this will actually make some revenue for you?
I think you can absolutely expect that we are actively reviewing our equity portfolio just as we're actively looking at the rest of our investments. Obviously, one of the things that we shared today is that, simply, in light of some of the uncertainty and challenges around interoperability, they have significantly reduced their cost base in the last month or so to sort of manage into that. Anything you want to add?
Yeah, the cost base reduction is substantial as well. It's about 40% compared to their previous cost base. That will give you some guidance there around the size of that going forward. The practice-first model really is looking to leverage sort of the existing customer base that the ATI group has through that e-conveyancing network, sort of their current customers, and utilizing some of the sort of the infrastructure that's in existence through a PEX sort of agreement into the banking sort of, I suppose, network as well. There's a lot to play out there still, so there's a lot to go in terms of working through those opportunities.
Hi, thanks for taking some extra questions. Just on the trading volume mix shift you talked about, which was quite a structural trend, more volumes moving from lit to dark, more off-market block trades, is this a revenue headwind or tailwind for ASX, or is it broadly neutral? I guess, are there any product or service changes you're looking to make out of this?
Yeah, it's a good question, actually. There are different fees attached to different types of trading activity. It is a higher fee trading in the auction or in Centrepoint, for example. From a pure fee perspective, activity there would be an increased fee. I think that does not take away from our very strong focus on the lit market and market quality numbers. One of the key areas where we have been doing a lot of work is investing in really lifting up how we think about market quality and how we evaluate that. You can expect us to be sort of sharing some more of those numbers publicly in due course as well. It has been a key area that we have focused on.
As Darren said, the focus for us is not just on getting the revenue benefit from those types of trades. It's actually also on making sure that we're driving good quality activity into the lit market and really incentivizing good quality flow.
Thanks. Just on the listing rules review, I guess, how attractive is the ASX currently as a place for corporates and their primary listing compared to what's offered overseas, both in terms of the listing process and the ongoing costs associated? My question is, I guess, what do you expect to achieve out of this review?
Yeah, very attractive on a global basis, actually. I think some of what James talked about already was the contrast between Australia's listed market and other markets around the world is quite significant. That said, we've absolutely committed to reviewing some of those settings. We definitely heard from the investor community that there were areas where they'd like to have more of a voice. What we're really driving through at the moment is figuring out where the priorities are. Of course, anything that we do on reviewing listing rules, remember, these are processes that need to be very open and transparent.
As we work through what are the priorities, we'll also need to do a lot of the research and analysis because if you change some of these settings, you really need to make sure you understand what the consequences of that would be and who it would impact. We'll do a lot of historical analysis to evaluate that. We'll be sharing any proposals and that analysis in a public consultation process so that everyone would get to have a say. Of course, the challenge for us as a market operator is always trying to achieve the best outcome for the market as a whole. Inevitably, there'll be different views and different perspectives from different types of participants in the market. Trying to navigate through that process and find the right balance for those settings is the really important role that we play.
James, is there anything you want to add in terms of the overall Australian market attractiveness and the relativities there?
As I spoke about earlier, we do have an incredibly positive value proposition as a public market here, and we see this compared to markets overseas. I think we, of course, do not rest on our laurels. Making improvements is something part of our job. The initiatives with ASIC currently are extremely positive that we can make these incremental changes over time to improve the attractiveness of the market even further.
Great. Now, just check any other questions before we wrap up. Okay. Look, thank you so much, everyone, for being here or for listening in on the webcast, for your engagement, for your fantastic questions. It's fantastic to see you all. I hope it was useful today. Thank you for joining us.